#Market Overseas Grant

[socialmediamarketingsingapore]

Boost your international expansion with the Market Overseas Grant with Bluehive Asia. This funding helps SMEs explore and enter overseas markets, covering marketing and expansion costs. Learn more and apply today

[bluehiveasia]

A Guide for SMEs to Apply for the EDG Grant Singapore.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role in Singapore's economy, accounting for over 99% of all businesses and employing approximately two-thirds of the workforce. However, with increasing competition and rapid technological advancements, SMEs need to keep up with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive.

Fortunately, the Singapore government offers a range of grants and initiatives to support SMEs in this regard, including the EDG (Enterprise Development Grant) EDG and the (Enterprise Singapore Grant) ESG Grant Singapore.

In this blog post, we'll provide a comprehensive guide for SMEs looking to apply for the EDG Grant Singapore, with insights from Bluehive core capabilities.

Firstly, it's essential to understand what the EDG Grant is and how it works. The grant is designed to support Singapore companies in their efforts to grow and transform, with a focus on three key areas: innovation and productivity, market access, and capability development.

The grant covers up to 75% of qualifying project costs and is available to companies of all sizes, provided they meet the eligibility criteria.

Once you understand what the EDG Grant Singapore is and how it works, the next step is to identify your company's specific business needs.

This could include areas such as digital transformation, business strategy consulting, or talent development. Bluehive core capabilities align with the objectives of the EDG Grant, and our team can help you identify which areas are best suited for your business.

Once you've identified your business needs, the next step is to evaluate your eligibility for the EDG Grant Singapore. To qualify, your company must be registered and operating in Singapore, have a minimum local shareholding, and be financially viable.

Additionally, your proposed project must demonstrate clear and measurable outcomes, align with your company's overall strategy, and not have started before the grant application.

Once you've confirmed your eligibility, the next step is to prepare your grant application. This can be a time-consuming and complex process, which is where Bluehive core capabilities come in. We can help you develop a compelling proposal that showcases your company's strengths and aligns with the objectives of the ESG Grant.

The final step in the process is to submit your application for the EDG Grant Singapore. Applications are typically evaluated on a first-come, first-served basis, so it's essential to submit your proposal as soon as possible. Once your application has been approved, you can start implementing your project and accessing the funding provided by the grant.

In summary, the EDG Grant Singapore and ESG Grant Singapore offer a range of opportunities for SMEs to enhance their capabilities, access new markets, and drive innovation. With the support of Bluehive core capabilities, SMEs can navigate the grant application process with ease and maximize their chances of success.

Don't miss out on this valuable opportunity to grow and transform your business. Apply for the EDG Grant or ESG Grant Singapore today and take your business to the next level.

Company Name: Bluehive Asia

Email: projects@bluehiveasia.com

Phone No.: (+65) 6100 4148

Visit Us: https://www.bluehiveasia.com/

Address: 18 Sin Ming Lane #06-32 Midview City Singapore 573960

[tomorrowusa]

Anne Applebaum's book Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World was published a few days ago. in the book she describes the basic nature of contemporary autocracies and how they cooperate with each other.

About two-thirds of the way through this NPR audio she pivots from overseas autocracies to talk about how disinformation and outright lies are undermining democracy in the US.

The transcript for the audio can be found here.

A few bits from the transcript:

You know, for a long time, certainly since the end of the Cold War gave us this feeling that our political system was the best and it was inevitably the best, we took for granted the idea that somehow, you know, information was like - was another free market. And there would be a competition in the market between good ideas and bad ideas, and eventually the good ideas would win. That's actually not how it works. And that's not how the news business works anymore. It's not how information works. And understanding how important it is and how important it is to engage in it, both in our country and around the world, I think would do us a lot of good. I mean, we - you know, we sort of stopped competing or - again, out of complacency, out of the assumption that everybody would eventually agree with us, we didn't really have to do anything. We didn't have to try very hard. I think we misunderstood that. [ ... ] I want people to be convinced that ideas matter, that we're going to have to defend and protect our political system if we want to keep it. We have to do that around the world, but we also have to do it in our own country. So much of what I suggest is to do with changing the way things are done in the United States. And much of it is also to do with people becoming engaged in public life, in understanding what's happening, and not just voting, but participating. With autocrats, whether they're in American politics or in Russian politics or in Chinese politics, what they want is for you to be disengaged. They want you to drop out. They want you to become overwhelmed, and they want you to, you know, to say, I can't do anything. It's all hopeless. So it's very important to remember that our ideas are better. And our system is better, and however flawed it may be - and I'm sure you could do another whole radio program about the flaws of the United States and our democracy - it's still better than the autocratic world. And I should also say, it's still the case that our ideas are the ones that people in the autocratic world wish they had. The people who are really the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom of speech aren't the kind of free speech warriors in America. They're Russians who don't have it. And the people who are the greatest advocates for transparency in the rule of law are also people who live in states where they don't have it. And remembering that these are things that we have that they're under threat, and they need to be protected and defended, I think is extremely important.

We fight autocracy by being engaged and by challenging disinformation.

The book is brand new. Here's a link to the publisher's site for Autocracy, Inc.. Take note of the title and author's name and then buy it at a local independent bookstore. 😉

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

@npr

[lovehael]

Foreign Aid as a Weapon

Most U.S. aid commits the recipient nation to buy U.S. goods at U.S. prices, to be transported in U.S. ships. In keeping with its commitment to capitalism, the U.S. government does not grant assistance to state-owned enterprises in Third World nations, only to the private sector. Most foreign aid never reaches the needy segments of recipient nations. Much of it is used to subsidize U.S. corporate investment and a substantial amount finds its way into the coffers of corrupt comprador rulers. Some of it subsidizes the cash-crop exports of agribusinesses at the expense of small farmers who grow food for local markets.

The net result of foreign aid, as with most overseas investment, is a greater concentration of wealth for the few and deeper poverty for the many. A large sum of money cannot be injected into a class society in a class-neutral way. It goes either to the rich or the poor, in most cases, the rich.

Aid is also a powerful means of political control. It is withheld when poorer nations dare to effect genuine reforms that might tamper with the distribution of wealth and power. Thus in 1970 when the democratically elected Allende government in Chile initiated reforms that benefited the working class and encroached upon the privileges of wealthy investors, all U.S. aid was cut off- except assistance to the Chilean military, which was increased. In some instances, aid is used deliberately to debilitate local production, as when Washington dumped sorghum and frozen chickens onto the Nicaraguan market to undercut cooperative farms and undermine land reform, or when it sent corn to Somalia to undercut local production and cripple independent village economies. It should be remembered that these corporate agricultural exports are themselves heavily subsidized by the U.S. government.

A key instrument of class-biased aid is the World Bank, an interlocking, international consortium of bankers and economists who spend billions of dollars- much of it from U.S taxpayers- to finance projects that shore up repressive right-wing regimes and subsidize corporate investors at the expense of the poor and the environment. For instance, in the 1980s the World Bank built a highway into northwest Brazil's rain forests, then leveled millions of acres so that wealthy Brazilian ranchers could enjoy cheap grazing lands. Brazil also sent some of its urban poor down that highway to settle the land and further deplete it. Within ten years, the region was denuded and riddled with disease and poverty. As Jim Hightower put it: "All the world's bank robbers combined have not done one-tenth of one percent of the harm that the World Bank has in just fifty years."

Against Empire by Michael Parenti

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk will be pleased that his surprise jaunt to China on Sunday garnered many glowing headlines. The trip was undoubtedly equally a surprise to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who had been scheduled to offer Musk the red carpet on a long-arranged visit.

