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pillowfort-social · 9 months ago

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Generative AI Policy (February 9, 2024)

As of February 9, 2024, we are updating our Terms of Service to prohibit the following content:

Images created through the use of generative AI programs such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, and Dall-E.

This post explains what that means for you. We know it’s impossible to remove all images created by Generative AI on Pillowfort. The goal of this new policy, however, is to send a clear message that we are against the normalization of commercializing and distributing images created by Generative AI. Pillowfort stands in full support of all creatives who make Pillowfort their home. Disclaimer: The following policy was shaped in collaboration with Pillowfort Staff and international university researchers. We are aware that Artificial Intelligence is a rapidly evolving environment. This policy may require revisions in the future to adapt to the changing landscape of Generative AI.

Why is Generative AI Banned on Pillowfort?

Our Terms of Service already prohibits copyright violations, which includes reposting other people’s artwork to Pillowfort without the artist’s permission; and because of how Generative AI draws on a database of images and text that were taken without consent from artists or writers, all Generative AI content can be considered in violation of this rule. We also had an overwhelming response from our user base urging us to take action on prohibiting Generative AI on our platform.

How does Pillowfort define Generative AI?

As of February 9, 2024 we define Generative AI as online tools for producing material based on large data collection that is often gathered without consent or notification from the original creators.

Generative AI tools do not require skill on behalf of the user and effectively replace them in the creative process (ie - little direction or decision making taken directly from the user). Tools that assist creativity don't replace the user. This means the user can still improve their skills and refine over time.

For example: If you ask a Generative AI tool to add a lighthouse to an image, the image of a lighthouse appears in a completed state. Whereas if you used an assistive drawing tool to add a lighthouse to an image, the user decides the tools used to contribute to the creation process and how to apply them.

Examples of Tools Not Allowed on Pillowfort: Adobe Firefly* Dall-E GPT-4 Jasper Chat Lensa Midjourney Stable Diffusion Synthesia

Example of Tools Still Allowed on Pillowfort:

AI Assistant Tools (ie: Google Translate, Grammarly) VTuber Tools (ie: Live3D, Restream, VRChat) Digital Audio Editors (ie: Audacity, Garage Band) Poser & Reference Tools (ie: Poser, Blender) Graphic & Image Editors (ie: Canva, Adobe Photoshop*, Procreate, Medibang, automatic filters from phone cameras)

*While Adobe software such as Adobe Photoshop is not considered Generative AI, Adobe Firefly is fully integrated in various Adobe software and falls under our definition of Generative AI. The use of Adobe Photoshop is allowed on Pillowfort. The creation of an image in Adobe Photoshop using Adobe Firefly would be prohibited on Pillowfort.

Can I use ethical generators?

Due to the evolving nature of Generative AI, ethical generators are not an exception.

Can I still talk about AI?

Yes! Posts, Comments, and User Communities discussing AI are still allowed on Pillowfort.

Can I link to or embed websites, articles, or social media posts containing Generative AI?

Yes. We do ask that you properly tag your post as “AI” and “Artificial Intelligence.”

Can I advertise the sale of digital or virtual goods containing Generative AI?

No. Offsite Advertising of the sale of goods (digital and physical) containing Generative AI on Pillowfort is prohibited.

How can I tell if a software I use contains Generative AI?

A general rule of thumb as a first step is you can try testing the software by turning off internet access and seeing if the tool still works. If the software says it needs to be online there’s a chance it’s using Generative AI and needs to be explored further.

You are also always welcome to contact us at [email protected] if you’re still unsure.

How will this policy be enforced/detected?

Our Team has decided we are NOT using AI-based automated detection tools due to how often they provide false positives and other issues. We are applying a suite of methods sourced from international universities responding to moderating material potentially sourced from Generative AI instead.

How do I report content containing Generative AI Material?

If you are concerned about post(s) featuring Generative AI material, please flag the post for our Site Moderation Team to conduct a thorough investigation. As a reminder, Pillowfort’s existing policy regarding callout posts applies here and harassment / brigading / etc will not be tolerated.

Any questions or clarifications regarding our Generative AI Policy can be sent to [email protected].

#pillowfort.social #pifo #pillowfort.soc #pfstaffalert #tos #policy #ai #please share #february 2024

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago

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An end to the climate emergency is in our grasp

On June 20, I'm keynoting the LOCUS AWARDS in OAKLAND.

The problem with good news in the real world is that it's messy. Neat happy endings are for novels, not the real world, and that goes double for the climate emergency. But even though good climate news is complicated and nuanced, that doesn't mean it shouldn't buoy our spirits and fill our hearts with hope.

The big climate news this past week is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's clarion call about surging CO2 levels – the highest ever – amid a year that is on track to have the largest and most extreme series of weather events in human history:

https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/during-year-of-extremes-carbon-dioxide-levels-surge-faster-than-ever

This is genuinely alarming and you – like me – have probably experienced it as a kind of increase in your background radiation of climate anxiety. Perhaps you – like me – even experienced some acute, sit-bolt-upright-in-bed-at-2AM anxiety as a result. That's totally justifiable. This is very real, very bad news.

And yet…

The news isn't all bad, and even this terrible dispatch from the NOAA is best understood in context, which Bill McKibben provides in his latest newsletter post, "What You Want is an S Curve":

https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/what-you-want-is-an-s-curve

Financier and their critics should all be familiar with Stein's Law: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." This is true outside of finance as well. One of the reasons that we're seeing such autophagic panic from the tech companies is that their period of explosive growth is at an end.

For years, they told themselves that they were experiencing double-digit annual growth because they were "creating value" and "innovating" but the majority of their growth was just a side-effect of the growth of the internet itself. When hundreds of millions of people get online every year, the dominant online services will, on average, gain hundreds of millions of new users.

But when you run out of people who don't have internet access, your growth is going to slow. How can it not? Indeed, at that point, the only ways to grow are to either poach users from your rivals (through the very expensive tactics of massive advertising and sales-support investments, on top of discounts and freebies as switching enticements), or to squeeze your own users for more.

That's why the number of laptops sold in America slowed down. It's why the number of cellphones sold in America slowed down. It's why the number of "smart home" gizmos slowed down.

Even the steepest hockey-stick-shaped exponential growth curve eventually levels off and becomes an S-curve, because anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop.

One way or another, the world's carbon emissions will eventually level off. Even if we drive ourselves to (or over) the brink of extinction and set up the conditions for wildfires that release all the carbon stored in all the Earth's plants, the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere has to level off.

Rendering the Earth incapable of sustaining human civilization (or life) is the ultimate carbon reduction method – but it's not my first choice.

That's where McKibben's latest newsletter comes in. He cites a new report from the Rocky Mountain Institute, which shows a major reversal in our energy sources, a shift that will see our energy primarily provided by renewables, with minimal dependence on fossil fuels:

https://rmi.org/insight/the-cleantech-revolution/

The RMI team says that in this year or next, we'll have hit peak demand for fossil fuels (a fact that is consistent with NOAA's finding that we're emitting more CO2 than ever). The reason for this is that so much renewable energy is about to come online, and it is so goddamned cheap, that we are about to undergo a huge shift in our energy consumption patterns.

This past decade saw a 12-fold increase in solar capacity, a 180-fold increase in battery storage, and a 100-fold increase in EV sales. China is leading the world in a cleantech transition, with the EU in close second. Cleantech is surging in places where energy demand is also still growing, like India and Vietnam. Fossil fuel use has already peaked in Thailand, South Africa and every country in Latin America.

We're on the verge of solar constituting an absolute majority of all the world's energy generation. This year, batteries will overtake pumped hydro for energy storage. Every cleantech metric is growing the way that fossil fuels did in previous centuries: investment, patents, energy density, wind turbine rotor size. The price of solar is on track to halve (again) in the next decade.

In short, cleantech growth looks like the growth of other technologies that were once rarities and then became ubiquitous overnight: TV, cellphones, etc. That growth isn't merely being driven by the urgency of the climate emergency: it's primarily a factor of how fucking great cleantech is:

https://rmi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/the_incredible_inefficiency_of_fossils.pdf

Fossil fuels suck. It's not just that they wreck the planet, or that their extraction is both politically and environmentally disastrous. They just aren't a good way to make energy. About a third of fossil fuel energy is wasted in production and transportation. A third! Another third is wasted turning fossil fuels into energy. Two thirds! The net energy efficiency of fossil fuels is about 37%.

