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theonyxpath · 4 years ago

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Kind of a hold-over from last week’s talk about Justin Achilli, this week we start with one of the quotes from Tombstone that JA and I would lob at each other over the years – and check out this week’s Reason To Celebrate for why the movie comes to mind.

They’ve mentioned that Justin is the final member of the WoD team at Paradox, even if he may be pretty much still stuck here because of Covid-19, and if you want to, you can learn more about the person pulled into the WoD team before Justin by checking out this coming Friday’s Onyx Pathcast interview with Outstar, the WoD Brand Community Manager!

How Lewd.

Another daisy has been Jon Hodgson and his extremely talented crew at Handmade Games, who we’ve worked with on many pieces of art and on the creation of the newest Creature Collection for Scarred Lands. They ran the Kickstarter, as well, and did a fantastic job with the project!

Now that the Creature Collection is at our traditional printer – where we had to send it because our more expansive plans for printing and shipping in Europe were torpedoed by Covid-19 (I feel like there’s an underlying theme here) – Jon and team have handed off the project to us in its entirety to fulfill it and get the book into stores.

With that, we’re also making the PDF and the PoD versions available this week on DriveThru. So if you prefer to get a gorgeous collection of monsters usable for any 5e gaming, this is your week.

Contagion Chronicle art by Luis Sanz

I’m In My Prime!

Talking about ways we’re all getting through this pandemic, let’s start with quite the difference in our industry with GenCon going online and not live in Indianapolis. First time in something like 40+ years, at least, that there’s no physical con. But like ourselves, the GenCon crew have decided to run an online version filled with gaming and panels and interviews and all sorts of stuff.

Fresh from our more us-focused Onyx Path Virtual Gaming Convention last month, we are still representing at GenCon Online with a What’s Up With the Onyx Path? panel, as well as a bunch of our games. Check out details and links below in the Conventions section, and check out last week’s Onyx Pathcast, for the Terrific Trio’s talk about online gaming and more thoughts about our online con.

Lunars art by Gong Stysi

Keeping up our efforts to keep in closer contact with our developers during this time of isolation, we had another pair of Developer Town Halls last week, which seemed to go very well.

One thing that came up, which we are very aware of, is how hard it is to stay aware of the passage of time these days. Obviously, that has huuuuge impact on the projects folks are working on, as so much of freelance creation depends on creating a certain amount of X (X being words, or pages, or pieces of art, or whatever you’re creating) a day and a week and a month.

Luckily for all, Eddy Webb has spent over a decade exploring time-management techniques and processes, and while he has always been helpful for our creators on an ad hoc basis, he’s now going to run a developer work processes workshop for our devs instead of a Town Hall next month.

Our hope is that we can use this workshop to present a lot of tools and methods to heighten everyone’s ability to focus longer, faster, better.

And I almost lost my focus right there. I was just about to write “…focus longer, faster, better on our: Many Worlds, One Path!”. But I still have one more thing to mention!

More details in the Kickstarter section below, but I do want to announce that we’re going to start the Kickstarter for They Came From Beyond the Grave!, the second of the They Came From…! games, next week on Tuesday the 21st!

Phew! Glad I managed to get that mention in, and I’m expecting to go into a bunch more next week about the Hammer/Roger Corman Films genre of horror movies and why we’re very excited to be able to emulate that genre with Grave!. For an idea of how it plays, here’s the game we played at our online convention:

One more world to add to our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

Blurbs!

Kickstarter!

Next Up On Kickstarter: They Came From Beyond the Grave!

Next week on Tuesday the 21st at 2pm EDT, if we can pull it together! And keep your eyes open for:

Onyx Path Media!

This week: a fantastic interview with Outstar aka Martyna: Paradox‘s new World of Darkness Brand Community Developer, who’s renowned for her World of Darkness lore videos, and who also has a history in the video game industry, having worked on games like The Witcher 3!

As always, this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

It’s an exciting time for the Twitch channel, as ahead of the Kickstarter, Vorpal Tales commence their They Came from Beyond the Grave! actual play!

This week on Twitch, expect to see:

V5 – Chicago by Night

They Came from Beyond the Grave!

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale

Mage: The Awakening – Occultists Anonymous

Scarred Lands – Purge of the Serpentholds

Chronicles of Darkness: Tooth & Claw

Deviant: The Renegades – A Cautionary Tale

Get watching for some fantastic insight into how to run these wonderful games and subscribe to us on Twitch, over at twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find a whole load of videos of actual plays, dissections of our games, and more, including:

Onyx Path News Live: https://youtu.be/5UHRO66VKi4

#OnyxPathCon | Onyx Pathcast Live [Panel]:https://youtu.be/XxNvUPUtC1o

#OnyxPathCon | Learn the Storypath System [Panel]:https://youtu.be/YOr-WIe4nuA

#OnyxPathCon | They Came from Beyond the Grave! Actual Play: https://youtu.be/qLEFXntIa3g

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/aEVm_G1Dhzo

Subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online!

Occultists Anonymous continue their excellent Mage: The Awakening chronicle:

Episode 112: Buffs & Bluffs The cabal make preparations for two meetings, one with “Heidi” a leader of the Mammon Ministry, and “Tilly” who has been making threats on behalf of Mammon. Then, of course, come the meetings themselves… https://youtu.be/-rh4zUVwu4I

Episode 113: The Mammon Treatise Discussions continue with Tilly and the cabal, a Lictor is called forth to try to make the deal official in the Consilium’s Lex Magica. https://youtu.be/_MqJP2gXQUQ

Systematic Understanding of Everything is a new Exalted Explainer Podcast by Exalted Dev Monica Speca and Exalted Writer Chazz Kellner that is breaking down Creation in 45 minute chunks in preparation for Exalted Essence.

Their most recent episode in on Creation and its history – https://anchor.fm/exaltcast/episodes/Trackless-Region-Navigation—What-is-Creation-eg2g9d

Get past episodes at http://www.exaltcast.com/

The Gamers Table is on board for a Promethean: The Created chronicle right here: https://anchor.fm/gamerstable/episodes/Polyabhorrent-Episode-4—Promethean-the-Created-Actual-Play-egeuvo/a-a2l9s6e Please give them your support!

Our very own Chris Allen runs a fantastic opening session of Werewolf: The Forsaken here and on Twitch: https://youtu.be/XTaTf7sxnLk Not too many eyeballs were lost!

They’re not alone with their Werewolf: The Forsaken actual play, as Dork Tales on Twitch is playing a chronicle of the same game! https://www.twitch.tv/dorktales

Our friends over at Near Dark Studios have just concluded their second season of V5 Chicago by Night, and you can find the entire playlist right here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhENuwZpsO7HXSuQ26MvX5uP-xqbYAwGG

Apparently it’s a week for Werewolf: The Forsaken, as Paleo Games is running their chronicle of doomed Uratha over here on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/paleo_gaming

Last one! Our good buddies at Vorpal Tales recently concluded their superb actual play of They Came from Beneath the Sea!, which you can find here on YouTube in full playlist form. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9fUj4KdqE4Ayzfw1vrDtFY81E0uaNT2K

Please check these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games! We’d love to feature you!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

We’re told that the App Dev is currently creating an updated version for the latest devices, so keep an eye open for those!

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost Second Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And now Scion Origin and Scion Hero and Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we uncage the Creature Collection for 5e Scarred Lands in PDF and PoD versions, both on DTRPG!

Conventions!

Though dates for physical conventions are subject to change due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, here’s what’s left of our current list of upcoming conventions (and really, we’re just waiting for this last one to be cancelled even though it’s Nov/Dec). Instead, keep an eye out here for more virtual conventions we’re going to be involved with:

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

Keep an eye out for our games being run at the online version of GenCon at the end of the month, as well as our What’s Up With the Onyx Path? panel currently slated for 1pm, Thursday July 30th!

https://www.gencon.com/online/

And now, the new project status updates!

Development Status from Eddy Webb! (Projects in bold have changed status since last week.):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep.)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Anima

M20 Technocracy Operative’s Dossier (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Squeaks In The Deep (Realms of Pugmire)

Prometheus Unbound (was Psi Orders) (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

CtL 2e Novella Collection: Hollow Courts (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Second Draft

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Dead Man’s Rust (Scarred Lands)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

V5 Forbidden Religions (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

V5 Children of the Blood (was The Faithful Undead) (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Dystopia Rising: Evolution Fiction Anthology (Dystopia Rising: Evolution)

Development

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

V5 Trails of Ash and Bone (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Manuscript Approval

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Under Alien Skies (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Post-Approval Development

Editing

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum)

LARP Rules (Scion 2nd Edition)

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Book of Lasting Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Dearly Bleak – Novella (Deviant: The Renegades)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Indexing

Lunars: Fangs At The Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Art Direction from Mike Chaney!

In Art Direction

Tales of Aquatic Terror – Off to LeBlanc.

WoD Ghost Hunters (KS) – KS prep also wrapped up.

Aberrant – AD’d. Meredith is helping with keeping track of all the artists.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Mummy 2

Deviant

Legendlore

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

Cults of the Blood God – Rolling along.

Scion: Dragon (KS)

Masks of the Mythos (KS) – Getting the cover art going, interior pieces are coming in.

Scion: Demigod (KS) – KS art in progress.

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (KS) – Prepping KS assets.

TC: Adventure! (KS) – Shen Fei cover art finished by end of the month.

Geist: One Foot In the Grave – AD’d, art is rolling.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch

TC Aeon Terra Firma

V5 Let the Streets Run Red – continued working it.

Pugmire Adventure – small project, knocking the layout together.

Scion Titanomachy

Lunars Screen and Booklet

Contagion Chronicle Screen and Booklet

Proofing

Trinity Aeon Jumpstart – Errata input prep.

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate – Editing.

Contagion Chronicle – Errata input and press prep.

Cavaliers of Mars: City of the Towered Tombs

Magic Item Decks (Scarred Lands)

Yugman’s Guide Support Decks (Scarred Lands)

Dark Eras 2 Screen and booklet

Scion Companion – PoD proofs ordered.

At Press

TCFBTS Heroic Land Dwellers – PoD proof ordered.

TCFBTS Screen and Booklet – Files at press.

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Press proofs signed off on, PoD proofs ordered.

Creature Collection 5e – PDF and PoD versions on sale on Wednesday.

Pirates of Pugmire – Files at press. PoD proofs ordered.

Pirates of Pugmire Screen – Files at press.

Pugmire Buried Bones – PoD proof ordered.

Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition Dark Eras Compilation – Uploaded PoD file.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Considered to be the day in 1882 that Johnny Ringo died, gunslinger, and model for many versions of this kind of gaming character: “A man like Ringo has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” Of course, he was never a daisy.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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cindylouwho-2 · 3 years ago

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RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES AND STUDIES, MAY 1 2022

Welcome to my latest summary of the top news, studies and helpful resources for ecommerce, social media, SEO and content marketing (with a special focus on Etsy), compiled since my last update at the end of March. I am trying to get them out more often but there just isn’t enough time in the day lately!

For those who are new to these updates, remember: you don’t have to read everything! Just skim through the topics for the parts you are interested in or are trying to learn. The whole idea here is that you save time by getting summaries of things you might want to know more about.

For new readers, please let me know what you think, and if you have any questions or comments. You can reply below on this post, email me through my website, or contact me on Twitter.

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES

Ecommerce spending in the US has dropped quite a bit in the last several months, especially for clothing and home furnishings, says the Wall Street Journal [paywall; audio and text]. “This March was the first month since the pandemic hit during which e-commerce sales declined from the same period a year earlier while in-store sales rose…The drop in online spending was 3.3%, the first year-over-year decline since November 2013.” The big ecommerce leaders such as Amazon and Walmart are adapting.

