#and they are The Only Alternative to the tories in the public consciousness

[aralioideae]

I think the reason im so bitter about labour winning in this way is that they really do not need to be Like That like the tories self destructed SO badly that labour could have practically sleep walked into a majority they do not need to be so right wing to win this but they are anyway and its so frustrating like after the past 14 years I should be ecstatic about a labour landslide but I just cant stop thinking about what we could have had

but noooo we cant have a government that doesnt scapegoat migrants and trans people nuh uh not allowed

[sophie-frm-mars]

Who do you think gains more seats at the next election, Green or Reform?

Probably Reform

We are experiencing multiple cascading crises and will only continue to experience more. There is a combination of material dissatisfaction and the media control of the public consciousness to consider. The material dissatisfaction under the trying times we live in drive people to seek change, to want something other than the incumbent political project. This drives the growth of third parties in general. In the UK the media has a tight control over what people who are invested in electoral politics consider to be the relevant political questions. Therefore more people who are joining parties besides Tory or Labour will be seeking an alternative who is more reactionary and more racist.

[soulvomit]

Something I need to unpack is how viscerally and negatively I respond to certain female celebrities/public figures (but in particular, upper middle class *white* female celebs) and I feel like a part of it has to do with them pattern-matching to a “type” of woman that I was pitted against when I was younger (and even pitted against in my own family) and still feel pitted against. And yes their whiteness is part of this, because I’ve never ever felt pitted against any other women the way I’ve felt pitted against white women who are aspirational figures.  Like, there are some of these female celebrities I respond really well to, who don’t piss me off. The 80s were incredibly alienating and the only women in general that I really liked were punk rock and rock & roll women, and women sci-fi characters. But the 90s were like... the culture just collectively letting out a sigh, and for once the celeb figures dominating Gen X consciousness weren’t universally affluence and Perfect Person aspirational figures; and there was also a period in which movie characters weren’t aspirational, either. That’s the main takeaway I get from watching a lot of problematic 90s shit is that... we weren’t supposed to be like these characters or want to be like them; the 90s was full of character studies of shitty people who were cautionary tales.  In the 90s, I liked Courtney Love, I liked Ani DiFranco, I liked Tori Amos. I can see myself liking Avril Lavigne if I’d been a Millennial and Billie Eilish if I’d been a Zoomer, because they weren’t/aren’t the kind of young women I ever got pitted against. (And sure, you can like these people without being their age group, but I’m talking specifically about peer-on-peer social dynamics.) And actually, celebs that are really “basic” or “normie” or who have a strong working class fandom, don’t really rub me the wrong way, ever, because I never feel like they’re the standard I was held to. If I’d been in any social space where this was true, that might be different.  There are some celebs who just fucking rub me the wrong way, and they’re *often* the ones who are big darlings of alternative crowds that I’m allegedly supposed to be part of. Like, geek celebs piss me off a million times more than mainstream celebs. And female geek celebs piss me off the most and it’s for dumb reasons, it’s because I joined geek culture BECAUSE IT DIDN’T HAVE CELEBS, and it’s also because women like that *are* the standard I was held to and found wanting.

[marginalgloss]

the republic of heaven

Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.

At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  

Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 

To call the novel ‘optimistic’ might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 

It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   

Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 

So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  

The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.

It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  

This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  

The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 

What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 

But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   

The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 

At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago. 

[berniesrevolution]

JACOBIN MAGAZINE

Review of Economics for the Many (Verso, 2018).

“. . . A New Britain where the extraordinary talent of the British people is liberated from the forces of conservatism that so long have held them back, to create a model 21st century nation, based not on privilege, class or background, but on the equal worth of all. And New Labour, confident at having modernized itself, now the new progressive force in British politics which can modernize the nation, sweep away those forces of conservatism to set the people free.” 

– Tony Blair, 1999

“Economics are the method: the object is to change the soul.” 

– Margaret Thatcher, 1981

Though they didn’t know it at the time, those who observed Britain’s 1979 general election and the Labour Party’s defeat were witnessing far more than a simple change of government. The Thatcherite ascendency that followed would not only reconfigure the institutions of the British state but establish — through a combination of luck, guile, and brute force — an entirely new political consensus that would consciously reshape British society in the process. By the time Labour returned to power nearly two decades later, a wholesale ideological counterrevolution was underway and its own leaders were among its most zealous partisans.

Perhaps no other European country in the postwar era (with the possible exception of Russia) has experienced a comparably drastic ideological shift, and certainly no working class has suffered such bitter repression and defeat in such a short time. After 1990, much of the global left faced a period of retrenchment but Britain’s political sclerosis, and the widespread sense of defeat it engendered, was particularly acute.