Compare that with cleantech. EVs convert electricity to movement with 80-90% efficiency. Heat pumps are 300% efficient (the main fuel for your heat pump is the heat in the atmosphere, not the electricity it draws).

Cleantech is just getting started – it's still in the hockey-stick phase. That means those efficiency numbers are only going up. Rivian just figured out how to remove 1.6 miles of copper wire from each vehicle. That's just one rev – there's doubtless lots of room for more redesigns that will further dematerialize EVs:

https://insideevs.com/news/722265/rivian-r1s-r1t-wiring/

As McKibben points out, there's been a lot of justifiable concern that electrification will eventually use up all our available copper, but copper demand has remained flat even as electrification has soared – and this is why. We keep figuring out new ways to electrify with fewer materials:

https://www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals/NewsDetails/copper-wire-price-remains-stable-amidst-surplus-supply-and-expanding-mining-25416#:~:text=Global%20Copper%20wire%20Price%20Remains%20Stable%20Amidst%20Surplus%20Supply%20and%20Expanding%20Mining%20Activities

This is exactly what happened with previous iterations of tech. The material, energy and labor budgets of cars, buildings, furniture, etc all fell precipitously every time there was a new technique for manufacturing them. Renewables are at the start of that process. There's going to be a lot of this dematerialization in cleantech. Calculating the bill of materials for a planetary energy transition isn't a matter of multiplying the materials in current tech by the amount of new systems we'll need – as we create those new systems, we will constantly whittle down their materials.

What's more, global instability drives cleantech uptake. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in European renewables. The story that energy prices are rising due to renewables (or carbon taxes) is a total lie. Fossil fuels are getting much more expensive, thanks to both war and rampant, illegal price-fixing:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-oil-price-fixing-conspiracy-caused

If not for renewables, the incredible energy shocks of the recent years would be far more severe.

The renewables story is very good and it should bring you some comfort. But as McKibben points out, it's still not enough – yet. The examples of rapid tech uptake had big business on their side. America's living rooms filled with TV because America's largest businesses pulled out all the stops to convince everyone to buy a TV. By contrast, today's largest businesses – banks, oil companies and car companies – are working around the clock to stop cleantech adoption.

We're on track to double our use of renewables before the decade is over. But to hold to the (already recklessly high) targets from the Paris Accord, we need to triple our renewables usage. As McKibben says, the difference between doubling and tripling our renewables by 2030 is the difference between "survivable trouble" and something much scarier.

The US is experiencing a welcome surge in utility scale solar, but residential solar is stalling out as governments withdraw subsidies or even begin policies that actively restrict rooftop solar:

https://twitter.com/curious_founder/status/1798049929082097842?s=51

McKibben says the difference between where we are now and bringing back the push for home solar generation is the difference between "fast" and "faster" – that is the difference between tripling renewables by 2030 (survivable) and doubling (eek).

Capitalism stans who argue that we can survive the climate emergency with market tools will point to the good news on renewable and say that the market is the only way to transition to renewables. It's true that market forces are partly responsible for this fast transition. But the market is also the barrier to a faster (and thus survivable) transition. The oil companies, the banks who are so invested in fossil fuels, the petrostates who distort the world's politics – they're why we're not much farther along.

The climate emergency was never going to be neatly solved. We weren't going to get a neat novelistic climax that saw our problems sorted out in a single fell swoop. We're going to be fighting all the way to net zero, and after that, we'll still have decades of climate debt to pay down: fires, floods, habitat loss, zoonotic plagues, refugee crises.

But we should take our wins. Even if we're far from where we need to be on renewables, we're much farther along on renewables than we had any business hoping for, just a few years ago. The momentum is on our side. It's up to us to use that momentum and grow it. We're riding the hockey-stick, they're on that long, flat, static top of the S-curve. Their curve is leveling off and will start falling, ours will grow like crazy for the rest of our lives.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

#pluralistic #s-curves #bill mckibben #climate emergency #renewables #energy transition #energy #solar #wind #fossil fuels #climate

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industech-group · 2 years ago

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MARKETING AND SALES AT INDUSTECH

Who are we?

We, at Industech, deal with real estate consultancy and are among the top service providers in the country. We are specialized in helping buyers and sellers to reach their equilibrium point to acquire desired property deals. We provide digital consultancy services and are also involved in joint development projects with various big clients like SMR Vinay Estella, Multi Infinite, Canterbury Divine Arc, Godrej, IFB Eastwood, and Lodha.

How do we help our clients achieve their targets?

Digital Marketing:

We are specialized in digital marketing. Our digital marketing team consists of skilled UX and visual designers, providing various digital marketing services like content marketing, email marketing, video marketing, search engine optimization[SEO], and social media marketing via platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google, etc to our clients.

We also provide professional services like logo designing, brand positioning, product positioning, market and user research, media planning, and many more.

Influencer Marketing:

This generation has a wide fan base for influencers. Due to this rising fame and popularity of influencers, we keep ourselves on track with the ongoing trends in the market and collaborate with various influencers to promote our clients’ products and increase brand engagement.

Planning:

Having a foolproof plan for any project is its basic foundation. We help our clients gain a competitive edge by assisting them in making strategic plans for their business projects and also in implementing these plans to get effective results.

Consultancy Services:

In this fast-moving competitive market, receiving proper consultancy is of utmost importance. We provide effective consultancy services for land buying, sales, valuation, and management. These services include property development, portfolio evaluation, property investing, property marketing, property management, investment opportunity research, residential property consulting, etc.

Customer Relationship Management [CRM] Team:

We have a team of skilled professionals who help us build and maintain effective relationships with our current and also, prospective customers. Our CRM team is constantly working towards resolving customer complaints and queries instantly and also, in an effective manner to ensure customer satisfaction.

We keep a track of all data regarding our prospective customers who show interest in us via ads or by visiting our website, we ensure to get in touch with all of them, reaching a wide range of the public.

Product photography:

The first impression is the last impression, we have skilled photographers and videographers to provide you with professional product photography services and help you give the best first impression and retain and also, attract more clients. We, at Industech, have professional skills in creating campaigns that drive leads, build brand awareness, and achieve desired results. We provide our clients with customized advice to ensure they receive the best returns on their investments. We provide ongoing support from start to finish to ensure the completion of the project on time and within budget. So reach out to us, today!

#real estate #realtor #advertising #bangalore #realestatebangalore #realestateinvesting #realty #home for sale #digital marketing #consultancy services #Product photography #advertisment

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iambutmortal · 1 year ago

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@elucienweekofficial Day 1: Mates

Summary: When Elain signs the divorce papers she’s sure she’s done with Lucien Vanserra. Until they’re offered the chance to recreate their honeymoon as a part of her job. For free. But reliving all those memories with Lucien proves leaving may be more difficult than she thought.

Word Count: 3k

Authors Note: I would like to thank @foreverinelysian for the amazing prompt and also apologize for holding onto it for a year (sorry @sjmkinkmeme). Also, yes, I did steal the opening scene from Asylum of the Daleks but in my defense that was my 12 year old sexual awakening so allowances must be made.

Read on Ao3

It took everything Elain had not to blow the strand of hair out of her mouth. The fan was pointed directly at her face, whipping her hair back dramatically. Or at least she hooped it looked dramatic, and not like she’d been caught by a cyclone. Because that would not make the magazine editors, or her manager, happy.

And with her luck would probably result in her ending up as a Facebook meme. She could picture the caption me trying to model but the world says no. The grandmothers of the world would be in stitches.

But the photographer seemed happy, kept yelling how the shot was perfect and stunning and you’re amazing darling so Elain was pretty sure it was dramatically.

“Break,” shouted the creative director, already leaning over the photographer’s camera to peer at the camera screen.

Elain resisted the urge to massage her cheeks, aching from the sultry, but not too sultry, smile she’d been forcing herself to hold for the better part of an hour. She was sure there were thousands of pictures at this point, all with her at a slightly different angle, chin up a fraction, down an inch, to the left a hair, all in service of getting one perfect picture the perfume makeup company could slap up on billboards to advertise their new blush.

