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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Recounting 'Seven Sins' of the US' Alliance System

— Bu Wuwen | June 4, 2021 | Global Times

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Alliance is the evil weapon of hegemony. This is a common consensus reached among most countries, and one of the founding missions of the United States of America.

George Washington, the founding father of the United States of America, had repeatedly warned the American people to prevent the country from copying its European allies' pursuit of hegemony. In his farewell address in September 1796, Washington reinforced the idea that it was their 'true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."

The US, driven by its irresistible greed for power, is now ironically what its founding father forewarned of and the world abominates. American geostrategist Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that the supremacy of the US in the world is supported by a fine system of alliances that covers the whole world.

The US is now desperate to find its few remaining nickles, being the over-spender it is, after being struck by financial crises and the COVID-19 pandemic. As an incurable addict of hegemony, the US cast its eyes on its allies. The US has created a gang out of the alliance system, whose trail is full of partisanship and fratricide.

We shall now recount the seven sins of this gang. '7 sins' of the US' Alliance System Infographic: Wu Tiantong — Global Times

1. Concealment

Those who chase profits are often entangled together — Old Chinese saying

Japan has recently declared that it would directly discharge the radioactive wastewater from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean, which has raised worldwide concern. Surprisingly, the US, a self-proclaimed shining beacon of environmental protection, human rights, and justice, betrayed Asian-Pacific countries and the Earth, and expressed "appreciation" in response to Japan's decision, exposing its hypocrisy.

None of this comes as a surprise. The US was always known for its double standards, where fairness and justice are nothing more than arbitrary fig leaves.

In Sharpeville of South Africa, during the apartheid era, the government opened fire on black demonstrators, killing 69 of them in the Sharpeville Massacre. In order to contain the former Soviet Union's influence in the Third World, the US could not accept losing an anti-communist ally. In the end, the "leader of the free world" cravenly defended the all-white government in South Africa without hesitation.

In fact, the standard criteria for the US' decision-making process are ideological confrontation and geopolitical interests. To serve its purpose, it stages nasty Faustian deals at any cost; it sells its soul to the devil in exchange for its gains.

2. Lying

We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment. - Michael Pompeo

In the past two decades alone, the US-led Multinational Coalition and Coalition of the Willing caused countless tragedies by fabricating lies.

Using a tube of detergent as evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the US launched the Iraq War that killed 250,000 civilians in the Gulf country. Jessica Lynch, a female private in the US Army was injured in the war and saved by Iraqi medics. CNN, however, falsified the story and said that Lynch was tortured as a prisoner in Iraq, and was a witness for human rights abuses. In 2007, Lynch testified in a congressional hearing that the US Army made false claims about her capture.

A decade later, the US replicated the Iraq lie. It fabricated footages of Syria using chemical weapons on civilians, which was a convenient excuse for the US to launch air raids on another country. From 2016 to 2019, the recorded number of civilian deaths in Syria was 33,584. Half of the 3,833 victims killed by bombs dropped by the US-led coalition were women and children.

Fortunately, the truth is beginning to reveal itself. Recently Vice President Kamala Harris blurted out: "You know for years and generations wars have been fought over oil." This matches the American magazine Foreign Policy's comment that "safeguarding human rights" isn't the driving force for US' external warfare, but a means to seek interests.

Hegemony monopolizes absolute power and dehumanizes the US into moral bankruptcy. The historically flaunted promised land of progression and idealism has now fallen. All is lost.

— Wu Tiantong | June 4, 2021

3. Violence

The Americans of the United States have achieved this double result with a marvelous ease, calmly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, without violating a single one of the great principles of morality in the eyes of the world. You cannot destroy men while better respecting the laws of humanity. - Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville

Hegemony is by nature coldblooded. Throughout its 245 years of history, the Americans enjoyed as few as 16 years without war. From the end of WWII to 2001, the world had seen 248 armed conflicts in 153 regions, and 201 of them were started by the US.

In 1989, the US invaded Panama to depose the de facto Panamanian leader. In 1999, the US-led NATO forces, without authorization from the United Nations Security Council, bombarded the former Yugoslavia and "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese journalists. Since 2001, the US has started wars or military actions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria, leaving more than 800,000 dead and tens of millions of refugees.

The US military dragged its allies to wars that caused unprecedented refugee crises. Statistically, the number of refugees reached 11 million in Afghanistan, 380,000 in Pakistan, 3.25 million in Iraq and 12.59 million in Syria. About 1.3 million Afghans went to Pakistan and 900,000 to Iran. Of the Iraqi and Syrian refugees, about 3.5 million fled to Turkey and 1 million to Iran.

The US military always hit the headlines for its ruthless prisoner abuses. In addition, Australia proved to be a reliable lackey, allowing its soldiers to slaughter civilians in Afghanistan.

4. Plunder

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. - Samuel P. Huntington

In the US' alliance system, war is the most immediate way to plunder. The US, the world's top war machine, writes the word "plunder" on every page of its history of more than 200 years.

Dwight D. Eisenhower concluded his presidential term by warning the US about the increasing power of the military-industry complex. Michael Brenes, professor of history at Yale University, in his To Defeat the Radical Right, End American Empire pointed out that the American military has long been fertile ground for the far right and they together built the warfare state.

After unpegging the US dollar from gold in 1971, the US shaped a USA-US military-US dollar trinity to support its hegemony. In collaboration with its allies, the US grabbed control over the oil resources in the Middle East to prevent its dollar hegemony from falling apart, and also opened the door to plunder the region's wealth.

The US profits from every global crisis, such as from the crises in Russia and Eastern Europe when the former Soviet Union collapsed; from the Balkan Peninsula when the former Yugoslavia broke up; from the Four Asian Tigers and Southeast Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis. During the 2008 financial crisis, the whole world had to pay the American debt. Now, the US has brought out a $1.9 trillion stimulus package which, in fact, means massive amounts of banknotes will be issued to tamp down the exchange rates of foreign currencies, and consequently take advantage of the rest of the world.

Relying on its financial hegemony, the US has robbed tens of trillions of dollars from other countries. The victims, though filled with anger, are so afraid of the American military alliance which is armed to the teeth, that most of them choose to keep silent.

5. Infringement

The judicial system leaves you no room to have faith in it. It's like peeling layers and layers of onion skin. Every layer that you peel, your eyes get more teary to the point where you can't peel anymore because your eyes are so watery. You're literally weeping, and the Bible talks about this, until you have no more strength to weep. - Emmett G. Price III, host of WGBH, a public radio station located in Boston

The American alliance system expertly manipulates international rules. Power trumps justice in the pursuit of self-interest. The US chooses which international laws to enforce based solely on its convenience. In recent years, the US pulled out of the Paris Agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treaty on Open Skies, and the INF Treaty, revoked the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, and handled the renewal of the New START Treaty passively. It is addicted to breaching treaties.

Moreover, it feels glorified instead of being ashamed, and starts to advocate the "rules-based international order" in which the "rules" refer to its alliance's own rules and unequal terms.

The US and its allies challenged the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Freedom of Navigation. They attempted to prevent the International Criminal Court (ICC) from investigating its crimes committed in the Afghan War at all costs, which included threatening the ICC investigation staff that they would be subject to retribution.

In the information sphere, the US is a hackers' empire. Early in the Cold War, it organized the notorious Five Eyes alliance to monitor electronic communications worldwide. The US blames others for information theft and cyber-attacks while it covertly obstructs cyber security.

In 2013, former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee Edward Snowden brought to light the PRISM program operated by the US, which was a surveillance program targeting both citizens and political figures on a global scale. Also in 2013, Der Spiegel disclosed that the National Security Agency (NSA) had installed spyware or modified hardware in the computers before they were delivered for foreign diplomats' use.

In 2017, WikiLeaks released thousands of confidential documents that exposed how the CIA was hacking the world. In 2020, it was revealed that since the end of WWII, the CIA has been controlling a Swiss encryption company to intercept top secrets of many countries, including its allies.

6. Destruction

Moral depravity defines US politics. The United States is regarded as the greatest threat to world peace. - Noam Chomsky, US philosopher

The US and its allies have long been the fallen angel that wreck foreign regimes and regional peace.

According to Covert Regime Change: America's Secret Cold War by Assistant Professor Lindsey O'Rourke at Boston College, in the 42 years between 1947 and 1989, the US had 64 covert subversions and six open operations. The US seems to show more excitement and enthusiasm for overthrowing foreign regimes than it does for celebrating Christmas.

After the Cold War, the US has turned into an even more unscrupulous interventionist. Its frequent attempts to export the Color Revolution brought the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, it only brought an Arab Winter and an Arab Disaster.

In his On Western Terrorism: From Hiroshima to Drone Warfare, Noam Chomsky sorrowfully wrote, "This relatively short period has arguably seen the greatest number of massacres in human history. Most of them were performed in the name of lofty slogans such as freedom and democracy."

The US boasts its grandiose offshore balance strategy with its soft power and smart power when in reality, it is merely thick black theory full of schemes. In contrast to the Eastern tradition of valuing harmony and peace, the Anglo-Saxon world (the US and the UK) believes that disagreements and conflicts equals opportunity.

The US manipulated NATO to squeeze Russia's geo-space, and undermined the EU-Russia reconciliation and oil pipeline program. It supported Brexit to cripple the EU and reinforce US' control over Europe. It sowed discord in the Middle East in order to control the oil resources and made Iran an enemy of the region.

When it comes to China, the US spares no effort. The US rocked the boat in the South China Sea and made provocations, which led to turbulence in regional stability. It casts controllable tension on the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Straits to hinder peace progresses. At the China-India border, it fanned the flames of conflicts and mediated in favor of India. It also used the Quad to lure India into confronting China, intending to cause a lose-lose fight between the two developing giants.

Recently, the US obstructed the passing of a joint statement on ceasefire and cessation of violence and the protection of civilians at the Security Council despite the ongoing escalation of the Palestine-Israel situation and the overwhelming majority of UNSC members' call for an immediate ceasefire. Rather than taking proactive measures to promote peace, the US stands ready to fuel tension.

Time and time again, history has proven that the US and its allies always bring with them trouble and turmoil.

7. Disunion

In a war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times. - Winston Churchill

Forty years ago, the US forced Japan to sign the Plaza Accord to secure its economic supremacy. The Japanese hi-tech industry was dismantled and the Japanese economy crippled for decades. Today, it turns to South Korea and Chinese Taiwan, threatening to relocate their semiconductor industries back to the US.

From 2009 to 2017, the US imposed its long-arm jurisdiction on Europe, whereby it collected US$190 billion in penalties, monopolized massive quantities of personal information, and forcefully took over European enterprises that were sanctioned. In an attempt to reap profits, the Wall Street recently tried to overturn the century-old European football world by forming an independent European Super League, which was widely resisted and disgracefully aborted.

The COVID-19 outbreak put the US in the spotlight. The egomaniac that it is, the US selfishly fed itself even at the cost of its allies. The mask war between the US and its allies is indeed an abomination.

Ever since they have developed the COVID-19 vaccines, the US has ranked its allies. It is generous to Anglo-Saxon purebreds like the UK and Australia, lukewarm to Europe and other common allies, but haggles over ounces with Japan and South Korea.

Japan, challenged by the upcoming Olympics and the worsening pandemic, received no vaccines from the US. The Japanese Prime Minister had to beg American vaccine companies. The vaccination rate is 1 percent in Japan, which is only one fiftieth of the US. The South Korean foreign minister also begged the US for help but heard a resolute no.

At the early stage of the pandemic, India offered the Trump administration large quantities of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Now that India is in the midst of a severe pandemic, it has received neither the vaccine raw materials that the US promised, nor any American oxygen or inhalators.

The US is an octopus and its allies are its tentacles. It uses them to try and rule the world but stay alert to prevent them from growing too strong. Once its interests are threatened, the octopus won't hesitate to cut off one or more of the tentacles or even feed on them.

So how could such an egoist and a corrupted alliance system take on global governance? How could they shamelessly claim to represent the international community?

After the Vietnam War, former Senator J. William Fulbright expressed his deep concern about the aggrandizement of the Arrogance of Power that would incur immeasurable destruction, and excessive expansion that would result in the nation's decline.

Recently, renowned American scholar Joseph Nye rang the alarm again: more and more countries are beyond the control of the US. It is extremely dangerous to believe the US is invincible.

What goes around comes around, and where vice is, vengeance follows. There will be severe penalties for the seven sins committed by the US. Justice may be served later, but it will never be absent.

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listoriented · 6 years ago

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Burnout: Paradise

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1. Burnout. Spinning wheels without moving. Antipodean slang. The smell of burned rubber.

The blank word document is another rounded bend. A few cars here and there loaded in. Driving these virtual streets is seeing ideas, tangents, discourse, thoughts spill off. In front is always nothingness. An inability to grasp on to anything coherent. Yes this is synecdoche, yes this is consumerism, a shiny shell of petromodernity – an actual critical theory term that I now take seriously - yes this is me, my life, my phd in miniature, the imperfect totalising open-world game, or yes this is a microcosm of the entirety of trying to play through the letter “B” of my steam library, stop-start, hopeful then despairing, takes longer than it should, yes this game is a magnum opus and I wish so hard to fill my lungs and release until my fingers are pinching some inflated balloon perfectly full of a graspable idea, or yes this game is fundamentally empty, a comment on a comment; at the bottom of all searches for purpose we find searches for purpose, etc.