What the late Mark Fisher called “capitalist realism” — the pervasive sense that “capitalism is not only the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it” — reigned supreme, simultaneously afflicting the Left and animating partisans of the new order. Henceforth, “progress” was to imply only an ever-more dizzying advance into a global capitalist modernity from which no escape was conceivable and “conservatism” was anything that even momentarily stood in the way.

As a consequence, parliamentary socialists — those who survived — were forced to assume an increasingly defensive posture in a (sometimes futile) effort to preserve welfarist institutions or at very least mitigate damage. Within the Labour Party itself, the initially promising leadership of Ed Miliband ended in disappointment and defeat. Outside the electoral sphere (with a few exceptions) the Left grew more abstract in its analysis of power and less programmatic in its prescriptions for confronting or reconfiguring it. While individual causes and struggles like the anti–Iraq War movement and the 2010 student protests inspired heroic activism, its overall position was nothing short of dire and the malaise ran deep.

As many socialists immediately understood, therefore, Jeremy Corbyn’s surprise 2015 election as leader of the Labour Party opened up horizons of political possibility previously unimaginable. Gone would be the former leadership’s triangulating positions on austerity, immigration, and welfare policy and back on the table were familiar social-democratic objectives around taxation, redistribution, and public ownership.

But as the party’s left celebrated a stunning turn of events amidst historically weak fortunes, critics of Corbynism overwhelmingly saw something primitive and atavistic at work. “A return to the 1970s” quickly became a favorite theme of Britain’s right-leaning press, which cast Labour’s new leadership as both a pre-Blairite and pre-Thatcherite throwback: the desiccated corpse of the “Old Labour” anachronism born anew. Even after the party’s success in the 2017 general election, versions of the narrative have persisted, as has likeminded opposition from the “modernizers” on its now diminished right flank.

Much in this genre of analysis can undoubtedly be put down to poor historical memory, political opportunism, or simple bad faith. But its ubiquitousness, particularly in commentary on the center and center-left, is evidence of how just deeply the dogmas of the 1990s — and the conservative modes of thinking they reflect — ultimately run.

Economics for the Many

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” 

– Clause IV, Labour Party Constitution, 1918

If the Labour Party’s 2017 election manifesto emphasized somewhat familiar (though nevertheless bold) themes like nationalization and redistribution, its next one promises to be considerably more expansive — encompassing, among other things, different forms of public ownership and industrial democracy.

Radical thinking of this kind has only grown more urgent. By virtually any imaginable standard — even those its adherents have set themselves — Britain’s ruling economic consensus has been a failure. Austerity has not, as successive Tory chancellors have insisted with such fanatical certitude, delivered the promised economic recovery. The legacy of the Conservative government’s deflationary fiscal policies can instead be seen in human costs that can only be called catastrophic: stagnant wages, dire and rising levels of poverty among both children and adults, crumbling public services, and a corroded social fabric alongside an ever more gilded existence for Britain’s economic and cultural elite.

The underlying problems, of course, predate both austerity and the 2008 crash. A bloated financial sector with its talons deep in the Treasury has produced lopsided and regionalized growth heavily favoring metropolitan London and largely servicing unsustainable consumption at home and environmentally destructive extraction abroad. Precarity and high levels of household debt for ordinary families, meanwhile, have followed an overall shift from the older manufacturing economy to one structured heavily around services and global finance.

Economics for the Many — a new collection of essays edited by Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell — is simultaneously an intervention into these realities and a programmatic sketch of radical left thinking for the twenty-first century. As its title suggests, the book is also an effort to reclaim economics for the Left, an easily stated though admittedly daunting task amid neoliberalism’s persistence as the economic lingua franca.

Simultaneously localist and internationalist in scope — and encompassing everything from trade, the environment, and alternative models of firm ownership to fiscal policy and the challenges posed by platform monopolies and the data economy — the essays are accessible and minimally abstract, both in their concern with the practicalities of policy and their awareness of the difficulties of implementation in the face of political constraints.

This, however, makes them no less innovative. In chapters on democratic alternatives to private enterprise, for example, Rob Calvert Jump, Joe Guinan, and Thomas M. Hanna explore cooperatives, community-based systems of ownership, social entrepreneurship, and workplace democracy, their analyses including case studies from across Europe, North America, and within the UK. Building on Labour’s 2017 manifesto, which promised to make workers the first potential buyer should a company go on sale, Guinan and Hanna propose active investment by local authorities in the cooperative sector.

(Conitnue Reading)

[stretchjournalemerson]

Of Finstas: a Philosophical Essay in the Style of Montaigne

By Tori Serpico 

“In the knowledgeable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty. Once one has seen it, however, one must conclude that it is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything, that it produces both light and its source in the visible realm, and that in the intelligible realm it controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it.” -Plato, The Republic

The social media world that we inhabit has distinguished itself from our physical reality, bearing a realm of its own in which we are able to present ourselves in whichever way we deem most opportune. A post made to social media is something of an imprint of physical experience that becomes translated into a shared public moment within this alternate realm. Having this ability allows us to include or omit aspects of physical reality as we wish to. Through social media, we have created a dual society in which we produce reflections of our true existences. None of this information is new or groundbreaking, it simply is the nature of social media that we have all learned, practiced, and accepted. But it is within this social media realm that exists distinctions that further complicate both our perceptions of others and of ourselves.