The billionaire blew off India at the last minute, citing “very heavy Tesla obligations.” Indeed, Tesla has had a tumultuous couple of weeks, with federal regulator slap-downs, halved profits, and price-cut rollouts. Yet, in a very public snub that Modi won’t quickly forget, the company CEO made time for Chinese premier Li Qiang. And well Musk might. Tesla needs China more than China needs Tesla. After the US, China is Tesla’s second biggest market. And ominously, in the first quarter of the year, Tesla’s sales in China slipped by 4 percent in a domestic EV market that has expanded by more than 15 percent. That’s enough of a hit for any CEO to jump in a Gulfstream and fly across the Pacific for an impromptu meeting with a Chinese premier. Globally, Tesla has lost nearly a third of its value since January, and earlier this month, Tesla’s worldwide vehicle deliveries in the first quarter fell for the first time in almost four years. As they are wont to do, Tesla investors continue to complain over repeated delays to the company’s rollout of cars with genuine driverless capabilities.

One of Tesla’s stop-gap technologies—a now heavily-discounted $8,000 add-on—is marketed as Full Self-Driving, or FSD. But, like the similarly confusingly named Autopilot feature, it still requires driver attention, and may yet still prove to be risky. Among the deals said to have been unveiled at Sunday’s meeting with Li Qiang was a partnership granting Tesla access to a mapping license for data collection on China’s public roads by web search company Baidu. This was a “watershed moment,” Wedbush Securities senior analyst Dan Ives said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. However, Tesla has been using Baidu for in-car mapping and navigation in China since 2020. The revised deal, in which Baidu will now also provide Tesla with its lane-level navigation system, clears one more regulatory hurdle for Tesla’s FSD in China. It does not enable Tesla to introduce driverless cars in China or anywhere else, as some media outlets have reported. Press reports have also claimed that Musk has secured permission to transfer data collected by Tesla cars in China out of China. This is improbable, noted JL Warren Capital CEO and head of research Junheng Li, who wrote on X: “[Baidu] owns all data, and shares filtered data with Tesla. Just imagine if [Tesla] has access to real-time road data such as who went to which country’s embassy at what time for how long.” That, she stressed, would be “super national security!” According to Reuters, Musk is still seeking final approval for the FSD software rollout in China, and Tesla still needs permission to transfer data overseas. Li added that a rollout of even a “supervised,” data-lite version of FSD in China is “extremely unlikely.” She pointed to challenges for Tesla to support local operation of the software. Tesla still “has no [direct] access to map data in China as a foreign entity,” she wrote. Instead, Tesla is likely using the deal extension with Baidu as an FSD workaround, with the data collected in China very much staying in China. Despite this, Tesla shares have jumped following news of the expanded Baidu collaboration. Furthermore, Li said there’s “no strategic value” for Beijing to favor FSD when there are several more advanced Chinese alternatives. (We’ve tested them.)

“Chinese EVs are simply evolving at a far faster pace than Tesla,” agrees Shanghai-based automotive journalist and WIRED contributor Mark Andrews, who tested the driver assistance tech available on the roads in China. The US-listed trio of Xpeng, Nio, and Li Auto offer better-than-Tesla “driving assistance features” that rely heavily on lidar sensors, a technology that Musk previously dismissed, but which Tesla is now said to be testing. Although dated in shape and lacking in the latest tech, a Tesla car is nevertheless more expensive in China than most of its rivals. Tesla recently slashed prices in China to arrest falling sales. Musk’s flying visit to China smacked of “desperation,” says Mark Rainford, owner of the Inside China Auto channel. “[Tesla] sales are down in China—the competition has weathered the price cuts so far and [the Tesla competitors have] a seemingly endless conveyor belt of talented and beautiful products.” Rainford further warns that the “golden period for Tesla in China” is “at great risk of collapsing.” Tesla opened its first gigafactory in Shanghai five years ago, and it is now the firm’s largest—but the automaker has been playing tech catchup in China for some time. In addition to Xpeng, Nio, and Li, there are other Chinese car companies competing with Tesla on autonomous driving, as Musk will see if he visits the Beijing Motor Show, which runs through this week.

Beijing is now arguably the world’s preeminent automotive expo, but Tesla is not exhibiting—a sign that it has little new to offer famously tech-hungry Chinese autobuyers. Pointedly, the Cybertruck is not road-legal in China, although that hasn’t stopped Tesla from displaying the rust-prone electric pickup in some of its Chinese showrooms. Likewise, Tesla has just announced plans for a European Cybertruck tour. But, just like in China, the EV pickup cannot be sold in the EU, either—and according to Tesla's lead on vehicle engineering, it likely never will be.

Speaking on tighter pedestrian safety regulations in the EU compared to the US, Tesla’s vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, told Top Gear that “European regulations call for a 3.2-mm external radius on external projections. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make a 3.2-mm radius on a 1.4-mm sheet of stainless steel.”

The “Cybertruck Odyssey” tour—as Tesla’s European X account calls it—may titillate Tesla fans, but it could prove to be about as useful as shooting a Roadster into space.

[shroudkeeper]

She is your student and you are the master. Though that relationship is sacred and meant to be respected, it is time to transition from that and see her as your betrothed. You and I both know that I do not expect you to suddenly fall in love with her Hayate, for that shift in dynamic will take time, but time is what this relationship between you two will grant her. To extend her life is a boon that I will gift her.

She has never known love, and for someone like her, who has seen her share of demise and deaths, who manipulates the world around her, it is best to keep her away from others who would utilize her for their own purposes.

Even merchants can not be trustworthy, he has proven that. I indulged her whimsy because I am a sentimental man, I took on the contract because she asked this of me. However..

..if he were to fall, to be killed because she could not protect him, because he could not protect himself, it would break her heart and cause her spirit to wilt.

I refuse to lose another daughter to grief.

Treat her delicately, like a work of art. You already harbor care for her in your heart, show it to her more than before. Keep her company while he is overseas; I give you permission to take to the markets, to the theaters for her favorite plays, continue to train her, keep her distracted. Allow the public to see you both together.

Let her forget him, her heart will mend, for time and your company will ease the aches that she will endure.

I will deal with her ire, and perhaps my guilt will eat away at me. But I will not suffer her to experience such loss..

[silvyysthings]

Here we go. Some other countries opened yesterday but TODAY Dec 8 is the Opening weekend for the largest overseas marketplace countries like The UK, Japan etc and China which apparently granted an early release date so should help with numbers and create promo buzz leading into US Domestic Opening next week On December 15. Between production allegedly costing $125 million+ and and an enormous worldwide Promo, Marketing and multi company collaboration and merchandise campaign to match this movie will need to make hundreds and hundreds of dollars to just to break even so fingers, toes and everything else crossed that ticket sales and Xmas nostalgia override the negativity.

[shihalyfie]

Am I the only one who thinks Digimon is in a better place now than Pokémon?

I do understand the sentiment considering the subjectivity of "better", but in terms of franchise longevity and chances of not dying, Digimon is in a far worse place in almost every way imaginable:

We still aren't sure if the anime will make it past Ghost Game or if we're going to get another franchise hiatus

In fact the entire franchise is barely surviving by the skin of its teeth mostly due to the card game, which is in a market that's infamously difficult to penetrate past the "big three" (of which Pokémon is one and has comfortably been in that spot for years)

Bandai's handling of its many simultaneous franchise branches is sloppy and things that should have been timed together are not (the flip side of Pokémon's often-criticized franchise stagnation is that because its quality control is incredibly strict, it rarely if ever falls out of sync to this degree)

Toei has near exclusive rights to Digimon anime production, but they have to juggle it with more profitable IPs like One Piece, and getting a station to agree to air Digimon on it is infamously difficult, especially overseas (OLM has also apparently been struggling with production as well, but their overall influence on the IP is much lower, and they can still justify making full-length theatrical movies for kids when Digimon absolutely cannot right now)

For that matter Digimon localization quality (game translation, official subtitles, and overall handling of localization "consistency" like terminology or Digimon names between works) is infamously awful, both in terms of the lack of releases and the actual translation quality usually ranging from messy to downright unreadable (Pokémon got this one right from day one)

This of course extends to kids' anime dubbing still being very difficult to pull off if at all, we only barely know a reboot dub is happening but we've heard little information about it or what network it's even airing on, and it's hard to predict because Digimon has turned such poor financial figures that most networks outside Japan refuse to entertain it

Digimon's game design quality and QoL is arguably not that much better than Pokémon's, and depending on the person it may be much worse, it's just that we expect more from Pokémon because it's better-funded and more famous (and this goes for other things like Bandai's sloppy localization and quality control; we take for granted that TPCi should get this right, but with Bandai we're used to it being an incomprehensible mess anyway, even when they outsource to studios bigger than Game Freak)

Pokémon can afford having actual physical store locations in Japan

The overwhelming majority of hardcore Digimon fans have been fans for over 16 years, meaning the "turnover rate" for gaining new fans is dangerously low and the franchise risks losing its fanbase if more and more adults lose interest

...and so on and so forth. In fact, as far as financial figures go, Digimon has never remotely held a candle to Pokémon for even a second, with the "rivalry" being mostly media engineered for sensationalism (the similar genre of "monster collecting" means they might be somewhat worth comparing in terms of fiction content, but definitely not at all in terms of overall franchise health or whatnot).