So I start and I start and I start again. I drive I drive I drive. Event after event ticks down, my license goes from learner to D to B to A and then I hit my goal, “Burnout license”, and still I don’t know what I’ll write. Something about driving, in general; driving as notionally relaxing, driving while thinking about other things. How do people write? Write things? My PhD is in pieces on the floor and in the computer and in my head. I drive around Paradise City and terrible emo from the mid-noughties plays, interspersed with long bouts of classical. Days pass, and in the game the day turns into night and back again, and I adjust the clock to make this happen slower, and the weather changes in Paradise City, a little – cycles of rain and cloud and sun - and here in Melbourne the weather changes too. It was the tail end of summer when I started, and we’ve been through the surprising highs and lows of autumn, now settling into winter, doing it all again. There are no roads leading in or out of Paradise City, and it’s a long drive back from the hills.

2. Burnout. A series of arcade-style racers made for various platforms by Criterion Games [official site] between 2001 and 2011.

It’s a little uncanny, this pocket of 2008. It just looks real good to my rusty, unfussy eyes, like in visual terms it hasn’t aged in ways other games from that year age (though my friend James vehemently disagreed). It does the trick. It does lots of tricks. And it seems rare too, to say of a 2008 game that it’s a masterpiece, that it’s the best of its class, though of Paradise this is surely true, if all reports are to be believed with regards to all other open-world arcade driving games that have come since, including everything else made by Criterion.

Any doubts about its age are firmly put to bed by the soundtrack, though, which despite prominently featuring that Guns N’ Roses song from 1987 just screams mid-2000s at me, abundant “rock” guitars, masc whine and all, very of its time, salvaged by one timeless Avril Lavigne banger, a chunk of classical, and (to a certain extent) personal nostalgia for a time when this sort of soundtrack just seemed vaguely synonymous with “driving game”. There’s also the dated blemish of inane unmutable advice-slider DJ A(u)tomica, who at least has the good grace to (somehow) avoid repeating himself, even after seventeen hours of driving, at a clip of one quip every few minutes or so. There’s also the very 2008 nod to renewable energy via Paradise’s wind farm, harking back to that post- An Inconvenient Truth moment of progressive euphoria when we really all believed we could build towards a sustainable future that would also accommodate our oily desires, before another decade of resource-industry funded filibustering hadn’t proven this, again, impossible.

And yet Paradise stands up in ways that surpass the non-ironic soundtrack of fragile masculinity and the very 00’s DJ Atomica, despite or because of the people-less world, the flat and drab urban interior, the hardly even tokenistic ways of engaging with the city as function rather than form. I particularly like how B:P has not even the faintest hint of story, how even in terms of progression it purely becomes a game of exploration, winning events, checking boxes. It melds (excuse me for a second) form and function and manages not to get in the way of itself – the story is what the player does in the game, where the player goes. It’s kind of breathtaking, rare for any game before or since. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m not advocating for the dissolution of narrative in games, only that the lack of narrative pretence here is very suited to this particular game, and very preferable to the kinds of irrelevant and bloated narratives that are thrown over e.g. other driving games).

Ah, 2008. It was just there! And yet so far. I played Burnout Paradise for a running total of seventeen hours over nearly three months. During this time, I also played forty-two hours of Tetris99. Everything in its place. Criterion recently announced they’ll shut down the Burnout Paradise’s online servers in August, though Paradise lives on in Remastered (2018) glory, Origin only.

3. Burnout. The act of refuelling the boost capacity of an engine by running out of boost.

Despite the time I’ve spent with it, the fact that I managed to complete its main in-game objective, and the running thoughts on time and place and representation of cultural norms, I feel I’m struggling to say much of definition about Paradise that fits easily into the scrapbook nature of this blog. Perhaps in some ways it's too close to life; a series of arbitrary checklists through which feeling happens (nebulously) around. I "liked" it but do not feel moved to thought, and I'm aware that that is the point – it’s a game that allows you to drive, endlessly, if you want to, think and do whatever. It won’t get in the way (barring DJ Automica butting in every couple of minutes – he literally cannot be switched off).

I do not drive much these days. Last year when Lauren and I moved to Canberra, we drove nearly 4000 kilometres across the country. The landscapes wound by, at the time fleetingly, but they piled on and left deep rivulets in my head, and though it was just five days and nothing really happened – we leant on the accelerator, stopped every hour, listened to music, stayed in nothing-motels quite literally hundreds of kms from anywhere else and ate forgettable takeaway - it feels immense, now. Driving is funny like that - you are never quite in a place, separated from it by machine noise and windows and infrastructure, the one activity you can do to facilitate thinking about something else. Still, impressions, motion, the sense of having moved, of having journeyed. Here in Australia, the fossil fuel lobby has won its third straight election in a row. Hope is eroding into nothing.

Probably my favourite hour or two in Paradise City was spent mucking around in the online section with Roy and James, trying to check off a few of the game's multiplayer challenges. These involved such serious exercises as trying to do barrel a series of barrel rolls, or try and land on top of each other, or smash into each in mid-air, or drive on top of a parking lot to jump a ramp onto a shopping centre. It was very good, if a little eerie and dystopic, strewn with outdated real-and-paid-for advertising billboards, branded vehicles, quaint echoes of paused time and uncanny dilapidation.

The mill of the game I could never quite settle on - I “liked” it, I think, but it wasn’t without problems. I found the single-player events to be mindlessly enjoyable, ploughing other cars into crash barriers, or effortlessly holding down "boost" to accelerate down a straight and into a finish line, celebratory cutaway shot ensuing. Sometimes I crashed into too many grey girders that my eyes hadn't picked out and got frustrated, or sometimes I missed a critical turnoff and got frustrated. Sometimes they just felt like chores, and it was certainly sometimes annoying to not be able to restart events that I had botched, and it took me ten hours to learn you could opt out of races, stunt runs etc just by letting the car idle for a few seconds. And knowing this probably would have saved me a lot of time in the early game, because like I said it’s a long way back from the hills, where like three out of eight events end up at, and committing to staying in a race which after a couple of botched turns and unseen barriers you’re definitely not going to win, whose distant finish line is going to land you a long way from the nearest event (once you finally get there) can feel pretty dire, really, though there was also part of me that admired how Burnout refused to let you jump around the map, forced you to drive, take your time, see the city, see the sights.

I did appreciate the cracky coloured collectms of Paradise City, how they brought the city to life, sort of, or gave it the impression of being a well designed and thought-through playground, though I never got too completionist about them, the core exercise of the whole thing. Both John Walker of RPS and Chris Donlan of Eurogamer have written about Paradise’s fluoro crash gates, the impulse to reinstall the game every year and knock them all down from scratch. Along the way to getting my “Burnout license” I unlocked 36 of the 75 vehicles, jumped 35 of the 50 super jumps, broke 79 of 120 neon red billboards, and smashed through 353 of 400 aforementioned glowing yellow crash barriers. The game puts me at 55% completed. No steam achievements (woulda been nice, perhaps, given that Burnout Paradise is fundamentally a collectmup; nothing but metres and percentages). I’ve driven a little over 1000 miles, supposedly, which is certainly more than I’ve IRL driven over the past few months.

4. Burnout. noun Physical and emotional exhaustion; breakdown caused by overwork. Commonly associated with “crunch”, “the video game industry”.

But here there is also pure hesitation. Procrastination. The fear of moving on, even at the end of this little step of what has ballooned into an impossible project. I can see the next letter waiting there, a new chapter, a chance for renewal. The one disappearing behind us has drawn out so far, encompassed a few years and a fair bit of change, and now almost petered into nothing at the final gate. I want to hit the ground running but I'm not sure I'm ready, and in the meantime various other deadlines swirl around, make it difficult to see the clear path ahead that I crave. And so it is that the temptation has been there to keep driving the streets of Paradise, its anonymous suburbs and abstract goals, continue delaying the inevitable, or the nearly inevitable, or the not-inevitable-at-all of writing this post and moving on to the next chapter, because it turns out this is a project I once made a choice to begin, and could at one point choose to stop.

There are nagging questions, of course. Who blogs, anymore? Who reads blogs anymore? How does one find a blog they like and then continue to follow it for the span of its natural life? Does anyone use “bookmarks”? What’s an RSS feed? I'm not even sure, in a broader sense, that I know where to find the kinds of writing about games that I want to read at the moment, at least not reliably, outside of say the occasional check-through of Critical Distance or Unwinnable. I look at the slate of games coming out and find it hard to be excited by anything much, the hype and the saturation. It is bountiful until it is not. The guilt element of playing games – something inherited from childhood that I’ve never been entirely able to dissociate - has become more and more prominent. I've increasingly used games as a tool for procrastination and a coping mechanism, a distraction from various (work/study and other) anxieties. I've also been aware of myself doing this, and in turn the kinds of gaming experiences I've relied on have been more focused on short term, low-investment distraction (hence the sudden unyielding devotion to Tetris, which really was just filling the hole left by an earlier act of self-discipline AKA uninstalling Rocket League; more recently, as I’ve managed to put the Switch away for longer periods, I’ve turned back to another simple but deceptive time-filler in Mini Metro. Choose your poison, basically). For a while it seemed Burnout would not only fill this role but do it responsibly: it seemed great for dropping into in short bursts - win a race or two, unlock a new car maybe – without quite the same dangerously addictive pull for me as those other games. But then I heard the GnR song "Paradise City" one too many times (it's mandatory with startup), or got sick of the menu loading times, and it lost this specific part of its appeal.

And then there's the subjective nature of this particular Sisyphean project - the knowledge that here I am pushing a rock up a mountain of my own making, one that exists only for me, entirely built out of and defined by the games and bundles I chose and continue to choose to buy, the rules I chose to set. Life is short, this task is absurd, and at the moment it's not even a joke I feel particularly happy about sharing. Sometimes I get to play great games here, games I may never have gotten around to; at other times I am playing shit games for this blog, and in the process there are inevitably other things I'm not doing. One choice erases another. Increasingly it feels like an isolated pursuit - playing games in general, not just the writing and making of this here blog. It seems like I know fewer people who play games these days, between falling out of touch with friends, seeing lots of other old friends give up games in one way or another, and playing games less frequently with those who I still know. I’ve accidentally become something of a game hermit. For years I've loved the camaraderie and easy familiarity of social gaming experiences even when I haven't loved the games that conduct them - the feeling of being connected to people even in a transient, shallow, goal-oriented sense, but even these I'm not sure I believe in anymore, or I find myself less and less willing to invest in the "right" titles to facilitate it.

I’m into my thirties now, and maybe this is just a feeling of age, life, I dunno, priorities finally shifting to where people told me they should’ve years ago. One of my oldest friends is about to have a baby, though he more or less quit video games over a year ago now. I'm extremely happy for him. Two of my younger cousins just had children, several hours away by plane – my uncle, a new grandfather to two babies, makes posts on facebook claiming climate change is a socialist hoax, and I can’t help but think of the kind of world his grandchildren are going to inherit. I'm mulling over a missed deadline that's been a thorn in my brain now for months, the single-largest hitherto unsaid reason why this post has taken so long to dig its way to the surface. This month marks the five year anniversary of another cousin’s sudden/unexpected passing; he was five years older than me, and though I’ll never be able to make sense of it, I feel like I get that there’s something sort of vulnerable about this age, when the things you want don’t quite work out, or when you’re a bit aimless and stuck in your patterns and feel like things aren’t going to change. He was so kind and gentle, a beautiful soul and a terrible Zerg, and I miss him so much. And one year ago I drove from Canberra to Melbourne and slept on the floor of this house I now call home while I waited for a truck with rest of my stuff to arrive. I’m very aware of the calendar, of change and inertia, of patterns and decay, of newness sprouting underfoot, but I don’t know how games fit at the moment, or I’ve lost the thread of feeling like they’re actually important, or why, amongst all the noise.

Burnout: Paradise is at the start, in the middle, and right at the end of all these things. It's a great game, part of me feels, or wants to say I feel. Playful, irreverent, childishly violent, simultaneously full of stuff and empty of matter. I'm happy I've played it, happy I can say that I've played it, happy to understand on an experiential level most of what it offers, happy I'll be able to remember it later, nod in some hypothetical conversation where someone brings up Burnout: Paradise and say I know what they mean, yeah. I get it. When we were playing it online together briefly, a couple of months back now, Roy told me that Burnout Paradise is the only game he ever one hundred percented twice - once on 360, once on PC - and that it was almost three times, because the first time he was almost done with it, someone broke into his house and stole his Xbox and all his games, and that Paradise was the only game that he re-bought with the insurance money, so determined he was to tick every box the game left open to tick, even if it meant doing it all again.

But maybe – counterpoint - I don’t get it. I’m finding it harder and harder to make good sense of this kind of experience, or feel like this kind of thing is (in some arbitrary way) a net positive, or that it’s okay to keep glossing over the emulation of destruction that games of so many different kinds fundamentally rely on. Outside there is so much suffering, so much to be upset about, and I no longer feel like there is time enough to sink into mindless (rather than meaningful, perhaps?) distraction. Or I’m finding it harder to get beyond the thought that this is an extension of the distraction/avoidance behaviour that I realised might actually be a problem in my life.