She felt bad for anyone who actually fell for it, since half the pan had been spread across her face in an effort to make some color appear, and whatever the final result was would still need digital enhancement. Even the makeup artist hadn’t been able to control her laughter at the attempt, shaking her head. “Guess I won’t be adding this to my kit.”

But a job was a job, and Elain needed the work to pay the bills. Bills that were suddenly a lot higher.

No, Elan scolded herself. She wasn’t allowed to think about it at work. That was the rule she’d had for herself two months ago when she’d had to lock herself in the bathroom to cry during a shoot. Despite her attempts to blot the smeared mascara away with toilet paper, the make up artist had been livid. Elain had only been spared by the fact that the photographer had liked it. Thought it was edgy and cool for whatever bland perfume they were selling to middle age house wives.

“Ma’am,” said one of the PAs on set, appearing at her elbow. PAs had a nasty habit of doing that, sliding behind her before she could notice, and nearly scaring her half to death.

“Yes,” Elain asked, pasting a pleasant smile on her face. Her cheeks barked in protest. But she was not going to be known as the model who was hard to work with.

“Your husband is here.”

In spite of herself, Elain couldn’t hide her glare. “I don’t have a husband.”

The PA glanced down at his clipboard, searching for the note he’d scribbled there. “It says here—”

“It’s fine,” Elain said, slipping past him and towards the room they’d turned into a makeshift dressing space. The company had rented an old house for the natural lighting and Victorian chandeliers, and they’d used the front parlor as a space to dump makeup and accessories. “I’ll go talk to him.”

She brushed past the curtain and there he was.

Lucien Vanserra. Her husband, at least on paper.

He looked good, and Elain hated herself for noticing. His red hair was shorter, only down to his shoulders, and slicked back. He’d made himself at home in one of the upholstered chairs scattered around the room, leaning back, one leg crossed over the other at the knee. It showed off the muscled thighs Elain was well acquainted with, hidden beneath dark was jeans.

“You need to sign these,” Lucien announced, holding up a stack of papers.

Elain snatched them out of his hand.

The words at the top Decree of Divorce stood out in bolded font.

She turned around, grabbing the pen someone had left lying off the wardrobe-turned-desk. She scanned the text briefing, before jotting her signature down on each of the dotted lines.

“Just like that?” she asked, handing them back.

Lucien unfurled himself from the seat, all lanky limbs chorded with muscles, and took them back from her.

“Just like that.”

He tucked them into the breast pocket of the black leather jacket he was wearing. Since when has he had that?

“Do you need a folder?” Elain asked, eyeing his chest suspiciously. “I doubt the judge wants wrinkled papers.”

Lucien snorted. “They’re fine. I know what I’m doing.”

“Of course you do,” Elain muttered. “Little Mr. Perfect.”

“What was that?” Lucien asked, taking a step closer to her.

“Nothing,” said Elain, smiling up to him with saccharine sweetness. “I just want to make sure after this I don’t have to see you again.”

“Don’t worry, beautiful, after this you never will again.”

Elain remembered a time when Lucien calling her beautiful would have her blushing fiercely, would no doubt result in him getting laid that night. Now it came out dripping with derision.

Elain rolled her eyes, pointing towards the curtain. “There’s the exit.”

“Nice knowing you,” Lucien said, striding toward the curtain and dipping under it.

Elain bit her lip as she watched his retreating back side. She ought to say something nicer, she thought. Before he was gone from her life forever, surely.

“Wait,” she called out after a long moment. But Lucien was already gone.

A part of Elain sighed in relief. What was she going to do if he stayed, explain why he came back from work one day to all his stuff packed in bags on the porch?

She huffed a sigh, blowing one of the strands of hair that had fallen into her face out of her eyes.

It was fine. She was going to finish her job and then go home and eat an entire carton of Halo Top. Maybe two depending on how sad the Hallmark movie on that night made her feel. Nowhere near as good as the real thing, but quantity over quality.

Elain glanced in the mirror behind her, to check that none of her makeup had smudged and that her eyes were crystal clear, not glassy, before following her soon to be ex-husband out.

Only to find him standing in the entryway with her sister.

“Oh perfect, I was about to send Lucien in to find you,” Nesta said, looking up from the email she was furiously typing on her phone.

“Do you have another job?” Elain asked. Nesta, on top of being her overprotective sister, was also Elain’s modeling agent. And a very good one. One wall of Nesta’s office was dedicated to all the magazine covers her models had gotten, right behind the Birkin bag she’d gotten as a gift from Anna Wintor on its shelf of glory.

“One day I’ll have a wall of Vogue,” had always been Nesta’s promise to herself and, at twenty nine, she was already well on her way there.

“Only the best for you,” Nesta said, sliding her phone into the pocket of her cleanly pressed slacks and brushing a kiss across Elain’s cheek. “And Lucien gets to join you on this one.”

“Oh,” Elain said, any excitement she had rapidly deflating.

Because she hadn’t actually told her sister she was getting divorced. It made her the worst kind of coward, something she told herself at every family dinner when she and Lucien sat next to each other and pretended things were going well, but she couldn’t bear to do it. Couldn’t stand to see the crestfallen looks on Feyre and Nesta’s face, the confused horror on her father’s. She was supposed to be the one who succeeded, married the nice boy from down the road and had a nice family.

Never mind that down the road was in a multi-million dollar mansion near Beverly Hills.

And after Elain told her family, she’d have to face the paparazzi. She was moderately well known, enough to get an occasional “who wore it best” shoutout in People (she always won), and Lucien was the son of Hollywood's most beloved silver fox.

A silver fox who’d run away with the wife of the state governor three months ago and was desperately trying to rehabilitate his image in the eyes of the press before his next movie. The media was out for blood, and Helion’s beloved son divorcing his pretty little wife wasn’t what anyone needed right now.

So Elain and Lucien had an unspoken mutual agreement not to tell anyone. When they showed up to Feyre and Rhys’ Sunday night dinners, whoever got there first sat in their car until the other arrived and they could keep up the appearance of arriving together. They sat next to each other and made a good show of acting like they didn’t hate each other’s guts. And then, when it was over, they left without another word and Elain pretended it didn’t feel like her heart was being stabbed over and over.

“You know the company you and Lucien used to book your honeymoon?” Nesta asked, too focused on whatever gig she had planned to notice Elain’s dismay. “They’ve been asked to plan the Greek princess’ honeymoon, which means Cosmopolitan wants to run a profile. And since the Royal wedding hasn’t happened yet, they wanted to feature another famous couple they worked with, and that’s you and Lucien.”

Elain’s eyes darted over to Lucien to see his eyebrows were high enough to touch his hairline.

“You want me to take pictures for a magazine spread?” Lucien asked. “I do have work to do. Not to mention,” Lucien gestured at the left side of his face, and the scars that raked down it, standing in stark contrast to his golden brown skin. A reminder of the car crash he’d been in in high school. “This.”

Elain had to bite her tongue to keep from saying something. She’d always thought the scars only served to make Lucien look more handsome, gave him a slightly dangerous air that lured her in, something that she reminded him of frequently, but her comments always seemed to fall on deaf ears. But it wasn’t her place, not now.

Nesta gave Lucien a scathing look. “The shoot is planned for two weeks after the California state election, so I’m sure you’ll have some time to take a week long, all expense paid vacation to the Bahamas.”

“We honeymooned in the Dominican Republic,” Elain interrupted.

Nesta whipped out her phone and tapped on it rapidly for a few seconds. “Yes, there.”

Elain barely contained her eye roll. She was sure Nesta could point out both countries on a map, and rattle off at least two or three facts about their geopolitical status, but asking her to remember where Elain went for her honeymoon was a step too far for her when she was focused on work.

“And the magazine is well aware of what your face looks like. It’s been enough places for everyone to know,” Nesta finished with finality.

Elain scowled. “We can’t just uproot our lives. We have things to do, I have things to do.” Namely buying the ugliest pink couch she could find to put in Lucien’s old office as one last fuck you.

“All expenses paid?” Lucien asked, speaking over her.

Nesta smiled dangerously. “Flight included.”

Lucien crossed his arms. The leather jacket pulled up at the motion, the cuffs tight around muscled forearms. “And all we have to do is take some magazine photos.”

“And do an interview,” Nesta added.

Somehow, Lucien managed to arch one brow even higher. “And they want me, son of a currently disgraced movie star.”

“And potential senatorial candidate,” Nesta added.