I remember specifically learning of the “finsta,” and did not understand its purpose or function. Ultimately I gathered that it is a separate Instagram account to post things that one wouldn’t post on their public, or advertised, accounts. It is used to make either “personal” posts, stream-of-consciousness thoughts, or to document more outrageous opinions or experiences. I asked the thirteen year old girl who introduced me to the concept of the “finsta” if she was hiding from an employer. She didn’t laugh.

I further questioned her. Who was she hiding from? What was it about her thoughts or experiences that she couldn’t let people see? What compels her to make a post on one account and not the other? Generally, the catalyzing factor of the existence of the finsta is the audience. Certain information belongs in one place and not the other because it is considered to be “private.” I was very interested in the statistics of this, specifically the numeric value of the concept of “private” in the social media realm. Most finstas I have seen are accessible to approximately one hundred people. In comparison to the number of followers an average Instagram account has, I would say that about one out of five of a user’s public Instagram followers also have access that that user’s finsta. Clearly, I am not a mathematician, nor have I done any legitimate research on these numbers, but for the sake of my point, they are close enough.

“Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare” -Descartes

It is difficult to have a perfect estimation because there are so many factors at play. How many followers is too many? Not every finsta has hundreds of followers. But if so, who is to say a person cannot feel personally connected to hundreds of people? In my opinion, finsta population is extremely high considering its alleged “private” nature. From my experience, finstas are almost equally as accessible to a public eye as a “public” Instagram page. I will go as far as to say that I feel that “privacy” is non-existent in the social media realm. Based on the limited knowledge I have, I believe finsta-users are more concerned with the factor of exclusivity as opposed to privacy, curating a specific audience for their more “private” posts that may not necessarily be private at all.

“I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions” -Hume, Of Personal Identity

In deciding to make a finsta post, one creates a new perception of themself that is targeted only towards one certain group of people. This reaffirms Hume’s bundle theory in a deliberate, self-aware fashion, as well as it muddies my entire idea of “finstagram.” Originally I was made to believe this practice was an exercise of reversing the facades we maintain on social media, instead the user is creating an entirely new one. Finstas are simply a public forum, under the guise of “privacy,” that have normalized the act of declaring private information.

I started encountering more finstas, more people who felt they needed to distinguish their “public” self from their exclusive “private” self. The concept of the finsta reveals the dualities in our characters, and out of them arise dueling personas. The simultaneous existence of these characters distinguishes and compartmentalizes our human qualities, insisting that they must remain separate from each other. In doing this, one signifies that if a quality exists in one persona, there is an absence of that trait in the other. For example, if one is expressing insecurity on their finsta, it is implied that they would not allow themself to reveal that insecurity in the public realm. Therefore, they would be thought of as someone who is confident by those who are solely exposed to their public account.

“Esse est percipi, and he recognizes himself as being only insofar as he is perceived.” -Sartre, Saint Genet

The finsta holds a mirror to the account’s owner as well as reflecting their self-reflection onto the viewer of the post, creating perception through reflection. But here arises the issue: as one allows themself to be externally perceived in a contradictory fashion, they are in turn accepting these contradictions internally as well. The issue here is not the existence of the contradictions themselves, but the desire to allow these contradictions to separate oneself into opposing forces instead of embracing the dualities that make us so human. While the act of separating our characteristics is dangerous in the sense that it creates dual selves for the perceiver, it blurs the lines of reality for the perceived, creating artificial boundaries of personality based on social media exclusivity.

The general willingness to share our deepest thoughts, beliefs, or insecurities in this “privatized” public forum is troubling to me. One’s internal and external processes are put on display, and are able to be witnessed almost simultaneously by those who wish to. Clearly there is a comfort within the social media realm that does not exist in reality, which I feel is rooted in the disconnection from our physical experiences that creates an artificial distance between who we are and what we do or think. The commonality is the “who,” and the disparity is the “what,” or the container. Because of social media we are able to place ourselves in handmade, curated, two-dimensional environments with lower stakes than the perceptions of true reality. This explanation, however, is cyclical, because our actions within the social media realm ultimately influence our external perceptions from others, as I claimed earlier. We simply must exist, unafraid of our perceivers, unafraid of who we are, where we are, and what we are.

Works Cited

Descartes. “‘Perfect Numbers, like Perfect Men [or Women], Are Very Rare.".” Jim Adler, Jim

Adler, 5 Mar. 2011, jimadler.me/descartes-1943c42a6b60.

Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739.

Plato. “The Republic.” The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato,

classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Saint Genet: Comédien Et Martyr. 1952.

Acknowledgments

For Montaigne-- thanks for the inspiration!

[webart-studio]

10 Grants You Have to Know About for Your Lady-Owned Enterprise or Group

March 19, 2019 6 min learn

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their very own.

4 out of each 10 companies, or 40 p.c, in the US are actually women-owned, in accordance to The 2018 State of Ladies-Owned Companies Report from American Categorical. These companies make use of eight percentof the entire non-public sector workforce and contribute 4.three p.c of whole revenues

The mix of women-owned companies and companies equally owned by women and men — 14.6 million — account for 48 p.c of all companies.

As well as, the variety of women-owned companies, 2007 to 2018, grew by 58 p.c, the report stated.

Associated: 5 Unstoppable Feminine Entrepreneurs Making Their Dents on the World

These numbers illlustrate what we already know: Ladies entrepreneurs are having an amazing affect on the small enterprise panorama nationwide.

But to proceed to be aggressive and develop, these entrepreneurs have to search out funding for his or her ventures. And, alarmingly, ladies enterprise homeowners are having hassle getting financial institution loans. Fortunately, they nonetheless produce other choices, given the rise of technology-driven monetary lending sources — equivalent to on-line loans, peer-to-peer loans and crowdfunding.

Then there are authorities grants. Whereas not broadly identified or used, these grants are one other nice possibility for ladies looking for further funding for his or her enterprise ventures. They only take slightly extra work.

  Understanding grants

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Enterprise homeowners typically flip to grants as a result of they don’t seem to be required to pay them again; basically, you’ll be able to take a look at grants as “free cash,” however they arrive with stipulations. Additionally, understanding and navigating the grant course of will be advanced.

First, it’s a must to analysis and discover a grant for which you are eligible. Then, it’s a must to perceive the strict software and compliance tips you will need to meet, to be eligible. Third, it’s a must to compete with different companies for a similar pool of cash. Fourth, when you’re awarded a grant, you will need to report on the way you used it. Lastly, you will need to dedicate time and vitality to the prolonged software course of, then anticipate approval. In a nutshell, it is advisable to have all your geese in a row, up-front and afterward.

Discovering federal and state grants

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Many enterprise homeowners assume that federal grants are only a click on away. We have now all seen the advertisements selling free federal cash to start out companies. However this can be a big false impression. Whereas there are federal grants out there within the areas of medical analysis, science, schooling and know-how growth, no such grants exist particularly for women-owned companies. You could discover grants that fund tasks that empower ladies, however such funding is usually put aside for nonprofit firms, not for-profit companies.

When researching grants particularly for a woman-owned enterprise, begin on the state degree. Most states provide grants for women-owned companies in some capability. Every state web site has a enterprise part the place you will discover grant and funding alternatives for ladies and minority-owned companies. instance of that is the enterprise part for the state of New York, which lists incentives and packages for companies. Take a look at your state’s website to search out out what is on the market for your enterprise.

Associated: U.S. Is No. 1 for Ladies Entrepreneurs, However There’s Nonetheless Room for Enchancment

One other nice useful resource to make use of in your analysis is the Minority Enterprise Improvement Company (MBDA). The MBDA is an company of the U.S. Division of Commerce that assists minorities and girls in establishing and rising their companies. On its website, you’ll be able to analysis grants and entry hyperlinks to state businesses that work with women-owned companies for funding alternatives. Click on right here to view all the state businesses throughout the nation.

Non-public grants for ladies

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To assist in your search, we gathered info on these non-public grants for ladies entrepreneurs began:

The Eileen Fisher Ladies-Owned Enterprise Grant Program: These grants, for companies which might be 100 p.c women-owned and have founding rules of social consciousness, sustainability and innovation, had been placed on maintain however are anticipated to be revamped as of this spring of 2019. Test the web site for particulars.

FedEx Suppose Greater — Small Enterprise Grant Program:

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Candidates to this Fedex grant program are inspired to share their visions to obtain a portion of the $200,000 awarded in grants (Hurry! the 2019 contest ends March 25!). A part of the judging entails most people voting for the finalists, so members could promote their companies whereas garnering votes.

Concept Café Small Enterprise Grant:

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The Concept Café is a free gateway that hosts completely different grants on its website. This Small Enterprise Money Grant of a $1,000 grand prize to a enterprise with probably the most progressive concept has honored 20 companies thus far.