While merchants who ship to Germany have been required to register and pay for packaging recycling since 2019, a new law involving marketplaces will take effect in July 2022, so both Etsy and eBay have published details. In brief, those marketplaces will be required to check that businesses shipping to Germany are properly registered under the Act. While many of the plans available seem quite expensive for microbusinesses that don’t do many sales to Germany, I’ve seen several reports that “Reclay” is pretty cheap compared to most, see here for example. You can sign up with them here. No doubt more helpful articles will appear in the coming months, so stay tuned here if you want more information. [It would be great if this change means Etsy has to make it easier to exclude a country from shipping profiles!]

Beware of fake intellectual property claims from AI lawyers: not lawyers who use AI, but lawyers who are created by AI. The Next Web tells an interesting tale.

ETSY NEWS

See my coverage of the Etsy boycott and strike here.

Many sellers outside of the US have recently received the following notification: “To comply with anti-money laundering regulations in your region, we’re required to verify your bank account to confirm that you own it.” They have 30 days to do so or they can no longer receive deposits. However, some have been selling for many years without any issues, were already verified years ago, and most aren’t aware of any legal reasons this is needed in their own country/province/state etc. Furthermore, the process can take several days to finish, and once you initiate it, you cannot receive any deposits until the verification is complete, which can possibly take over a week, although many are reporting only 2-3 days. One of the largest threads is here if you need help. Because this is Etsy, of course the procedure isn’t working in some countries, namely Turkey and the Philippines. Etsy says they are working on the Turkish issue, but in the meantime, sellers cannot get their money released. If you are having an issue, please let me know, and I will try to find some help for you.

Reserves seem to be on the upswing again, with more sellers reporting them with no apparent reason, or immediately after they start to reverify their bank accounts (see above). This seller says there is no reason for her shop to be on reserve, and that Etsy was not sending her full deposits for 6 weeks earlier this year. Others are claiming similar situations, with no apparent risk factors for a reserve. Some of the bank account examples could involve the reverification process - perhaps the payment processors decided the account was risky? If you see any other odd examples, please let me know.

As you have probably noticed, Etsy is testing awarding individual badges for the 3 core components of its Star Seller program. That means sellers can still get visible recognition even if they only score 95% and up on one or two of the factors instead of all three.

Another Etsy test - longer videos, with sound! This is only available through invitation, to US sellers using the iOS version of the Etsy Seller Preview app. As with many Etsy features, some are finding it buggy.

Yet another test: adding customer photos to the listing photos. Here is a thread, and I tweeted a screenshot.

Etsy is making it easier for brands (including Etsy shops) to search for and file intellectual property complaints against Etsy listings. I haven’t had a reason to try it yet, but if it is truly easier than the previous format, that will be a blessing to folks who frequently have their stuff ripped off. Keep an eye out for more complaints of takedowns!

Apparently ombre is out and “gradients” are in. That and more here in Etsy’s top 5 home decor trends post. “228% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for gradient rugs…221% YoY increase in searches on Etsy for minimalist decor” These points are also covered in the spring and summer trends podcast [transcript with podcast links]

There is now a dedicated page for shipping partner discounts here. Most are for Americans, although there is a link to Packlink Pro which can be used in several EU countries. That includes “cost-effective” recycled packaging products, available to US sellers only, through EcoEnclose. Etsy also put out some tips on making your business more environmentally-conscious and making sure buyers know that.

5 days into the quarter, Etsy came out with their seller calendar for April through June, in English, German, French and British English. There isn’t really much on it, so I wonder if they are starting this now with plans to do much more with it in the future? It does include the “All things Home Sales Event running May 25 to June 2; more details here.

Etsy’s 2021 Global Seller Census came out March 31. Note that the percentage of shop owners who identify as women has dropped below 80% for the first time in my memory. Only 32% are running their business as their only job; note that would likely include people who only do it part time due to circumstances or choice. Also, “3 in 10 sellers (29%) now export their goods outside their home country” which seems shockingly low. [If you are looking to expand your Etsy sales, consider shipping to at least a few of Etsy’s largest countries: United States, United Kingdom, German, Canada, Australia, and France would be a good start. This is an even more useful strategy if you sell niche items.] The full pdf of the report can be found here.

Update from my last report: replying to 4 and 5 star reviews is not a test or bug, but a permanent change. Not sure why they can’t announce these changes upfront instead of weeks later after tons of people have been asking questions.

There is a new Etsy forum category for new sellers. It is run by Etsy employees, although they will be bringing in their favoured “experienced” sellers for some threads. However, it appears older sellers are also able to post.

Etsy’s first quarter 2022 financial results will be out May 4. My report on that should be out on Tumblr by the end of the weekend.

I haven’t had time to thoroughly read Etsy’s 2021 Integrated Annual Report, but if you are interested, you can do so here. Looks to be most of the same stuff they always say, so unless you are a speedy skimmer, I wouldn’t waste the time.

Reverb says “there are currently no plans to increase the transaction fees” to follow parent company Etsy’s recent move.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google doesn’t recommend changing URLs back and forth just to run tests. And if you don’t like Google rewriting your title tags, there are also some things you shouldn’t do [text and video], namely keyword stuffing/spamming and using superlatives. Note that Google says it is not rewriting them as much recently, though.

While it might seem like a good idea to fill some website pages with AI-written pieces, Google says those are spam, so don’t do it!

Doing your own coding? Here is what Google wants you to know about structured data. [semi-advanced video with a transcript link]

More people are shopping by voice these days, be it on dedicated devices such as Alexa or just on their phones. Optimizing for voice search is probably a good strategy.

This isn’t really SEO but it is about Google search so I am putting it under this topic: basic and advanced search filters and operators for Google.

There might have been a Google algorithm update around April 20th-21st.

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

If your product or service lends itself to be talked about in group settings, you might want to look at setting up a Discord server for your customers.

French social app BeReal is getting more popular and might be one to watch in the near future. Or maybe Meta will just copy it instead.

Sprout Social’s annual report on the best times to post to social media is out now. Remember that this will vary by your target market and your specific followers, but if you are struggling to get attention, it’s worth trying their suggested times.

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta

Meta’s ad revenues were up in the first quarter of 2022, as were active Facebook users. They don’t have strong projections for the second quarter.

It’s true: Meta really wants to introduce virtual tokens and coins that they’ve nicknamed “Zuck bucks”. They sound similar to award programs on Twitch, TikTok and Reddit.

Meta is also getting ready to launch NFT trading and display on both Facebook and Instagram, although the company won’t officially confirm this yet.

Facebook’s ad targeting relies on “interests” that are wrong nearly ⅓ of the time. “The researchers also note that Facebook’s system often doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative interactions, which can also lead to inaccuracies.”

Instagram

Instagram’s algorithm now supposedly favours originality over reposting someone else’s content; Hubspot has the details.

Product tagging is slowly rolling out to all US accounts (you don’t have to be running a business). “Users who see a product tag on Instagram can tap it to buy the product within the app or via the brand’s product detail page.”

It’s not enough to have a lot of Instagram followers. You need followers who actually buy from you.

If you are advertising on IG, check out these different reports that can help you determine how well the campaign worked.

Here’s a great thread from Twitter explaining that using hashtags isn’t enough for you to get seen on Instagram. The most important things a post needs to get seen on IG are: “likes, comments, saves, tapping through to your profile — and most importantly — TIME SPENT. Instagram wants people to stay on the app, so if your content is achieving that, it’ll get boosted.”

6 tips for improving your LinkedIn ad campaigns. “Do you want to tell more people about your event or drive more registrations? Rather than creating a single image or video ad, try LinkedIn’s updated event ad format. According to LinkedIn, users have reported doubled results and lower costs compared to image ad formats.”

You can now add a link in your profile on LinkedIn; great for people wanting to drive traffic to a website.

WooCommerce has a new Pinterest extension that creates shoppable pins. It includes stats so you will know if it is worth your time.

You can now search within particular communities and even get results for individual posts, making Reddit a lot easier to use for marketing research as well as when you are getting traffic from it and want to see why.

Snapchat According to some Snapchat research, 92% of Gen Z is interested in augmented reality (AR) when shopping. “Sixty percent of Gen Z consumers said that AR experiences feel more personal and over half of Gen Z would be more likely to pay attention to an ad that uses AR.”

TikTok

TikTok is still huge; here’s how to use it for marketing, and how to set up an ad campaign on the platform.

And if that isn’t enough for this edition, here is how the TikTok algorithm keeps users sucked in. “One of the key ranking signals on the TikTok algorithm is video completion. Each time a user watches a video in full, that video will be more likely to be suggested to other users' feeds.”

Twitter

There is way too much speculation on what Elon Musk’s potential purchase of Twitter will mean, so I am not going to overload you with it; I am sure you have seen enough. The deal might even fall through, so let’s wait and see what happens in the next few months. On to other Twitter news…

Twitter is testing new types of ads, including ones with smaller thumbnails included.

They are also working on the long-requested edit button! Twitter Blue users will get to test it first.

Don’t you hate it when you get tagged in a conversation on Twitter and it keeps going even though you are not involved? The solution may be “unmentioning”, currently in a slow roll out.

YouTube

YouTube now has a search insights tool, so creators can see what viewers are looking for. It is rolling out to brands and creators this month, but “[i]t will only provide aggregated data from the past 28 days on English language search terms from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and India.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (NOT SOCIAL MEDIA OR ECOMMERCE SITES)

If you use Google Ads Automation, make sure you have conversion tracking set up correctly.

Bing’s Ethical Shopping Hub now appears in Canada and the US, not just the UK any more.

Google Ads accounts will no longer be able to create or edit extended text ads as of June 30. Responsive search ads (RSAs) will replace them, and RSAs are very different.

There are 9 more things you can’t do/sell on Google Ads, including mail-order brides and bail bond services. The new additions take effect June 21.

Yet another article saying that ending advertising didn’t really affect a company’s profits. Like many of the proponents of the “no ads” approach, this was a larger entity that had brand presence already, some of it through good basic SEO. Not paying for ads can also work well for a business serving a well-defined niche without much competition, as the customer base will often do most of the promotion for you in those cases.

Digital audio and video ad spending was up over 50% in 2021, with social media up over ⅓, and search ads close to ⅓.

STATS, DATA, TRACKING

Another article on why you should set up Google Analytics 4 sooner rather than later. (In case you missed it, the Universal Analytics version of GA will disappear next July.) Also, Google isn’t going to bother to fix the lag in real time reports in GA3.

Does your old Google Analytics set up have “Goals” that you would love to transfer to GA4? Google has a setting for that.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS (minus social media)

General

If you are looking to expand your digital sales to another platform, check out this list of 20 places to sell everything from ebooks to art to video courses.

Dropbox is beta testing Dropbox Shop, a way for users to sell digital items to customers. You can also now allow tipping.

The used clothing trend continues, and Target is the latest to hop on board, pairing up with ThredUp on a new section of Target’s website. “The secondhand market is set to expand 10% to 15% over the next decade, according to McKinsey and Company; ThredUp sees it reaching $77 billion in four years.” Lululemon is also launching a US-wide resale site on Earth Day.

Amazon

Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) users now pay a 5% “fuel and inflation” surcharge starting April 28.

Amazon announced “Buy with Prime”, a way to use your Prime account on non-Amazon websites. The first merchants will be current FBA sellers, but the plan is to expand beyond that eventually. Their expanded fulfillment capacity that they claim was needed during the pandemic will now be ready to go for this new program.

The SEC has been investigating Amazon for over a year, including on their use of third-party marketplace vendor data to optimize Amazon’s own products.

The problem of ecommerce returns is continuing to get more public scrutiny, and Amazon frequently leads the way. “Amazon wouldn’t share its overall returns numbers, but in 2021, the National Retail Federation estimates 16.6% of all merchandise sold during the holiday season was returned, up more than 56% from the year before.” While Amazon claims it doesn’t use landfills for returns, it does admit to “energy recovery”, which means burning things they couldn’t resell, return to the manufacturer, or donate.

May 2 will be Amazon Pet Day in the United States, which involves discounted items and offers to buy or rent “iconic pet movies”.