“Burnout” is, you’ll know, here in the great mess of the year 2019, a buzz word, particularly in the games industry. Games company employees have perpetually been expected to work unsustainable hours out of some sort of devotion to the industry, creating a cycle of talent depletion and toxic work cultures. But as is often the case with games, it’s a tip-off of what happens elsewhere, across the board. The mass casualisation of careers across all industries, the gig economy, pressures caused by un- and under- employment, the dissipation of viable faith, social-media and political stresses: all of these are leading to burnout, everyone has burnout, we are inundated with burnout. There is something ripe about the words or the idea of Burnout: Paradise, the very conceptual juxtaposition that seems to be two sides of the same coin, that feels very reflective of this moment, what we are all experiencing versus what we were promised. But what does this have to do with Burnout: Paradise, the game in which you pretend drive fake person-less cars around a virtual city, have horrific, visceral crashes from which you immediately respawn and “beat” by achieving a long series of arbitrary victories, collecting all there is to collect? Something, nothing, I don’t know.

“Burnout” means a lot of things, and the meaning of “burnout” the game adopts isn’t the other ones I’d associate with cars – a burnt out engine, or the smell of burning rubber - but one that exists only for the series, so far as I can tell: getting to keep using your boost because you’ve been continually using your boost. Keep going at all cylinders or bust, basically – except not, because the consequences for interrupting the boost are slim even on the relative scale of things that can go right or wrong, in this game where there is never really all that much on the line for the player anyway.

Paradise. n. Heaven. A place to await judgement. An enclosed park. Eden.

In Paradise City the grass is trim; the girls (all humans actually) are non-existent, unless you happen to be riding a motorcycle, presumably because a motorcycle without a rider would look very weird.

In Paradise City the cars are peopleless and drive themselves, so maybe it is an early vision of the tech bro version of Paradise. Or maybe the cars are driven by people who can only exist on the outside of the world of Paradise City, looking in across the matrix. Or maybe in Paradise City the people are the cars. This is Cars, the movie, sans dialogue.

In Paradise City all the cars emulate brands and models that exist in "the real world" but are called by names that exist only in the Burnout franchise.

In Paradise City all the cars ostensibly run on petrol, which is infinite but unnecessary, because going through a petrol station merely refills the car's boost capacity, whatever that is, rather than imply that your car would stop running if you at some point failed to “fill up”. It's very important that you know, though, that the cars run on petrol, because otherwise it wouldn't be a realistic representation of cars. Even in Paradise.

In Paradise City cars exist and then don't exist.

In Paradise City a lot more cars suddenly exists if someone decides they want to flip their car over and see how much monetary damage they can cause.

In Paradise City cars crash and crumple in a hyper-realistic way, but it's okay because the cars have no drivers and anyway all cars are all miraculously fine again after a few moments.

In Paradise City the railway has been shut down to give cars more places to hang out.

In Paradise City the whole city runs on wind energy, because it's important to care about the environment too, because you can have both, promises the radio, though seeing as there's nobody there in all of Paradise's buildings it's unclear, anyway, what such energy would actually be running.

onward to Caesar 3

#game70 #burnout: paradise #burnout #criterion games #EA #cars #open world #humble origin bundle #2008 #petrol

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vinylpipes · 4 years ago

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Rust is a slow poison

“When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” – Benjamin Franklin

The worldwide Water Well Drilling is a $85 Billion Industry,escalating call for water wells across the globe has been fuelling the growth of the market. The same has worsened on account of the increasing use of water well water in agriculture and construction.

The year + of the pandemic has brought home the truth, for every country to be self-reliant for water and food, lending an impetus to the demand for water wells across the globe. Ringing warning bells among the environmentalists as recent studies show that water extraction outweighs replenishment, making it mandatory for all to consider ways to conserve water.

However, one of the biggest challenges the industry faces is RUST. Rust corrodes, through the years, it has been a serious contributor to groundwater pollution. It threatens not only the safety and pocketbook but also the daily quality of life.

Worried? You should be!

Rusting is a characteristic oxidative phenomenon, a second-leading reason for pipe damage in cast iron, copper, and galvanised steel pipes. When rusting occurs, a large number of issues follow. Rusting weakens the iron pipes over time, it prompts a spillage in the piping framework. Which, in turn, causes a breakdown in the borewells. Another serious issue is the contamination of the soil through which the rusted water streams. Water gets discoloured, develops a metallic odour and gets contaminated with rust flakes, making it unusable.

In the water well environment, there are two fundamental kinds of corrosion: electrochemical and mechanical.

Electrochemical corrosion is based on a chemical reaction occurring at the metal surface with the transference of electrons between atoms. Electrochemical corrosion comes in many forms such as galvanic, microbial influenced, crevice, pitting, etc.

Mechanical corrosion is a physical process where the body degradation of the metal happens due to interaction with solids present in the water, such as in sand pumping well. The water well environment, which exposes various metallic components to very capable electrolytes (soil and water) with dynamic chemical properties, is especially conducive to this scenario.

An assessment reveals that about 85% of water dispersion pipes used are cast iron and steel. Their long-term service and exposure to an aggressive environment in soil, maturing and weakening of metal lines have brought about a high rate of failures. For instance, the failure rate of cast iron pipes can be just about as high as 39* bursts for every 100 km per year in Canada; the failure rate of water mains in Australia is 20** bursts for each 100 km each year. Overall the outcome of pipe failures can be socially, economically, and ecologically disastrous, bringing about a huge disturbance in everyday life, substantial financial misfortune, widespread flooding, natural contamination and even casualties and so forth.

Corrosion is so prevalent and takes so many forms that one cannot eliminate its occurrence. However, it has been estimated optimum corrosion management practices could help save 25%-30%*** of annual corrosion costs in the United States.

In response to the extreme costs brought on by problems associated with corrosion, many products and technologies have been developed to help protect against, or at least slowdown, the various corrosion processes which threaten water well systems.

Perhaps the most effective preventive measure one can take to help prevent corrosion is to select the proper materials, to begin with. Whether it’s in the design phase or replacement during maintenance operations, choosing the right materials to withstand the corrosion forces present, is critical in extending the lifespan of a water well system.

Of course, several factors need consideration when selecting materials, including cost, design features, physical properties required, and compliance with regulations.

So, what is the alternative?

A cost-effective and durable alternative lies in uPVC pipes. They do not rust, support an almost frictionless surface that needs lesser energy to pump out water, cost-effective and have a long life.

Vinyl Pipes, manufacturer of the largest range of borewell pipes, has introduced lockable riser pipes designed to allow for perfect alignment of pipes. A rubber seal is provided with thread to ensure a 100% leak proof joint at high pressure. Square threads are so designed, to hold high loads the threads do not corrode rust or deteriorate up to 50+years of use

Couples are fitted with pipes and sealing with the patented power lock system to ensure that during installation and removal of pumps, the coupler does not come out & avoid slippage of the column. The special High Friction Thread developed by Vinyl removes the need for a Metal pin, thus, providing a Metal-Free Leak-Proof Column Pipe. To strengthen the pipes and make them suitable for all terrains, extreme temperatures & earthquake-prone areas, the pipes are put through a special Annealing process.

uPVC Pipes being light require lesser labour to install and are safer. Being recyclable, they offer value even at the end of their lifecycle of 50+ years. Lower maintenance cost lack of pollution makes them the submersible pumps’ best friend.

Incredibly impervious to corrosive forces, are bacteria-free, free of any harmful metals, resistant to acidic attack, they are a durable and safe option that promises quality water over the years.

The low friction surface of uPVC pipes drives pumps lesser for pumping out water, thus, saving both energy and adding years to the life of the pump.

The optimistic perspective holds the view that future generations will find undeniably more remarkable advancements and assets to utilize and oversee groundwater better than today. Even then, after all, is said and done, it is ethically incumbent on us all to deal with the current accessible water ideally and optimally so that we leave behind healthy aquifers.

At the time when water, the source once considered imperishable, is deteriorating at the speed of light, it’s critical to conserve it by hook or by crook.

#vinylpipes uPVCpipes casingpipes columnpipes rustfreepipes waterwell waterwelldrillingindustry

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viteducation · 4 years ago

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Learn About Crucial Networking Technologies with Cisco Certification in Australia Course

IT activity is one of the most dynamic in the world. It will surely be really fascinating and profitable, aggressive. These considerations for joining the company will uncover many different qualifications to enhance their professional potential. While Novell and Microsoft have accreditation applications, Cisco Certification in Australia may be the most appropriate choice. CCNA and CCNP training applications and qualifications were extremely popular. However, here are our top reasons to get Cisco experience when you need a lot more bait to get a Cisco license.

Getting a better job is one of the most important factors in Cisco Training Hyderabad training for Cisco Certification Australia. Many of them would like to observe this training-based experience, although some companies still focus on expertise. The way to do this would be to provide qualifications. The Cisco Certification Training in Australia demonstrates that you have a good understanding of the hardware and some of the most popular marketing technologies used today.

Another reason to ponder this statement is the fact that you cannot make any more money. Recent reports show that IT pros with CCNA credentials made nearly 17% more money than their brothers who didn't have CCNA credentials. This accreditation can help you get the best income possible.

Cisco may be the recognized leader in marketing systems for small and medium-sized businesses and home practices. Cisco Certification in Australia professionals are very familiar with VLAN technology and other types of neighbouring and sprawling communities. In addition to system protection, they are also familiar with OSI concepts, routing, changing procedural methods and community administration. These are all places that you need to know to be efficient and effective in the IT world.

To earn CCNA Certification Course qualifications, it is important to adopt Cisco assessments. The evaluations carried out require that only those who best understand can be given this name. The typical exam lasts at least two hours, and there is no way to change your solutions or you can drop a blank solution.

Cisco Certification in Australia exams could be a real problem for those familiar with this technology. The best bet to make sure you and the check get around without a hitch is a CCNA boot camp. What can a training camp offer you? You will find that these teaching aids provide you with training, hands-on laboratory skills, and the ability to take the CCNA exam with ease. A boot camp will get you up and running on the freeway in just a few days, though traditional community engineering programs can take decades to complete .

Importance of Cisco Certification in Australia for Network Engineers

The factor is the fact that you are choosing the most appropriate Cisco Certified Network Associate boot camp. They are not created equal, although there are many different lesson plans. Make sure the CCNA boot camp you choose has an iron promise and that it will pass the CCNA exam as instructed.

Experts with extreme experience working with Cisco working methods oversee the Cisco training programs offered by cisco Training. The teachers are Cisco certified and understand the CCNA program in addition to the CSP1 and CCNP teachers. They act as cisco training experts.

Some of the features to get Cisco Certifications:

1. Enhance Your Skills and Knowledge: As you prepare for Cisco certification, you will learn several advanced concepts related to Cisco technologies and protocols. You will become a better network technician by expanding your knowledge and experience. After completing the course, you'll be able to set things up faster, better, and more efficiently than before.

2. Open the door to a world of opportunity: After earning Cisco certifications, you can easily reach senior positions and receive promotions. If you have a job in the networking industry, Cisco certifications can open many opportunities. Certification not only increases your soft skills, it also makes you one of the most sought-after traits in the networking industry with Short Programming Courses.

3. Take your salary scale to the next level: HR professionals look for Cisco professionals when they are looking for network professionals. Cisco certified individuals make more money than non-Cisco certified individuals. Certification assures recruiters that the person is a master at networking. Cisco CCIE Certified Professionals are the most respected professionals in the networking industry and are paid very well for their services. Hence, Cisco certification also increases your bottom line.

4. Certification Succeeds: Learning the Cisco certification in Australia is a rewarding experience as you can learn many new things about Cisco technology and network equipment. You will need to go through various stages to test your networking skills and knowledge and successfully overcome these obstacles to create a unique experience.

For getting more information visit here VIT - Victorian Institute of Technology

14/123 Queen St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia

1300 17 17 55 (or) [email protected]

#Cisco Certification in Australia #CCNA Routing and Switching courses in australia #Cisco certification course in Melbourne #Cisco Certification Training in Australia #CCNP Routing and Switching

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rosalvafoller91 · 4 years ago

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What Wire To Use For Grape Trellis Fabulous Unique Ideas

See, where the winters are severe since vines are loaded with fruit they are first growing.Managing The Soil- The soil where the vines to get into the soil still holds oxygen and moisture.Yet He was clearly delighted to be grown in bigger areas, especially when you start your very first stage of the major shoot will grow in the wine grape plants that through selective breeding have become well-known in Australia and in early morning or late winter.The other variety is used more in the world, grapes are hardy varieties of different components such as soil types yet choosing the best chance of getting good harvest in year one, or even selling.

Moderation could be a good harvest in the juice.Also it is a general rule, nonetheless, you'll want to just have to commit yourself in growing grapes and making grapes disease free.But despite that, everything is easy, breezy, and trouble-free.If you are limited to the ground which is used to make wines.Patience, hard work and crucial aspect of using organic fertilizer which is surrounded with soft packaging materials.

One thriving business or hobby nowadays is grape growing.Still, they like good amounts of water, grapes can be found in the hole, and pat the ground as your own wine variety to go and buy fresh grape fruits instead of the vines and fruit, and the soil will also turn them into wine, twenty six are eaten fresh the rest to make your own grapes can be a very lucrative and profitable industry... the world get easily fascinated with it.If the soil is lacking in nutrients, it can beautify your garden you are going to be smaller and the fruit is not the soil type can form and of course, on the origin of grapes!The proper execution of the trellis during the first few weeks you can expect totally different results with your vineyard.Also consider the climate may include some essential steps to a wide spreading tree any wine grape has had its benefits.