“Rumors,” Elain interrupted. “All just rumors.”

“Which are good in this line of work,” was Nesta’s counter.

“I’m in,” Lucien said.

“We’ll think about it,” Elain corrected, glaring over at Lucien. He smirked at her in challenge.

Nesta sighed, glancing between the two of them, at last picking up the tension. “I need an answer by tomorrow, they want to book flights.”

Elain squirmed under her sister’s stare. This was exactly what she didn’t want, any cracks showing in her picture perfect life before she was ready to sit everyone down with a carefully rehearsed speech.

“Elain?” Nesta asked.

In response, she leaned slightly towards Lucien, who obligingly pulled up his sleeve to show her his watch, a thick silver one she’d given him for his last birthday. At least he hadn’t forgotten that trick, since Elain never had a watch or phone on her at work. “My ten minutes are up,” Elain said, glancing at the time. “Gotta run.”

“I need an answer,” Nesta called as Elain slid backwards, towards where the photographer and director were still leaning over the camera, arguing back and forth over some detail or other.

“I’ll text you,” Elain promised. She almost felt bad leaving Lucien with Nesta. Almost, but not quite.

“I don’t know what to do,” Elain said on the phone later that night. “It would be a whole spread, at least ten pages, and a cover story.”

“Which would be perfect for your career,” Vassa finished for her.

“But then I would have to—”

“Spend a week with Lucien.”

Elain sighed. Vassa and Jurian were the only two people outside of their lawyers who knew Elain and Lucien were separating. It was unavoidable, since Lucien was living in their guest room for the time being. Looking for his own place would raise too many questions, and staying in a hotel for weeks would be an invitation for bored paparazzi.

“What would you do,” Elain asked, taking a bite of her ice cream. She’d splurged on Haagen Dazs, rationalizing that the encounter with Nesta had more than justified it.

“I’m not the one getting an all expense paid vacation.”

“With your ex-husband.”

“Technically he’s still your husband until Monday,” Vassa laughed. Because the court closed early on Friday and Nesta’s appearance had taken up too much time for Lucien to drive over to the court house.

“Not helping,” Elain growled. “And why would Lucien even agree? He loves to poke at Nesta’s buttons.”

“It would be good for him too,” Vassa said. “Future state Senator gets a fluff magazine article about him and his beautiful wife.”

“It’s a rumor,” Elain insisted. “He hasn’t even nominated himself. And anyway, it’s going to look a lot worse when he has to come out and say we’re not together anymore.”

“First of all, you know it’s more than a rumor. No political analyst gets called into a meeting with the head of the DNC for nothing, and second just pretend you’re still married, you’ve already been doing it for six months.”

Elain suppressed her groan. Vassa made it clear at every possible opportunity how much she disapproved of Elain’s current course of action. A “Congrats of Getting Divorced, Coward” Edible Arrangement had shown up on her door the day she moved to start the paperwork, and it had only escalated from there.

Although Elain figured she should be glad Vassa would still talk to her instead of taking Lucien’s side completely. She was distressingly short on friends who weren’t her sisters and it would be so easy for Vassa to blame her when Elain still refused to explain what exactly had caused her to kick Lucien out. But Vassa had just sighed, crawled into the mountain of blankets Elain had made for herself, and said she knew Elain would talk to her when she was ready.

“He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

Elain had given an emphatic no and that had been that.

“Ugh,” Elain sighed, flopping back on the couch. “I don’t know.”

“You’ve said that about twelve times already,” Vassa sighed. “We’ve been on this call for two hours.”

“Then maybe you’re not being helpful enough.”

“I’m not helpful? Fine then,” Elain heard a rustling on the other side of the phone as Vassa started thumbing through her room.

“Oh you don’t need to…” Elain protested weakly.

But the sounds of video game weapons were already buzzing in her ear.

“Lucien,” Vassa asked, her voice muffled as she pulled the phone away and put it on speaker. “What are your thoughts on Nesta’s offer?”

There was a long, pregnant pause on the other side of the line.

“I’m in if Elain is.”

“Thank you,” Vassa chirped.

Elain waited until there was once again silence on the other side of the line to speak. “Traitor.”

“I accept you’re welcome, I’m forever in your debts, I could never repay you.”

“I hate you,” Elain snapped. “I hope your favorite tree burns down in the next wildfire.”

“Low blow,” Vassa protested. It was, based on how much time and energy Vassa spent caring for that orange tree.

“I’m hanging up,” Elain said.

“Text your sister.”

“See you at spin tomorrow.”

“Love you bitch,” was Vassa’s sign off, and then the line went dead.

Vassa was too smart for her own good, Elain thought. Because if Lucien was in, so was she. There was no way she was going to look like the coward in front of Lucien, like she wasn’t willing to do something he will.

So she closed the phone app and pulled up her text messages.

Nesta’s was at the top, several unopened messages demanding an answer waiting.

We’re in.

#elucienweek2023 #elucien #elucien fanfiction #elucien fanfic #acotar #acotar fanfiction #acotar fanfic #elain archeron #lucien vanserra

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sean-parnell · 4 months ago

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How Manufacturers Can Leverage Content Marketing to Grow

Cold calls, print advertising, tradeshow participation, and knocking on doors once worked well manufacturers can no longer rely on them to generate leads that fuel sustainable, double-digit growth despite having an effective sales team that may still have some skills in these areas.

Inbound lead generation in commercial and industrial markets requires compelling brand storytelling and thought leadership that educates prospects along the buyer’s journey, who don’t want to talk with salespeople before they’re good and ready as they fear being “sold to” by people that don’t have their best interest in mind.

Problems Solved vs. Products & Services, Features & Benefits

Powerfully resonating with prospects requires brand storytelling that converts website visitors into prospects then into customers.

Your brand story begins with having a deep understanding of the problems faced by your prospects, what they need to overcome them, and the value to them in doing so before promoting all of your products and services and their features and benefits. Prospects are searching for who can solve their problems and may have a limited understanding of what will solve their problems, so claiming your solutions are “the best” and that you’re an “industry leader” may mean nothing until they have an understanding of how your products will help them.

The hero of your prospects’ story is themselves, so you need to educate them on how you can solve their problems, and how your people, process, products, and services – not just products – do so. This is what will resonate powerfully with them. In this way, you serve as a guide for achieving success and avoiding failure. Your products and services with their features and benefits are how you solve these problems..

Thus, your “brand story” needs to be told throughout all of your marketing: on your home and about pages, blogs, guides, case studies, marketing collateral, presentations, proposals, press releases, third-party website profiles, direct mail, email campaigns, your tagline, and anywhere else you promote your company.

A brand story for each product and service you sell can also be developed as each of them solves different problems in different ways for different markets. This “sub-brand storytelling” is also effective for different vertical and geographic markets as each has different requirements.

Extracting & Promoting Thought Leadership

When they have a problem that they want to solve – because the pain of not changing exceeds the pain of the change – prospects self-educate themselves by researching the internet before speaking with any vendors, so it’s important to provide educational content that will help them understand how you can solve their problems:

TOFU: Top of Funnel: this content builds awareness by providing an overview of the problems you solve and how your products solve them

MOFU: Middle Funnel: this content goes one level deeper and helps them consider between different options that can solve their problem

BOFU: Bottom Funnel: this content gets very specific and helps prospects make their final decisions

OOFU: Out of Funnel: this content is created in a misguided attempt to maximize keyword rankings and website traffic as part of a flawed search engine optimization strategy (SEO) but fails to generate leads though can be quite costly

Tip: it’s important to have a good balance of all types of content (except OOFU).

It’s especially important for manufacturers to understand that, in addition to learning about how you solve their problems with your products and services, your prospects want to know how your solutions and business practices compare with both direct and indirect competitors. They also want to understand how their investment can be cost-justified so they can sell the idea of buying from you to internal decision makers that may not be in communication with you. Product comparisons are very useful because this is what prospects try to compile themselves, especially if they include areas where your competitors have an advantage over yours. Case studies that include return on investment (ROI) estimates are also highly useful for prospects.

Lead-Generating Content Begins with Keyword Research

Understanding and prioritizing what your prospects are searching for is a critical first step for lead generation, which begins with conducting keyword research on all the different terms your prospects may use.