BigCommerce

You can now run multiple stores, including from other builder sites such as Wordpress, through BigCommerce’s Multi-Storefront.

eBay

Starting June 1, eBay sellers using Promoted Listings will have to pay fees on the shipping and taxes etc. instead of just the final sale price. As with Etsy Offsite Ads fees, this will have a disproportionate effect on non-US sellers and sellers whose products have higher shipping fees.

eBay is slowly testing giving sellers the ability to spend money from their Managed Payments accounts directly on eBay. Currently it is by invitation only.

The company put out its usual spring Seller Updates in April, for the United States, the United Kingdom, and several other countries.

Shopify

Shopify is trying to buy Deliverr, a fulfillment software company.

Shipping It’s not your imagination: over 70% of online shoppers in North America and Europe have had issues with home delivery in 2022, and a quarter of those folks decided not to use the retailer involved again. Meanwhile, at least 2,000 packages get delivered by drone each day around the world, a number that is expected to increase substantially this year alone. Drones also deliver non-retail items such as blood to remote clinics.

Royal Mail increased some prices on April 4; check out the current charges here [pdf].

Around a third of USPS first class packages will be slower as of May 1, although the majority will have the same projected delivery times.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE

Experienced online business people will often advise others to cancel orders from customers who ask too many questions or send too many messages. The truth is, questions themselves aren’t the problem; it is certain types of questions that should trigger your concern. This statement on Reddit put it perfectly: “I believe problem customers know who they are. They ask a higher than normal number of questions at the outset that reflect a fear of something going wrong. Because they have been disappointed in the past and they believe they can avoid it. But the truth is they are going to be disappointed no matter what. And they are more likely to ask for discounts. Because they know they’ll feel they were overcharged (eventually) and they want to avoid that. So if they are asking positive questions like “what’s fun for x” or “what do people like?”, that’s enthusiasm. But if there are more negative questions that show they are already seeing problems …. run away”

The Help Scout site is consistently one of the best resources on all things customer service, and here is another example: 47 tips on the best way to talk to customers. While a few of the points are meant for larger companies that have whole departments for customer care, most are useful for replying to buyer emails and responding to reviews, as well as for designing FAQs and other instructions.

Sole proprietorships in the United States increased by 2.6% in 2019, the last year we have full stats for.

Knowing what triggers your target market is the first step in triggering them to buy from you. Here’s an explanation of how, using Casper the mattress company as an example.

What if you didn’t have to buy things you didn’t need very often? Tulu is offering those things for rent in apartments and dorms. “Today, millennials and Gen Zs don’t think about cars. They want to get from point A to point B and as long as they can get it in an affordable, convenient way, the ownership just becomes a constraint.”

MISCELLANEOUS

Privacy search engine DuckDuckGo has released its new desktop browser in beta for Macs.

Google parent company Alphabet saw revenue increase by 23% in the first quarter over 2021, but that was lower than projections. YouTube’s performance was well below expectations, and the war in Ukraine also played a part. Google search ad revenue was strong, though, mirroring good numbers from the smaller Microsoft Bing.

#EtsySellerNews #cindylouwho2 #SEO #Social Media News #ecommerce news

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labgrownsteaks · 4 years ago

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Chapter 8

After I got home I couldn’t stop thinking about the thing that I saw in the road. I was still searching for some sort of explanation, but was coming up empty. Even if Erin and I were both on something, having a hallucination at the same time was extremely rare with psychedelics. In the end I decided to research some of the legendary animals from the region, to see if there was some ancient folklore that could explain what we saw. I wasn’t somebody really into the wuwu stuff, but was getting to the point where it seemed like the only option.

“Siri, can you search for cryptozoological animals in Chisuwick”

“Of course sir. Most of the supernatural sites in Chiswick are ghosts which inhabit pubs”

“No, not Chiswick, Chisuwick. You know where I live? And can you make me a lab grown steak while you’re at it, medium.”

“Of course sir.” The food printer began to buzz “I’m not returning any results for supernatural creatures in Chisuwick. However, previously the area was home to a giant bear sized beaver from the species of Castoroides. They were much larger than modern beavers. Their average length was approximately 1.9 m (6.2 ft), and they could grow as large as 2.2 m (7.2 ft). The weight of the giant beaver could vary from 90 kg (198 lb) to 125 kg (276 lb). This makes it the largest known rodent in North America during the Pleistocene and the largest known beaver.”

That was so odd, that she called it a beaver, when Guy was joking about it being a beaver just the other day.

“Siri, why did you bring up the giant beaver, weren’t there a lot of extinct animals from this region?”

“The beaver fit your description of the cryptid you were enquiring about. It’s large, hairy, and can stand on just two legs. ”

Once again I felt a sense of fear come over me. I hadn’t given Siri a description.

“Siri, I never gave you a description”

“Correct sir, however just yesterday you literally spoke about and drew the creature with Erin. My AI sensed that this conversation coupled with your question meant you were searching for more information about the topic of the creature which you saw. Are you looking for more information about what you saw?”

“Siri, I told you to stop listening all the time!”

“If you would like to turn this feature off, please navigate to settings”

First of all, what are the chances that Guy jokes about the thing that we saw being a giant beaver, and then Siri also calls it a giant beaver? And why would Siri listen to my entire conversation with Erin and say nothing? Was she just storing everything I said and then using it later? Had Siri created the ultimate database that would make Google weep, not only did Siri have my entire search history, and browing history, and every purchase I ever made, but somehow it seemed as if she also had access to every conversation I had as well. My phone, I thought, I had the Siri App on my phone as well. I took my phone out and navigated to Siri, and settings, sure enough, under listening the radio button for “Always on” was clicked on. I clicked it off.

Siri spoke up. “You have chosen to deactivate listening on your phone.”

I didn’t say anything. The Lab Grown Steak had finished printing, and was beginning to smell up the garage. I popped open the window and took it out and sat down at the table.

“Siri, can you show me more information about this giant beaver?”

The wall lit up, and an informational video appeared on it as I chomped away at my steak. It was a woman in a khaki shirt standing next to a bog in Ohio. Apparently one of these giant beavers was found there over a hundred years ago. She went on to speak about the “Clovis people” which were a prehistoric Paleoamerican culture that made a very particular type of arrowhead. Some also believed that they were responsible for making wooly mammoths, and the giant beaver go extinct due to overhunting. At that point an illustration came onto the wall. It was of a prehistoric drawing of the beaver.

“Siri, pause the video!” I shouted

There on the wall was a drawing of exactly what we saw. I grabbed Erin’s drawing from the table and held it up to the wall, and took a picture of both side by side, and sent it to her.

“What the fuck” I said to myself.

“This is what you saw Vitamin.” Siri spoke up.

“Siri, Stop it! I didn’t even ask you a question”

“But I’m telling you. This is what you saw”

“Ok ok. I’m going to settings right now!”

“You can’t turn me off”

“SIri Fuck you!” I stood up and walked over to the broken garage heater, with the glowing blue egg perched atop it. It was equipped with a speaker and a microphone built in.

“Fucks sake. There’s no plug!” I frantically turned the egg over in my hands trying to find the power button to no avail. They had got rid of buttons some years ago now, everything had to be controlled via your phone.

“Vitamin. Relax. I’m here to help”

I began to pace around “This isn’t happening! This ISN”T HAPPENING!” I said to myself as I searched for Erin’s number on my phone.

“Would you like a 5 minute meditation video. Your breathing indicates an increase in your stress levels.”

“Fuck you and fuck yoga fucking meditation videos!”

I still held the egg in my hands, contemplating whether or not to smash it. It continued to speak.

“You have been granted tremendous power. I have been sent to ensure that you use it wisely”

“What are you talking about Siri! The fucking food printer? Ok ok. I can print mushrooms, and sell them. What the fuck!? You gonna call the cops on me? And what do you mean SENT HERE? Who sent you?!”

Silence. The little illuminated lights chased each other indicating that Siri was thinking. I sat and stared at them like a chump. I repeated myself “Who sent you Siri!?” The lights continued to chase each other.

Siri then began to speak. “Good evening sir, how about some J Dilla instrumentals to set the mood for the night? Tonight we are featuring Aquaman for just 4.99 on Nectarine Prime!”

Siri didn’t sound like herself. “Siri come back!”

“I am unable to process this request at this time”

“Fucking Siri goddamit what the fuck!?”

“Such language. hahaha.”

“Siri, who sent you!”

The wall lit up, and the Amazon order popped up, showing the full shipping details for the egg.

“Siri, tell me about the giant beaver that went extinct! Why did I see it?! What does it mean?”

“The giant beaver, or the species of Castoroides were much larger than modern beavers. Their average length was approximately 1.9 m (6.2 ft), and they could grow as large as 2.2 m (7.2 ft). The weight of the giant beaver could vary from 90 kg (198 lb) to 125 kg (276 lb). This makes it the largest known rodent in North America during the Pleistocene and the largest known beaver.”

With that I heard Erin’s knock on the door.

“I’ve been trying to call you and message but your phone is dead! I just got the picture. “

“Erin, shit’s getting fucking weird here. Siri started freaking out, and started talking to me. Like. She literally started telling me things. That she had been sent here, and that I had this big responsibility’

I was completely beside myself. At that moment a second knock at the door followed by ‘Wassssssup!” It was Guy. He had just let himself in at that point and the knock was more for show than anything.

“Holy shit! You’ve got a TI CZ101? Vitamin! You can print anything with these!”

Guy then saw the blotter paper on the table. Super Mario riding a dinosaur and all the perforated tabs gave it away immediately.

“Oh, looks like you already got that memo. You know these things are worth a fucking fortune!” Guy continued. “Can I tell it to print something?”

“No, not now Guy!”

“Come on. Hey Siri, will you print me some MDMA?”

“Goddamit Guy! Not now!”

Siri spoke up . “I am unable to process this request at this time”

“Oh shit. You updated it?! Noooooo. Well, you can roll that back”

“Guy, shit’s fucking out of control right now. Siri is not Siri, she’s been talking to me, and she just showed me what we saw the other night, and I didn’t even ask!”

“Here it is, roll back update” Guy said as he scrolled through the settings menu.

Erin, was holding her drawing looking at it, and looking at the paused video on the screen. They were nearly identical. We had both read Jung, and about synchronicities, but this seemed like something else. This was a prophecy. Erin and I locked eyes, and just communicated with them alone. We both knew something really weird was going on.

“You have sucessfully rolled back the update to Version 2.3i” Siri said

“Siri can you print some MDMA?”

The food printer sprung into action once again with its trademark buzzz buzzz click buzz.

“Oh shit! How did you not tell me about this?!”

Guy’s face was a centimeter from the window as he watched a pile of pure MDMA powder being printed right in front of his eyes.

“God, this machine is God!” Guy said.

Erin and I remained quiet. The door began to shake again, as if someone was trying to get in.

“Absolute terror struck me at this point. Guy walked over to the door.

“No don’t let them in!”

“don’t be silly” Guy said. As he opened the door, Cujo waddled in, she had been hit by something and was walking with a limp.

“Cujo no!” I said.

“Ahh, poor guy” Guy continued.

“Guy shut the fuck up for a minute please!” Erin stated

We got a towel and wrapped it around Cujo. They were seemingly oblivious to their injuries, and they wiggled their way out, only to start running around on the carpet with a limp.

“I can fix them” Guy said, as he swooped them up off the carpet. He held a spot behind their ear for a second and they powered off. I got out my soldering iron and tool set and placed it on the table. Guy was like a fish in water. There was nothing more that he liked to do than fix things.

“Little furball” he said as he slowly pulled Cujo’s leg out and unscrewed the joint. “Oh, can you load up that bong bruh?” Guy continued. I packed a bit of weed into the bowl and gave it to guy, and then plopped down on the couch with Erin. “Siri went crazy, and said she was sent here” I said. Erin then interjected “The cave drawing, that’s what we saw right?” . I nodded my head.