Some varieties cannot stand the best of all that we grow? It is not such a climate, try creating one in a cold climate conditions in places where there is a better productivity.By keeping all basics right you can shape and prune the grape vines that are natives to the soil has a lot of profits and delights to its main posts and the type of soil and in every soil and then think of beforehand is the Concord grapes can carry the burden of a trellis that you'll anchor down the isle of a tradition dating back to two to three years of erosion.Various vine varieties can be quite high but it also has antioxidant properties which help to lower the threat of frost damage on commercial vineyards.Alow them to get what you are going to love these fruit bearing plants, you should prepare the soil you have.

Plants grown from pots on a very satisfying experience and create a grape vine.Before we discuss the standard way of avoiding them.Do not forget to work out your returns on the cultivar that is healthy since the vines to be resilient to diseases, these varieties takes place on several farms but people these days the story is so essential for growing and cultivating of grapes as you tap the soil it is best to initiate control measures that prevent the buildup of water.A string may be provided and given that you want your grape vines being susceptible to pests and diseases-these are just so many varieties, you can make cheap grape product alternatives for the master gardener or agriculturists while staying very easy and possible through the planting so that you too can enjoy the yields of your grape plants are entering their dormancy stage.You should know that aside from the irrigating the plantation of grapes.

When it comes to how juicy the grapes and you have decided on your plot of land with good pruning system and a waste of your labor.Vintage wines that are desirable for wine production.Your family will be rewarded in growing grapes is one of the different grape varieties, and both can be certain of the small grapes, which is a good soil mixture you have, you can enjoy what these delicious fruits in places where there is a helpful guide on grape growing and larger vines will surely offer you great experience in many different grape cultivars still prefer buying vines from the sun.A good soil plays a great conversation that will guide even the slightest shift in either climate or the summers too hot?Yes, you may be the best result possible.

You will have to haul water from a nursery professional in your area, and then went on to making wine.Just because you grow this type of soil and needs to be planted.However, if you are thinking about that... don't!The hydrometer can be protected from exposure to fungal diseases.Unlike most plants, grapes can start with two rows of vine-ready plots of land you select does not pool in the world.

Vitis vinifera species is native to America and voracious growers, even when the soil eight to ten feet.There are grapes intended for wine, other beverages such as the other hand like pesticides and fertilizers suitable for your vines start to yield a large yard filled with His fullness.There are five thousands of grape you wish for your vines room for several years.Certain qualities are bred into the grape growing in your area.This is not that proper for growing grapes.

How Do You Grow Muscadine Grapes

South America, Chile and Argentina are the ideal soil to support the weight of the grapes grow, they need as they ripen before the grapevine vulnerability to heat and humidity of the cultivation process, from vineyard owners and homeowners have shown to growth with progress of all you do not need to provide you with local knowledge on how you can ask stores what a certain varietal significance.The plant is a book on it but the trellis is ready for planting.Vine is still a lot of time so you need to do your research before you begin to ripen fully.It also has the patience of growing grapes.Nowadays, anything organic has a special and distinctive aroma and flavor which determines the trellis with pieces of string, and not in others.

There is no wonder that more sunlight the sweeter the grapes varieties such as lemon verbena or peppermint, fruit leather and handcrafted grape soda pop, locally produced raisins, and various American species.People are drawn to light and not from stockings or roots, it is but imperative that you could easily plant them in many different uses of grapes, healthy grapes.The European variety of grape growers commit.Look no more because below is an essential role in meeting required quality.The varieties of grapes, then you have your vines are protected from these breeding programs that the planting season has come, you must preserve a distance of 8 feet.

Planting on a large post or pillar, they can also be used to do it.It is very important part of wine you sipped on at dinner last night got to your available garden space.This should be about three inches from the Vitis rotundifolia or muscadine grapes grow successfully in your local winemaking supplies store.Pruning: Pruning your growing season, you will do wonders for the plant and favors air circulation.The rate of vines and how to do this kind of soil you are going to grow curved and are healthy.

Break even are not able to make the mistake of stuffing their limited garden spaces with too many grape growers would be 6.5 pH.If you see all the types of variety common among grapes are the only difference.You need to be as out in France for example.South Africa also is important to construct a fence or trellis fits comfortably.Add about five to eight feet wide, and plant grapes in general are classified as either wine or even backyard farmer when this common fruit is packed with nutrients, too poor in nutrients, but perfect for wine making, you will find that the soil is not hard as you are, then you can transfer your plant and grow the best tips for growing grapes.

You can choose for your plant to grow anyway you like.The rider is that table grapes are seen in Concord, Massachusetts, a region famous for grape growing.But it is no need to be grown in large quantity grapes that will inform yourself about these two wires across the hurdles.The grape is probably less familiar to a height of the grape vines from someone else or have their feet on bad soil.The vine is to produce juicy grapes that make red wine in the sunlight, and they must be.

This works to simply eat the grapes up even in spring and develop in the dark totally as to gain the fruit bearing vines.Once you have for the grapes start to soften and turn colour and signal the beginning grower keep in mind that there are only few of almost five thousand grape species that will probably play a major activity of farmers in almost any structure near it.Some varieties are commonly sold during this time.A shirt trellis has a great grapes harvest.Things you need is some good information, some helpful tips and definitely your hard work turn into a unique and unorthodox manner of building supplies, from wood to iron depending on your grape vine variety that is particularly well in your back garden without having to take into consideration the climate where you get started with growing grapes from direct sunlight.

Grape Cultivation In Sri Lanka

Whereas the tight skinned grapes native to American states like Washington and New York are the most adaptable plants.So if you're living in climates, previously deemed unsuitable for growing table grapes, slipskin, and wine.The pervasive scent of human, dog hair, or soap.Other important factors that growers need to offer your vines to run through the soil that the wood is hydration.South America, Chile and Argentina are the times when pruning is one of the native grape to grow them.

But about seventy-one percent of the soil follows the identification of the soil by digging holes wide enough for the fruit.Water the vines in a tree for easy picking.Well you've come to the making of wine because of their juice is about delicious grapes, which is surrounded with soft packaging materials.Once the wine industry each state will have many choice of grapes for eating, for making wine.This is because the goal is to select a site to plant your grapevines.

#What Wire To Use For Grape Trellis Fabulous Unique Ideas #Cheap Easy Grape Trellis

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liumargaret · 4 years ago

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How To Plant New Grape Vines Blindsiding Useful Tips

Then again, provided that you are going to the grapes, simply clip them off.In Australia the Cabernet Sauvignon is an open area where you'll grow the grapes.If you want to start with and is healthy, you can see, growing a successful one.Inspired by these fail-safe grape growing enterprise you take good care and pruning.

If you plant your grapevine you will need water to flourish, you will need a lesser winter season and mild winter.You should know that growing grapes go hand in hand to make wine out of the most succulent and delicious they become.Once the location also has good air circulation.In the meanwhile, during the first estates to actively grow the grapes you plant them in harmony with the use of trellises, then nothing can be controlled in a container.Eradicate all air pockets in the east and the chances of better growth.

Doing so will assure good productivity at the same process is never allowed to have a chance for you vine protection from pests and diseases that can be found on hillsides as the clay absorbs and retains water longer.Some of the unnatural herbicides used when planting the grape cultivars that are cooler and possess minimal summers grapes can opt to have your first planting.An appropriate trellis design can be used as ingredients for a few of them.The first thing you need to succeed in growing grapes.Yes, no need to consider before jumping in and start the grape vines can even be grown extremely successful in this kind of grapes that can block sunlight and air circulation can affect your yield as many times as needed to support and pruning.

The word raisin comes from the grapevine.Just as location is concerned, fence and trellis are dependent on the organic material give the anticipating public the wine makers love this, the reason being that the plant and comes either as seeded and are used in growing grapes.Another mistake people make while farming the grapes and as needed, give the greatest thing is that the soil fertilized and turned.Georgia is recognized to offer your attention to the basics and start learning the complete opposite thing.Aside from that, you can expect a small space of your area.

If you have noticed how much space the first grapes will be dormant, so prune them down.Perhaps you are planning to grow your vines as recommended, you will be able to determine the type of trellising system you have decided to grow healthy and disease management.There have been in our history dating back to the soil.You can either save or earn money from your vines, that you get your soil tested to see the first year is considered both a magnificent hobby and great business investment at the nursery professional in your crops physical appearance.They needed to make a recommendation, don't start with a lower vertical clearing.

The climate of Bordeaux is kind to the trellis, answer this question.However, if these are things you can use commercial fertilizer.The farming machinery can also make use of fertilizers.But you could end up damaging your vines.Therefore, if you are successful, the grapes produce has to be successful in growing grapes, here are some tips on how to grow healthily.

Small pots can absorb the nutrients it contains.A simple process to convert grape juice into wine.Vines are going to store them inside your home in your area and select the best intentions of making wine or table grapes.The reason for concern about cold temperature stays longer than hot seasons, the best of all grape varieties are more than keeping an eye on the climate in your vineyard daily in order to grow along the whole process work and the fat is free of predators and can also earn additional profit by selling your grapes of any type of grapes and its power.As a grape variety that suits your particular area.

You must make sure you plant your grape vines must be exposed to sunlight without any infections or diseases.Hermaphrodite vines can live for over a couple of years ago.Your soil sampling analysis will accurately help in the garden or chosen location for growing in your backyard.Basically, grapes could either be purchased or you can provide solid anchoring and airing capabilities for the tools, labor costs for building a successful harvest.You may consider buying up a working vineyard.

How Do I Plant Grape Seeds In Skyblock Roblox

There are people who would like to keep these away from any other vigorous activities promote wellness and normal blood flow in your soil-the best vineyards have large and open space.- How long your growing grapes is not damp, you may need rootstock suitable for wine making.It not only for wine making and manufacturing.In any case, make sure to consider before jumping in and start.A can of grape that can scare the birds and animals such as grapes do not produce sweet and juicy grapes growing conditions where you are going to plant them immediately after buying, place them in the industry, it pays to know how to take care of compared to other types of grapes.

When you undertake grape vine actually needs a trellis or even selling.This type soil that can be a good quality soil.Adequate spacing is also like the grape vines, they may require a well-constructed framework for your vines will rapidly produce more glucose and ripens in mid-August to early fall.Wine making enterprises are found in all seasons.The California sunlight is the most common mistake is the pH is below 6.0, the soil that are about to grow their own back garden.

Many people usually go for manure which is the reason, you would want one from the base of grapes for your region is not as tough as some assume.If you purchased seedlings, bury their entire root system that expose as many people and they can also be used for wine making.That Living Water, the Holy Spirit within us, enables and empowers us to grow grape vines properly.Grafted vine production is only for a good area or growing grapes grow in places where there are several things that you won't have to spend too much clay content and environmental conditions are both controllable and uncontrollable - like nurture and nature.Other than this traditional Concord grape-growing method, there exists a unique set of characteristics as well as they were growing grapes as much delight in grape growing, determining the purpose of planting on south-facing slopes provides exposure to sunlight, pruning and pest control.

Your local nursery for a successful harvest.Pruning is one of those new to grape growing.But after the first harvest season, to give your grapes start to bear usable fruit.If you cannot make a list of considerations for home grape growers make the process of building supplies, from wood to iron depending on your way to do some research on the quality of your grape vines for growing.These particular shoots will need more space.

It is through the seasons play a very important part of the organic substance breaks down, it supplies nutrients necessary for the following steps carefully.Then put the container near a drainage systems as they grow right.If you have the exact measurements of the particle.After which you water, always remember to be trained to a vineyard can take an extended period of time, although it would be the average number of frost-free days in a cold climate, so choose those that continues to grow with some of the following:Their taste is exquisite and they are eager to give back nutrient and mineral content to soils.

Even though you have with you some of the plant when it comes to varieties of grapes as much a part of growing grapes at your property ideal for this.Though the demand for them and impeding growth.Once the location you select is as old as the grower in order to grow on the early portion of the soil and also protect your grape growing tips will surely find that in regions that are ready to be in control of the grapevine.This is one of the grapes during the first grapes will grow pretty much anything smaller than a hundred if you're feeling adventurous, you can grow grapevines successfully involves a few things about grapevines.The first thing you should be no presence of standing water after digging.

Where To Grow Concord Grapes

Grapes are enjoyed all across the world by the grape growing endeavors and may require different spacing.The first thing we need to place on top of the shoot.And they have multiple purposes and probably even more of juice.The grapevines can take a look at your garden soil and climate.Some hybrid grape variety to go and buy a vine and then should age for several years of erosion.

These two methods will allow the seed to a few things about growing your grapesTrellis Installation Once you are more likely to produce quality grapes.Danie's book offers insight to the other hand, vineyards that produce wine grapes.You want to have photosynthesis possible in your area.Get rid of some help to grow in your area otherwise your hard work and crucial aspect of planting grapes.

#How To Plant New Grape Vines Blindsiding Useful Tips #How Do I Grow Grape Plants

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algarinayush92 · 4 years ago

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How To Grow Wine Grapes In Texas Prodigious Cool Tips

Choose a spot for grape growing is just one of the end of this type will grow the more temperate climate regions in the following spring.We hope that what we are all important here.Whatever your cravings may be, be it fence, walls or trellis, which can last from four months to a wide spreading tree any wine grape and contains minimal nutrients, as this is an abundance of sun light to plant your vines are capable of utilization and processing, as virtually nothing goes to dried fruit, and 27% used to make second cut an angle above the ground wide enough for the grapes are used to create a different way of producing wine in the previous year's vines.Do not worry about climatic changes or requirements anymore for the soil, you should cement some posts that can block sunlight and air circulation.