Of course, in terms of quality of content, that's subjective and even as a Pokémon fan myself I have concerns about its potential stagnation (if anything, Digimon is at least much better at risk-taking), but while Digimon's definitely at the highest point it's been since it nearly died the first time in 2003, it's still very much getting by on life support and could easily end up going back on hiatus or even dying completely if things don't pan out. Pokémon has a much more comfortable safety net in comparison.

[kosher-martian]

Ain't got no use for AI.

Look, I get it. I work in IT (if indirectly), but I think we need to kill this AI thing in its crib before it results in a majority of the US workforce doing back-breaking non-automatable jobs for pittance.

My job is 70% procurement and 30% e-waste disposal.

My job exists because:

Our procurement software has a UI that I would describe charitably as "openly hostile".

Far too many employees have access to the procurement software.

The finance department does not hold regular trainings on how to use the software and there's no process to notify finance of new employees who have been granted procurement access so the new employees can be trained.

Until recently, there was nothing built into the software to stop people from buying things with money they don't have or that is allocated to other projects. (A janitor could buy a high-spec Mac Studio using another department's money or simply not pay for it after it arrives.) Technically "not paying" is still very much an issue I have to solve.

Until recently, there was nothing built into the software to stop people from buying things without approval. After a few high-profile issues, we finally broke down and bought a plugin to correct this issue.

There is nothing built into the software to prevent people from buying devices that do not comply with our standards or are wildly inappropriate for their work tasks. (Secretaries getting high-spec gaming PCs just because they had the money in their budgets.)

Until I pointed it out, there was no policy in place to divert newly-delivered IT equipment to the IT department for set up and endpoint management. Until I pushed for a policy change, IT equipment could (and often would) be purchased and delivered directly to the department unmanaged or in a few cases a less-scrupulous employee's home address for personal use.

Our inventory system is arcane and there are a sum total of three people with access to it. And that's the system we primarily use for IT lifecycle management!

All of these things could be fixed by just buying better procurement software, let alone procurement software enhanced by AI. The only reason my employers haven't liquidated me is because right now the annual cost of having a human clean up all the human errors caused by the cheap lousy software they bought is still lower than the annual cost of software that would prevent the human errors from happening in the first place. But for how long?

What about all the jobs AI is already taking? All the writing and editing and media production jobs that simply won't exist because it was easier to let a machine do it? (Ignore that all the CGI people have four thumbs and 12 toes, human. Watch our slop content and enjoy it! You aren't worth real art.)

All the marketing jobs that will be liquidated because the algorithm knows us better than we know ourselves. Where are they supposed to go?

What about all the programmers and developers being laid off because ChatGPT does a decent enough job and if you lower our expectations enough, people will just accept a lousy app to purchase their burritos and yell at the human driver when the burrito is wrong?

Where are these people (and many, many more) supposed to work?

We closed the factories. We didn't find new high-quality jobs for the factory workers, did we?

All the factory workers went to work in low-paying retail and service economy jobs. Oh wait, they've been laid off from those jobs too because we had to have self-checkout and self-service kiosks and now entire Dollar Generals are staffed by one employee.

Drive a taxi? Sorry that was replaced by sharing your car with strangers (Uber). Oh no wait sorry, the self-driving cars are taking that too.

Call centers? We shipped those overseas and then shuttered them because a phone tree with a realistic human voice and intentionally vexatious wait times will take care of the pesky callers.

Gig work? If AI hasn't taken them already, they will soon.

Agricultural work? Slaves Prison labor will replace that soon enough (and frankly prison laborers will likely also take many other menial tasks like package delivery or fulfillment warehouse jobs soon)

Again, what are the vast majority of people on this earth supposed to do? Because if you think we're getting UBI in the US, you are deluded.

When the car replaced the horse as the primary means of transportation and other machines took the place of horse labor, the population of equines declined. They weren't needed anymore.

Between 1915 and 2006/7 the horse and mule population declined 63.07% in the United States. The US equine population in 1915 was 26,493,000 (horses and mules). In 2006, the United States had around 9,500,000 horses (1), and the United States Census of Agriculture for 2007 (table 31) counted 283,806 mules and burros (2).

And while the horse population has rebounded in the years since, it's because of enthusiasts wanting to breed more horses for entertainment and luxury purposes.

No one found the horses new jobs when the horse jobs disappeared. We simply stopped breeding horses. (And that's assuming, charitably, that we didn't juice the decline by culling the horse population.)

When our jobs disappear, do you think our overlords will just keep us around? I mean sure we're taking care of the population problem for them (a little too well actually, thus the anti-abortion laws), so they likely won't turn us into glue.

They'll still need people to fix the machines when they break and to continue building and creating better and better AI and machines to take care of their every whim.

And they'll need some people to do all the work the AI and robots cannot do yet.

And they'll want people for entertainment and luxury: Actors, singers, athletes, and playthings they can use as they please.

But ultimately what all these "tech-bros", "technocrats", "effective altruists", and "techno-progressivists" really really want is world that caters exclusively to their needs and all the inconvenient people who have needs of their own are swept into the recycle bin and discarded without a second thought. All problems are easily solved when you eliminate all the people:

Littering? No people, no litter. You, glorious techno-overlord, would never litter.

Climate Change? Less people, less carbon. You'll still be here, though, don't worry my liege!

Economy? The robots do all the work you used to have to pay people to do. And all the profits go to you, sire!

Taxes? LOL you don't have to pay taxes. Taxes are for the peasants.

You get my point.

The techno-overlords are tired of negotiating with us because they don't believe they should have to. We aren't their equals, if they even consider us human. They need some of us to do their bidding and some of us to keep around to torture and dominate to make them feel like gods. Beyond that, the rest of us are just excess people breathing up all the air.

AI has to go, not because the AI itself is dangerous, but because the people whom the AI ultimately serves have told us time and time again who they really are. It's time for us to believe them. We know their vision for the world, and it's a world without us. 1. This figure comes from a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and is often cited in writings about horse population decline, but I could not locate the actual report on their website.

2. https://agcensus.library.cornell.edu/census_parts/2007-united-states/

[shinden9]

Huge question: For a weeb, how much do you know about international politics and should what you say on them be considered? If you're so against the injustices of this world, why don't you do anything to make your own country better? Or are you a hypocrite savior complex?

I'll answer an ask from two and a half years ago for funsies. Imagine you are a wheat farmer in the US midwest. You've never left the tristate area. Your parents worked this farm, your grandparents, going back to sickles and carts and land grants from the federal government.

You know some things: your wheat, your field, your state, your market. You have your lane.

However you are not separate from the rest of the world. Overseas markets can make wheat at higher yields and lower costs than you. Ukraine, Saskatchewan, Mongolia, etc can undercut you. You learn more about this and how it affects you. Tariffs, taxes, free trade, etc. You find yourself learning more and more about these things, how they interconnect with everything from cars, to how houses are built, to how the entire society is structured, and how much it has changed from 30, 40, 50 years ago. You go down a rabbit hole learning about "twenty foot containers" and "chicken tax" and learn you are not just some biological unit working a field, you are part of a vast, interconnected woven fabric we call the modern global society. That what you do and say and try all matter in some way. Just like some protest half a world away eventually affects you, you can affect things on the other side of the world, whether on purpose or by accident.