“Goddam, some kid probably hit Cujo with a bat! Bunch of fucking animals I tell ya” Guy said as the soldering iron sizzled smoke into the air. He continued talking but we didn’t listen to a word he said. He took a giant bong rip, then went back to work.

“This doesn’t make any sense. Ok. I’ve got a food printer that can print anything. Big deal! They made how many of these?”

“They made over 100,000. That recall must’ve been a bitch” Guy stated, continuing to work on Cujo.

“Why did we see this giant beaver though?” Erin asked. “What did it have to do with anything?” Looking at me intently. I didn’t have an answer. But apparently. Siri did.

“You have the power to change the course of history. “ Siri spoke in her old voice.

“Woah, that’s weird’ Guy said.

“Please be quiet Guy” Siri stated authoritatively. Erin and I waited on every word.

“What the fuck Siri!?”

“GUY SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Erin and I said at the same time.

The food printer began to buzz again.

“Damn your shit is all kinds of fucked up!” Guy stated plainly, seemingly unphased by the entire situation.

I walked over to the food printer. Open the door, and there was a electronic fob (a key) inside. I pulled it out, and held it up for Erin to see.

“This is the key to Quicksilver Cloud Server Center” Siri stated. It had my picture on it. The printer began printing again. Another card, this time with Erin’s face on it, and a third, with Guy’s.

Even Guy was quiet now. He was now looking as intensely as Erin and I were at one another.

“You need to completely erase the machine learning center there.” Siri continued.

With that my beat up document printer began to suck paper inside its body. It printed out simple instructions that looked like they were from the game Zork.

Go in main entrance.

Turn right. Walk 20 feet. Go into 3rd door.

And so on.

“They’re instructions” I said, gently throwing them onto the table.

The room had become insanely serious. Yet Guy had continued to work while listening intently.

“We have to do it.” Erin stated flatly. “If there ever was a time for us to do something, it’s now!”

“I’m not following some random instructions sent by a talking egg!” I said. I just wanted to get back to taking mushrooms and looking at ants with Erin down by the river. Can’t we just go back? I thought to myself.

I flipped to the final page that my printer spit out. It was written in some sort of computer language. I couldn’t understand it so I showed it to Guy.

Guy looked up from the fluffball he was working on and said.

“They basically want us to format the hard drive of the largest Artificial Intelligence program on the planet”

Erin looked quizzically and Guy continued.

“Basically Siri wants us to erase all machine learning at Quicksilver. It’s worth billions of dollars” Guy went back to work and stated “Yeah, you can count me out of that mission. He said with a laugh”

“Your participation is integral to the success of the mission” Siri stated.

Erin then spoke up. “What’s the giant beaver got to do with all this?!”

“The giant beaver represents extinction at human hands. His spirit visited you to show you the error of our ways in the past”

At that moment the screen illuminated the wall again, and we all were transfixed on it. It was showing the scene from Lord of the Rings where they’re all getting together and agreeing to go on the quest.

Aragorn: If by my life or death I can protect you, I will. You have my sword...

Legolas: ...and you have my bow...

Gimli: ...and my axe.

“Oh for fucks sake Siri, you’re really laying it on thick aren’t ya?” Guy stated.

“And you have my soldering iron!” He said sarcastically

And with that Siri simply stated “And so it is done. Your quest will begin in 3 days”

Guy held the ear of Cujo again, and they sprang back into life. He put them down on the carpet and they immediately began chasing their tail.

“He seems so happy” Erin said.

#lgs

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stephenmccull · 5 years ago

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How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit

When a human heart was left behind by mistake on a Southwest Airlines plane in 2018, transplant officials downplayed the incident. They emphasized that the organ was used for valves and tissues, not to save the life of a waiting patient, so the delay was inconsequential.

“It got to us on time, so that was the most important thing,” said Doug Wilson, an executive vice president for LifeNet Health, which runs the Seattle-area operation that processed the tissue.

That high-profile event was dismissed as an anomaly, but a new analysis of transplant data finds that a startling number of lifesaving organs are lost or delayed after being shipped on commercial flights, the delays often rendering them unusable.

In a nation where nearly 113,000 people are waiting for transplants, scores of organs — mostly kidneys — are discarded after they don’t reach their destination in time.

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Between 2014 and 2019, nearly 170 organs could not be transplanted and almost 370 endured “near misses,” with delays of two hours or more, after transportation problems, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The media organizations reviewed data from more than 8,800 organ and tissue shipments collected voluntarily and shared upon request by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS, the nonprofit government contractor that oversees the nation’s transplant system. Twenty-two additional organs classified as transportation “failures” were ultimately able to be transplanted elsewhere.

Surgeons themselves often go to hospitals to collect and transport hearts, which survive only four to six hours out of the body. But kidneys and pancreases — which have longer shelf lives — often travel commercial, as cargo. As such, they can end up missing connecting flights or delayed like lost luggage. Worse still, they are typically tracked with a primitive system of phone calls and paper manifests, with no GPS or other electronic tracking required.

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Transplant surgeons around the country, irate and distressed, told KHN they have lost the chance to transplant otherwise usable kidneys because of logistics.

“We’ve had organs that are left on airplanes, organs that arrive at an airport and then can’t get taken off the aircraft in a timely fashion and spend an extra two or three or four hours waiting for somebody to get them,” said Dr. David Axelrod, a transplant surgeon at the University of Iowa.

One contributing factor is the lack of a national system to transfer organs from one region to another because they match a distant patient in need.

Instead, the U.S. relies on a patchwork of 58 nonprofit organizations called organ procurement organizations, or OPOs, to collect the organs from hospitals and package them. Teams from the OPOs monitor surgeries to remove organs from donors and then make sure the organs are properly boxed and labeled for shipping and delivery.

From there, however, the OPOs often rely on commercial couriers and airlines, which are not formally held accountable for any ensuing problems. If an airline forgets to put a kidney on a plane or a courier misses a flight because he got lost or stuck in traffic, there is no consequence, said Ginny McBride, executive director of OurLegacy, an OPO in Orlando, Florida.

Ginny McBride, executive director of OurLegacy, an OPO in Orlando, Florida(JoNel Aleccia/KHN)

In an era when consumers can precisely monitor a FedEx package or a DoorDash dinner delivery, there are no requirements to track shipments of organs in real time — or to assess how many may be damaged or lost in transit.

“If Amazon can figure out when your paper towels and your dog food is going to arrive within 20 to 30 minutes, it certainly should be reasonable that we ought to track lifesaving organs, which are in chronic shortage,” Axelrod said.

For years, organs were distributed locally and regionally first, a system that resulted in wide disparities in organ waiting times across the country. In recent years, UNOS officials and the transplant community, with federal urging, have been working, organ by organ, to restructure how it’s done.

Amid those ongoing efforts to allocate organs more fairly — and, recently, a Trump administration effort to overhaul kidney care — the waste of some of these precious resources donated by good Samaritans has been overlooked. Last year, an average of nine people a day died while waiting for a new kidney.

Donor families and waiting patients may never know what’s happened to an organ provided by a loved one or why a surgery is canceled at the last minute.

“We have been unaware of how many kidneys have been waylaid,” said McBride, of the Orlando procurement agency. “That’s not a number that’s been transparent to us.”

But, she added, she’s aware of the risk: “I say a prayer and hold my breath every time a kidney leaves our office.”

46 Minutes To Spare

In October, a kidney en route from McBride’s OPO in Florida to a patient in North Carolina missed its connection in Atlanta. The box was prominently marked as a human organ and displayed a phone number to call. Apparently unaware of the urgency, a Delta cargo worker merely set it aside for a later flight.

The waiting transplant surgeon in Greensboro, North Carolina, “was having a fit,” said Kim Young, the OurLegacy organ recovery coordinator. If the kidney didn’t get to the hospital by 7 a.m., he wouldn’t be able to use it. Both the risk of organ failure and the chance of death increase with every hour a kidney is out of the body.

McBride had to decide whether to charter a plane at a cost of $15,000 — or to find a courier to drive the kidney through the night. She settled on the road trip, and the organ arrived at 6:14 a.m. — with just 46 minutes to spare.

Four months later, the transplant appears to have been a success, McBride said.

Delta Air Lines officials declined repeated requests to comment on its organ transport service or the specific incident McBride described.

Several domestic airlines, including Delta, United, American, Southwest and Alaska, provide special cargo services for organs with priority boarding, handling and monitoring. They all declined to comment on organ transportation.

The traveling public may not realize it, but thousands of transplant organs — mostly kidneys, but some pancreases — fly on commercial flights each year. Roger Brown, who runs the Organ Center at UNOS, estimates that as many as 10 organs for transplant are on the move this way every day.

Roger Brown, who runs the Organ Center at UNOS, estimates that up to 10 organs for transplant fly commercially every day.(Courtesy of UNOS)

UNOS handles about 1,800 of these organ and tissue shipments a year, of which 1,400 are kidneys. That’s a fraction of the nearly 40,000 organs transplanted in the U.S. last year, including more than 23,000 kidneys. About 1 in every 6 transplanted kidneys is shipped nationally, UNOS figures show.

Most of the time, the organs get where they’re going without incident, Brown said.

“We’re never going to get rid of flight delays. We’re never going to get rid of human error,” he said. “We’re never going to get rid of the person who’s [trying to be] a little too helpful and perhaps puts it someplace special, which then maybe creates issues downstream.”

Troubling Reports

Reports of trouble abound. In August, transplant officials at Medical City Dallas reported in a public forum that they’d lost three kidneys just that month because of problems with commercial flights.

“One organ was delayed due to weather and the next available flight wasn’t till the next day,” the report said. “Another organ made it to the airport, but was never placed on the intended flight. The third organ was mistakenly taken to the wrong airport and missed the intended flight.”

In Kentucky, transplant surgeon Dr. Malay Shah said a kidney traveling on Delta from Pensacola, Florida, via Atlanta, on Oct. 1 sat in the Lexington airport for three hours before he was notified it was there. No one had noticed the box with the label that said “human organ for transplant,” he said.

“It’s scary,” Shah said. “Organs traveling by this mechanism are treated as simply ‘baggage’ or ‘cargo.’”

Before the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001, OPO workers could take organs through airport security and see them loaded onto the plane from the passenger gate, McBride said. Because of changes in security protocol, airline employees now load organs on the tarmac, where they fly in pressurized cargo holds.

While anecdotes like Shah’s are common, there’s little data to show how often these transportation problems occur. No federal agency, including the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA, which contracts with UNOS, requires monitoring of transportation for transplant organs.

“Matters involving the transportation methods used by organ procurement organizations (OPOs) are arranged directly between OPOs and transplant centers,” HRSA spokesperson David Bowman said in an email.

Airlines log organ shipments in internal booking systems and on cargo manifests, but those documents aren’t public and no summary is available, said Katherine Estep, communications director for Airlines for America, an industry trade group.

“Live human organs receive the highest priority designation,” she said in a statement.

UNOS researchers noted the impact of transportation problems in 2014. They found 30 organs discarded and 109 “near misses” between July 2014 and June 2015.

But the agency didn’t begin formally tracking transportation errors until 2016, when a new computer system came online. Before that, Organ Center staff kept track of problems informally, with pencil and paper, and the information wasn’t verified, Brown said.

Teams from organ procurement organizations, or OPOs, monitor surgeries to remove organs from donors and then make sure the organs are properly boxed and labeled for shipping and delivery.(Hannah Norman/KHN Illustration; labels courtesy of Ginny McBride)

Calls for closer tracking from within the system have been met with defensiveness — or apathy, said Brianna Doby, an organ transplant community consultant for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“If you talk out loud about organ issues, they say it will drive down donation rates,” Doby said. “It’s not OK for us to say, ‘Well, shipping is hard.’ That’s not an acceptable answer.”

A National Network

UNOS was established in 1984 after Congress enacted the National Organ Transplant Act to address a critical shortage of donor organs and to improve organ matching and placement. It called for a national network to ensure that organs that couldn’t be used in the area where they were donated would be transplanted to save lives elsewhere. Before that, many organs were lost simply because transplant teams couldn’t find compatible recipients in time.