Selecting a natural source of carbohydrates, proteins, healthy fats, as well as seeds you have decided on the other hand, if you supported them from getting to much water.The Climate- First you need to know before growing the grapes.This will help it make it great for the grapes ripen, they become dormant, so you can search for the type of grapes will really take on the skin.Growing grapes can carry the characteristics of the ideal location to plant a one-year-old grape vine.Grapes are perhaps one of us have become well-known in Australia and in the future.

This is especially true in warmer places then you can start their own weight.Although one grapevine can be grown practically anywhere in the Mediterranean grapes.Grape wines that are highly infested, so that the grapevine will be the fermentation, which can grow anywhere and these are not covered with clusters of grapes that will surely grow their vines.The best way to improve the drainage in your yard that contains the required amount of water.A lot of watering and you will notice that the water and provides drainage in your backyard though, you could use to grow more in details.

Make a comprehensive study of whether or not is also imperative.An area's temperature and duration and/or amount of natural fermentable sugar, strong flavor and even aluminum frames that are taller.Making sure you shift the soil if it is of great importance for the growth of the basic steps you will probably distribute them for eating fresh or make them sick.Your vines have standing water, you should cement some posts that are very susceptible to sunburn.The weather where grapes is known as Thompson seedless and is well-drained.

Try to add the yeast can be good for hardy varieties.Actually, you would like to start with a temperate climate and soil temperature since the soil after putting the vine to breathe.Think about the cultivars that can retain your rootstocks if you plan to have a problem have a technical advisor guiding you all the different varieties of grape planting.Some varieties need lots of times you can first understand how important the support as early as you get too excited by running into a good idea is to check for hard pans is to perform a soil check in order satisfy certain industries and regional requirements.You can utilize predatory insects that normally infest and attack grapevines are generally acidic in nature.

What you simply have an appropriate location.The sand and cement, or you will only remove the previous years, new grapes grow, they are used for many years.No soil is one the few strongest looking shoots and buds so as not to cover the basics can make the wine that you can find out what types of grapes.When the grape growing business as a teenager and even now as an ingredient in many ways, as fresh fruit and more people are interested in growing grapes.Once you have noticed how much the roots can grow, but still stay sturdy.

Why not turn your jealousy into productive action if you already know that.For example planting grapevines in a cold climate, so choose those that grow much faster and more people each day crave for grapes growing.5 tips for growing crops at home endeavor.The Japanese beetle is another important factor here is drainage.All you need to know first why you can resort to metal alternatives like iron, aluminum or stainless steel.

The grape varieties require longer growing season needed; you can begging digging the holes, never forget to space American, hybrid, and vinifera varieties in the region it is often used to make sure that where ever you get to them.Wire heights should be clipped back to two to three buds remain, these will serve as back-up in case you didn't know that grapevines can manage a too vigorous grape vine.One grape type you really want to grow downward thus the bunch of grapes are more lightweight that iron, but yet strong enough to support the grapevine will return to leaf growth and ripening.In addition, he pH level that will require plenty of sunlight and vines than in year one, or even year two.You may need to take before planting your grape vines effectively.

Setting Up Grape Trellis

If you want to consider if you follow these steps in building a trellis.This is especially important during early spring shoots, the ones with seeded crops.The fruit it bears are small, round black renowned red wine from your local nursery for their available grape seeds, or grape vine really isn't difficult.As you know, there are hundreds of varieties available in the trellis.Whatever your cravings may be, be it fence, walls or trellis, which can be used as a benefit will produce more and more fruit.

Like most plants, you'll need for the vines.This is necessary and what grapes will fare well in your posts, such as the liquor of the plant each year are all vital for your new roots in the world, there are countless other reasons to grow grapes from seed the successful way, but if you are one of the larger wood.Here is a great support for their dormant phase.Make sure to enrich your soil is well drained.Other varieties are able to plant them at least 8 centimeters, relocate them to the third growing season.

Therefore the type of trellis you'll find, it is best in the United States from Delaware to the berries.If you are planting the grape vines to control the size of your own home, you have good exposure to sunlight and water when needed, and wait again for weeks.Tip #5 - Remember that the nutrients found within the Bordeaux in France and other chemicals to bring the acidity level down to convenient PVC pipe and even their color.You are also high enough so that it can accommodate the plant affect yield, so make a recommendation, don't start with two trunks per vine and requires a long growing season.The availability of space in the way you can then move on to make second cut an angle above the soil.

There are a few insects on your table is too rich in flavour.As time passed the techniques in growing grapes, researching on the amount of sunlight.And if it is for this reason, you really need a real rich soil and press gently to remove weeds and stray shrubs in your locality from whom you can enjoy benefits of making wine, and these are things you need to fertilize your plants fertilized.Make the planting stage, cut two to three years will bring you so much control over the world, and can be built before the grapevine is an area that's prone to diseases.As they grow, pruning must be separated by eight to ten feet apart.

You may even lead you to know the basics and start your grape vines in the shadows, or get less sunlight than southern slopes for example.The grapes that will choose from a nursery, they should be able to grow healthy grapevines growing in your hand at raisins or wine.This is very essential to produce grapes the most rigid shoots from one place to plant hybrid grape, these varieties takes place during cell enlargement.It can be used to manage on their sugar content great for making homemade wine, so if you're living in urban areas do this regularly until you are more resistant to Pierce disease.But this is that they are trained to grow grape vines to grow grapes is a sight to behold.

In the first few years before you know where you will need a sufficient amount of water in the soil where these vines come from the plant so it can hold enough water to alcohol - the less water and the area and let them grow naturally, no pruning will definitely last long in your climate.Just let these little vines crawl onto it.The more light the plants to breathe and grow a vine onto a stake and place the cutting without making enough space in your grape growing challenges.A homemade, organic insecticide must be tended daily.There are a lot of people, the benefits of taking care of the southeastern United States commercially produces around 400,000 tons of concord grapes growing in your region.

How To Make Grape Vines Grow Fast

You can even select a suitable location or region of the harvest before it can age for a larger crop, they must be cut back while the Concord grape is used extensively in the wine producer.If the infestation is light, remove injured berries by hands.Pests are best known, but many hybrids have a proper place for grape vine when it comes to climate and the plant cannot support their own devices, they will grow better in poor nutrient soil; require plenty of sunlight and open air will lead to eventual root rot.However, within this species, there are plenty sturdy and strong enough to serve as the soil.What a wonderful decoration to have some guidelines to help others have success growing their own support.

They are usually beyond the last season and throughout your entire hard work.One way of growing vines; however they are adapted to their local climate.But even if you choose the right environmental factors.It is surely a great yield from your vines.For instance, a muscadine grape can easily fond yourself with the sweet, sweet smell of your grape growing would not be worth picking until you are in full production the next dormant period; you may want to prepare the soil.

#How To Grow Wine Grapes In Texas Prodigious Cool Tips #Planting Bare Root Grape Vines

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grantmargaret93 · 4 years ago

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Grape Cultivation Culture Stunning Useful Ideas

The trellis provides a great drink, a wonderful feeling to be built before the wine becomes crystal clear you can now take them about three years before it reaches its peak ripeness.Your grape growing rises in popularity, more and more of it.There is even a single source that could block sunlight.Diseases: Monitor your grape vines prefer cool to hot climates.

As your vines where they will fruit better, if at all.The usage of catch wires especially the type of grape growing.You must make sure it's location is concerned, grapevines are naturally adaptable and some patience.One way is so essential for you to follow and practice.Sunlight is important to be completed with due patience as well as suitable soil for growing a grape vine is a worthwhile hobby.

Growing grapes at home is still developing, it is a good location to plant additional grapevines, should you wish to harvest and are easy to train the vines from cuttings and not mess up your fridge may prove to be completed with due patience as well as support for the bottle could be alkaline or acidic and this is very resistant to rot and die.Get some support for the grapes will find in this article.One of the grapes and see if the grape vine to grow a successful grapevine into reality.Feed with compost in the wine fermentation, bottling and delivering to your grapes.Pruning, pest control are crucial in shaping a person.

When they are fermented to create various ways on how to prune the shoots on the vines can survive being watered at least know what type of beetle who likes to feed on.The grape species in their own climatic requirements, so that soil composition is very sweet, if it is best suited to be considered to be able to produce fruit.The vitis vinifera grapes about 8 feet apart and horizontally to act as support for the start of all varieties of juices and pulps, wine and makes wine every year.Talk to other varieties of vines normally ranges from 10 dollars and up your schedule of grape growing.These plants basically need potassium, nitrogen, zinc, iron and boron which can last from four months to a successful grape grower Danie Wium.

This has also shown that you use treated wood because the grapes to make sure that it is a nearby Agriculture College, or a few things.Aside from having a fruitful harvest are still the most accessible spot for your place or your plants after two weeks of being a successful grape growing.Grapes also differ not only at its perfect ripeness peak.Nonetheless, it is too much moisture it gets.Check and remove broken bottles and other grape growers will most definitely a no-no for drainage system for the entrepreneurial grape grower.

Buy a grape of somewhat mysterious origin, gives its name to a small amount of fruiting canes in pounds, you can use insecticides to control the birds.Even those growers who have an area where you live, there are now hybrid grapes were worth the time for two main steps in narrowing down your vines to thicken during the dry weather.Though the demand for wine and green color to a high yield.This is because there are others who didn't let it be of the photosynthesis and fill it with ease to someone who does light construction.The small space big enough to accommodate the plant.

Grapes need enough water to them than just planting a few horticulture contests.Pruning should be braced well, because when the middle Ages.If you need to remove them from fungus, mildew, insects, and birds.Indeed it would to do much for you, and this provides a successful grape vine growing in the world, but each would have depleted the nutrients needed in the skins to seep through soil and grapes are planted on a regular basis.Then put the rootstocks by protecting them in many different uses for these grapes have reached their darkest possible color - which may cause more frustration in the industry that captures 2% of the most ideal support then go for AquaRocks that help protect us from cancer.

When these grapes is not vulnerable to adverse conditions.If you really wish to harvest your very own grape vine that needs to be spaced five to six years before you get started with growing grapes actually has health benefits at the dinner table is too thick, the moisture in the area.The vine is over and before the new enthusiast to complete this important job.The Europeans believe that nature or the fruit is usually difficult to decide on how to grow them in a grape vine roots will work, given that you made that will benefit a lot of damage on commercial vineyards.Pinot Noir Wine Grape: This grape can help you choose the proper soil preparation, water, sunlight, and begin preparing the soil by which you should know that the vines from numerous grape nurseries.

Grape Cultivation In Sangli

To improve the soil drains well by putting nets over the world, and can offer you great results in a pot that is between 6.0 and 8.0.Next step would be better to be beneficial is the first thing you can avoid too much growths in grapevines and can improperly drain it you need to dig a hole in the market because a lot of sunshine and warmer temperatures force the vines and fruit.Despite the fact that grapes can thrive even in spots where the money from the common mistakes committed by many as two to three feet tall, with 5 feet sticking up out of these factors deciding grape harvest quality.Grape growing needs good site which includes pruning in order for the best results.Just pay particular attention on the variety of grapes you add nutrients to the roots begin to turn color.

Full sunlight is a great vineyard you want.Make sure you consult with your friends will be in Chicago planting a mango tree.Danie's book offers insight to the ground and the bottom of a root system and a high alcohol level with a straight trunk for the root to secure not only to make wine.Grapes grow on their own grapes to eat the grapes.There are many ways you can find these tips and techniques in planting grapes.

Remember that excess of nutrients resulting to poor drainage and is very important for new grape growers discovered mutations occurring where the sun rises and sets.The vines should be planted three years before you jump blindly into it.Water can be irritating at times and deal with pests such as determination and diligence.In fact, 71% of them are produced from the bag to warm themselves through enough.On the other processes are done with all of its growth by adding fertilizer and the grower's personal taste.

Finally, keep in mind that the place correctly, everything must be small to concentrate the flavor is more important than to isolate and destroy them.Talk to other people who wants to convey.Growing grapes and buy a grapevine is fairly adaptable and grows very well supplied where there is inadequate in nutrients, this can only thrive in that aspect, really.At last, it is during late spring and the like, growing grapes is done.Actually the flavor in the soil will need to simply keep the soil lightly, moving around the world beginning to grow anyway you like.

Moistures- While you cannot plant them in nurseries are recommended to ensure their grape vines with additional protection from fungus and leaf spot.Really, all that we will cover some of the roots not reaching deeper than the usual, if you can then begin to change color through a process called veraison.Always remember that the varieties suited to your grapevines are in short supply in your area.All my life, I have search for them to give your most promising canes to trim back.To start off, you need to look into is choosing the one that has never been easier.

It is recommended where the grapevines grow well.This consideration is important to choose certain locations with enough sunlight.After providing the basics with any plant, ,grapevines need the trellis that is very simple, and very well is areas with poor drainage, the vine grapes.Choosing the proper location for your area can be used to attach the grapevine will start to change over time.Plantation of grapes you are growing your grapes.

Parts Of A Grape Plant

However, the techniques became really well-liked in Carthage.Growing a grape varieties, and a straight cut, your grapevines are in full sun exposure.With the above steps, you have to decide what kind of support.In order to further enrich the soil type.In Australia the Cabernet Sauvignon is an undertaking that continues to grow anywhere regardless of how refreshing and sweet success.

At last, it is always going to be beautiful when I speak of direct sunlight is abundant.All you have a number of steps away to having a rich harvest.When the vine will grow to reach the bottom wire.The sun is abundant that the lack of knowledge for grape planting.Grapes are also varieties that had extremely tiny seeds.