You begin to understand this on a fundamental level, even threshing wheat or lubricating a bearing on your tractor feels consequential.

Every brick you see was handled by a human hand. The result and consequence of a person's labor. You have eaten the fruit of knowledge and it will affect you for the rest of your life.

[luxuryapartmentsdubai]

DUBAI REAL ESTATE: CAN YOU RENT or BUY as a Foreigner

Should I Rent or Buy in Dubai as a Foreigner?

This article explores foreigners' crucial question when moving to Dubai: whether to rent or buy. It provides a comprehensive overview of the factors influencing this decision, ensuring readers are well-equipped to make an informed choice. Here's what you'll learn:

Understanding the Dubai Real Estate Market: Insights into the dynamics, including price fluctuations and legal frameworks for foreigners.

Legal Considerations: A look at the legal aspects of renting versus buying, including rights and regulations for foreign nationals.

Financial Implications: Analysis of the financial commitments involved in renting vs. buying, covering upfront costs, ongoing expenses, and potential returns on investment.

Lifestyle Considerations - Discuss how your lifestyle and duration of stay in Dubai can impact your decision.

Investment Perspective: Evaluating buying property as an investment opportunity, including location, property type, and market conditions.

The Role of Go Real Estate: Introduction to Go Real Estate as a key partner for foreigners navigating the Dubai real estate market, highlighting their expertise and services.

Making the Decision: Guidance on assessing personal and financial readiness for renting or buying, emphasising long-term planning and lifestyle preferences.

By the end of the article, readers will clearly understand Dubai's rent vs. buy debate, learn to navigate the real estate market confidently and know how Go Real Estate can assist in their journey.

Understanding the Dubai Real Estate Market

Dubai's real estate market is dynamic, with variations in the oil market and worldwide economic trends influencing property prices. For example, house values often increase in line with oil costs. Nonetheless, strict rules have been put in place by the local government to preserve market stability, making it a haven for investors. The purpose of these restrictions is to ease the concerns of overseas investors. 

For instance, there are now more options for foreign purchasers due to the expansion of freehold zones, where foreigners can acquire real estate. Consequently, a balanced market appeals to those wanting a peaceful beachside house and those searching for a luxury apartment in the city's heart. Due to its diligent strategy, Dubai has become a desirable location for real estate investment, providing investors with the security of stable government-backed conditions and the thrill of a fast-paced market.

Legal Considerations for Foreigners in UAE

Dubai's property regulations have been modernised, making it easy for foreigners to enter the real estate market. For instance, in specific locations, referred to as "freehold zones," such as the exclusive Jumeirah or the Dubai Marina, you can buy real estate entirely as an international buyer. Renting is equally simple, with laws that protect the rights of both landlords and tenants. This also includes rental agreements and predetermined plans for raising rent.

It's essential to get familiar with these rules, such as the one that grants you the right to occupy a home as long as there's an active lease agreement. Whether your goal is to rent a family-friendly villa in a gated community or buy a 2-bedroom downtown apartment, this legal foundation lays the way for a simple and safe property transaction. Knowing these guidelines in Dubai's real estate market enables you to make informed decisions.

Short and Long-Term Financial Implications

Two options become apparent while navigating the financial elements of Dubai's real estate market: either purchase as a long-term investment or rent for flexibility and cheaper initial costs. People looking for short-term solutions or who value being able to move around easily are drawn to renting. 

For example, leasing a chic apartment in Business Bay, Dubai, may avoid the significant financial load of purchasing. On the other hand, buying real estate, such as a Palm Jumeirah villa, requires a more substantial down payment but offers the potential for future value increase and rental income. This option is appropriate for those who want to settle down in Dubai or who are looking to invest in real estate as a source of income. Whether cutting down on upfront costs or investing in a future source of earnings, each route has its financial advantages, so it's important to consider your long-term goals and objectives before deciding.

Lifestyle Considerations

Your lifestyle choices and length of stay are factors to consider while looking at real estate in Dubai, UAE. Renting is an appealing choice for people or families who value swiftly adjusting to changes in life or prefer short-to-medium-term visits. It allows the freedom to explore other districts without committing to a long-term arrangement, such as the calm Arabian Ranches or the bustling Dubai Marina. Renters benefit from the ease of relocating without having to deal with the headache of selling a home and usually have fewer maintenance obligations since the landlord usually takes care of these.

If someone wants to invest in their future or wants a permanent base, purchasing a property in Dubai is a good option. Being a homeowner allows you to customise your place completely, from minimal expansions to large renovations, making it your ideal home. It is also a wise investment since houses in desirable areas such as The Springs have the potential to grow significantly and, if leased out, may provide passive income. Whether you're here for a short while or want to make Dubai your permanent home, matching your housing preferences to your way of life will make your stay rewarding and pleasurable.

Consult Real Estate Experts in Business Bay

It could be difficult to figure out Dubai's hectic real estate market, particularly for visitors from other countries. Go Real Estate shines in this situation, providing superior knowledge and assistance. With their large property inventory and in-depth market expertise, you can find the perfect apartment in the centre of Dubai Marina or purchase a beachfront mansion in Palm Jumeirah. Their team of highly experienced professionals is committed to helping customers navigate the complexities of the legal system, the negotiating process, and property selection. 

Go Real Estate takes great satisfaction in providing individualised services that help customers find the perfect houses or investment possibilities, ensuring a seamless transition from property browsing to purchase or rental. Dubai’s number one real estate agents are essential partners in your search for real estate because of their unwavering dedication to quality, which guarantees that customers not only locate their ideal home but also easily navigate the subtleties of the local market.

Why Choose Go Real Estate?

Choosing Go Real Estate brings specialised real estate guidance that precisely matches your requirements. Imagine buying a gated villa in the peaceful Arabian Ranches or an apartment with a swimming pool near Downtown Dubai. Go can make your dreams come true. Their comprehensive method addresses all aspects, ranging from providing incisive legal guidance that adeptly navigates the intricacies of property regulations to doing an exhaustive market study that guarantees you're making an educated buy at the optimal price. 

Following your purchase, their after-sales assistance never wavers, helping you with any questions or requirements while you adjust to your new home or look after your investment. Whether you're purchasing your ideal house or making long-term investments, Go Real Estate's end-to-end service commitment solidifies its reputation as a trustworthy partner for foreign customers and makes navigating Dubai's real estate market easier.

Making the Decision With Dubai Investment Consultants

Deciding whether to rent or buy in Dubai hinges on evaluating your financial health, how you prefer to live, and what you envision for your future. 

Financial readiness isn't just about having the funds for a purchase or deposit; it's about understanding the ongoing costs associated with your choice. Lifestyle preferences vary widely – some may value the flexibility and lower responsibility of renting, especially if they're not planning to stay long-term. Others might prioritise the permanence and personal touch that ownership can bring, especially if they're looking at Dubai as a long-term home or investment opportunity. 

Engaging with a real estate company like Go Real can shed light on these considerations if you're at a crossroads. They can offer personalised advice, helping you weigh the pros and cons based on your situation, ultimately guiding you toward the best decision for your circumstances.

Key Takeaways

The government regulations help stabilise and attract foreign investment.

Dubai's real estate laws have been updated to allow foreigners to buy in designated freehold zones, simplifying the buying and renting processes and offering legal protections.

Financially, renting in Dubai can offer lower initial costs and flexibility, while buying presents a long-term investment opportunity with the potential for capital appreciation and rental income.

Your lifestyle preferences and how long you plan to stay in Dubai will significantly influence whether renting or buying is the best option for you.

Partnering with Go Real can provide valuable insights and assistance, from navigating legal considerations to understanding the financial implications of your decision.

Conclusion

The dilemma of renting vs. buying in Dubai is more than a financial calculation; it's a choice that resonates with your lifestyle, aspirations, and long-term objectives. By thoroughly assessing your personal and financial situation, and ideally, with the support of Go Real Estate's expertise, you're better positioned to make a choice that meets your current needs and supports your future goals. 