The Cartier Ladies’s Initiative Awards

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The Cartier Ladies’s Initiative Awards characterize a joint partnership created in 2006 by Cartier, McKinsey & Firm, and INSEAD enterprise college, It awards annual grants to help tasks by ladies entrepreneurs and is without doubt one of the largest and most prestigious enterprise grants for ladies, however the competitors is steep. The primary-place prize on this worldwide ladies’s enterprise competitors is $100,000 for seven “laureates”; second place comes with a $30,000 prize for seven finalists. The competitors is closed for 2019 however functions open in June 2019 for 2020.

Chase Google — Mission Most important Avenue Mission:

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The Mission Most important Avenue Grants, a partnership of JPMorgan Chase and Google, awarded $250,000 to 12 winners this 12 months (out of 35,000 functions. Recipients additionally acquired a visit to Google headquarters. Recipients embody companies like Edibles Rex, an organization devoted to offering nutritious meals for kids in Detroit’s constitution colleges. 

    Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis (SBIR):

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The Small Enterprise Innovation Analysis (SBIR) program is a extremely aggressive program that encourages home small companies to interact in federal analysis and R&D that has the potential for commercialization. A number of federal businesses are concerned. As of Nov. 20, 2018, businesses might award a Section I award as much as $252,131 and a Section II award as much as $1,680,879 with out looking for SBA approval.

Walmart Ladies’s Financial Empowerment Initiative (WEE):

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Grants can be found for nonprofot organizations that align with the Walmart Basis’s key areas of focus: alternative, sustainability and group. Globally, Walmart and the Walmart Basis gave $1.Four billion in money and in-kind contributions throughout fiscal 12 months ending Jan. 31, 2017. And, we did it one grant and one group at a time. Nationally, grants are $250,000 and above. Eligible nonprofit organizations should function on a nationwide scope by means of chapters/associates in lots of states across the nation or by means of packages that function regionally/regionally however search funding to duplicate program actions nationally.

The Amber Grants

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he Amber Grants started in 1998, in honor of a younger girl (Amber) who died on the age of 19 — unable to meet her entrepreneurial goals. The Amber Grant helps ladies such as you obtain the goals that Amber couldn’t. Every grantee receives a $2,000 grant and grow to be eligible for the annual $25,000 grant, which might be awarded on the finish of 2019 to certainly one of 12 qualifiers. Hurry! This 12 months’s software interval ends March 31.

    The Tory Burch Fellowship

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As much as 50 finalists a 12 months on this grant competitors obtain a $5,000 grant for this year-long Tory Burch Fellowship, and four-day enterprise workshop at Tory Burch Headquarters in New York Metropolis.The $5,000 grant should be used for enterprise schooling. This 12 months’s software course of ends in June.

Associated: Why Entry Is the Key to Ladies’s Equality within the Workforce

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source https://webart-studio.com/10-grants-you-have-to-know-about-for-your-lady-owned-enterprise-or-group/

[fayewonglibrary]

Faye Wong’s 18 best songs (2020)

from Cantopop to grunge, Chungking Express to Final Fantasy VIII – Hong Kong’s ultimate 90s diva

From her Chinese-language covers of The Cranberries, Tori Amos and Cocteau Twins to her iconic statement album Di-Dar, Pledge and 100,000 Whys, Faye Wong left an enduring mark on the Asian music scene – from alternative Western styles to big balling ballads, and embracing Cantonese before returning to her native Mandarin

Faye Wong was the ultimate Hong Kong diva of the 1990s. Her nightingale voice, artistic persistence, indifference to fame and unmistakable style made her one of the city’s most singular celebrities.

While most of us might know her for that cover of The Cranberries’ Dreams, or providing the vocals to Eyes On Me, the ending theme song for Final Fantasy VIII , Wong didn’t hit the big time until her fourth studio album “Coming Home”. After a modelling stint and coming third in a singing competition, Wong had been signed by Cinepoly and came under the tutelage of Tai See-chung, who also trained Hong Kong megastars such as Anita Mui, Aaron Kwok, Andy Lau and Leon Lai.

Her original name Wang Fei was considered too mainland-sounding for the Hong Kong market and her record label gave her the name Shirley Wong. However, given the mediocre success of her first three albums, she was sent to New York to undertake vocal training and as a cultural exchange. It was in the Big Apple where the artist found herself, saying in an interview:

“I wandered around, visited museums and sat at cafes. There were so many strange, confident-looking people. They didn't care what other people thought of them. I felt I was originally like that too, independent and a little rebellious. But in Hong Kong I lost myself. I was shaped by others and became like a machine, a dress hanger. I had no personality and no sense of direction.”

It was this realisation that led to her becoming the idol that she is today, a performer who gradually transitioned from Cantopop love ballads to composing alternative tunes for her own albums. While she has taken a step back from the limelight since her second marriage in 2005, here are our favourite songs by the Cantopop queen turned alternative musician.