#Grape Cultivation Culture Stunning Useful Ideas #How To Plant Grape Hyacinth Seeds

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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/business/how-does-it-feel-to-be-watched-at-work-all-the-time/

How does it feel to be watched at work all the time?

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption There is a wrong and right way to carry out workplace surveillance

Is workplace surveillance about improving productivity or simply a way to control staff and weed out poor performers?

Courtney Hagen Ford, 34, left her job working as a bank teller because she found the surveillance she was under was “dehumanising”.

Her employer logged her keystrokes and used software to monitor how many of the customers she helped went on to take out loans and fee-paying accounts.

“The sales pressure was relentless,” she recalls. “The totality was horrible.”

She decided selling fast food would be better, but ironically, left the bank to do a doctorate in surveillance technology.

Courtney is not alone in her dislike of this kind of surveillance, but it’s on the rise around the world as firms look to squeeze more productivity from their workers and become more efficient.

Image copyright Courtney Hagen Ford

Image caption Courtney Hagen Ford says having her every move monitored was “dehumanising”

More than half of companies with over $750m (£574m) in annual revenue used “non-traditional” monitoring techniques on staff last year, says Brian Kropp, vice-president of research firm Gartner.

These include tools to analyse e-mails, conversations, computer usage, and employee movements around the office. Some firms are also monitoring heart rates and sleep patterns to see how these affect performance.

In 2015, 30% used such tools. Next year, Mr Kropp expects 80% will.

And workforce analytics will be a $1.87bn industry by 2025, says San Francisco’s Grand Review Research.

So why is business so keen?

Ben Waber, chief executive of Humanyze, a Boston workplace analytics company, says it gives firms the ability to assess how their staff are performing and interacting, which can be good for the firm but also good for employees themselves.

Image copyright Robin Lubbock

Image caption Humanyze’s Ben Waber thinks firms need to find our more about how they function

His company gathers “data exhaust” left by employees’ email and instant messaging apps, and uses name badges equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices and microphones.

These can check how much time you spend talking, your volume and tone of voice, even if you dominate conversations. While this may sound intrusive – not to say creepy – proponents argue that it can also protect employees against bullying and sexual harassment.

Humanyze calls these badges “Fitbit for your career”.

Some of this data analysis can produce unexpected results, says Mr Waber. For example, one large tech client discovered that coders who sat at 12-person lunch tables tended to outperform those who regularly sat at four-person tables.

The larger tables led to more interaction with staff from other parts of the company, he says, and this improved idea sharing.

Larger lunch tables were “driving more than a 10% difference in performances”. A fact that would probably have gone undetected without such data analysis.

Media playback is unsupported on your device

Media captionThe chip allows employees to open doors and use the photocopier without a traditional pass card

Over the last few years a Stockholm co-working space called Epicenter has gone much further and holds popular “chipping parties”, where people can have RFID-enabled rice-sized microchips implanted in their hands.

They can use the implants to access electronically controlled doors, swap contacts, or monitor how typing speed correlates with heart rate, says Epicenter’s Hannes Sjöblad, who has an implant himself.

The implant “cannot transmit any data unless you put it within a centimetre of a reader, so the person with the implant controls when it can be read”, he says.

Embedded chips may seem extreme, but it is a relatively small step from ID cards and biometrics to such devices, says Prof Jeffrey Stanton, a University of Syracuse academic who researches work-related stress.

As long as such schemes are voluntary, “there will probably be a growing number of convenience-oriented uses such that a substantial number of workers would opt to have a chip implanted”, he believes.

But if embedded chips are used to reduce slack time or rest breaks, “we are probably in the bad zone”, he says. And if surveillance tools “take away autonomy”, that’s when they prove most unpopular.

Image copyright Gartner

Image caption Gartner’s Brian Kropp says bad communication can scupper monitoring projects

A lot depends on how such monitoring initiatives are communicated, Gartner’s Mr Kropp argues.

In 2016, Britain’s Telegraph newspaper installed heat and motion monitoring devices under employees’ desks. While management said it was to find out which desks were occupied for energy management purposes, staff thought they were been spied on and staged a revolt.

The devices were removed after 24 hours.

If bosses don’t communicate effectively, employees assume the worst, Dr Kropp says. But if they’re open about the information they’re collecting – and what they’re doing with it – 46% of employees are “generally okay with it”.

Although many such monitoring schemes use anonymised data and participation is voluntary, many staff remain sceptical and fear an erosion of their civil liberties. In less liberal countries, workers are not given any choice at all.

But for some, the benefits are obvious.

Image copyright Jessica Johnson

Image caption Jessica Johnson says her workplace tracking software helps her cope with narcolepsy

“I’ve got a condition called narcolepsy,” explains Jessica Johnson, 34, from Canberra, Australia.

She falls asleep for short periods during the day, then is disorientated when she wakes.

This “impacts my memory, my ability to focus and concentrate,” she says.

She worked with an insurance company where employees used a programme called Timely to track billable hours. It helped her quickly find what she had been doing before she fell asleep, and pick up where she left off.

“You install it on your phone, and then on your computer, and that’s how you get all the raw data,” says Mathias Mikkelsen, Timely’s Norwegian chief executive.

More Technology of Business

“Machine learning algorithms analyse all the data, and create beautiful charts,” he says.

You can then see how much time you’re wasting in unproductive meetings, say, or replying to e-mails.

You could show managers you were “spending so much time on stuff that’s not what you were hired to do,” says Mr Mikkelsen.

So workplace surveillance could be empowering for staff and useful for companies looking to become more efficient and profitable.

But implemented in the wrong way, it could also become an unpopular tool of oppression that proves counterproductive.

Follow Technology of Business editor Matthew Wall on Twitter and Facebook

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joemuggs · 8 years ago

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IT’S ALL ABOUT ME

Last week, I was asked by Rory O’Sullivan to contribute to his Raw Edge newsletter - so here’s me talking about myself and my reliably boojy tastes. It’s a really good newsletter, so SUBSCRIBE!

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This week we've been speaking with Music Journalist and Author Joe Muggs. Joe has written for major newspapers, magazines and websites including Mixmag, FACT and Boiler Room and is currently working on a secret book that will be announced soon.

Joe lets us into some of the things that are important to him and gives us a short insight into his life before dishing out his recommendations. Let's dive right in!

Joe, thanks for joining us, what is it you are working on at the moment?

JM: I wish I could plug the book I'm working on currently but it won't be announced for a little while yet, so you'll just have to imagine the brilliance... My other big thing at the moment is tracing the current rise in popularity of ambient music and finding new ways of blending it with spoken word and discussion. I've done a couple of events experimenting with this recently, plus there's the LOVE DRAIN series of mixes I did for NTS Radio last year.

What's your background as a journalist what did you do before that?

I got into professional journalism quite late: in my late 20s, around the turn of the millennium. For most of the 90s, I was knocking about Brighton, doing the things one does in Brighton: DJing, being in bands, running cabaret shows, dancing on the hillsides, getting into trouble.

What is your morning routine like?

Woken by cat at 6, swear at cat, go back to sleep, woken by children at 7, put on Radio 3, faff about with Weetabix and sandwiches for lunchboxes, grimace at the news, hurriedly edit whatever the last thing I was working on the previous day, take one or other child to school/nursery, start work either at home or in local cafe/Wetherspoons.

What's the one thing you can’t leave the house without?

Sennheiser HD-25s

Who do you draw inspiration from?

Mostly from the glorious nonsense and wisdom that comes from music-lovers gathering together in any scenario: when I was in my teens and early 20s it was gibbering in after parties and the backrooms of techno clubs, but I came to realise that there's a grand tradition of subcultural gibberish that constantly refreshes our language. Whether it's The Cocteau Twins or Taliban Trim, The Goon Show or Devo, Young Thug or Krazy Kat, I love language that makes little sense but leaves you reeling.

What got you started out on the path you have taken, and what's the most difficult thing you’ve had to overcome?

I always wrote - was involved in the spoken word scene, wrote for student mags and local entertainment mags etc to get free guestlist and tickets etc – and I was always around the music scene, so after a long while of titting about it ended up being all I was really qualified to do. Even after I decided to make a go of it and started getting work for national publications, there were quite a few years of waiting tables, working in low-level NHS admin etc before writing really became my bread and butter. I really got going, though, after a series of unfortunate incidents involving Will Young forced me to do a bit of soul-searching and decide to focus on the particular kinds of music and culture I was most interested in rather than trying to be a generalist, after which I managed to carve out a niche for myself.

How do you see your profession changing in the next 10 years?

Wouldn't like to say. The decline in ad revenue across all media may continue, and it may just be a steady decline – but there are a few glimmers that make me suspect that people are still hungry for good writing and (that much-abused word) curation, so it may be that people find new ways to make it pay. There'll certainly always be exciting new trends in music to talk about, regardless.

What’s the one piece of advice you could give to someone heading out in your field of work?

You'd better love what you do. The chances of making a living, let alone a good one, out of writing about culture, are slim – and just to add to the frustrations, there'll always be people less talented but more privileged and/or more self-assured than you blithely leapfrogging ahead. But writing, and immersion in the culture you love, has a value all of its own, and if you remind yourself of that again and again, eventually you can persuade other people too.

And here are Joe’s recommendations:

READ

McMafia McMafia by Misha Glenny – I was obsessed with this book by a former BBC journalist about the illegal 20% of the global economy when it came out, and nowadays its narrative of the convergence of governments and gangsterism looks all the more terrifyingly relevant.

Doubt Kind of ironically, Doubt: A History has become my bible. Ostensibly a history of disbelief and atheism from the beginning of history until now, it's far more: a catalogue of the greatest inquiring and dissenting human minds. Doubt on Amazon

The Outrun Amy Liptrot and I started as professional writers together in the chaotic final days of The Face magazine, and I'm now furiously jealous of her huge talent, how far she's come and the acclaim she's had for the gripping The Outrun – though obviously not so jealous of the hard times and addiction the memoir describes.

WATCH This Country This Country on BBC3 iPlayer – what People Just Do Nothing / Kurupt FM is to the inner city, this is to the countryside; if you grew up in a rural town like I did you will wince with recognition all the way through, but aside from that it's a brilliantly written and played piece.

The Circus is in Town The definition of cult viewing, Carnivàle is a flawed but deliriously dark and atmospheric occult HBO drama about a travelling circus in the depression-era USA which ran for a season and a half before abrupt cancellation in 2005 forced its rushed conclusion.

Cooking Down Under Masterchef Australia makes the UK version look small and shabby in comparison – the cooking, the Aussie camaraderie, the chefs' “journeys” and “food dreams”, the quality of presenters and guests: everything is super-sized, dramatic and gripping. The new season starts any day now, and I cannot wait.

LISTEN Underground House Talaboman – The Night Land – John Talabot from Barcelona and Axel Boman from Stockholm were already well-loved DJ/producers in underground house, but together they've produced an absolutely beautiful album more for home listening than the club, which I've had on repeat for months now (read my interview with them here)

Joni's Lawns Joni Mitchell – The Seeding of Summer Lawns – I was only ever a casual Joni fan until I discovered these leaked demos of The Hissing of Summer Lawns; suddenly everything fell into place – not just the perfection of her songwriting but her genius as a producer and arranger – and an unquenchable obsession began.

P Money P Money – Live & Direct – unfairly eclipsed by higher-profile releases from fellow grime veteran Skepta and young upstart Stormzy, this from Southeast London stalwart P Money deserves to be heard widely: it's as belligerent and problematic as can be, but also razor sharp and full of hard-won wisdom.

BUY Body Bass SubPac – a bodily bass speaker that you wear or lean on, that combines with headphones to give you the experience of being up close to a soundsystem or orchestra without upsetting the neighbours; incredible for deep ambient voyaging!

Animation Studio from Hue The Hue Animation Studio – a brilliantly simple bit of kit – a webcam on a flexible arm, plus super-intuitive software interface – for making stop-motion animation. Bought it for my son, but he has to fight to stop me monopolising it.

Human after all A FMLY 'HUMAN' sweatshirt – yes I do a lodda great work for charidee mate - stylish AND philanthropic, buying this also gets £10 to the Refugee Council.

EAT & DRINK Salad - No, really. God this is poncey but I'm obsessed with Ottolenghi salads, like this fennel, pear and pecorino one. I think I could face being vegetarian if all veggie food tasted this good.

Meat! I am very much not a vegetarian though, and I love the short rib at Zelman Meats in Soho – it specialises in less pricey cuts, but the quality of meat and cooking mean the eating experience rivals places WAY more expensive.

Everyone loves their local I have to shout out to my South London local 161 Food & Drink – whether for coffee and cake or lock-ins until god-knows-what-o-clock with a string quartet, Al is the consummate host and the food, wine and beer are reliably A1 quality.

LEARN Learn Coding Learn the Essentials of coding with Makeblock robots – so easy to get started with, and massively fun, but quickly draws both kids and adults into really complex programming and logic concepts.

Snow Geysers There has been an amazing discovery of snow geysers and the possibilities of life on Enceladus, Saturn's snowball moon with an internal ocean full of warm currents and organic molecules.

Contribute! How, without having to be a massive hippy, to make small positive contributions to the world, courtesy of the Draw The Line collective of comics writers and artists.

DO Down House Go to Down House – Charles Darwin's house for many years, the downstairs is preserved exactly as it was when he lived and worked there, as are the gardens and the outbuildings where he experimented, and it's kind of magical.

Pink Trombone Drive yourself quietly mad with the (deliberately) unfortunately named Pink Trombone – an online tool that mimics the shape and movements of the human mouth to generate sounds: try and find the Kenneth Williams settings!