Onsite SEO then fully leverages the content you’ve already developed when you work the highest priority keyword phrases into your page titles, meta descriptions, H1 headers, and throughout the content of each page – just remember it has to read well and should only be performed by someone that thoroughly understands your business and what prospects value.

Brainstorming content ideas that incorporate these keyword phrases and educates prospects along the buyer’s journey is the next step, following by prioritizing these content ideas into an editorial calendar. The best content comes from getting a professional copywriter to interview your company’s thought leaders and then writing up what is learned in the form of foundational website content, blogs and guides.

Best Practice: Google Search Console reports the keywords people searched for to find you.

Creating Lead Magnets

When your prospects discover that you are providing education and thought leadership for how you can solve their problems, many will be willing to provide their contact information to download this gated content – especially long-form, MOFU and BOFU content including guides, whitepapers, ebooks, and webinars. It’s also important that your contact forms ask prospects where they found out about you so you can attribute each download to the marketing or other activities that generated them. It’s not recommend to gate promotional material that prospects expect to be freely available, including blogs, brochures, data sheets, infographics, case studies, and similar materials.

Promoting MOFU and BOFU also generate even more website traffic and leads, including in Google Ads, LinkedIn Campaigns, Microsoft Ads and other pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, your social media profiles (especially LinkedIn and Twitter), on third-party article publishing sites (e.g. Medium), and throughout your public relations activities.

The Manufacturing Content Creation & Lead Generation Process

Here are the steps for creating content that has been proven to generate leads and product sales from many commercial and industrial manufacturers:

Conduct keyword research and optimize all of your current content for search

Develop brand storytelling and implement it throughout your home and about pages, marketing collateral, presentations, and all other marketing materials

Write blogs and publish them on a consistent schedule, educating prospects on a wide variety of topics that help them understand how your products and services will solve their problems

Syndicate unique versions of this content on high ranking, third-party websites

Launch Google ads and email campaigns to bring more prospects in

Create microsites to promote how you solve specific problems in your top vertical markets

Launch ecommerce to supplement sales through your channel partners for people that want to speak with and buy directly from you – just don’t undercut them, so selling only at list price is recommended

Evaluate new market opportunities where your current competitors are irrelevant with Blue Ocean Strategy

This approach routinely generates sustainable, double-digit sales growth with an ROI of over 300% within 12-18 months when executed by an experienced industrial marketing agency – and your company will no longer be a well-kept secret in your markets.

The Case for a Marketing Audit

While it may be appealing to hire a full-time content marketer, SEO specialist, or to outsource to a manufacturing marketing agency that may wow you with shiny objects, conducting deep dive marketing due diligence with an experience marketing consulting resource understands your industry is typically a better way to start.

An effective marketing audit will identify what it will take for you to generate sustainable, double-digit growth by leveraging brand storytelling, content marketing, SEO, content syndication, email campaigns, marketing automation, social media, advertising, PR, and more.

Most marketing audits focus only on promotional marketing communications, so you may want to find an industrial marketing agency that can auditing the other three Ps of your marketing: products and services, pricing and placement (selling through channels and go-to-market strategy).

#manufacturing marketing #industrial marketing #b2b marketing agency #content marketing #search engine optimization (SEO)#brand storytelling

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siyainterior · 7 months ago

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IBAIS MEDIA is a Digital I.T. & Advertising company.

We assist in promoting the business of all Manufacturers, Traders, Exporters and Importers across India through Architectural and Interior products like Architect & Interior Hardware, Tiles-Sanitary, Wooden, Furniture and in future Home Décor.

If you want to know more information, please visit our website: www.ibaisindia.com

We are creating future Online B2B, B2C & B2E building 🏢 material E-commerce platforms.

We advertise in 300+ cities of PAN India. we have also covered Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Myanmar, Africa and Dubai and other Neighboring Countries and All Social Media channels. (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Telegram, WhatsApp channel)

(More than 28,000+ Members have already joined our Digital Platforms. Those Who are involved in the HARDWARE business Manufacturers, Wholesalers, Dealers, Exporters, Importers, Architects-Interiors and Carpenters.)

IBAIS MEDIA is a digital platform for Branding, Marketing & Services. We are a Develop Marketing platform that Specialized in Strategy, Creativity, Design and innovative technology.

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khushbukatakwar · 1 month ago

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Advertising Agencies in Hyderabad

Hyderabad, known as the “City of Pearls,” is also a hub for innovation and creativity. Over the years, the city has become home to many ad agencies in Hyderabad that are making a significant impact on the advertising industry. These agencies help businesses connect with their audience, build their brand, and boost their growth. In this blog, we’ll explore the success stories of some top advertising companies in Hyderabad and understand how they’ve achieved remarkable results for their clients.

Growth of Advertising Agencies in Hyderabad

The demand for effective advertising has led to the rapid growth of advertising agencies in Hyderabad. Businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises, are seeking the expertise of these ad agencies in Hyderabad to craft compelling campaigns that resonate with their target audience. These agencies have evolved to offer a wide range of services, including digital marketing, content creation, and branding, helping businesses stay ahead in a competitive market.

#ad agencies in Hyderabad #advertising agencies in Hyderabad

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yatescountyhistorycenter · 1 month ago

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Do you know Yates County?: Yates County Oddity No. 27 through No. 52

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Anyone who has conducted research either through Yates County’s digitized newspapers or the Yates County History Center’s subject files has likely come across items titled either “Penn Yan Oddity” or “Yates County Oddity.” These items – snippets might be a good word – provide information about various aspects of local history, seeming to answer some sort of question or mystery.

Seeing so many of these snippets – and finding the answers but seeming not to find the question – I decided to scour our digitized newspaper database to see if I could find all of them, the questions with the answers. It turns out the oddities – 90 Penn Yan Oddity items, 52 Yates County Oddity items – were part of an advertising campaign in the 1940s for Baldwin’s Bank, then located at 127 Main St. in Penn Yan, the present-day home of the Arts Center of Yates County.

The Penn Yan Oddities ran in The Chronicle-Express in consecutive weeks from February 20, 1947 to November 11, 1948, and then the Yates County Oddities picked up right away in the newspaper from November 18, 1948 to November 24, 1949. So, for more than 2 and a half years, readers of The Chronicle-Express learned something about local history each week in the newspaper.

Each item started out as an advertisement for Baldwin’s Bank with the phrase “Do You Know Yates County?” at the top of the graphic followed by the question for the week. In the middle, the bulk of the ad, would appear information about the bank’s various services and offerings. The bottom would direct the reader to look for the answer elsewhere on the same page and then look for another Oddity the following week.

In this article, I present Yates County Oddity No. 27 through No. 52. Each question and answer has been transcribed exactly as it appeared in the newspaper, which changes made only for typographical errors and not for grammatical errors. The only time words have been removed from the items is in the case of references to photographs that appeared in the newspaper.

27) How many Lake Keuka cottages in Yates County?

There are 1,800 dwellings along the shores of Lake Keuka, according to the county made this past fall by John V. Stark, compiler of the new Lake Keuka directory. Of these 850 are in Yates county.

Here’s the breakdown: cottages (not lived in the year around) on Lake Keuka number 1,480; in Yates county 640. Year-around residences, either on Lake Keuka shore or on the lake roads, number 320, of which 210 are in Yates county.

28) How many miles of lake shore in the county?

More than half of the Lake Keuka shore line is in Yates county. Supervisor John V. Stark estimates 35 of the approximate 60 are in Yates. Some 9 miles of Canandaigua lake shore lie within Yates and some 20 miles of the west shore of Seneca, which gives Yates a total of about 64 miles of shore line, much of which is available for summer homes.

Since there are 348 square miles in this county of about 17,000 population, there is a mile of lakefront for every 260 persons and for every five square miles of lake. Is there any other county in the Empire state with a greater lake frontage per square mile of area?

29) What Yates pioneer helped chain the Hudson?

With his two yoke of oxen, Eliphalet Hull helped in placing the great chain across the Hudson near West Point to prevent the British ships from sailing up the Hudson. Mr. Hull later became of the noted pioneers of Benton township, the first Methodist class leader west of Utica.

30) What Grange founder was born and buried here?

Francis Marion McDowell was born near Wayne, just beyond Yates county and died in 1894, his grave being in the Lake View cemetery, Penn Yan. He was one of seven founders of the national grange, holding the office of treasurer for 20 years.