Vulnerable Woman

In 1992, Greed of Man was TVB’s big budget show of the year and is still lauded as one of the network’s best dramas. Faye Wong’s Vulnerable Woman was the music played when the heroine tragically died. The song immortalised the scene in the hearts of viewers all over Hong Kong.

No Regrets

“No Regrets” was the follow up album to “Coming Home” and it didn’t disappoint. The eponymous single was a huge hit.

Monsoon

Another hit from the “No Regrets” album. A mellow Cantopop number that resounded in the halls of karaoke lounges for years to come.

Summer of Love

“100,000 Whys” is the album where many see Wong coming into her own. Shedding her stage name Shirley, Wong went back to using her given name – Wang Fei – in Chinese and changed her English name to Faye. Her album brought grunge to the Hong Kong public’s consciousness as well as adopting other bold style experiments of the time. Summer of Love was a small step away from the string of ballads she was known for and appealed to her younger fans.

Cold War

A cover of Tori Amos’ Silence of the Year with lyrics beautifully adapted by Albert Leung. Amos’ vocals weren’t easy to replicate and Wong was able to apply her style while staying true to the original.

Pledge

The Beatles’ “White Album” was considered to one of their best as well as being one of their more experimental. For Wong’s fans, her choice to issue the “Random Thoughts” album in white with the words embossed in cream, came to feel similarly pivotal. Covering two songs by the Cocteau Twins, this album was Wong’s first move into alternative rock. Pledge is the first song she wrote alongside her then partner and eventual husband Dou Wei and was the first original Mandarin song to be featured on tracklists.

Dream Lover

Wong’s cover of The Cranberries’ Dream is a landmark due to the fact that she adapted lead singer Dolores O'Riordan’s vocal style of keening and yodelling thereafter. The song was featured in Wong Kar-wai’s much acclaimed feature film, Chungking Express, which Wong also starred in, catapulting her into the international spotlight.

Sleepwalk

This song showcased Faye Wong growing into her adopted style, using a slight yodel in the intro to this original score by C.Y. Kong.

Honeymoon

The next album, “Please Myself”, while not as much of a commercial success as “Random Thoughts”, included this hit single, and also the title track and Exit on the tracklist, all self-penned by Wong.

Angel

The year 1994 was a prolific one for Wong as not only did she release two Cantonese albums but a Mandarin one as well, with translated works and a few original scores. Angel continued Wong’s experiment with alternative music and was also the theme song of the fantasy film, Mermaid Got Married.

Brink of Love and Pain

The ballad that anchored the “Please Myself” album was one of the last conventional Cantopop songs by the pop diva and began the divide between her own musical style, and commercial and mainstream tastes.

Di-Dar

Di-Dar was featured number 27 in Ming Pao Weekly's list of “40 Classic Cantopop Albums of the Last 40 Years” in 2008. Music journalist Fung Lai-chee described it as “the best psychedelic and bestselling avant-garde work in Cantopop, with songs that are self-centred, ignoring [the] market and others' work.”

Ambiguous

This ballad was written to appeal to the mass market and is a favourite among Wong’s fans.

Anxiety

Considered one of the riskiest albums of Wong’s to date, this album falls squarely in the alternative category. Many of the songs didn’t include proper lyrics – a cardinal sin in the age of karaoke – and it wasn’t well-received by the mainstream market at the time. However this album scores high in listenability and deserves more of an audience.

Eyes on Me

It was a matter of national pride when Wong provided the vocals for the ending theme for arguably one of the most popular RPG games of the 1990s, Final Fantasy VIII. It was the era just before streaming took off and YouTube even existed so scores of fans forged ahead to finish the game, solely to arrive at the end credits to hear the song.

Hundred Years of Solitude

The “Lovers & Strangers” album was one of Wong’s bestselling albums and after its release in 1999, Guinness World Records declared Faye Wong the best selling female Cantopop artist of all time. It was also the beginning of Wong’s departure from prioritising the Hong Kong market and releasing more and more songs in Mandarin, her mother tongue.

Chanel

Wong established herself more clearly as a songwriter by penning five of the songs on the tracklist of the “Fable” album. Her singing style had matured and moulded itself to her style of songwriting while she pushed at the boundaries of popular music.

Withered Flower

“To Love”, released in 2003. was the last of Wong’s studio albums to date and Withered Flower the last Cantonese song she has presented to her Hong Kong fans.

by: Lisa Cam

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SOURCE:  SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

[fayewonglibrary]

FAYE ACCOMPLI (2000)

With a new album and a younger beau, Faye Wong again is the centre of media attention. She talks to Life! about her family, daughter, and the paparazzi

By YEOW KAI CHAI

FAYE WONG is a curious, unique and fascinating phenomenon in the Chinese entertainment scene.

Hers is one lit by sacred mystery, slavish fan-dom and marketing savvy – a kind of meteorite which makes an impact on pop consciousness that is felt years later.