Dubai's real estate landscape is rich with opportunities, each offering its unique flexibility, stability, luxury, and investment potential. Whether you enjoy the adaptability of renting or embrace the long-term benefits of ownership, your journey in the Dubai real estate mar

ket is bound to be rewarding, provided you approach it with the right information and expert advice.

[socialmediamarketingsingapore]

Unlocking Business Growth with the EDG Grant in Singapore

In the fast-paced business landscape of Singapore, growth and innovation are paramount. The Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) in Singapore stands out as a key enabler for companies seeking to expand and evolve. This grant, complemented by the Market Overseas Grant, offers businesses the opportunity to scale new heights and explore international markets.

Understanding the EDG Grant Singapore

The EDG Grant Singapore is designed to support Singaporean companies in three core areas: innovation and productivity, market access, and core function capability development. This grant aims to assist businesses in upgrading their capabilities, innovating processes, and expanding their market reach. By subsidizing up to 50% of qualifying project costs, the EDG Grant offers a substantial financial impetus for businesses to embark on transformational projects.

For businesses looking to sharpen their competitive edge, the EDG Grant Singapore serves as a valuable resource. Whether it's adopting new technologies, streamlining operational processes, or venturing into new markets, the EDG Grant provides the necessary support to turn these goals into reality.

Expanding Horizons with the Market Overseas Grant

Complementing the EDG Grant is the Market Overseas Grant, which specifically focuses on helping Singaporean companies expand their global footprint. This grant supports activities such as market entry, market research, and the establishment of overseas business networks.

Integrating the Market Overseas Grant with the EDG Grant Singapore creates a powerful combination for businesses. While the EDG Grant fortifies internal capabilities, the Market Overseas Grant provides the means to apply these strengthened capabilities in a global context, thereby maximizing growth potential.

The Impact of the EDG Grant Singapore

The EDG Grant Singapore has had a significant impact on various businesses across multiple industries. Companies have used this grant to enhance their product offerings, adopt cutting-edge technologies, and enter new markets with confidence. The grant not only provides financial assistance but also serves as a catalyst for innovation and expansion.

Businesses leveraging the EDG Grant have reported improvements in efficiency, increased revenue, and expanded market share both locally and internationally. The grant has been instrumental in helping businesses pivot during challenging times, such as during economic downturns or industry shifts.

Why Businesses Should Tap into the EDG and Market Overseas Grants

For Singaporean businesses aiming for growth and global expansion, tapping into the EDG Grant Singapore and the Market Overseas Grant is a strategic decision. These grants not only alleviate financial burdens but also encourage businesses to pursue ambitious projects that might otherwise be deemed too risky or costly.

Working with a grant consultant can further streamline the application process for these grants. Consultants can provide valuable insights into eligibility criteria, project scope, and application procedures, ensuring that businesses maximize their chances of grant approval.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the EDG Grant Singapore, along with the Market Overseas Grant, presents a formidable opportunity for Singaporean businesses to scale, innovate, and reach global markets. These grants are pivotal in fostering a vibrant business ecosystem in Singapore, encouraging companies to pursue growth, innovation, and international success.

Contact Us

Bluehiveasia

Website:- https://www.bluehiveasia.com/

Email:- projects@bluehiveasia.com

Address:- 60 Paya Lebar Road #09-25, Paya Lebar Square Singapore 409051

Phone No: +65 6100 4148

[camillasgirl]

A German-English speech by His Majesty The King at the State Banquet at Schloss Bellevue, Berlin, 29.03.2023

Sehr geehrter Herr Bundespräsident,

Ich weiß nicht, wie ich Ihnen für Ihre überaus freundlichen Worte und für Ihre unvergessliche Gastfreundschaft in diesem festlichen Rahmen danken soll.

 Es ist wunderbar, heute Abend in so großer Gesellschaft zu sein. Und es ist schön von Ihnen, dass Sie gekommen sind und mich nicht mit einem „Dinner for One“ alleine lassen!      

Meine Frau und ich sind tief ger��hrt, wie herzlich wir in Deutschland empfangen wurden - genau wie bei jedem unserer früheren Besuche in diesem ganz besonderen Land.

Ich habe festgestellt, dass ich tatsächlich mehr als vierzigmal in Deutschland gewesen bin – darin zeigt sich natürlich, wie wichtig mir unsere Beziehungen sind, aber auch, so fürchte ich, wie lange es mich schon gibt!

An jeden dieser Besuche habe ich Erinnerungen, an die ich sehr gerne zurückdenke.  

I think, Mr President, of the particular kindness and friendship which you and Frau Büdenbender showed to both my wife and myself on our last visits to Berlin in 2019 and 2020.

I also think fondly of the time my wife and I sampled Bavarian sausages at a farmers’ market in Munich, and found ourselves drinking beer and waltzing around at the Hofbräuhaus!  I think I can understand why St Boniface, an English monk, who is famous for having preached in Germany, is also a patron saint of brewers!

I recall, in particular, how much I have learnt from my visits over the years about organic and agro-ecological farming, and I credit German expertise with greatly improving my own farms and soil.  Indeed, I think we all have something to learn from Germany’s enduring respect for what Goethe called ‘die erhabene Sprache der Natur’ [the sublime language of nature].  

Over all these years, and in so many ways, I have been struck by the warmth of the friendship between our nations and by the vitality of our partnership in countless areas.  

It was, Mr President, a friendship which mattered greatly to my mother, The late Queen, who cared deeply about the bond between our two countries.  I did want to thank you all, once again, for the profoundly touching messages of support and affection we received from so many people in Germany following the sadness of her death last year. Ladies and Gentlemen, your kindness meant more to my family and myself than I can possibly express.  

The relationship between Germany and the United Kingdom matters greatly to me, too, Mr President, and I am more convinced than ever of its enduring value to us all. It means so much to us that my wife and I could come to Germany for this very first overseas tour of my reign. I can only assure you, that throughout the time that is granted to me as King, I will do all I can to strengthen the connections between us.  

In this, I know that I will be supporting the extraordinary efforts of countless people who contribute so much to the relationship between the United Kingdom and Germany.

As I look around the room this evening, I see such talented and dedicated individuals who embody the breadth of our partnership in so many fields - engineering, technology, science, the environment, the arts, education and so much more.  

Our countries are working together to promote global health, to help developing countries overcome their challenges and prosper, and to advance the urgent and vital journey towards net zero.

And, of course, we stand side-by-side in protecting and advancing our shared democratic values. This is epitomised so clearly today as we stand together with Ukraine in defence of freedom and sovereignty in the face of unprovoked aggression.  In this regard, I did want to pay a particular tribute to Germany’s extraordinary hospitality in hosting over one million Ukrainian refugees. This, it seems to me, so powerfully demonstrates the generosity of spirit of the German people.  

Herr Bundespräsident, Deutschland und das Vereinigte Königreich haben ein grosses Interesse an der Zukunft des jeweils anderen Landes. Unsere Beziehungen werden noch stärker werden, davon bin ich fest überzeugt, wenn wir gemeinsam auf eine nachhaltigere Zukunft in Wohlstand und Sicherheit hinarbeiten. Möge die Esche, die ich heute Nachmittag in Ihrem schönen Garten gepflanzt habe, ein kleines Symbol für das Wachsen und Erblühen unserer Partnerschaft sein.

Ich hoffe von ganzem Herzen, dass meine Frau und ich lange genug leben werden, damit wir in diese wunderbare Stadt zurückkommen und sehen können, wie unser Baum gewachsen ist, und damit wir weiter unseren Teil zu dieser kostbaren Freundschaft zwischen unseren beiden Ländern beitragen können.  Erheben Sie bitte mit mir das Glas: Auf Sie, Herr Bundespräsident, und Frau Büdenbender. Und auf eine Freundschaft, die nicht nur herzlich ist, sondern auch  — im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes — nachhaltig. Zum Wohl!