31) Which town touches the most other Yates towns?

Milo township touches five other Yates county townships: Benton on the north, Torrey on the east, Starkey and Barrington on the south, and Jerusalem, for a short distance with a land-to-land boundary, on the west. If intervening lake were ignored, Jerusalem would also have five Yates towns touching.

But Jerusalem, along with Potter and Benton, each directly border four other Yates townships.

32) How many Yates towns have lake frontage?

All but two of the Yates county townships border upon at least one of the Finger lakes and Milo has frontage on two – Seneca and Keuka.

With Bluff Point jutting deep into Keuka to give her the characteristic “Y” shape, Jerusalem claims by far the greatest lake frontage of any township. Italy has the least, barely cutting across the southern end of Canandaigua lake. Potter town alone is landlocked.

Middlesex fronts on Canandaigua; Barrington on Keuka; Benton, Torrey, and Starkey on Seneca lake.

Before days of the railroad and auto trucks, convenient outlet to the lakes was all important as a means of transportation. Today it means resort business.

33) What four towns have the most population?

According to the 1940 census Milo, Starkey, Jerusalem, and Benton led the Yates county population count in that order. Potter, Barrington, Torrey, Middlesex, and Italy followed.

Work has already started on the 1950 census. Will the Yates county population of 16,338, as revealed by the 1940 count, be greater or less? It has been declining in recent years by small amounts.

34) How many mail routes are there in the county?

There are a total of 21 mail collection and delivery routes in Yates county, exclusive of the Star routes.

Of the six village routes five are Penn Yan letter carriers and the sixth is the carrier in Dundee. Of the 15 rural delivery routes, five emanate from the Penn Yan post office, three from Dundee, two from Branchport, and one each from Rushville, Middlesex, Himrod, Bluff Point, and Rock Stream.

35) Is Yates the smallest county in the state?

Yates county is not the smallest county in New York state, measured by population or area.

According to the last federal census Putnam, Schuyler and Hamilton counties had less population than Yates, whereas 11 other counties had fewer than the 343 square miles of area included within the boundaries of Yates. Among these smaller counties are most of the densely occupied areas of metropolitan New York – such as Kings, Queens, Bronx, Rockland, Richmond, Nassau, and others.

36) Where is the highest spot in Yates County?

The highest point in Yates county is in Italy township southwest of Italy Hill village, about where a bomber crashed during the war, killing the entire crew. The altitude at this point is given as 2,130 feet above sea level on some maps, a little less on others.

37) How many churches in Yates County?

There are 41 churches in Yates county in which services of worship are held regularly or frequently. This does not include the Garrett Memorial chapel or isolated and independent congregations which meet in halls or homes.

38) What Yates man invented milk tablets?

J. Robert Hatmaker of Paris, formerly of Milo township, 45 years ago was gaining fame as inventor of the process for reducing milk to tablet form. The German emperor had ordered thousands of these tablets and was sending quantities of them to his troops in Manchuria.

39) Where is biggest rock in the county?

The late Berlin Hart Wright, local naturalist, believes that the big boulder on the east side of Italy valley is the largest rock in the county. Brought here by glaciers some 2,500 miles from the Laurentian mountains in Canada, it measures some 25 by 15 feet above the ground and weighs an estimated 350 tons.

40) Where is oldest cemetery in Yates?

City Hill cemetery on the west hill above Seneca lake, south of Dresden, established in 1788 by followers of the Universal Friend and early settlers of this area, is the oldest cemetery in what was then known as the Genesee country and is the oldest in the county.

41) What unique Yates monument honors a woman?

The boulder and plaque on the west shore of the West branch of Lake Keuka, just south of Branchport, at the time of its erection 16 years ago, was the only monument erected in the United States to honor an Indian woman. The mother of Red Jacket, famed Indian chief and orator who lived in thish section is honored by the unique monument.

42) What is our latitude?

Yates county is situated at 42.5 degrees north latitude, as far north of the equator as are: northern Spain, central Italy, Vladivostok, in Siberia, southern Manchuria and north central China.

43) Which railroad bridge is highest?

The highest railroad bridge in Yates county is the span which carries the Pennsylvania tracks over Big Stream at Glenora. At this point the tracks are 102 feet above the stream bed. The Rock Stream span is 71 feet high and the bridge over the Keuka Lake outlet at Penn Yan is 50.

The first bridge of pine timbers built in the (1850s), when the railroad line from Watkins to Canandaigua was put through was some 90 feet above the bed of the gorge. About 1893 the present steel span was erected just west of the old wooden structure, which was then torn down.

44) In what square mile of rural Yates lie the most roads?

The greatest concentration of public highways in anyway square mile of rural Yates county appears to be at the tip of Bluff Point where a car can traverse an estimated eight miles of different roads without going beyond the limits of a square mile area.

45) When was wheat first raised in Yates?

The first bushel of wheat grown in western New York is said to have been raised in Yates county.

A note in the old family Bible of Richard Smith, one of the followers of Jemima Wilkinson who settled on the west shores of Seneca lake, south of the present village of Dresden, reports grinding 10 bushels of winter wheat raised in this vicinity. This was in 1789 and was ground in the first grist mill in this part of the “pioneer west.” The mill, erected on the outlet, opposite of what is now Seneca Mills, was first ready for use July 4, 1790. Previous to then grain was taken by horseback to a mill in Pennsylvania for grinding.

46) Where was Yates County’s source of pearls?

The late Edwin C. Dinturff had some beautiful necklaces and jewelry pieces made from pearls which he took from clams that once thrived in Flint creek, where it entered Potter swamp near Potter Center. Edible fresh water clams are still found in some local streams.

47) What Elm Street residence was once situated on Main Street?

The residence of Mr. and Mrs. William D. Allison, 133 Elm St., was once situated in Main street. As a matter of fact, on April 5, 1911, it was located in the very center of the business section as it was being moved to make room for the present post office building.

By means of block and tackle and a team of horses, it was rolled down Main street to the four corners and thence on Elm to its present location, the second house west of the parking station. One of the biggest jobs was removing the trolley wire on Elm street and suspending trolley traffic to make possile moving the large dwelling. The other residence removed from the post office location is now used as a dwelling at the foot of Champlin avenue. A picture of the moving appears in the window of the Baldwins bank.

48) In Yates which was first – Italy or Naples?

In Europe, Naples was a part of Italy, but here Italy was a part of Naples. The township of Italy, Yates county, was organized by act of legislature Feb. 15, 1815, it being set off from the township of Naples, Ontario count. The origin of the name is not known.

Italy township grew in population to 1698 persons in 1845. Now, a century later, it is estimated at about 500 population.

49) Where is the smallest post office building?

Rock Stream residents have claimed that their post office, recently abandoned for one located in the community store, was the smallest in the United States. El Dorado, Calif., is one place which contends it has a smaller post office, but has not sent in the exact dimensions, as yet.

In the meantime the residents in the southern end of Yates county can boast of having had the smallest post office in Yates county. The building, which measures 12 by 24 feet and 9 foot walls, is now being converted into living quarters.

50) What Penn Yan home has hickory shade trees?

The shade trees in the lawn in front of the home of Miss May E. Decker, 203 Clinton street, Penn Yan, are hickory nut trees – so far as we can learn the only dwelling in the county seat which depends upon hickory nut trees for shade. There are maples, however, between the walk and the curb.

51) Is population mostly village or rural?

According to the last Federal census figures, Yates county’s population is more rural than village. The total population of the four incorporated villages – Penn Yan, Dundee, Rushville, and Dresden – was listed as 7,001, whereas the total population of the entire county was estimated at 16,338. These are 1940 figures.

52) How much will be paid out in Christmas Club checks?

When three of the Yates county banks send their Christmas club checks to the more than 1700 club members, which is being done in Penn Yan this week Saturday, the total amount of the Christmas club checks will be about $115,000.

#historyblog #history #museum #archives #american history #us history #local history #newyork #yatescounty #newspaper #chronicleexpress #yatescountyoddity

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bigeasymagazineme · 1 year ago

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#make a monthly donation #become a sponsored contributor #advertising with us in new orleans #advertising services in new orleans #advertising in new orleans #online home for progressive new orleans #make a one time donation #advertise with big easy magazine #donate to big easy magazine #support independent journalism #advertising #digital advertising

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sprites4ever · 2 months ago

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My Political Philosophy

Society

For a functional Republic, we need the people to know the truth.