Just last week, several incensed Faye-natics wrote to Life! to complain about the less-than-positive review of her latest album, Fable. The letters burned with an unbridled intensity reserved normally for matters of life and death.

Faye is a diva, and divas are infallible even when they falter, these correspondents insisted.

While the bigger Western pop market has always loved its fair share of staunch, individualistic visionaries, ranging from loose cannons like Courtney Love to weird, elliptical New Age daughters like Tori Amos, the East had preferred its female singers decked out uniformly in pretty frills, smiling coyly and oozing saccharine.

The entry of Faye changed all that.

THIS EMPRESS DOES HER OWN THING

A*MEI can belt better, CoCo Lee can shake her bon-bon with more fervour, but Faye – who moves very little on stage, makes scant eye-contact, and banters very poorly – is Queen. Or Empress, if you go by her Chinese name, Fei.

She is the Anti-Entertainer made good, the kind of gauche, strangely-riveting drama unfurling on stage.

Faye as a proposition came at the right time in the Internet era, a child of the global village, where the twain finally met.

As Life! music columnist and “I’ve-never-stopped-being-angry” singer and DJ Chris Ho once told this writer, he fancies the “idea” of Faye Wong, somebody who does her own thing without a care in the world for social approval – never mind whether her songs are good or not.

How many of Singapore’s unloved ���indie” rockers would love to have that kind of clout.

Here is a goddess who subsists on both flaws and gifts alike – her lousy media relations, superb style sense, and her talent in out-copycatting her Hongkong counterparts in choosing smarter, more revolutionary musicians to filch from.

All these add up to an irresistible package.

Last weekend, on the popular Taiwanese variety show Super Sunday on the TVB-S channel (Ch 54), Faye was the guest.

She was gorgeous and smiling all the time, but was otherwise in typical Faye mode. She did not play to the crowd, or banter needlessly. She just spoke when she needed to.

Tellingly, the usually-riotous team of Harlem Yu, Huang Chi Jiao, A Liang and premier veteran compere Chang Hsiao-yan wound down their antics and became less irreverent.

They kept calling Faye tian hou (Heavenly Queen), and spoke to the 31-year-old, 1.72-m tall singer in clearly deferential tones.

The more senior Chang, usually quick and particularly ruthless, even gave way to her guest in a contest.

The singer, on her part, looked bemused by the surrounding plebeian inanities, a placid self orbiting at her own pace.

A COOL ONE FOR GENERATION NEXT

THE name Faye, at the cusp of the new millennium, has become synonymous with Attitude and Coolness personified for Generation Next.

Just last month, an impressive turn-out of 500 journalists from China, Hongkong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore flew to Shenzhen. Faye, as part of a promo tie-up with Head &Shoulders Shampoo, was scheduled to emerge from a helicopter in a golf buggy and perform three songs from Fable on an aircraft carrier.

Alas, due to rain, the gig was brought indoors, and she stayed for only about 15 minutes to field questions from the disgruntled press before being whisked off.

It was all in a day’s work on Planet Faye.

MEANING BEHIND THE SONGS

FEELINGS: A diva speaks

On the lyrics of her songs “(Lyricist Lin Xi said) it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep…’

On a message to her listeners ‘No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods.’

On the paparazzi "There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.’

On negative news reports "I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else.’

On movies she enjoys "I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.’

SO, OF course, we didn’t get the one-on-one interview or even a phone interview with this elusive mystery. But we were given the privilege of faxing her a list of questions. And here we have Faye’s answers, recorded on tape.

We cannot tell you what her facial expressions were, or what she was wearing, or what Singaporean make-up designer Zing had painted on her face.

We hear only the Beijing native’s mellifluous, Northern-accented Mandarin, punctuated occasionally by a peal of laughter.

She has ignored some of the more probing questions, preferring to spend precious reel on giving us a very detailed run-down on the mystical meanings of the first five songs, which she says are "all about love and its complexities, from the beginning of creation to modern times”.

Oh, okay. But which songs in Fable mean the most to her?

“The five songs I wrote are the songs I like more,” she declares, not very diplomatically.

“I asked lyricist Lin Xi what they mean and he said it is to do with the various love stages and incarnations. Sounds very deep, but that’s what he was writing. Anyway, people don’t really have to really listen to the lyrics. They can listen to the music.”

On the whole, what message does she want to convey to her audience with this album?

“No, there is no special message. For this album, it’s basically an expression of certain moods,” she offers in a typically-obtuse manner.

“When people hear the songs, they should be able to feel the moods. I only write lyrics and music when I am inspired. I won’t write for the sake of writing. I hope that people can find some form of emotional empathy. No big pronouncements.”

No big pronouncements. Such a casual statement of nothingness can only come from supreme confidence. Faye has come a long way since 1987, when she was an 18-year-old who had left Beijing for Hongkong, to take singing lessons.