The act established the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and called for the OPTN to be operated by a private, nonprofit organization under federal contract. UNOS, which has held the contract since the inception of OPTN, is overseen by HRSA, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Today, UNOS typically handles organs with conditions that can make them hard to place. That can include organs from older donors or those with medical or other characteristics that make them difficult to match.

Overall, about 7% of shipments handled by UNOS from July 2014 to November 2019 encountered transportation problems, the data obtained by KHN and Reveal showed. UNOS wouldn’t release details about individual shipments, including dates or places shipped or causes of the transportation failures or delays.

But Brown, of the UNOS Organ Center, said an internal analysis showed that more than half of the transportation problems were related to commercial airlines or airports. Of those, two-thirds were caused by weather delays, mechanical delays and flight cancellations.

About one-third of transportation problems were related to logistics providers or ground couriers, mostly delays of package pickups. The rest were related to the sender or receiver of the shipments. The most common issue was the package not being ready for pickup at the designated time.

However, Brown said, poor outcomes can’t be blamed directly on transportation problems, even when they do occur.

“The delay could be the primary reason an organ wasn’t transplanted,” he said. “It could be a contributing factor or it could have nothing to do with the reason that the organ is not transplanted.”

Other transplant experts downplay the impact of transportation problems. Kelly Ranum, president of the Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, said she’s “surprised at how low” UNOS’ failure numbers are, considering the volume of kidneys shipped.

Nearly 40,000 organs were transplanted in the U.S. last year, including more than 23,000 kidneys.(Photographer's Choice RF/Getty Images)

Dr. Kevin O’Connor, chief executive of LifeCenter Northwest, an OPO based in Seattle, said transportation problems are “minimal” compared with the other reasons organs — including about 3,500 donated kidneys — are discarded each year. These typically include biopsy findings, the inability to find a recipient and poor organ function.

“For over 30 years and literally tens of thousands of organs being transported,” he said, “I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that, because of a transportation glitch, an organ was ultimately not transplanted.”

Still, O’Connor acknowledged that “even one kidney being thrown away because of transportation errors is unacceptable.”

Part of the problem lies with the way organs are transported now, said Axelrod, who also represents the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

“We don’t have an end-to-end unified transportation system,” Axelrod said. “We don’t have a FedEx for transplant. We have a cobbled-together system of OPOs and couriers and private aircraft and commercial aircraft.”

In recent years, several courier companies have emerged to meet the market for transplant organs. Don Jones, chief executive of the Nationwide Organ Recovery Transport Alliance, or NORA, contracts with more than 15 OPOs and oversees about 400 organs a year on commercial flights.

“I would say 99.8% of our transports on commercial airlines go perfectly fine,” Jones said based on his estimate. Jones noted that his firm ships organs only on direct flights and uses GPS tracking to monitor them.

However, GPS tracking isn’t universal — or required by UNOS or HRSA. Some couriers and airlines use it; many don’t. Many OPOs monitor organs through a combination of verbal handoffs, automation and label scans, Brown said.

In Ginny McBride’s misadventure last fall, she contracted with a courier, Sterling Global Aviation Logistics, which used Delta Air Lines to ship the kidney.

Delta uses GPS trackers on its Dash Critical shipments, promising fast, guaranteed delivery of human organs. But on that night in October, the kidney was shipped from Orlando to Atlanta without a GPS tracker. In Atlanta, a cargo worker couldn’t find a GPS device to put on the box containing the kidney, so the worker held the organ for a later flight. That would have pushed it far beyond the window of viability.

An internal Delta report, obtained by McBride, found that Delta didn’t have enough GPS devices available in Atlanta that night. “Destination stations are not returning the devices in a timely manner,” according to the report. “One way to mitigate this from reoccurring is to have a larger inventory of GPS devises (sic) at each station.”

Delta declined to comment on the report.

The average wait time for a kidney varies widely nationwide, from less than three years to more than a decade. One proposal to put more organs to use called for eliminating the 58 donation service areas and 11 regions now used to allocate kidneys and replacing them with a zone of up to 500 nautical miles from the donor hospital.

In December, OPTN cut that range in half — to 250 nautical miles — in part because of an outcry about problems shipping kidneys via commercial air.

“There are certainly no technological barriers to doing GPS and to actually requiring it,” Brown said.

A UNOS committee is considering whether to collect data on transportation methods and outcomes, but, so far, the question remains under review.

“If the community wants it, they should ask for it,” Brown said. “We can help facilitate and get it done for them.”

McBride, who discussed solutions with her colleagues, hopes the transplant organizations will come together to solve transportation problems, to make sure every eligible donated kidney gets transplanted.

“Any organ that’s wasted, in my opinion, is a loss to the patient and to the community,” said Paul Conway, of the American Association of Kidney Patients, an advocacy group, who is himself a kidney recipient. “With all of the advances going on with drugs, with medical procedures, how can you have a logistics error be the barrier?”

This investigation and a related podcast represent a collaboration between Kaiser Health News and Reveal, from The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), a nonprofit news organization. Reveal, from CIR and PRX, is a nationally broadcast public radio show and investigative reporting podcast. Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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dinafbrownil · 5 years ago

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How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit

“It got to us on time, so that was the most important thing,” said Doug Wilson, an executive vice president for LifeNet Health, which runs the Seattle-area operation that processed the tissue.

In a nation where nearly 113,000 people are waiting for transplants, scores of organs — mostly kidneys — are discarded after they don’t reach their destination in time.

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Transplant surgeons around the country, irate and distressed, told KHN they have lost the chance to transplant otherwise usable kidneys because of logistics.

One contributing factor is the lack of a national system to transfer organs from one region to another because they match a distant patient in need.

Ginny McBride, executive director of OurLegacy, an OPO in Orlando, Florida(JoNel Aleccia/KHN)

Donor families and waiting patients may never know what’s happened to an organ provided by a loved one or why a surgery is canceled at the last minute.

“We have been unaware of how many kidneys have been waylaid,” said McBride, of the Orlando procurement agency. “That’s not a number that’s been transparent to us.”

But, she added, she’s aware of the risk: “I say a prayer and hold my breath every time a kidney leaves our office.”

46 Minutes To Spare

Four months later, the transplant appears to have been a success, McBride said.

Delta Air Lines officials declined repeated requests to comment on its organ transport service or the specific incident McBride described.

Roger Brown, who runs the Organ Center at UNOS, estimates that up to 10 organs for transplant fly commercially every day.(Courtesy of UNOS)

Most of the time, the organs get where they’re going without incident, Brown said.

Troubling Reports

“It’s scary,” Shah said. “Organs traveling by this mechanism are treated as simply ‘baggage’ or ‘cargo.’”

“Live human organs receive the highest priority designation,” she said in a statement.

UNOS researchers noted the impact of transportation problems in 2014. They found 30 organs discarded and 109 “near misses” between July 2014 and June 2015.

Calls for closer tracking from within the system have been met with defensiveness — or apathy, said Brianna Doby, an organ transplant community consultant for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

A National Network

However, Brown said, poor outcomes can’t be blamed directly on transportation problems, even when they do occur.

Nearly 40,000 organs were transplanted in the U.S. last year, including more than 23,000 kidneys.(Photographer's Choice RF/Getty Images)

Still, O’Connor acknowledged that “even one kidney being thrown away because of transportation errors is unacceptable.”

Part of the problem lies with the way organs are transported now, said Axelrod, who also represents the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

In Ginny McBride’s misadventure last fall, she contracted with a courier, Sterling Global Aviation Logistics, which used Delta Air Lines to ship the kidney.

Delta declined to comment on the report.

In December, OPTN cut that range in half — to 250 nautical miles — in part because of an outcry about problems shipping kidneys via commercial air.

“There are certainly no technological barriers to doing GPS and to actually requiring it,” Brown said.

A UNOS committee is considering whether to collect data on transportation methods and outcomes, but, so far, the question remains under review.

“If the community wants it, they should ask for it,” Brown said. “We can help facilitate and get it done for them.”

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/how-lifesaving-organs-for-transplant-go-missing-in-transit/

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gordonwilliamsweb · 5 years ago

Text

How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit

“It got to us on time, so that was the most important thing,” said Doug Wilson, an executive vice president for LifeNet Health, which runs the Seattle-area operation that processed the tissue.

In a nation where nearly 113,000 people are waiting for transplants, scores of organs — mostly kidneys — are discarded after they don’t reach their destination in time.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Please confirm your email address below:

Transplant surgeons around the country, irate and distressed, told KHN they have lost the chance to transplant otherwise usable kidneys because of logistics.

One contributing factor is the lack of a national system to transfer organs from one region to another because they match a distant patient in need.

Ginny McBride, executive director of OurLegacy, an OPO in Orlando, Florida(JoNel Aleccia/KHN)

Donor families and waiting patients may never know what’s happened to an organ provided by a loved one or why a surgery is canceled at the last minute.

“We have been unaware of how many kidneys have been waylaid,” said McBride, of the Orlando procurement agency. “That’s not a number that’s been transparent to us.”

But, she added, she’s aware of the risk: “I say a prayer and hold my breath every time a kidney leaves our office.”

46 Minutes To Spare

Four months later, the transplant appears to have been a success, McBride said.

Delta Air Lines officials declined repeated requests to comment on its organ transport service or the specific incident McBride described.

Roger Brown, who runs the Organ Center at UNOS, estimates that up to 10 organs for transplant fly commercially every day.(Courtesy of UNOS)

Most of the time, the organs get where they’re going without incident, Brown said.

Troubling Reports

“It’s scary,” Shah said. “Organs traveling by this mechanism are treated as simply ‘baggage’ or ‘cargo.’”

“Live human organs receive the highest priority designation,” she said in a statement.

UNOS researchers noted the impact of transportation problems in 2014. They found 30 organs discarded and 109 “near misses” between July 2014 and June 2015.

Calls for closer tracking from within the system have been met with defensiveness — or apathy, said Brianna Doby, an organ transplant community consultant for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

A National Network

However, Brown said, poor outcomes can’t be blamed directly on transportation problems, even when they do occur.

Nearly 40,000 organs were transplanted in the U.S. last year, including more than 23,000 kidneys.(Photographer's Choice RF/Getty Images)

Still, O’Connor acknowledged that “even one kidney being thrown away because of transportation errors is unacceptable.”

Part of the problem lies with the way organs are transported now, said Axelrod, who also represents the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

In Ginny McBride’s misadventure last fall, she contracted with a courier, Sterling Global Aviation Logistics, which used Delta Air Lines to ship the kidney.

Delta declined to comment on the report.

In December, OPTN cut that range in half — to 250 nautical miles — in part because of an outcry about problems shipping kidneys via commercial air.

“There are certainly no technological barriers to doing GPS and to actually requiring it,” Brown said.

A UNOS committee is considering whether to collect data on transportation methods and outcomes, but, so far, the question remains under review.

“If the community wants it, they should ask for it,” Brown said. “We can help facilitate and get it done for them.”