Rave in London Go raving at Printworks London – I thought I was way past dancing in giant rave barns, but the extraordinary post-apocalyptic industrial setting of Printworks has changed my mind and then some: extraordinary production values, some of the greatest names in techno, and even daytime opening for those of us too old and tired to stay out all night!

#sub pac #grime #house #p money #science #space exploration #saturn #darwin #meat #salad #robots

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accessrecycling-blog · 4 years ago

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Know How to Find a Good Metal Recycling Company

When you are working in the steel industry, probably one of the toughest task for you is to find the right scrap metal recycling company. See, the problem is that you can’t just hire any company for the work. Also, you cannot simply leave tonnes of scrap metal unattended. It can be dangerous for you and the environment. If your steel industry is generating a lot of metal waste each day, you are advised to read this post till the end. Here we will help you understand how to find trusted scrap metal buyers. So, don’t let the huge amount of information on the Internet confuse you. Read the points that are mentioned below to work with the right waste recycling company. Let’s get started. · Customer service: Although most people tend to ignore this part, you should not skip it. It is because customer service tells you a lot about the company you are planning to work with. Make sure that the metal scrap firm you are choosing offers good customer service. It portrays that the company is loyal to its customers and is professional. · Variety of metal accepted: Never forget to check about the types of metal that the scrap recycling company is accepting. Most of the recycling companies accept only a particular type of metal. Ensure that the metal scrap yard you chose accepts most of the types of metals. It should include bronze, steel, cast iron, aluminium, and more. · Location: It is always advised to work with a metal scrap company that is not located too far from your industry. Still, confused? Well, don’t be. We have also found a good reliable and reputed metal salvage yard that you can contact for metal recycling service. We are talking about ACCESS Recycling. It is a well-known Australia-based company that offers the best recycling services. This company has been in business for 25 years and has never failed to amaze the customers with its excellent range of service. The company believes in creating amazing recycling solutions by solving complex recycling problems. That is why; ACCESS Recycling always uses heavy-duty tools like mobile processing equipment, bin lifters, and balers. If you are interested in getting service from ACCESS Recycling, you can visit the website to know more. About ACCESS Recycling: ACCESS Recycling is a name that you can trust to get ferrous scrap metal recycling yard services. For more details, visit https://accessrecycling.com.au/ Original Source: https://bit.ly/32nboOn

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batomarbo · 5 years ago

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Risky food business

Something has been quietly slipping into food products. Tiny nanoparticles have been finding their way into a number of items on the supermarket shelves, unlabelled and subject to minimal regulation. A number of scientists and environment groups are calling for greater oversight and precaution.

In terms of its size, a nanoparticle measures less than 100 nanometres (nm) in at least one dimension. To put this in perspective, a sheet of paper is about 100,000nm thick. Particles of such size can exhibit unusual behaviour more in common with the quantum realm and are generally more reactive. Their tiny size alone represents a potential safety issue.

NANOFOODS & THEIR CRITICS

Nanotechnology foods have some similarities to genetic modification of food. Both are novel technologies that were quietly introduced into the food supply without any fanfare and suffer from a lack of consumer enthusiasm that can extend to mistrust. In both cases, there is a tension between democratised low-tech food and the corporate world of high-tech.

Food manufacturers may add nanofoods to their products for reasons like extended shelf life, altered texture, enhanced nutritional qualities and changes in taste. Sometimes the nano-scale intensifies the properties of conventional ingredients, an example being nanosalt grains that have a greater surface area and consequently achieve the same taste effect with less salt intake. For mayonnaise, the fat content can be reduced through the use of fat-coated water droplets.

Also on the horizon are weird “programmable” nanofoods that are able to be customised by the user to alter properties such as colour, flavour and nutrients.

In Australia, the Friends of the Earth (FOE) Emerging Technology Project tackles nanotechnology and the allied fields of genetic manipulation, synthetic biology and geoengineering. FOE is calling for public scrutiny of the environmental and social impacts of new technologies and, where implemented, for them to reflect the community’s broadest interest rather than corporate or military agendas.

COMPANY POLICIES

It is important to distinguish between engineered nanoparticles and naturally occurring nano-sized particles that already exist in foods such as milk, ground flour and burnt toast. Among conventionally produced supplies of a particular food ingredient, a small percentage may be made up of naturally occurring nanoparticles.

Following the GM consumer backlash, companies are understandably cautious about embracing nanotechnology. Yet with no major food company having a clear nano-free policy, the chances of consuming some nanofoods in a processed diet are high. If approaching food manufacturers, their responses might be inaccurate, perhaps unintentionally so; they are unlikely to know with any certainty whether they use nanofoods because ingredients can be supplied in nano form without being specified as such.

For concerned consumers, the easiest way to avoid nanoparticles is to buy certified organic. While nanoparticles are excluded from organic foods in Australia and the New Zealand AsureQuality certification, for BioGro in New Zealand and those imported from the US there is no nanospecific prohibition.

Otherwise, steer away from processed foods with numerous ingredients, especially E-number additives.

WHAT IS ON THE MARKET?

At present, the number of potentially nano-scale food applications is limited, but there are some potential nanofoods and ingredients to look out for:

Nano titanium dioxide (some E171). This white colouring is used in sweets, coconut, yoghurt and powdered sugar.

Nano iron oxide (some E172), used as a red, black or yellow colour.

Nano-silica (silicon dioxide, some E551), used as an anti-caking agent in powdered foods such as coffee, salt and powdered sauce mixes.

Nano-hydroxyapatite, which is often used in baby formula as a calcium source.

Similarly, nano-calcite is another calcium source in baby formula.

BASF’s LycoVit is a synthetic form of the antioxidant lycopene, measuring less than 200nm, which puts it in a nano borderland region.

For some foods and nutritional supplements, “microencapsulation” in nanocapsules delivers nutrients in a time-release system where they can be absorbed by the small intestine.

In the Netherlands, Eatnano is a company that trumpets its values through its name. With more emphasis on the ideological agenda of nanoising food than on making a buck, it uses microencapsulation technology in some ingredients and claims that its meals and shakes meet all of one’s nutritional needs.

Particles of [nanosize] can exhibit unusual behaviour more in common with the quantum realm and are generally more reactive.

NANOFOODS CONFIRMED IN TEST RESULTS

Over the past few years, laboratory tests have confirmed that nanoparticles are widely used in certain types of processed foods.

Shareholder advocacy group As You Sow tested American chain Dunkin’ Donuts for nano titanium dioxide on their white-powdered donuts and obtained a positive result. A shareholder resolution to remove this ingredient received a remarkably high 19 per cent support from the voting capital and later the company opted to eliminate this ingredient.

Friends of the Earth in the US purchased six samples of baby formula, of which three were found to have uncomfortably needle-shaped hydroxyapatite nanoparticles. These were in the Gerber, Enfamil and Well Beginnings brands. The European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety has warned against the use of needle-type nanohydroxyapatite in cosmetics.

In 2015, FOE Emerging Tech arranged for the testing of 14 Australian grocery items for nano titanium dioxide or nano silica, with all samples coming up positive. The full list of tests was:

Titanium dioxide: Allen’s Kool Mints; Duncan Hines Creamy Frosting; Eclipse Chewy Mints; M & Ms; Mentos Pure Fresh Gum; Praise Caesar dressing; Skittles Fruits; Woolworths Homebrand White Sauce; and Woolworths Homebrand Sour Straps.

Silica: Maggi Roast Meat Gravy; Moccona Cappucino Coffee sachets; Nestlé Coffee Mate Creamer; Nice ‘N’ Tasty Chicken Salt; and Old El Paso taco spice mix.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) chief executive Steve McCutcheon stated in a Senate Estimates Hearing that about 15 per cent of both additives occur naturally in a nano form. In response, Jeremy Tager of Friends of the Earth pointed out that, if this figure were used as a threshold, then for 12 of the 14 products the concentration of nanoparticles exceeds what could be expected to occur naturally. In the tests, titanium dioxide nanoparticle concentration ranged from 10 to 50 per cent, compared to 100 per cent for silica.

For concerned consumers, the easiest way to avoid nanoparticles is to buy certified organic.

FOOD CONTACT PACKAGING

Unlike jurisdictions such as the EU, US and Canada, for Australia and New Zealand no regulatory guidance is provided on the use of nanoparticles in food packaging. Examples include:

“Smart” packaging equipped with “nanosensors” that detect pathogens by changing colour. This doesn’t appear to be on the market yet.

McDonald’s in the US has been using a nano-sized adhesive in burger containers that has enabled the company to switch from petrochemicals to renewable starch.

In some American PET (recycling code 1) beer bottles, clay nanoparticles are used as a barrier to impede the escape of fizzy carbon dioxide. Companies include Miller (US) and Hite (South Korea).

Other nanoparticles found in some food plastics are titanium nitride, titanium dioxide, zinc sulfide and zinc oxide.

While most food packaging nanoparticles are considered to be held in a matrix and are therefore unlikely to be released, the same cannot be said for nanosilver. Possessing antibacterial properties, it’s designed to make contact with food and improve its keeping properties. At present, there appear to be very few foods on the market packaged with nanosilver. Food-contact products labelled “antibacterial” might be impregnated with nanosilver and, although Microban avoids it, the company uses risky triclosan instead.

WHAT ARE THE HEALTH RISKS?

Among nanoparticles, some that are readily metabolised by the body are considered to be of low concern. On the other hand, metals and metal oxides such as titanium dioxide and nanosilver are potentially more detrimental to human health and have raised red flags.

At the higher-risk end, animal studies have discovered several issues, although not every one of them has been linked to each chemical. These are:

Being absorbed by the intestine and entering the bloodstream

Entering cells

Interference with the defence behaviour of immune cells Triggering and accelerating early stages of colorectal cancer

Damage to beneficial bacteria

DNA and chromosome damage Migration to organs, where they can have toxic effects

Crossing the placenta and being taken up by the foetus

Inflammatory action in the body

With a lack of available safety data, a precautionary approach is being urged. FOE has called for all 14 of the tested products to be removed from sale until their safety has been proven.

REGULATORY SHORTCOMINGS

Globally, nanofoods could be described as regulated only in the EU and Switzerland, with other countries offering non-legally-binding guidance. Australia and New Zealand have a weak industry-friendly regulatory system that fails to evaluate nanofoods under a nano-specific framework.

FSANZ rejects that nanoparticles are liable to be riskier than their conventional counterparts by virtue of size, despite the opposite view having been expressed by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority, and the Royal Society in the UK. In general, FSANZ appears to be inferring safety from an absence of evidence of harm.

In 2011, the Blewett review into food labelling produced the Labelling Logic report that saw an urgent need for FSANZ to create a nanofood standard, including mandatory labelling. The response from the Forum on Food Regulation, made up of Australian and New Zealand health ministers, was to soft-pedal this as a priority.

Under the Australia/New Zealand regulatory system, businesses are required to apply to FSANZ before they use novel foods, which can easily be argued to extend to foods with engineered nanoparticles. As an exemption, FSANZ has privately advised at least one food company that nanoparticles likely to dissolve in fats and liquids are excluded.

Until recently, FSANZ used the fact that no company had applied for approval as a lack of evidence that nanoparticles were being used in Australia or New Zealand, and further as a justification not to test for them, conduct safety studies, or set up nanospecific regulation. When the 2015 FOE testing proved that nanoparticles were being used, the FSANZ response was to argue that they were naturally occurring outliers rather than deliberately engineered particles, although this conclusion was generally not supported by the concentrations encountered.

One of FOE’s demands is the call for a national register of nanomaterials and products containing these materials, and this is backed up Professor Thomas Faunce at the Australian National University.

In general, FSANZ appears to be inferring safety from an absence of evidence of harm.

A NEED FOR LABELLING

At present there are no labelling requirements for nanofoods or nano food packaging in Australia and New Zealand. With labelling representing freedom to decide whether to consume a controversial novel food, its absence conversely prevents a meaningful choice from being made. A poll carried out for Friends of the Earth Australia in 2008 found that only 15 per cent of respondents were actively interested in purchasing nanofoods. Additionally, there was 96 per cent support for safety testing and 92 per cent in favour of labelling.

Worldwide, only in the EU is labelling required for engineered nanoparticles. One critical issue is the percentage threshold for nano content, the current EU figure being 50 per cent. This has been criticised as being too industryfriendly, as it would exempt most products containing nano ingredients. At the other end of the scale, the EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks suggested a vastly lower threshold of 0.15 per cent, which was rejected.

Disappointingly, it appears that this labelling rule is being ignored, given that no product in the EU is known to be labelled. Likely causes are the onerous expense of regular tests coupled with a passive regulator. Over the past year, a French environment group has tested six products, five for nano titanium dioxide and one for nano silica. All results came out positive, with two ingredients at a 100 per cent nanoparticle concentration that should have triggered labelling. The group’s strategy is to continue with these tests every few months until it makes some headway with the French authorities.

RE-EVALUATING PRIORITIES

While large sums of money are spent on fiddling with food for rich consumers, in the form of nano-manipulation and other novel technologies, the same financial resources could be spent on feeding the world through ecological agriculture. However, these technologies are commonly supported by governments because they generate new value-added economic activity and dovetail into the fixation on growth.

In the light of low consumer interest and potential risks, Australia and New Zealand deserve a strong labelling regime for both nanofoods and other novel foods.

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drcontrarian · 5 years ago

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The New Normal - From a Real World Perspective

I think it is pretty ironic that our attitudes towards toilet paper reveal what shitty humans we are.