Two years later, her singing teacher introduced her to Cinepoly, which released her first three albums, and marketed her as a cookie-cutter balladeer.

At the time, she went by the plain name of Shirley Wong Jin Man.

She was not happy. She was getting famous, but she was an introvert and she did not like the attention brought by fame.

She took a sabbatical and flew to America, where she attended some singing and dancing lessons.

The trip was an eye-opener. In New York, people in the streets dressed the way they wanted, and acted the way they wanted.

It proved to be the turning point in her life. She returned to Hongkong in 1992, more assertive and ready to steer her own ship. She reverted to her own name, ditched Shirley for Faye, and decided to record Mandarin albums instead, save for one or two novelty Cantonese tracks on each CD.

She made an about-turn away from the chart-friendly pop route and transformed herself into a canny alternative popster who spoke her mind and followed her heart. She dressed the way she wanted, and acted the way she wanted.

She struck gold.

Musically, the 1990s was an experimental era which gave free rein to Faye, who borrowed the fine (some say bad) points blithely from the leading female originals of the western pop hemisphere – Bjork’s sartorial and follicular sensibility; Sinead O'Connor’s nuanced vocal styling; and Liz Fraser’s unintelligible phrasing.

She covered the Cranberries, and mimicked Dolores O'Riordian’s yodelling. She even worked with the Cocteau Twins.

On the media front, she was no PR merchant, happily dissing reporters who dared ask her about her marriage/divorce to mainlander Dou Wei.

She would deflect intrusive questions with mystical monosyllables, which, depending on your ardour or the lack thereof, was either intriguing or just plain rude.

In short, she turned the rules of the game upside down. It was shocking, baffling – enchanting. She stood out.

The media and public, thrilled or repulsed by such blatant insouciance, lapped it all up. They trailed her every move, her elusive relationship with Nicholas Tse, who is 11 years her junior, and second-guessed her every new image overhaul.

It was a beneficial media-celebrity relationship for both parties: fuelling her cool, defiant stance and adding grist for publicity.

PAPARAZZI SUCH A HEADACHE

SO WHAT does she really think of the media, especially the paparazzi? How does one maintain the line between one’s public and private selves?

“Of course, I don’t like the gouzai dui (paparazzi)”, is her calm, candid answer.

“The paparazzi make the task of separating work and private life very difficult. There is absolutely no way for me to protect my own privacy. It is a headache!

Although I understand that as a public personality, my private life would be an issue of interest, I still think there needs to be some restraint. There has to be a decent limit. I feel it’s immoral for the paparazzi to snoop.”

As for the “negative reports” in the tabloids, Faye, a devout Buddhist, professes she has transcended frustration.

“Now, they don’t affect my state of mind that much. I just treat the reports as if they were about someone else. The report and my life are two different matters. I wouldn’t be bothered.”

It does seem that she has become less irascible, more at peace with her life and its inconveniences.

Asked what kind of movies she enjoys, she ponders, then offers, most beguilingly, “the kind of movies I don’t like”.

“War movies, period movies, I don’t quite like. Things that are distant from my present lifestyle, I’m not so interested in. I like to watch movies from which I can get some enlightenment or inspiration.”

To her credit, Faye thinks that Fable could have been better produced.

“The mixing for this album was done in England. We worked with an English mixer – I don’t know whether people who heard the album could tell that. I heard the CD, and it wasn’t as good as I had expected, but it has its fine points.”

For the next album, she will work again with longtime collaborator, arranger-producer Zhang Yadong, and find some famous European arranger/producer to arrange and mix the album, she says.

Unfortunately, as the singer points out, “the more famous producers are usually very expensive, and we have yet to settle the copyright issue”.

“It’s a headache, but I hope the plan will work out,” she adds, laughing.

HER SUCCESS AND ITS DOWNSIDE

REFRESHING it is to hear Faye, often typecast as wilful and artistic, considering a serious business matter.

At this juncture of her life, she may have achieved equanimity. She has learned how to enjoy success, and dealt with its downside.

Indeed, slavish adoration may come and go, but Faye has one basic guiding principle on how to live her life.

“My parents’ biggest positive influence is on my character. They are very upright people. They have integrity, and they are not fake or insincere.”

If all else fails, there is always her darling daughter. So, has Dou Jingtong inherited Mummy’s talent?

“Yes, she is sensitive to anything that has rhythm. She is acutely sensitive to music. I don’t think it’s all hereditary though. Maybe she was a musician in her previous life!”

As if surprised at her own elucidation, Faye chuckles, sounding truly embarrassed. And for a second, you think you hear beyond the Superstar, the Hype and the Fable, the wide-eyed girl who once marvelled at the things she had seen for the first time.

Fable is out in stores.

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SOURCE: THE STRAITS TIMES / LIFE