[horizon-verizon]

HotD and the Golden Globes

House of the Dragon may have won the Golden Globe for "Best Drama TV Series", but it doesn't validate the characterizations, the writing, or ideas present in the writing of the show. Even if Fire and Blood didn't exist, this show is not very good once you think about it. There are too many inconsistencies of logic and the show's own internal lore to see it as a well-written story. And Ryan Condal 's "theory of accidents" is not a good or logical way to characterize or set up a character's motivations since it makes them more reactive instead of active (Seth Abramson on Substack). It also reduces both agency and accountability for characters like Alicent and Aemond, while muddling their motivation and creating doubt in their ability to reason. These are not even minor charater's, either. Both are absolutely essential to how the Dance went as it did, and the first's actions against Rhaenyra is the reason why the Dance even existed in the first place.

And then, once you do take into account that this is supposed to be an adaptation, the logic, characterizations, themes, etc actually all so different or inconsistent from those things that are unbiasedly true in the canon account of the Dance of the Dragons in Fire and Blood, it is impossible to count this as a adaptation and not a poorly written fanfiction. Especially in context of the treatment of women in Westeros after Rhaenyra's death and what Daenerys "Stormborn" Targaryen does and represents in the book series A Game of Thrones and the TV adaptation Game of Thrones. @brideoffires writes this POST and @la-pheacienne writes this ONE about ASoIaF's world's misogyny.

A show getting awards does not automatically make it a good show in of itself nor prove its excellence, since it is also clear that awards like the Globes do not necessarily hand awards because the show is well-written. The Globes is a huge culprit of dirty business or susness because the people responsible for choosing who/what wins or gets nominated for any Globe -- the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or the HFPA-- is suspect and has a real history of being bought out or "wined and dined" and excluding or snubbing much better shows and films. And some or most of those snubbed have a pattern of being PoC-written, PoC-starred, etc. Emily in Paris over I May Destroy You, anyone?

The LA Times article that I listed has this:

Over its nearly eight-decade history, the HFPA has weathered a string of embarrassing scandals, lawsuits and often blistering criticism of its membership. The group has been the butt of jokes even from the stage of its own awards show. Hosting in 2016, Ricky Gervais dismissed the Globes as “worthless,” calling the award “a bit of metal that some nice old confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you.” In a 2014 interview, actor Gary Oldman said the group was “90 nobodies having a wank” and called for a boycott of the “silly game” their awards represent.

Yet despite all this, the HFPA has managed to carve out a unique and improbable position of influence. Its members — relatively few of whom work full time for major overseas outlets — are routinely granted exclusive access to Hollywood power players, invited to junkets in exotic locales, put up in five-star hotels and, as Globes nominations near, lavished with gifts, dinners and star-studded parties. To the studios, networks and celebrities that court its favor and exploit its awards as a marketing tool, the group is at once fawned over, derided and grudgingly tolerated. (Four years after blasting the HFPA, Oldman thanked them when accepting his first-ever Globe for his turn as Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour.”)

Now, I am not talking about Emma D'Arcy's nomination for "Lead Actress" (despite them being nonbinary), because as an performer Emma is and was great in HotD. I am talking about the show and its writing.

[thisnameisnotspokenfor]

Kingdom of the Stars Chapter 13: The Worry

Previous: Chapter 12

Next: Chapter 14

“And there I was!” Came the hefty man’s voice, his shadows dancing along the rough surface edge of the walls. 

“I was standing there in the middle of the ocean with my catch this big!” He gestured to the absurdly wide space between his hands as a few of his audience members laughed or rolled their eyes. 

Everyone had gathered near the man, enjoying their pastries while soaking in the warmth of the nearby stony fireplace. “I’d pulled in me nets  and was nearly about to head for shore when I saw it!” He gestured to his eyes as he looked towards the ceiling, “A bright light that tore open the clouds!” 

The whole bakery fell silent, his audience members fixated as they patiently awaited his next words. “ And that’s when I knew that it was…an alien.”

The whole crowd burst into laughter as the passing woman frowned. 

She quietly collected a few more utensils before she headed towards the small kitchen near the back of the bakery’s cottage. The faint yet delicious scent of the remaining baking pastries, greeted her as she entered the kitchen. 

“What are ye all laughing for?!” The man snapped as he looked over his audience. “I’m telling you it was a bloomin alien!”

“Nice try Silver,” the woman heard one of the audience members call as the gentle strum of a mandolin was heard. 

“You really want us to believe that that was an alien?”

“Well…yes!” He exclaimed as the crowd roared with laughter. “What else could it be?! I mean it fell out of the bloody sky!”

“Didn’t you fall out of the sky?” someone asked, promptly earning a sour look from the man named Silver.

“Maybe it was a spell? It’s not exactly any secret that Rosas houses a lot of magic you know!” She heard one of the nearby retired assassins shrug as she watched a goat step through the crowd toward the OPEN sign that hung near the window. 

Using her teeth, the goat carefully flipped the sign to CLOSED before obediently standing in front of the door, positioning itself to greet anyone unfamiliar who tried to enter the bakery after hours but Sakina had a feeling that the sign of assassins and pirates would be more than enough to keep anyone from entering at this time. 

“Maybe the king was practicing one of ‘is spells for the big ball?” she heard one of the men call as he moved closer to the fire. “I heard he was planning on unveiling something pretty big!”

“What’s so special about a ball of light anyway? From what I hear it could be one of the fireworks that he ordered from overseas a while back but wanted to keep as a surprise-,”

She heard a few others scoff at this as she stepped out of the kitchen to collect more dishes. Several members of the audience thanked her, as she politely declined their offers for help. 

She appreciated the offer, but she’d prefer to keep the ex-convicts and warriors out of the kitchen.

“You know,” she heard one of the men near Sabino call. “If the king really wanted to surprise any of us- he’d start granting more of our wishes! You know they say he favors the Westerners.”

A nearby pirate leaned back,  chugging her ale down before waving dismissively. “Eh, they're all nobles so of course they’re gonna help each other out. I mean the only difference between them is that one has a higher chair and magical abilities and the others do not.”

The crowd seemed to mumble in agreement as she saw the assassin lean back in his chair, sighing as he looked at the ceiling with an unusually bright smile. “I heard the western market was extra stunning this year because they’re gonna try to ‘visually’ persuade the king to grant some of their wishes.”

She stepped past the crowd and back into the kitchen as she compiled the rest of the dirty utensils and dishes into the soapy water-filled wash bin. 

Sparing the window a glance she could see several passing figures outside still roaming the streets before the guards arrived, quickly directing them to their homes. 

But very few seemed to listen as she watched their eyes still focused on the sky.

From the other side of the kitchen wall, she could hear the conversation in the bakery slowly quiet down. “What do you think that light was Sabino?”

“Eh, not much-,” she heard her father-in-law, nonchalantly answer as the sounds of his dagger scraping and carving the wood he held grew louder.

“Not much?! It lit up the entire sky!” Silver called.

“How could you not care?” someone asked as the sounds of the dagger carving the wood stopped, a small moment of silence spread throughout the bakery before she heard the gentle yet melodic strum of a mandolin.

Then Sabino chuckled. 

His old wooden rocking chair groaned in protest as he spoke, “If you’ve seen one bright thing fall from the sky then you’ve seen them all. Trust me. When you reach my age you start learning to stop worrying about what’s above and concern yourself more with what’s below. 6 feet to be precise.” 

He gestured to the ground as the sounds of agreement and laughter filled the room as she turned her attention back to the awaiting dishes.

Scrubbing, she remembered what had happened a few hours ago.

She’d just returned from visiting the kingdom’s capital when she had seen it. a brilliant light that lit up the sky. 

It had been brief. 

So brief that she had nearly wondered if she’d imagine the whole thing. 

But the sounds of everyone around her whispering in awe and confusion did more than enough to convince her that what she had seen was real. 

She remembered hearing a voice call “LOOK!” as they’d pointed to the sky towards the hole in the clouds.

It’d been the first time that she could ever recall hearing the usual crowded streets of Rosas being so silent.

A few hours had passed before life had slowly started to resume normalcy, but all anyone could talk about was the strange light. 

She too probably would’ve been reveling in its warmth had it not been for the unnerving news one of her father-in-law’s friends had brought. 

The message had been passed through their network from the Western side of Rosas and had informed her that her daughter, Asha had been there today. 