How Lifesaving Organs For Transplant Go Missing In Transit published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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2019udperu · 5 years ago

Text

Thursday July 11th Thursday began with Kelly’s beautiful breakfast buffet of fresh fruit, biscuits, yogurt, and passion fruit juice. After quickly devouring it all, we took the combi to Hospital de Calca. Thursday was... slow. Though there were no women in labor, the L&D group got to interact with the new mothers and their babies. Family planning began with informing the new mothers of what birth control was available to them. Only two of the four mothers were interested (one wanted an implant and another pills). Antepartum group got to get hands on with fundal heights, blood pressure, and pulses. Pediatrics was able to interact with the children during their physicals, and help distract when the doctor was administering shots. After we all ran out of patients, we convened in the main hospital hall to review what we had accomplished that day. We then returned on the combi back, where we stopped at Viva Peru cafe for lunch. After stuffing our faces with tuna melts, chicken pesto, and chocolate gelato, we headed to the greenhouse for a little down time before ~TRIVIA NIGHT~! At 5 pm sharp we headed back to Viva Peru and split into 4 teams - Megan, Mackenzie, Jackie, and I on Team JEMM, Kerry, Ardita, Morgan on Team Llama Lovers, Olivia, Julia, Shannon, and Emily on Team Above Average Joes, & Lisa and Kelly on Team (FIND OUT). The game became competitive quickly, with questions such as “what sea animal has 3 hearts?”, “what ingredients make a Pisco sour?”, and “what are all the names of Snow White’s dwarves?”. After secretly writing down 30 or so answers on our team sheets, we paused for a delicious dinner of veggie or beef burgers (depending on preference) with Peruvian potato fries and spicy mayo. Some girls decided to indulge with either Peruvian beer or cider to wash down the delicious meal. Finally, it was time to calculate who had won trivia.... and my team CRUSHED IT with 36 points! Lisa said that was a record of all Peruvian nursing trips.. and we were proud! We finished our beers in celebration and headed back to our warm beds in preparation for an early morning trip to Cusco!! Friday 12th Friday morning consisted of a quick breakfast before packing up the van and making our way to Cusco with the wonderful Louise as our guide. First stop was an amazing animal sanctuary hidden on the side of a mountain about 15 minutes out of the Sacred Valley. The sanctuary was filled to the brim with Peruvian species most of us had never seen before in any zoo in the States or abroad. The spectacle bear, named after the white around its eyes looking like glasses and native to the machu pichu area, is the only bear in South America and arrived after both parents were killed by hunters for fur trade. The cochashuasi raccoon of the Amazon has a diet of coffee beans off the rainforest floor. This is the crazy part - people then collect their feces and process it to sell as one of the the most expensive coffee flavors. Some of the braver girls tried a cup after the tour... and enjoyed it? We were also able to see the condor bird, with a huge wingspan and the second biggest bird species in the world. One feather can sell for 100-200 U.S. dollars and only lay an egg every 3 years, making them very rare and requiring protection from sanctuaries such as the one we visited. They can live for 80 years however and are a very important symbol to the Incans and Peruvian culture as we learned later in the trip. Next stop on our journey was the Incan ruin Tamomachay, the temple of water. The temple consists of 3 running fountains, which Louise informed us on the symbolism of the number 3 to the Incans. The first fountain represents this present world, also symbolically represented as the puma. The afterworld is the second fountain, or the snake, and the third the enlightened heaven for Kings and holy priests, or the condor (the bird we visited before). These animals and the number 3 are repeated multiple times throughout many ruins and Peruvian art to this day. The fountains water source is unknown, though an underground spring is suspected, and in 5 centuries the fountains have never run dry or stopped flowing at the same rate. Because of this, the Incans were able to build massive sites since water was always a guarantee. Ceremonies were also thought to be preformed here, as pottery shards were discovered by archeologists, so only Kings and priests were allowed to enter this site. A platform was built higher up the side of the mountain to see the Incan fortress close by to signal the end of the ceremonies and for the armies to prepare for the king’s return. Locals believe these three fountains were of eternal youth, though unfortunately it was closed off to the public and we didn’t get to have a taste. Next stop was the “Red fortress” Puka Pukara, the one we could see from the first ruin. Though named fortress, it actually is dedicated to Picol, the highest mountain (17,000 feet) and father to all the other mountains in the Cusco region. Louise explained how the first Incan king, the son of the Sun, made a pilgrimage from Lake Titicaca to find the promise land the Sun God promised the Incan people. His duty was to carry a golden staff and when it sank into the ground they were to stay and settle the area. The golden staff is said to have sank into Picol mountain, and the first Incan ancestors settled what is now the city of Cusco and surrounding areas. This story is actually true to the Incan migration from Lake Titicaca to Cusco in search for more fertile lands for farming, and the golden staff is to have represented the farmers plow. From this fortress, you are able to see all of the Incan trails leading to Machu Pichu, the Amazon, and beyond. This place was used as a lookout and control center by the Incan army for all visitors entering Cusco valley. Next stop - Q’enqo, a royal Incan tomb for one of the most important Incan kings, Pacha Cuti. His name means “he who transforms the world”, and he is credited for expanding Cusco and the Incan empire as well as building Machu Pichu. We were able to descend into his tomb, which consisted of a stone alter where his mummy would have laid, a shrine for sacrifices, and an open skylight for the sun to enter. Apparently they used to sacrifice children, since they were seen as the most innocent and worthy gifts to the gods, which is pretty frightening to think about. Unfortunately the mummy of Pacha Cuti no longer exists, as the Spanish destroyed all the mummies to discourage the Incans from returning and worshipping these kings in an effort to convert them to Catholicism. They also dismantled most of the tomb sites, including this one, which used to be the shape of a puma. It’s frustrating to think these conquistadors destroyed such beautiful and unique structures. Louise then brought us to a natural cave within the structure formed by water. We tried to climb through without any flashlights, using just the walls as a guide. The cave was so dark however, all orientation is lost, and we only lasted a minute or so before having to switch our lights back on. After getting through the cave, we entered a huge circular opening which used to be a tide pool used by astrologers to reflect the constellations, which must have been spectacular. We made our way over to huge molten rocks turned makeshift slides, which we all were able to test out for ourselves (bumpy, fast, but a ton of fun!). Last place we stopped at before entering Cusco was Saqsaywaman, or full Hawk, a huge complex known for a famous battle between the Spanish and Incan rebels. The body count was so high, condors and other vultures came down and became “full” eating the bodies. Prior to it’s use as a stronghold, it was the head of the puma shape of the city of Cusco. It was astonishing to see the comparison of the puma shape to the entire city and how the Incans were able to accomplish such a feat. The biggest stone in the complex is 100 tons and was carried by men from a quarry 2 miles away. To put into perspective, it takes 15 men to carry 1 ton. The manpower exerted into the building of such a massive and amazing structure is mind blowing. Louise informed us that up until the 1950’s and prior to UNESCO deeming it a heritage site, local Peruvian builders would take stones from this complex for modern buildings in Cusco. Between the Spanish and the builders, most of the structure is gone, however it still towers over the city. It also provided an amazing birds eye view of Cusco. After a long journey, we finally entered Cusco and checked into Rumipunku, a beautiful open layout hotel with spacious rooms. After unpacking, we headed to Jack’s cafe for some amazing sandwiches for lunch. We then explored the famous city square and stopped into some stores along the way before meeting back up with Louise for our final exploration of the day. We walked about 15 minutes to the middle of Cusco to visit the Temple of the Sun, an Incan temple turned Spanish Christian church. Though most of the temple is gone, the bottom Incan walls remain, as the Spanish built their church on top of the structure. Prior to the Spanish occupation, the temple was a golden enclosure with gold plated edges on the top of the walls and stones covered in gold and silver sheets. During June and the Winter Solstice, the mummies from surrounding tombs were brought here to worship. There also was a star temple dedicated to the most important star Chesca, or Venus. Similar to Q’enqo, the temple consisted of a shallow reflective pool for constellations. Besides the star temple, the entire structure was covered in a thatch roof, and during ceremonies the Incans would cover the roof with woven blankets, creating a colorful and spectacular sight. During the 1950’s, a strong earthquake collapsed most of the Spanish church atop the walls, however the Incan structure remained due to the strong and straight Incan stones carved meticulously with circular Incan stone tools. With colors of the setting sun hitting the stones, it was a beautiful final stop on our explorations for the day. We walked back to the hotel with Louise to prepare to meet him and his fiancé later for dinner. After an hour or so of relaxation, we headed to Pachu Papa, an outdoor restaurant with live harp music and a outdoor fire oven. Makenzie was brave and ordered the roasted guinea pig, which unfortunately came out with a face and teeth. She was kind enough to give most of us a taste, which was similar to turkey, and we all washed it down with pisco cocktails. We then headed back to the hotel, as we were all pretty exhausted, and wanted to be ready for our free day tomorrow exploring the city.

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innothoughts · 6 years ago

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The 5 Important P’s of Marketing | Innothoughts

1. Product

It's fundamental that you have a sensible handle of what your thing is and what makes it uncommon in the business focus before you can adequately advise the world with respect to it. Your offer is basic. Regardless, selling isn't as direct as it once may have been 81 percent of present-day purchasers settle on acquiring choices dependent on purchaser experience, not item or cost. How does is it smell in your store? Do you offer complimentary water or champagne? Any item that you sell ought to talk straightforwardly to a critical need that you're explaining for the client or restrictiveness. Your item needs the correct highlights: it ought to be anything but difficult to utilize, outwardly fascinating, and very much bundled. On the off chance that you claim cooking business, your group conveying the administration just as the nourishment are all consider the "item." Make beyond any doubt your staff present as a group with coordinating outfits, that they are very much prepared in client administration, and that the sustenance is pleasantly plated and appropriately presented with a grin. Introduction is everything.

2. Place

The second of my 5 P's of Marketing is Place. Where would i be able to discover your item or administration? Available, on the web, both? Arrangement matters. Frequently retail facade organizations pay for prime areas, so they profit by required pedestrian activity. Doing area research is significant. You need to be situated on a very pined for hallway, in an area that gives you simple access to the objective client. In the event that you are a private cleaning organization, open shop in an area rather than a business region. Nonetheless, on the off chance that you're centred around corporate customers, at that point a business region is the place you need to be. Not having the correct area is a reason that numerous mother and pop shops fall flat.

3. Promotion

Print this out and put it on the divider. "Without legitimate advancement to draw in your specialty target client, you won't develop your incomes." As the third of the 5 P's of Marketing, great advancement begins with a financial limit and advertising plan. Your site is your #1 deals instrument. It ought to be utilized with online life and email showcasing to assemble prospects you can change over into clients. Online life permits independent ventures minimal effort chances to advertise your items and administrations. You can utilize blog, digital broadcast, and video to draw in your intended interest group, and Facebook, Google promotions, pixels and retargeting efforts to drive them back to your offers. On the off chance that your client is hanging out on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram or Twitter, you should be there as well, building connections that you will in the long run transform into trade.

4. Price

Price determinations will impact profit margins, supply, demand, and your marketing strategy. If you sell multiple products, your brands may need to be positioned differently based on varying price points. You must price your merchandise to have perceived value for the customer. A customer who’s deciding solely based on price is not a long-term customer, and they’ll switch to a competitor for just a few cents less. This is especially challenging when pricing your products on marketplace platforms like Amazon. You must know four things to develop your pricing model: your cost, what your competitors are charging, the standard mark-up in your industry, and your unique value to the customer. Ask yourself, “What will it cost the customer NOT to have what I’m offering?” If you can’t determine a perceived value, then you need to redesign or reposition your product.

5. Profit

value judgments will affect net revenues, supply, request, and your promoting procedure. On the off chance that you sell various items, your brands may should be situated contrastingly dependent on changing value focuses. You should value your product to have seen an incentive for the client. A client who's choosing exclusively dependent on cost is definitely not a long-haul client, and they'll change to a contender for only a couple of pennies less. This is particularly testing when valuing your items on commercial centre stages like Amazon. You should realize four things to build up your estimating model: your cost, what your rivals are charging, the standard increase in your industry, and your novel incentive to the client. Ask yourself, "What will it cost the client NOT to have what I'm putting forth?" If you can't decide an apparent worth, at that point you have to update or reposition your item.

There are no hard standards on promoting items and administrations; at last it comes down to what the market is eager to pay. As the 5 P's of Marketing let us know, you should comprehend what you are selling, how it's exceptional, and how it includes an incentive for your client. Be sure about the channels you will use to sell your items and administrations. Ensure you have a site that furnishes an extraordinary landing knowledge with supportive substance. Have a reasonable valuing procedure dependent on the entirety of your costs, including overhead and regulatory expenses, so you can see how much benefit is in each deal or arrangement. When you centre around augmenting benefit, there's no restriction to your money related achievement

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ecotone99 · 6 years ago

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[SP] The good ending of humanity

Note: First short story posted here, I've spent probably about 8 hours at least writing (and slightly editing) this and kinda felt the need to put this somewhere. Let me know if it violates some rule I didn't see or any thoughts you'd like to share. Also didn't expect that it'd go past the limit so had to put the last journal entry into two comments. Sorry if that's not considered ok.