If the people are educated on the world, bad actors cannot abuse popular lack of knowledge to advertise extremist policy.

I want MASSIVE investments in public education and media, and a COMPLETE restructuring of the education system.

Stop forcing children, who need to go out and explore the world to mature, to slave away eight hours of five weekdays learning things they aren't interested in.

Educate children on natural sciences and sociopolitics in a more friendly, decentralized atmosphere which isn't a relic of the 1800s.

Do not stop education at age eighteen and expect the currently taught knowledge to serve the people for decades to come.

Make continually updated, digitalized education a constantly available commodity for all citizens, free of charge.

All cititens MUST be free and have the same rights.

Via better education on the fundamental realities of humanity, such reforms will also be met with less opposition from regressives who believe groups such as the LGBTQ+ community to be evil.

TOTAL Secularism!

If you want to dedicate your life to spreading the idea that the world exists on a giant's ballsack, that's fine, but pay for it yourself.

Economy and Logistics

IF a Socialist Utopia is possible, I want it.

But it must be achieved through reform, not through revolution.

Until that day, I will continue to work toward it as a Liberal.

For freedom, peace and prosperity, one needs a strong economy, and for that, one needs Industrialization 3.0.

I want a nationalist approach to industry;

Stop outsourcing the people's work for profit. Use modern technology to produce goods and services in the country, and have that technology designed, maintained and improved by an educated populace which has emerged from the fusion of proletariat and academia.

A founding pillar of a strong economy is a good logistics network.

It is amazing how many problems can be solved by trains if they are built and maintained properly.

Expand and modernize the railway network and BAN CARS FROM CITIES!

You'll be amazed by how much space is freed up if we do that. All those parking spots and roads, gone in favor of freely navigable public spaces, as well as living and working spaces. We can put trees everywhere in the city centers to improve air quality!

We can make reliable, far-reaching public transportation that is free for citizens, based on trains, as well as drones for delivery.

Again, this will be powered by our educated citizens and modern technology.

Immigration

Uproot the problem.

Immigration is not the problem, but a symptom of a far more deeply rooted problem.

Do you believe people WANT to travel across half the world in a dangerous refugee boat??

No, but they have no other choice because the conditions in their home countries are unworthy of humans!

We need an aggressively moralist foreign policy that uses a part of our economic product to fund massive, systemic improvements and reforms in the nations where the most migrants come from, which happen to be the poorest, most crisis-plagued ones.

Don't just deliver medicine and bottled water to a desert village. Deliver tools and teach the people how to make medicine and build water wells.

This is an investment into the future. This creates positive relationships between our country and the countries we help grow, meaning mutually beneficial ties with those countries when they've grown to stand on their own feet. Then, their people also won't need to flee anymore.

Military and Foreign Policy

Recent developments have shown that a unilateral desire for peace is not enough to assure it.

Insane imperialists and self-righteous terrorists, corrupting words of peace, justice and goodness to justify their selfish aggression, will wage war on whomever they think they can, regardless of if the victim has any desire for war.

I do not desire war.

But to prevent us from having war unleashed upon us, we need to make it clear to the aforementioned that they do not want war with us, due to the violent consequences we would unleash. For that, and to stop those imperialists and terrorists who, in service of their selfish motives, counter our foreign policy of helping the less privileged nations, we need a strong military which is powered by educated decision-makers and soldiers who are also motivated by our country's values, to use cutting-edge, industrially homemade technology and weapons in order to defend our people and enforce our help for others against those who wish to destroy both.

As mentioned before, the allies we make via our investment in the poorest nations will definetly help us in that regard.

Environment and Energy

It ties back into the education problem.

Since the 1950s, nuclear power has provided a clean, safe means of producing absurd amounts of energy, but systemic propaganda by the fossil fuel industry, the same people who greenwash their agenda with insincere promises about a transition to renewable energies, of which they know those cannot cover the energy demands on their own, has made people fear nuclear energy like the devil.

All the problems about reactor meltdowns, radiation safety and waste products have already been solved and have generally been overstated by the fossil fuel lobby. People have also taken to fearing all forms of nuclear energy due to the prospect of annihilation via its weaponized form, nuclear weapons.

But a form of energy that is so powerful that it can destroy the world when weaponized, can also be used by good people to save the world. Evil people will use all means at their disposal anyway. It's the good people who need to stop limiting themselves.

Factually, atomic energy is an extremely complex topic that requires immense education to be understood.

Hence it being so easy for the fossil fuel lobby to fearmonger against it, due to the popular lack of knowledge about it.

As said before, we need more public media and education, which would also alleviate the people's fears of a form of energy which, due to its power, we are OBLIGATED to use for good.

With clean, reliable energy that can supply even an exponentially growing people and economy, we can also use more products of advanced technology and science to fix environmental damages and preserve nature, so that we can exist in harmony with it.

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a-halo-for-you · 1 year ago

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Useful Online Resources for Creative Students

Tips to controlling your creative chaos.

Studying Creative Writing and Theatre led me to exploring more about myself as an individual as well as an aspiring writer and actress. And in my writing I managed to compile a few more secret helpers to my party so when I am on the verge of a meltdown due to stress and writer’s block, there’s always a helping hand to get me out of a tricky situation.

Every writer has their tools, from their brain to the type of pen they most prefer to make notes with and which software they prefer to work on. In this article I will be going through some of the tools that have best helped me through my time at university.

⊱ ────── The Dictionary and Thesaurus ────── ⊰

I know, I know, not particularly exciting and original but it is imperative for us to have these at the ready, whether through technological means of the internet or in printed editions. We have all been in that place where there is a word on the tip of our tongues but we just can’t find it and that is where these come to our rescue.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

⊱ ────── YouTube ────── ⊰

YouTube has plenty of channels dedicated to writing, publishing, editing etc. It also has footage of our beloved authors who give plenty of valuable advice from their extensive experience in the job. It is also home to many wonderful playlist channels- no doubt helping me with the flow of my stories a few times or concentrating on studying an essay.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

⊱ ────── Spotify ───── ⊰

Speaking of music! Music is probably a number one for me personally, it creates the atmosphere internally before you cry, sweat and bleed it out onto the pages yourself with your own words. Spotify is my favourite as with a student discount you can get a premium membership that means no advertisement interruptions. You can also spend time creating different playlists for different works, for characters, settings or a collective emotion.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

⊱ ────── Pinterest ────── ⊰

Now, if you have not come across the wonders of pinterest I must direct it towards you as some are stimulated by music others are stimulated by photos. Helping to visualise characters, clothing, setting they have many wonderful photos for this, as well as plenty of information that can be shared on history, culture, creative ways to get rid of a body etc. There are also posts specifically tuned for writers, a large amount coming from Tumblr blogs which I would also recommend looking at.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

⊱ ────── Reedsy ────── ⊰

The next site I recommend is Reedsy. Reedsy is an online blog and website that connects writers, editors, artists and publishers. They have writing software where you can write your book in a publishable format, they have apps and tools that vary from generators and prompts to online classes that you can subscribe to. They also have writing competitions which help to create portfolios for new writers. At Reedsy you can meet other like minded individuals through the marketplace and post for your online portfolio.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

⊱ ────── Fantasy Name Generators ────── ⊰

Now to some writers, using Generators can seem like a cheat but if you’re stuck then this website is a good place to go, whether you’re struggling with world-building or character creation and need some good names there’s always something you can find and note down. A tip to give would be to take two names and mix them to come up with something new, that way it also feels a little less of a cheat.

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

Finishing here, I hope that any of these tools are useful for you as they have been for me in organising my creative chaos. And my last piece of advice for any unpublished writer or writing student would be not to compare your works in progress with any published works. Who knows which draft number it is so don’t compare it to your first!

⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

#creative writing #writing process #writing inspiration #writers on tumblr #writeblr #creative prompts #spotify #writing prompt #journaling #planning #on writing #writing tips #student tips #student learning #university #student life #study tips #creative women #creative works

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

Text

Google is (still) losing the spam wars to zombie news-brands

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 3) in CALGARY, then TOMORROW (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Even Google admits – grudgingly – that it is losing the spam wars. The explosive proliferation of botshit has supercharged the sleazy "search engine optimization" business, such that results to common queries are 50% Google ads to spam sites, and 50% links to spam sites that tricked Google into a high rank (without paying for an ad):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

It's nice that Google has finally stopped gaslighting the rest of us with claims that its search was still the same bedrock utility that so many of us relied upon as a key piece of internet infrastructure. This not only feels wildly wrong, it is empirically, provably false:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Not only that, but we know why Google search sucks. Memos released as part of the DOJ's antitrust case against Google reveal that the company deliberately chose to worsen search quality to increase the number of queries you'd have to make (and the number of ads you'd have to see) to find a decent result:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Google's antitrust case turns on the idea that the company bought its way to dominance, spending the some of the billions it extracted from advertisers and publishers to buy the default position on every platform, so that no one ever tried another search engine, which meant that no one would invest in another search engine, either.

Google's tacit defense is that its monopoly billions only incidentally fund these kind of anticompetitive deals. Mostly, Google says, it uses its billions to build the greatest search engine, ad platform, mobile OS, etc that the public could dream of. Only a company as big as Google (says Google) can afford to fund the R&D and security to keep its platform useful for the rest of us.

That's the "monopolistic bargain" – let the monopolist become a dictator, and they will be a benevolent dictator. Shriven of "wasteful competition," the monopolist can split their profits with the public by funding public goods and the public interest.

Google has clearly reneged on that bargain. A company experiencing the dramatic security failures and declining quality should be pouring everything it has to righting the ship. Instead, Google repeatedly blew tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks while doing mass layoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Those layoffs have now reached the company's "core" teams, even as its core services continue to decay:

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

(Google's antitrust trial was shrouded in secrecy, thanks to the judge's deference to the company's insistence on confidentiality. The case is moving along though, and warrants your continued attention:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-2-trillion-secret-trial-against

Google wormed its way into so many corners of our lives that its enshittification keeps erupting in odd places, like ordering takeout food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Back in February, Housefresh – a rigorous review site for home air purifiers – published a viral, damning account of how Google had allowed itself to be overrun by spammers who purport to provide reviews of air purifiers, but who do little to no testing and often employ AI chatbots to write automated garbage:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

In the months since, Housefresh's Gisele Navarro has continued to fight for the survival of her high-quality air purifier review site, and has received many tips from insiders at the spam-farms and Google, all of which she recounts in a followup essay:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

One of the worst offenders in spam wars is Dotdash Meredith, a content-farm that "publishes" multiple websites that recycle parts of each others' content in order to climb to the top search slots for lucrative product review spots, which can be monetized via affiliate links.

A Dotdash Meredith insider told Navarro that the company uses a tactic called "keyword swarming" to push high-quality independent sites off the top of Google and replace them with its own garbage reviews. When Dotdash Meredith finds an independent site that occupies the top results for a lucrative Google result, they "swarm a smaller site’s foothold on one or two articles by essentially publishing 10 articles [on the topic] and beefing up [Dotdash Meredith sites’] authority."

Dotdash Meredith has keyword swarmed a large number of topics. from air purifiers to slow cookers to posture correctors for back-pain:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/keyword-swarming-dotdash.jpg

The company isn't shy about this. Its own shareholder communications boast about it. What's more, it has competition.

Take Forbes, an actual news-site, which has a whole shadow-empire of web-pages reviewing products for puppies, dogs, kittens and cats, all of which link to high affiliate-fee-generating pet insurance products. These reviews are not good, but they are treasured by Google's algorithm, which views them as a part of Forbes's legitimate news-publishing operation and lets them draft on Forbes's authority.

This side-hustle for Forbes comes at a cost for the rest of us, though. The reviewers who actually put in the hard work to figure out which pet products are worth your money (and which ones are bad, defective or dangerous) are crowded off the front page of Google and eventually disappear, leaving behind nothing but semi-automated SEO garbage from Forbes:

https://twitter.com/ichbinGisele/status/1642481590524583936

There's a name for this: "site reputation abuse." That's when a site perverts its current – or past – practice of publishing high-quality materials to trick Google into giving the site a high ranking. Think of how Deadspin's private equity grifter owners turned it into a site full of casino affiliate spam:

https://www.404media.co/who-owns-deadspin-now-lineup-publishing/

The same thing happened to the venerable Money magazine:

https://moneygroup.pr/

Money is one of the many sites whose air purifier reviews Google gives preference to, despite the fact that they do no testing. According to Google, Money is also a reliable source of information on reprogramming your garage-door opener, buying a paint-sprayer, etc:

https://money.com/best-paint-sprayer/

All of this is made ten million times worse by AI, which can spray out superficially plausible botshit in superhuman quantities, letting spammers produce thousands of variations on their shitty reviews, flooding the zone with bullshit in classic Steve Bannon style:

https://escapecollective.com/commerce-content-is-breaking-product-reviews/

As Gizmodo, Sports Illustrated and USA Today have learned the hard way, AI can't write factual news pieces. But it can pump out bullshit written for the express purpose of drafting on the good work human journalists have done and tricking Google – the search engine 90% of us rely on – into upranking bullshit at the expense of high-quality information.

A variety of AI service bureaux have popped up to provide AI botshit as a service to news brands. While Navarro doesn't say so, I'm willing to bet that for news bosses, outsourcing your botshit scams to a third party is considered an excellent way of avoiding your journalists' wrath. The biggest botshit-as-a-service company is ASR Group (which also uses the alias Advon Commerce).

Advon claims that its botshit is, in fact, written by humans. But Advon's employees' Linkedin profiles tell a different story, boasting of their mastery of AI tools in the industrial-scale production of botshit:

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

Now, none of this is particularly sophisticated. It doesn't take much discernment to spot when a site is engaged in "site reputation abuse." Presumably, the 12,000 googlers the company fired last year could have been employed to check the top review keyword results manually every couple of days and permaban any site caught cheating this way.

Instead, Google is has announced a change in policy: starting May 5, the company will downrank any site caught engaged in site reputation abuse. However, the company takes a very narrow view of site reputation abuse, limiting punishments to sites that employ third parties to generate or uprank their botshit. Companies that produce their botshit in-house are seemingly not covered by this policy.

As Navarro writes, some sites – like Forbes – have prepared for May 5 by blocking their botshit sections from Google's crawler. This can't be their permanent strategy, though – either they'll have to kill the section or bring it in-house to comply with Google's rules. Bringing things in house isn't that hard: US News and World Report is advertising for an SEO editor who will publish 70-80 posts per month, doubtless each one a masterpiece of high-quality, carefully researched material of great value to Google's users:

https://twitter.com/dannyashton/status/1777408051357585425

As Navarro points out, Google is palpably reluctant to target the largest, best-funded spammers. Its March 2024 update kicked many garbage AI sites out of the index – but only small bottom-feeders, not large, once-respected publications that have been colonized by private equity spam-farmers.

All of this comes at a price, and it's only incidentally paid by legitimate sites like Housefresh. The real price is borne by all of us, who are funneled by the 90%-market-share search engine into "review" sites that push low quality, high-price products. Housefresh's top budget air purifier costs $79. That's hundreds of dollars cheaper than the "budget" pick at other sites, who largely perform no original research.

Google search has a problem. AI botshit is dominating Google's search results, and it's not just in product reviews. Searches for infrastructure code samples are dominated by botshit code generated by Pulumi AI, whose chatbot hallucinates nonexistence AWS features:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/01/pulumi_ai_pollution_of_search/

This is hugely consequential: when these "hallucinations" slip through into production code, they create huge vulnerabilities for widespread malicious exploitation:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

We've put all our eggs in Google's basket, and Google's dropped the basket – but it doesn't matter because they can spend $20b/year bribing Apple to make sure no one ever tries a rival search engine on Ios or Safari:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/google-payments-apple-reached-20-220947331.html

Google's response – laying off core developers, outsourcing to low-waged territories with weak labor protections and spending billions on stock buybacks – presents a picture of a company that is too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Google promised us a quid-pro-quo: let them be the single, authoritative portal ("organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"), and they will earn that spot by being the best search there is:

https://www.ft.com/content/b9eb3180-2a6e-41eb-91fe-2ab5942d4150

But – like the spammers at the top of its search result pages – Google didn't earn its spot at the center of our digital lives.

It cheated.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

Image: freezelight (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spam_wall_-_Flickr_-_freezelight.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

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