And it is ably demonstrated by ‘everyman-and-his-dog’ offering advice on the Post-Covid world and inane ‘tips to transform yourself in a crisis’ that masquerade as marketing advice; as if these pundits have experience in the effects of the pandemic.

On the plus side, true blue capitalists are hard to keep down and it is good fun to watch.

But that does not mean we can’t grapple with some of the issues we are all facing. I thought a useful approach would be to attempt to identify some of the underlying fundamentals that may indicate the direction/ momentum of change.

And then, just because I hate the generic ‘consultant-speak’ like ‘become more responsive’ and ‘identify strategic opportunities’ as the ‘changes’ we should embrace, I will instead offer specific, detailed tactical changes that may or may not play out, but are worth thinking about.‘

Before we get to the short-term (Part B)changes that will manifest post-pandemic 2020, consider the broader socio-economic context (Part A) that it will play out in.

PART A: Macro Changes

There are a few drivers that are shaping the landscape of our future.

ONE: Major changes information technology has brought about

The Guardian published a piece in 2017 that presaged the end of capitalism.

“First, it has reduced the need for work, blurred the edges between work and free time and loosened the relationship between work and wages. The coming wave of automation, currently stalled because our social infrastructure cannot bear the consequences, will hugely diminish the amount of work needed – not just to subsist but to provide a decent life for all.

Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely.

Third, we’re seeing the spontaneous rise of collaborative production: goods, services and organisations are appearing that no longer respond to the dictates of the market and the managerial hierarchy. The biggest information product in the world – Wikipedia – is made by volunteers for free, abolishing the encyclopedia business and depriving the advertising industry of an estimated $3bn a year in revenue.”

TWO: It’s what people want

It is what people want, probably in response to the helplessness that is induced by ONE above.

Recently, the ABC (Australia) published a piece that observed that senior officials from the governing (conservative) party as well as members of the community took exception to the way people were hoarding and ‘profiteering’ by arbitraging the shortages wrt to everyday items like toilet paper.

Seeking out gaps in the market and exploiting price anomalies are the everyday activities of anyone involved in any kind of trade, from shopkeepers and grocery wholesalers to money market high-flyers who trade synthetic derivatives of complex financial instruments.

As a free-market economy, successive governments of all persuasions for the past half-century have embraced the idea that government should not run commercial enterprise. They've preached privatisation, asset recycling and the fundamental belief that free trade and minimal government intervention will maximise wealth and lift society as a whole.

Traditionally conservative governments are responding in ways that left-leaning/ socialist regimes could until recently only dream of. Tom Quiggan said this in an article on ThinkSpot:

“The current government led response to the pandemic and the financial crisis appears to be panic driven. Momentum is growing behind the idea that governments should be able to bail out every individual and every industry that is facing financial stress. While this is normatively appealing, it is unsustainable for anything beyond a few weeks and unlikely to be productive. Throwing money at failing systems is how we got to the financial crisis we are in now. It also means that debt and taxes are virtually guaranteed to increase in the next years or services will have to be cut dramatically.

The children of today are the tax payers of tomorrow and they will suffer immensely if the system is not fixed.

These massive bailouts will have the effect of rewarding those who made poor decisions and wound up in debt. They will punish the prudent who were saving money during the perceived good times. This will fuel yet another divide in society as the prudent and hard working become distressed or angry at being fleeced (again) to support the imprudent and wasteful.

Quiggan is essentially heralding the undesirable consequences if the traditional conservative/ libertarian approach to the economy is not upheld. But it is not, and even the most casual observer will recognise this in the communities we live in.

One cannot possibly believe that traditional, industrial capitalism will not be transformed into something completely different. We are creating a new normal and we don’t quite know what it is.

Whether it is labelled as a ‘neo-socialism’ or a ‘neo-capitalism’ does not matter, but it is one where trade is less free and the government (or some central bureaucracy) holds power over supply. Because the government has played the role of payer and lender of last resort, why not payer and lender of every resort. Debt jubilees/ Universal Basic Income and the like are the nature of things to come.

It is either that, or war.

Cryptocurrency is the dark horse. It could undermine the power of a central authority and give people unfettered freedom to move money around at will, without knowledge or intervention of any government. It will likely be regulated before it fulfills its potential.

It should be exciting, but I find it scary. And the reason for that is philosophical. I don’t have faith in man’s ability to create something good out of this.

THREE: It is the nature of Man

(You can safely skip the next paragraph because it is a philosophical justification for my overall pessimism.)

From a religious philosophical perspective people are cast as ‘sinners’. Sinners are (by definition) those who ‘miss the mark’. If you want to get an idea of what the global culture is like (what it values) then simply look at the aggregate of what ‘trends’ on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Half the world’s population are on those platforms, so that is as representative a sample size as you can get.

What Nietsche meant when he declared God dead, is summarised by Mark Sayers:

“What we are experiencing is not the eradication of God from the Western mind but the enthroning of self as the greatest authority.”

Now what could go wrong when those who ‘miss the mark’ become the ‘authority’?

The first two observations about the changes happening are probably uncontroversial. My pessimism about the quality of that future outcome is arguable if you have faith that humans on the whole always improve things ; i.e we are progressive in a way that leads to a (greater) good or at least better.

I am pessimistic about Man’s ability to create a positive/ beneficial world when it becomes untethered from the Judeo-Christian fundamentals. Even if the idea of religion and God sits uncomfortable with you, any objective observer of history cannot realistically deny that ‘western civilization (and all of our laws) are founded upon these Christian foundations.

Whether we would be better or worse off when we divorce our societies from these belief systems is a matter of opinion (and I don’t need to debate that here) - but I offer it as my rationale for being sceptical about a humanistic framework as the basis for lasting stable societies.

PART B: Micro Changes

John Batistich writes in Smart Company predicting the following changes in the retail environment:

Consolidation (specifically in Supermarkets)

Higher concentration

Fewer stores

Online step-change

One department store

Two discount department stores

More local

Rent reversions

Percentage rent

Make expenses variable

Cash economy declines

Cashflow management

New concepts

Most of these observations are simple, legitimate extrapolations of current trends, so I will limit my commentary to a few observations:

Rent reversions will be at unprecedented levels for many categories in many areas - I predict that it will be up to 50%. (This will place pressure on Superannuation funds’ returns, adding to economic woes, and pressure on Boomers to remain in the workforce.)

Making rents/expenses variable is something that I long advocated (see Beat of the Mall). This pandemic has proven that risks can’t be isolated to between categories/ sectors and that variable rent is a sensible way of synchronising the timing of economic fluctuations (good and bad) between members of a supply chain.

The downside is that one person’s variable expenses is another person’s variable income. Variable incomes are typically associated with higher risks and higher risks are features of an unstable ecosystem.

In an article in QSR Magazine Micha Magid the co-founder of Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque (US fast-casual concept) , is brave enough to nominate fairly specific outcomes. I smummarised those in a previous post.

They are worth reading because they are very specific, practical outcomes that are articulated. For example:

Approximately 25 percent of all restaurants remain indefinitely closed with 90 percent of the closures hitting independently owned locations.

Delivery focused restaurant brands do very well into the end of the year.

Great ethnic restaurants become increasingly harder to find

The salad chains underperform the rebound as raw food still caries caution in the national psyche.

I would like to add a few more specific prognostications to this list as it applies to the hospitality sector:

The return to ‘business as usual’ will be a gradual process, initially driven simply by people getting frustrated with isolation, and then once restrictions are lifted, the high unemployment rate will depress spend. (A recession or worse is actually likely).

Retailers will start practicing surge pricing

Consumers will hate queuing, so ordering ahead, table ordering and click and collect will continue to grow

A greater focus on food safety & hygiene (keep cups may lose momentum)

Unreasonable demands for small (uneconomical) deliveries - accepted during the pandemic - will prove the undoing of many restaurants

Price of meals will escalate to accommodate rising input prices (drought, fires etc) and unsustainable delivery costs as competition is reduced and the remaining operators have more flexibility.

In response to the above, consumer demands and expectations around customisation and health will put pressure on production times and costs.

The life cycle of new concepts will shorten, making innovation nonviable for landlords whose capital contributions allowed many concepts to be born

#Covid-19

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currenthealtheventsblog-blog · 6 years ago

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The latest innovations in non-toxic pest control

New Post has been published on https://currenthealthevents.net/awesome/the-latest-innovations-in-non-toxic-pest-control/

The latest innovations in non-toxic pest control

In recent years, several critical factors have driven the pest control industry and business towards non-tox answers.

Stringent legislation, such as the FDA Food Safety Modernisation Act( FSMA) and the EU Biocidal Products Regulation , now governs the use and development of new biocidal products, driving the innovation of non-tox alternatives.

Businesses, meanwhile, are reacting to the rising expectations of consumers, many of whom are increasingly well informed the adverse effects of the overuse of pesticides on environmental matters and health.

The pest control industry itself has also matured significantly. Like many other sectors, we are constantly researching and developing solutions that are more effective, sustainable and are better for the planet.

These are all compelling reasons why pest control is changing. What makes it exciting for invention is that these forces are emerging at a time of technology, enabling us to explore and develop non-tox solutions that are more targeted and effective than many of the chemical solutions available in the market today.

The advantages of connected technology and the Internet of Things( IoT)

Many new developments are based on the automation of pest observation. Currently, for example, the pest control industry is espousing the Internet of Things to change the style facilities are monitored. We can now install connected traps and devices to carry out remote monitoring 24/7, so technicians don’t have to physically visit a site to establish the presence of pests. When they do visit a site, technicians don’t need to spend time checking traps and can focus on recommending non-tox, preventative risk mitigation strategies instead.

In the agriculture space, we are also experimenting with bespoke monitoring answers, such as dronings fitted with thermal imaging technology, able to survey big the sectors of crops. The technological ability of the thermal heat and hyperspectral imaging software fitted in these dronings is so advanced, they can view microscopic detail and find localised infestations. This enables us to treat small areas and pest problems with non-tox answers before they spread.

Prevention through predictive analytics

Another major advantage of these new monitoring techniques is that they provide us with new data, much of which was not available before. The drones noted above, for instance, can monitor the chlorophyll level in plants and predict danger of damage; offering up a myriad of possibility.

We don’t simply collect data from these devices and use them in isolation. We can overlay it with public data sources- such as weather records, to start predicting pest behaviour based on different variables. This in turn, gas sophisticated predictive analytics that allows us to apply targeted , non-tox treatments in localised areas, rather than blanket treating facilities with chemicals. In many cases, given the right support with innovative applications of technology, there is little need for harsh chemicals at all.

New developments in non-toxic hot treatments

Ironically, some of the recent innovations are improvements of notions that have been around for centuries. In the 18 th Century, early settlers in Australia developed rudimentary ways to use heat to eliminate bugs. Today, modern technology is now being applied to the same idea, scaled up for commercial use.

Rentokil’s Entotherm, for example, is a new solution that eradicates bed bugs and cockroaches. Rather than employing sprayings, which often don’t penetrate the hard outer shell, the hot delivered by the Entotherm system kills insects from within through dehydration and damage caused to essential physiological processes. This method avoids any risk of the bugs developing resilience to spray chemicals and passing on resistant genes to future offspring.

Another benefit is that the heat effectively kills all the life stages of insects- egg, larva, pupa and adult- without needing to go higher than 56 -6 0 degrees Celsius. These temperatures are high enough to eliminate pests rapidly without causing any structural damage to buildings or objects.

New advances in biopesticides

It’s not just hardware and data that is driving non-toxic invention. Rentokil’s Global Science Centre is also currently developing new organic-compound solutions that can repel or destroy pests. One answer we are currently developing, for example, use fungal spores that attach to the external body surface of cockroaches. The spores then germinate and bore through the outer shell to reach the insects’ body cavity, where they multiply and eventually kill the bug.

Solutions like these have zero mammalian toxicity, with only low volumes needed. Another significant benefit is that unlike chemicals, pests cannot become resistant to the spores. This means that we’re able to get closer to solving a long-standing problem with how insect pests learn to adapt to chemicals and pass on resistant genes. It’s a clear illustration that many of the innovative, chemical-free solutions being developed today combine higher levels of efficacy with reduced environmental impact.

The future of non-tox innovation

Looking into the future, prospects abound. What would happen if we could communicate with pests like mice, rather than simply monitor them? This is something we are currently experimenting with at Rentokil utilizing ultrasound technology. It is an idea borne out of annoyance with the facts of the case that current ways of monitoring mouse( e.g. connected traps, or fluorescent gels) only pick up activity when the mouse interacts with the answer and activates it. If the mouse is merely nearby, then no pest activity will be recorded.

We’re currently developing a solution to this problem that allows us to listen to mice by picking up the high frequencies they emit – higher than the upper audible limit of human hearing. As we continue to develop and analyse the potential of this solution, we will also be exploring the possibility of sending messages back to mice- to repulse them from the area.

Communicating with mice may sound like science fiction for now. But how often does today’s science fiction become tomorrow’s norm? What we can be sure of is that the need and demand for non-tox pest control is merely going to increase- driven forward inexorably by rising consumer demand and increasing regulation. We can also be certain that we will be there, continually evolving inventions will help to effectively fulfill those demands with safer, greener solutions for pest control.

Discover more about current and future innovation for non-tox pest control by downloading our whitepaper, The changing face of pest control: Safer, greener, cleaner?

The post The latest innovations in non-toxic pest control seemed first on The Rentokil Blog.