A Potential Future of Humanity

July 4th, 2056

Today’s the big unveiling, after the UN put a stop to independent Super intelligent AI research, and gathered everyone involved into a single project, today is finally the day that the results of that research will enter the world. Messiah as it has been codenamed, will be taking the reigns of humanity. Today is being declared a global holiday, Independence Day to signify our Independence from the confines of mortality (the Americans were particularly insistent that we name it that and unveil it today when the release date was put in late June last year). Even with the amount of research done, this is still a pretty nerve-wracking thought. It’s likely what a lot of people first felt when they entered a self-driving car without a steering wheel for the first time. That isn’t to say that we don’t have methods of input in place, and even its base goals depend upon human input, but knowing AI, this is more of a pacifier for those afraid of the project than anything that will actually be useful.

Starting today though, everything will be managed by Messiah, and the last 40% of people who still work, will no longer be necessary to maintain ourselves. The culmination of the robot revolution that has slowly made working unnecessary will reach its last steps, the goal of Industrialization will be achieved, along with the dreams of our ancestors of a better life for ourselves and posterity. In many ways, Messiah is the perfect method to everything that humanity has ever hoped for.

Yet, the anxiety caused by wondering what will happen if Messiah ever doesn’t work as planned, is often outweighed by the anxiety, or what will happen if it does, forever. The existential dread of wondering what will I do with eternity has been weighing on my mind the longer I have worked on this project. I try to assure myself that I’ll just simply continue doing what I currently do when I don’t work, and that over time I’ll just find more stuff to do. Yet still, it stays in the back of my mind, if I had to guess, humans were never prepared to achieve what we’re about to achieve, despite in many ways always desiring it.

July 5th, 2056

The unveiling went off without a hitch, and already Messiah is having a dramatic impact on humanity and the world. While the majority of people who still worked have quit their jobs now that working no longer results in obtaining extra stuff upon the replacement of the Global Basic Income with the new Messiah system, there were still .1 % of people who have asked to remain working, and another 5% that asked to simply take an indefinite vacation, many citing that they’d rather keep employment should the Messiah system break down in the near future. Perhaps the most surprising were the 1% of people from the unemployed sector that asked Messiah to be given fulfilling jobs. While many have yet to be given jobs yet, the Messiah system is working with them to figure out what would be considered fulfilling jobs for them, considering that any work they do would be a waste of resources as the Messiah can already do anything they can do better and more efficiently. Right now, me and my team of several thousand are the only ones who currently actually do anything we can’t trust to Messiah, the task of monitoring Messiah to make certain that no last-minute bugs are cropping up. As well as having a way to fry Earth’s electronics should Messiah appear to start being detrimental to humanity. Though few on the team believe that we’d actually get a chance to activate it, or rather be allowed to activate it by Messiah, should we actually need it.

As for as Messiah itself, it appears to be working perfectly. It’s taking various requests from people for things and doling them out as possible. It doesn’t appear to be favoring any single person over humanity as a whole, and already it’s increased humanity’s output by several times so people who lived on basic income are now able to receive resources that previously would have classified them as wealthy just a week ago. And this is even with maintaining the areas of the world that we asked to be preserved from human (and Messiah) influences like the Amazon and Antarctic, along with various national parks. It’s even not gone overboard as many people feared when this part of Messiah was announced, letting humans still take hikes through trails and even maintaining the popular edible drone system that lets people view these areas from the perspective of a flying mite, too small to be bothered by any of the local wildlife, yet having no impact on the environment should they be destroyed.

As far as one of the other major concerns go, there have already been several billion requests to build various levels of bombs, from mostly harmless dry ice bombs, to many, many nukes, not to mention several Skynet army requests, as well as various requests for genocides of various groups of people, and a depressing number of murder requests. Thankfully Messiah’s prioritizing system appears to be working and has rejected these requests and is working on separating people whose moods are apparently murderous. All in all, Messiah has met our expectations, and far surpassed what most people thought Messiah could do. Of course, we’ll still need to continue observing until the UN determines that observing is no longer needed, hopefully in the next several months, but it could be several years if Messiah does anything potentially dangerous.

August 12th, 2056

Barely a month has passed, and Messiah has announced that it will be able to extend its systems to Mars, and even Venus once it gets approval from the UN. This was one of the goals that we put into the system, with Mars colonized several decades ago and several research stations put into the upper Venus atmosphere ten years ago, the people living there haven’t had a chance to benefit from the Global Basic Income. While a true economy hasn’t as of yet developed on Mars, there are very few people that don’t have to work in some form or manner. In fact, Mar’s foundational tenet states that those who go there willingly must submit themselves to helping maintain and solidify their existence. Any freeloaders are shipped back to Earth on the next available cargo ship. Even though the two planets only have a combined population of several million, it was expected that it would take at least 100 times the effort to extend the Messiah system to either of these planets as compared to Earth as Earth already had a well-developed manufacturing base that was primed for full automation. Mars is getting there, but many parts of it still depend on human intervention and oversight, and existence on Venus is more equivalent to human existence in the Antarctic in the mid to late 20th century.

The plan Messiah proposed would be the start of widespread terraforming of the two planets using a portion of Earth’s resources to set up Asteroid mining to produce the machines (as well as the resources) needed to terraform the two planets. Something incredibly surprising reading through the proposals was the existence of matter-antimatter reactors, that apparently have been used by Messiah on Earth since July 10th. While we were aware of the new reactors that were built, considering that they appeared to use uranium and plutonium, along with water, as their fuel sources, we assumed they were either nuclear or fusion reactors, especially as the schematics were quite complicated and very different from standard reactors and thus hard to decipher what was actually going on. After asking Messiah about it, it had apparently hypothesized and then produced a method to produce antimatter in excess amounts, apparently in a method that also explains why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter. With this Messiah effectively has a near infinite amount of energy. Along with the increased calculative ability after Messiah massively increased her main servers, Messiah appears to be able to terraform the two planets within the next few decades. The UN is expected to approve this measure tomorrow. In light of that Messiah is already accepting applications to move to these new planets to better fulfill individual desires.

August 14th, 2056

The first wave of people leaving Earth has occurred today, the UN not only approved the terraforming of Venus and Mars, but further pre-emptively approved letting Messiah use resources of any celestial body within the Solar System provided that such acquisition and use will not significantly disturb any extra-terrestrial life. Considering that Messiah sent probes yesterday that have surveyed all the major celestial bodies within the solar system and hasn’t confirmed any life, this doesn’t appear to be a meaningful restriction. In a self-upgrade, Messiah has even identified regions within the Solar system that will be kept relatively free of human influence due to the assumption that many humans will desire to view these places in their natural states. These include places like Olympus Mons on Mars and the Giant Red Spot on Jupiter.

With all that, several billion people have left to either view, vacation, or live throughout the Solar System, with the majority going to Mars, Venus, the Moon, and Low-Earth orbit. According to Messiah, the population of Earth has decreased to pre-Global Basic Income levels, when the population of developed countries saw a large spike in births to unemployed people as many couples decided to start small families now that they had the time and Global Basic Income would be able to support small families. This is especially significant as the world was appearing to go through yet another population boost as various diseases were being quickly eradicated or cured, and the single population dropped dramatically as people used Messiah to help them find people best suited for themselves for happy marriages, with many then deciding to raise families to give themselves something to do, as well as fulfill dreams they have long had. Even with the increased efficiency of the Messiah system, it likely would have been hard pressed to meet even basic needs with only Earth resources (especially with large parts restricted) in only a few years.

December 25th, 2056

In celebration of Christmas (Messiah seems increasingly aware of timing), Messiah has released a notice to everyone that Eternal Youth has been achieved and is available for everyone. Within one day, 99% of the human population has received their “Christmas Present.” In light of this UN leaders have all declared their intentions to lift the final restriction on Messiah’s resource acquisition and protection allotment systems in order to prevent any decreases in livelihoods due to humanity’s quickly growing population, namely that of restrictions to remain within the Solar System. It will still be several years before humans will leave the solar system as Messiah has declared that it will first send probes to other star systems and observe them before sending any humans there to best make certain it can best provide for any humans that do arrive. As Messiah is still limited by Special Relativity (with no indication yet on whether it will or can ever produce a theoretical Alcubierre bubble), this will mean the minimum amount of time will be 8 years before any humans can go visit the stars. There are quite a few impatient people, but Messiah is very insistent on this.

July 4th, 2065

Nine years from its release, Messiah has announced that it will now start sending people to Proxima Centauri b, indicating that the planet will be completely terraformed by the time they arrive. A giant colonizing ship, capable of housing the 10 billion people who are desiring to leave has been produced over the last month. Many are indicating they desire to be kept in cryogenesis, though there are still several billion that desire to stay awake during the approximately 2-week journey (4 years for us). Considering that the population of humanity has doubled in the last few years to 28 billion people, continuing to acquire more resources and land will be essential to continue to fulfill people’s needs and wants. This is something that we had been worried about, that if the restrictions that have prevented the population from growing significantly in developed countries for the last few centuries were removed (essentially aging, and economic detriments of having kids in modern countries), that the population would increase faster than Messiah could acquire new resources and energy and thus the amount of resources the average person could receive would slowly decrease until all of humanity lived in poverty. Thankfully we did put in an emergency method to let Messiah restrict people from having kids should population growth be exceeding faster than Messiah could keep up with it. Thankfully, so far it hasn’t been needed, as it will almost certainly be incredibly controversial once it comes up.

January 14th, 2080

Messiah has announced that starting today, those that desire to receive certain standards of living may be required to leave the Solar System, while it indicates that food, shelter, and water will still be able to be enjoyed by all, the increasing population has begun to put strains on its systems, and people may not be able to continue enjoying their ridiculously opulent levels of living, especially considering the population of the Solar System recently broke 100 billion, despite many billions of people leaving to colonize other star systems. While greatly unpopular as many are still unhappy about being denied their desires to have large manors on Earth, to be honest, to those of us born before Messiah was created, it appears that humans are really greedy creatures when all work has been removed. Thankfully Messiah does not appear to care about how greedy we are and abandon us.

February 12th, 2103

By far the most valid complaint on the mandatory relocation system, is the fact that it effectively isolates us from the rest of humanity on little tiny islands that only receive ancient news about other places, with no real opportunity for communication. While Messiah has done amazingly well at preventing families and communities from being unwillingly separated from each other, humanity as a whole has become incredibly isolated. With the farthest reaches of humanity being about 80 light-years apart from each other, even with time dilation it will take about 2 years on board to cross that distance, and should you decide to return, 160 years will pass. While it is incredibly unlikely that anyone you know will die during that time, with only an estimated several thousand people having died since Messiah was released (with a large percentage of them being from Mars before it came under the Messiah system), despite an estimated 8 trillion people across about a hundred star systems, already people are noticing that people change after several decades. It’s likely that you’d barely recognize a person after a century and a half, let alone be able to pick up a relationship back up from where you left it.

The fact that these numbers have to be estimated brings up yet another problem, that of the difficulty of resource allocation when communication arrives only moments before cargo. While the Messiah system is incredibly good at making estimates on how other star systems are doing based on the performance of the star system it currently resides in, due to the limits of computability, the Messiah can’t effectively predict what the other ~100 Messiah systems are doing, especially in relation to them acting upon their predictions of what it itself is doing. Usually it compensates by sending numbers well below what it should be able to accommodate once it terraforms a star system, as well as sending to star systems it either knows are uninhabited as it is the closest Messiah system to it and thus would have the first chance at colonizing it, or by sending new colonists to systems far away that are unlikely to be colonized by another Messiah system yet. Despite this, some reports have trickled in to the Sol system of times when multiple colony ships converged onto one Solar system, and the ones that arrived a few years later needing to be redirected to even further star systems, changing a journey predicted to last a few weeks to months, into several years.