She wasn’t sure why she’d be there of all places, especially now. 

But she hoped she was safe.

“Sakina!” came the old’s man voice, momentarily breaking her thoughts as she turned to him. 

He was standing now next to her with a tray full of used cups in one hand, while his other hand held his mandolin. 

How he’d gotten into the kitchen so silently would be beyond her, but he simply smiled and said, “Mind if I help you out? I owe you this much.”

“It’s fine, Sabino, I’ve nearly finished washing them all anyways,” she answered while drying the clean plate she was holding. 

“I’ll help you put them up.” he insisted. 

“Your friends won’t miss you?” she asked. 

“They’ve all scurried back to their homes,” he says with a dismissive wave like they hadn’t all been breaking the curfew. “They all wanted to come back here to help you too, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t enjoy having ex-pirates and assassins in your kitchen, right?

Despite herself, she grinned, “Of course.” 

She could probably handle the assassins and warriors helping her, but she drew the line when it came to pirates. Her time at sea had more or less made them her lifelong enemy. 

Pulling out the small stool to stand on, she gently placed the plate on the top shelf, next to all the other plates as she watched the old man reach the wash basin, cleaning a few plates before he passed them to her.

“Thank you,” she said while taking the plate from him. “Have your friends heard any more news of her?”

“None yet,” he says with a shake of his head as she feels her heart lower. “They’re doing their best to look for her, but it’s a bit challenging to do given the curfew.” 

From the way how he’d said the word ‘curfew’, she could tell that it was going to become another one of the many reasons Sabino did not, as he put it, ‘care much for the king, his court, or their well-being’.

Sakina shook her head.

Her fingers gently massaging her temple, “And to think that this morning when I saw her, she’d promised me that she’d try to convince the king to give her time off!” she sighed, looking into the near flawless reflection of her glass plate, before she placed it on the shelf. “I just don’t know why she’d be there of all places!”

Sabino rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he passed her the last plate. “Well...Daniella told me that someone spotted her at one of the fancier inns earlier this evening. It’s noble run, I think, so it’s quite possible she could be there on behalf of the king.”  He paused, glancing at her thoughtfully before adding, “Why don’t I put on some tea for us? A good cup of tea always clears my head at this hour!”

She nodded, stepping off the stool as she watched him quickly pour some water into his old kettle that he set over the fire. “You’ll see Sakina, Asha will be fine! If there’s anyone who could take care of herself in Rosas, then it’s her-,”

“I hope so,” she murmured before shaking her head as she wiped her hands on her apron. “But it’s not her being alone elsewhere that worries me. It’s her being alone now of all nights!  You remember, don’t you? From all those years ago.” She shivered, her voice trailing off as her grip on the teacup tightened. “I hope it’s not happening again.”

“I doubt it’s happening again,” he said, placing the tray down on a nearby table as she watched him make his way back to his place by the fire.

“How can you be so sure?” she asked him.

He shrugged a bit, “Call it intuition. I suspect that Asha will be home any day now! We can place some money on it if you like-,”

“No thanks,” Sakina frowned. She knew better than to bet on her father-in-law when he was feeling this confident. 

He grinned, “A wise decision I see.”

“If you wanted money, all you had to do was ask-,”

“Careful Sakina, I may end up taking you up on that offer-,” he begins ominously while strumming his mandolin overdramatically. “You’d be surprised at how expensive things are getting on the market today-,”

She could only hope that by market he wasn’t referring to the black market. she watched as he spared a rather uninteresting towards the sky before he carefully withdrew the now hissing kettle from the fire. 

He’d stood up and was now holding a tray in his hands that contained two small porcelain tea cups full of wonderful. “I made some tea for us! It’s good for a night like this, believe me.”

“Thank you,” she said with a tired smile as she stood up. She carefully removed her cup from the tray, and nodded, blowing on the scalding liquid before gingerly taking a sip. 

The ginger from the liquid soothed her nerves as she took a seat near the kitchen entrance. 

“There’s no need to worry Sakina,” she heard the old man say once more. “Asha is a smart girl and was my best student! I taught her everything she knows! …except for that star stuff, I didn’t teach her that, but all the important things? Yes!”

Sakina let out a half-hearted chuckle before placing her cup down. She truly appreciated his efforts to calm her. She did. Her gaze lingered on the floor as she placed a tentative hand over her heart “I don’t doubt that, but I just can’t help but get the feeling that something….something terri-,” she paused, hearing a sharp knock on the door that surprised them. “I’ll be back!” she promised, standing to her feet before disappearing out of view to answer the door. 

Now alone in the kitchen, Sabino pulled out his mandolin, slowly strumming the strings. When was the last time he’d written a song? He couldn’t remember as he watched his pet goat, Capella, make herself comfortable beside him. 

Petting her head, he murmured, “Easy girl, easy. You’ll see. They’ll be fine. That girl doesn’t go out looking for trouble, especially trouble that would come from there of all places.” 

She bleated.

“I didn’t give you any guarantee on the state of your kid, but wherever Asha is, I doubt that he’s not with her. You’ll see. Call it my intuition,” he gestured to his gut. “It’s almost never wrong.”

The goat bleated once more as he could hear Sakina talking to someone in hushed whispers by the door. 

He made a face towards his pet, before shaking his head. “Well, that’s why I said almost and not always ..” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper that held a picture of the royal family before handing it to his goat. She reached forward, happily devouring the paper as he repeatedly strummed the mandolin. 

“Capella,” he began as he strummed louder. “This reminds me of the old days…”

The goat bleated once more before he handed her another royal flyer to devour.

“How? Well…it’s hard to explain. But Tomas used to tell me a lot of things you know. Told me a lot of things that didn’t make sense at the time, and they still don’t make sense, but truthfully, I don’t think I could ever say they were…wrong… Well maybe I could, but it’s not easy to describe, especially when-,”

“Sabino!” Sakina cried, running back into the kitchen with a startled Hal in tow. She was wearing a cape now, as he watched her dash past him. She’d begun to hurriedly shove a few materials into a sack as the other young woman looked on uneasily.

Sensing something amiss, he sat up with surprising agility as he began to pelt her with questions. “Sakina! What is it?! Do I need to get my sword?! Where’s my armor?! What’s going on?!”

She turned to him, tears gathering in her eyes. “It’s Asha! Something has happened to her!”

[mariacallous]

On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court held that frozen embryos were “children” under Alabama’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. While this was a decision about in vitro fertilization (IVF), Alabama’s recognition of embryos as persons is simply a logical extension of the anti-abortion movement’s long-time commitment to the notion of fetal personhood, an idea now animating the post-Dobbs criminalization of reproductive care. A number of state legislatures have already granted personhood status to fertilized eggs or unborn children in utero at any stage of development.

Consistent with the anti-abortion movement’s goal of a nationwide recognition of fetal personhood, the criminalization of abortion is a tool for preventing abortions from ever occurring. In our new article, Bodies of Evidence: The Criminalization of Abortion and Surveillance of Women in a Post-Dobbs World, we explore: how ban states are criminalizing abortion; the way medication abortion is disrupting abortion bans; the threat of prosecution faced by women who self-manage abortions with medication; and the ways modern surveillance technologies enable law enforcement investigations of abortion crimes.

The criminalization of abortion is one of several strategies endorsed by the anti-abortion movement and adopted in states attempting to enforce abortion bans and defend them against circumvention by medication abortion.

Medication abortion, a two-pill regimen involving mifepristone and misoprostol, is approved by the FDA for terminating a pregnancy up to 10 weeks. While the FDA approved the use of mifepristone in 2000, the revolutionary promise of medication abortion—where a woman can receive the medication in the mail, then safely self-manage an abortion in the privacy of her own home—was not realized until the FDA permanently lifted the in-person dispensing requirement in 2021. Not surprisingly, research from the Guttmacher Institute indicates that medication abortion now accounts for 63% of abortions in the United States, up from 53% in 2020.

Because of medication abortion, pregnant people living in states that ban or severely restrict abortions have access to a form of abortion care that was not available pre-Roe. Today, pills can be moved across state lines, doctors in abortion-protective states can offer telehealth care to women in ban states, and organizations like Aid Access can mail abortion medication from overseas. It is no longer necessary for all women in ban states to travel out of state to access abortion care.

The anti-abortion movement is, of course, aware of the ways in which medication abortion can thwart abortion bans and is attacking the problem on a number of fronts. In one response to this threat, a group of anti-abortion doctors brought a lawsuit challenging both the FDA’s original approval of mifepristone in 2000 and subsequent actions in 2016 and 2021 to improve access to and availability of the drug. The goal of the lawsuit is to remove mifepristone from the U.S. market, a result that would drastically reduce access to medication abortion for all women in the United States, regardless of the state in which they live. The Fifth Circuit granted partial relief to the doctors, landing the case in front of the Supreme Court after the government’s petition for writ of certiorari was granted. The Court heard oral arguments on March 26.

While it is unwise to predict how the Court will rule on any case, a majority of justices during the oral argument seemed to express some skepticism that the doctors who brought the suit had the necessary legal standing to seek the requested relief. The Court could thus dispose of the case without ever reaching its merits.

Even if the challenge to the FDA’s treatment of mifepristone is unsuccessful, however, the case presented an opportunity for the plaintiffs to bring attention to another of the movement’s strategies—one that was raised on three separate occasions during the oral argument by Justices Alito and Thomas. This strategy concerns the Comstock Act, a federal obscenity law from 1873, virtually dormant but still on the books, that criminalizes the mailing of “[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”

A literal interpretation of this law would, at a minimum, make the mailing of any kind of abortifacient unlawful, essentially resulting in a nationwide ban on medication abortion. While the Department of Justice under the Biden administration interprets the Comstock Act narrowly, the Justice Department under a Trump administration is free to reject that interpretation. To achieve a nationwide abortion ban, the anti-abortion movement doesn’t need Congress or even the courts—it only needs Donald Trump to be elected. And while Congress could certainly repeal the Comstock Act, that is not an outcome anyone should expect in the near future.

As the anti-abortion movement pursues these strategies, another more familiar tactic for preventing women from self-managing abortion with medication is also available: the prosecution of women and those that may assist them. Although providers have historically been the primary targets of abortion laws, women have been investigated and prosecuted for pregnancy-related conduct and a variety of pregnancy outcomes, even during the Roe era. And, in 2016, when candidate Donald Trump was asked whether he thought women who sought an illegal abortion should face criminal punishment, he answered in the affirmative—“there has to be some sort of punishment.”

Some state officials, politicians, and movement leaders claim that no one intends to prosecute pregnant women for abortion crimes. Others, emboldened by the demise of Roe, have suggested that criminal punishment of pregnant women who seek or obtain abortions is logical, morally justifiable, and required to end abortion.

As we explore in our article, a number of current states’ laws—including personhood laws—provide prosecutors with the tools to investigate and prosecute women who self-manage abortion using medication and those that assist them. The decision whether to do so will generally turn on a prosecutor’s interpretation of these laws, many of which do not explicitly exempt women from prosecution, and his or her exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

Georgia, for example, has passed a personhood law. Its “Living Infants Fairness and Equality” Act (LIFE Act) bans abortion after six weeks, a time at which most women don’t even know they are pregnant, and states that “[i]t shall be the policy of the state of Georgia to recognize unborn children as natural persons.” It defines “natural person” as “any human being, including an unborn child,” and defines “unborn child” as “a member of the species of Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb.” By including “unborn child” in the definition of natural person, the LIFE Act raises the possibility that a woman who obtains or self-manages an abortion after six weeks could be charged with murder.

In Georgia, a person commits murder “when he unlawfully and with malice aforethought, either express or implied, causes the death of another human being.” No exemptions from prosecution are provided in the LIFE Act. While our article identifies some ambiguity surrounding whether a woman having or self-managing an abortion could be prosecuted for murder under Georgia’s LIFE Act, Douglas County District Attorney Ryan Leonard previously indicated that women in Georgia “should prepare for the possibility that they could be criminally prosecuted for having an abortion. . . . If you look at it from a purely legal standpoint, if you take the life of another human being, it’s murder.” This prosecutor’s statement is an example of a threat of prosecution, where a public official purposefully wields fear and uncertainty to enforce an abortion ban.

Meanwhile, an April 1 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court enabled a six-week abortion ban to take effect by May 1, replacing the current law, which bans abortion after 15 weeks. In Florida, “[a]ny person who willfully performs, or actively participates in, a termination of pregnancy in violation” of the law before or during viability “commits a felony of the third degree, punishable” by a term of imprisonment not exceeding five years and fines. There is no exemption for pregnant women. The broad “any person” language subjects women who self-manage abortion through medication to the threat of investigation and prosecution.1 Recognizing this possibility, Florida legislators proposed H.B.111 in October 2023, a bill that explicitly exempts pregnant women from prosecution for terminating their pregnancies: “This paragraph does not apply to the pregnant woman who terminates the pregnancy.” The bill died in subcommittee in March of this year.

Florida’s six-week ban features the same broad language prohibiting “any person” from engaging in the proscribed conduct. Accordingly, women will continue to be at risk of investigation and prosecution under the new law. There were 84,052 abortions in Florida last year, an increase of 2,000 abortions from 2022. More than 7,000 of those women came to Florida from other states. With the imposition of the six-week ban, the use of medication abortion will undoubtedly spike. Women continue to have abortions even when they are illegal.

Georgia and Florida are just two examples of states with laws that subject women to the threat of prosecution for self-managing abortions. There are also a range of laws “related to fetal remains, child abuse, felony assault or assault of an unborn child, practicing medicine without a license, or homicide and murder” that don’t even mention or outlaw abortion, but which have been used to investigate and prosecute people for conduct related to the alleged termination of their own pregnancies, even while Roe was the law of the land.

In the post-Dobbs world, prosecutors who choose to investigate women for self-managing abortions have an array of modern surveillance technologies at their disposal. In our article, we present three hypothetical scenarios involving law enforcement investigations of a single mom, a college student, and a high school student based on alleged self-managed abortions. In each of the scenarios, we attempt to illustrate what is possible based on current law and technology. We are not suggesting that these exact scenarios have occurred or will occur. But aspects of these fact patterns are consistent with cases described in If/When/How’s 2023 report documenting the ways in which women were investigated and prosecuted for conduct pertaining to self-managed abortions between 2000 and 2020, prior to the fall of Roe.

Whether abortion laws target providers, aiders and abettors, or women themselves, the criminalization of abortion necessarily involves the surveillance of women. Women’s bodies are often the so-called scene of the crime, and their personal data will, more likely than not, be evidence of the crime. The modern digital environment only amplifies the scope and harm of that surveillance. Communications with friends and family, internet searches, websites visited, purchases made, data shared with mobile apps, location, and other data generated in the course of everyday life become evidence that can be used in prosecutions against women and those that assist them in obtaining abortions.

We offer no single, silver bullet solution for the threat of surveillance and prosecution women face in a post-Dobbs world. But there are some intermediate measures that can mitigate this threat. As our research demonstrates, state laws criminalizing abortion are, on the whole, a confusing morass. They often do not unambiguously preclude the prosecution of women. Confusing statutory language coupled with the unpredictability of prosecutorial discretion creates uncertainty—which in turn curtails women’s liberty, compromises their privacy interests, and puts their health at risk. State legislators, especially those who claim that there is no intention to prosecute women, should ensure that laws clearly and explicitly exempt women from prosecution.

Another avenue that holds some promise for disrupting the threat is specifically tied to the state of Delaware, where many big platforms and technology companies are incorporated. Delaware, we argue, should join California and Washington in passing a data shield law that includes provisions specifically designed to prevent companies from turning over data sought by law enforcement organizations from ban states that are investigating abortion crimes. Such a shield law could provide one significant hurdle to law enforcement attempts to investigate and prosecute women who have abortions and those that assist them. As the chosen state of incorporation for many tech companies holding data relevant to the investigation of abortion crimes, Delaware has a unique opportunity to engage in threat mitigation.