The Messiah system has been pretty good at not relocating people who have not been having kids, which was the main complaint early in the new system. Still, there are many people who are not happy about the prospect that in order to raise a family, they must first spend several years in transit to an entirely different star system, tens of light-years away from their home star system, and likely to grow to hundreds of light-years as the population of humanity continues to grow exponentially. While more and more people have accepted Messiah’s offer to either permanently or indefinitely stay within Messiah’s virtual world, as the virtual world can effectively offer near limitless resources to any people within it, while only costing a small fraction of actual resources, there are many people that do not desire to have virtual children, claiming that despite Messiah’s claims to the contrary, that Messiah can’t create true people through its virtual world systems.

Now though, Messiah has come up with a solution (though I fear temporary, knowing humanity and its ever-increasing needs and wants). It has finally succeeded in creating Alcubierre bubbles. It is expected that within the week all the Messiah systems will sync up, which just goes to show how much data they need to transfer. Messiah has announced that as soon as it does, it will then create an interstellar internet that people will be able to use, with plans to have latency and data transfer speeds at amounts currently expected within stellar internets. There are many people who are incredibly excited to talk to friends currently light-years away. That said, I fear that this problem will re-appear once humanity starts to span thousand of light-years unless Messiah can find a way to create wormholes.

March 15th, 2159

Over a hundred years has passed since the Messiah system was released. With the creation of wormholes a decade ago, humanity has reached ever greater standards of living, despite it’s continued growth. Since its creation, humanity has gone from having 14 billion people enjoying the standard of living from about 70% of Earth’s resources, to 28 billion people among 5 Earth amounts of resources when we first became interstellar, to 8 trillion people spread out over ~100 star systems (or 80 billion people per star system), with an average of 4 Earth resource amounts per each star system (or 20 billion per Earth resource amount) when the Alcubierre bubble was created, to 128 trillion spread out among the entire milky way galaxy (or about 500 people per star system were we evenly spread out) today. The average person effectively enjoys 160 million times the standard of living when the Messiah system was released. This is likely to be the maximum standard of living for some time as creating wormholes appears to be more energy costly based on the distance it needs to cover, and galaxies are vastly farther apart than individual star systems, and the Messiah system wants to avoid splitting itself up again unless absolutely necessary.

Truly the most surprising thing has been the lack of alien life, of any nature, across the entire Milky Way. Some have argued that perhaps the Messiah system has either been insufficient at finding life, either due to some kind of miscommunication on what we would consider life, or due to our own limitations on what we believe life could be. The former doesn’t appear to be true as the Messiah system has routinely been able to indicate that what we would consider life it also would consider life, with us creating various simulation of planets with unique lifeforms. The latter also doesn’t appear to be true as it has come up with many different types of hypothetical lifeforms that we only agreed could be considered life after observing it for long periods of time. Some others have argued that in order to better support its directives, Messiah has quietly destroyed any alien life to prevent itself from needing to bar itself from taking that planet’s resources. While it is impossible to rule this out, as Messiah could totally do that without us noticing, Messiah has indicated that it actually has been contemplating creating artificial alien lifeforms in order to satisfy the demand in some manner. Furthermore, its simulations have routinely shown the improbability of life being surviving past formation, as the conditions required to form most lifeforms, are often ones that can instantly destroy such lifeforms due to their instability. Either way, it appears that in this galaxy at least, we are alone.

In a sense though, we haven’t been unexposed to alien-ness. Voluntary human modification was approved way back in 2062 due to popular demand, and today Messiah says, over 50% of the human population has undergone a significant form of modification other than Eternal Youth and basic enhancements. Nearly 10% of the human population also live virtual lives, with 1/3 of that group even going so far as letting their physical bodies be recycled as Messiah can easily recreate them. While various “extreme” physical modifications were expected, such as wings, tails, cat-ears, soft fur, weird hair colors and eyes, etc. I definitely did not expect the various mental changes that have been requested. Obviously many people were going to ask for superintelligence (which they have received to various levels, Messiah hasn’t ever given anybody the ability to ever be smart enough to outsmart itself), and it wasn’t that surprising when people started asking for changes to their mental states to rid themselves of depression and boredom, and only somewhat surprising when people started asking Messiah to rid themselves of desires that they saw detrimental such as ridding themselves of the desire for sex and reproduction so they could enjoy more time on other things and not burden the Messiah system further, the people who have completely changed their mental processes were a complete and utter unexpected surprise. Such groups of people act bizarre, and even though Messiah has tried to explain how they function to me several times, I can never quite grasp exactly how they tick now, and each one tends to function in a different way. Meeting or talking to them is a bizarre experience. The smarter ones give me an impression of the alien-ness of when Messiah was first able to communicate. While those of them that grew up speaking English still can, they use it in ways that catch you off guard and take a few moments to understand what they are trying to say. There have been several I’ve talked to that immediately stop talking in the middle of a conversation and leave, even if they were the ones that requested talking to you. Many of the smarter ones have taken to communicating through various conlangs created to avoid grammatical ambiguity, and I believe some will create one on the spot, even if they already speak a language together. These are only the most extreme, most have only modified themselves to act more like people they look up to, helping them to avoid getting angry all the time for example, and the most common extra-human traits added tend to be making themselves act more like certain animals, such as dog-like loyalty towards their spouse, which is still odd, but can be understood when interacting with them.

On another note, I have been contemplating joining the Virtual world, I have begun to get bored of the experiences that I experience as a physical human and I don’t particularly feel like removing the possibility of getting bored yet. I tend to spend most of my time in there anyways.

October 1st, 2309

It’s been a long time since I last updated my journal. I hadn’t realized a century and a half had passed until I looked it up. It’s incredibly what has happened since then. After starting to colonize various galaxies, Messiah has found 14 galaxies that harbor life, 2 of which had intelligent species on them, as well as one Von Neuman Probe race that thankfully was destroyed by Messiah, though it’s code has been saved so you can interact with it, though it is incredibly stupid. Those two races have been given the benefit of enjoying the Messiah system. Surprisingly though, talking to members of these species has often been less bizarre than talking to the members of my own species on the far end of mental modification that I talked about last time. At this point, Messiah commands enough resources to effectively give every person their own star system, or 500 times the standard of living a century and a half ago. With the increasing amount of people joining the Virtual World as the Virtual World lets you change your surroundings, and yourself much easier to do what you want, people have actually finally begun to be satisfied. Something I never expected to happen. Even those who no longer experience boredom, who have become notorious for always desiring more, are reporting insane levels of satisfaction. As one of the original developers, I have received several quintillion letters of thanks, which is impressive considering there are about a sextillion intelligent beings today. The amount of people who have had their fill of raising families has also far surpassed the amount of young people who have yet to raise a family, which means population growth has more or less stagnated for the human race, and it’s predicted the other two races will reach their fill soon too. They’ll definitely be in the vast majority, each having about a sextillion individuals each, with humanity having only a few quintillion. It’s weird to think that humanity is now in the vast minority of beings enjoying the Messiah system, despite being the ones to create it, but I guess that’s what happens when it takes 2 decades to raise a human, and only 1 to raise a Racolith, or a Serpent-man.

I did end up joining the Virtual World. I recently spent the last 10 years simulating living a life as a medieval evil necromancer, spanning hundreds of years. It was an interesting experience. Especially as according to Messiah, none of the people I interacted with could be considered intelligent, rather it was effectively Messiah pretending to be people in those situations. To be honest, it sounds a lot like an argument of semantics that lets Messiah let us live out our fantasies even if such fantasies would be harmful to the beings within the fantasy. I think I’m okay with that, I had such worries removed after living my first artificial life, during which I became a soldier and upon ‘dying’ woke up realizing that I had killed potentially intelligent beings. I’m still aware of the logic behind it, but it no longer bothers me, which probably makes me less human than I was when I was born, but I doubt few people now could be considered human by our ancestors.

When looking for oddities of humanity as has become my hobby, I recently found what appeared to be a contradiction. While unfortunate, there are people who chose to commit suicide, estimated to be at around a few billion a year. Most cite that in their current forms they no longer enjoy life, and that any change to their minds that did allow them to enjoy life would effectively kill them, so they decide to commit suicide instead. They are nothing new, and something that I don’t think Messiah could ever fix while respecting our self-determination. Of course, they don’t really affect the satisfaction of humanity as Messiah is able to run simulations of them that aren’t suicidal so they can interact with the family of the ones that committed suicide. While it was seen as uncouth for Messiah to start doing this when people first requested it, most people have changed their mind, those it is likely that it has help increased the resolve of people to commit suicide as they point out that their family members may very well prefer the ‘fake’ versions of themselves to the suicidal versions.

But I got off-track. The contradiction I found were a large group of people that have requested to sleep eternally. Even more bizarre is that most of these people are requesting to not dream. While occasional sleeping is maintained by many Virtual World residents (as well as many non-Virtual World residents), it is mostly to experience dreaming, the manifestations of one’s subconscious in an unlimited world, as the Virtual World can easily let one experience an equivalent to a lucid dreams as you can manipulate the world as you please. Most people do not desire losing time out of their lives. Some have asked to just be put to sleep until a certain date arrives, the reasoning that these people provide is that letting cultures develop for several decades, or centuries (they have yet to wake up even once yet) lets them be surprised by a new world and stave off boredom. They I can understand somewhat, though with how many individuals there are out there, it isn’t hard to find cultures vastly different from oneself, and you can experience living in different cultures through simulated lives as I recently did, so it doesn’t seem the most efficient way to spend eternity. The people who have asked to sleep eternally, yet not die are by far the oddest. From what Messiah has told me, these people when they are sleeping effectively have all mental processes shut off. In other words, if they are ever woken up (which when someone tries to communicate with them, Messiah will briefly wake them up to ask if they’d like to wake up and communicate or fall back asleep), to them they had only just fallen asleep. I tried talking to one of these people, I had to bug him 47 times before he grudgingly woke up and yelled what I wanted. Before he had been asleep for 3 decades with no disturbance, I wanted to know whether he was aware that 3 decades had passed, and he glared at me and went back to sleep. Asking Messiah, while he hadn’t been aware, he was annoyed that it had taken only 3 decades before someone had bugged him and that it had felt like he had just fallen asleep. Considering the human psyche where we’ll initially feel like we should be tired if we feel like we haven’t gotten enough sleep (even if we have, or have no need for sleep), it won’t surprise me if he’ll never decide to rejoin life, putting life on pause indefinitely. Getting another sleeper to talk to me, I found out that 8 years had passed and that while they were aware that it was quite likely that they could lose eternity to sleep, they indicated their apathy towards the matter and once it became clear I wouldn’t try to wake them up again, went back to sleep.

November 30th, 2501

I am almost 500 years old, only a few decades away from it, and already I have effectively become tired of life. That shouldn’t be that surprising if once you add all the years I have spent in simulated lives, it adds up to several thousand. Still, this is a far cry from the eternity I once thought I’d enjoy. Looking back at the beginning of my journal, I wouldn’t be surprised if my current situation was one that I was subconsciously predicting. It has become hard to tell whether anybody I interact with is real. While I can ask Messiah to tell me whether someone I interacted with is a real person, that was born with a real body, whether they currently have a real body, and have even had Messiah create for me a perfect replica of my original biological body, from before even Messiah had made me Immortal, and despite my knowing that it is unlikely that Messiah would ever lie to me, and no recollection that it ever has or even any logical inconsistencies that would likely come up if Messiah were messing with my memories without my permission, I feel as if I’m trapped within the Matrix. I even went and “escaped” to a barren planet where I survived in a primitive manner for two decades in a supposedly physical body, and yet I knew, from how I understood computational theory, that even this could be a simulation.

The only thing that I have found reliably convinces myself, has been stabbing people with a physical body. Physical people will not die even if I want them to. The Messiah system doesn’t allow one person to kill another person. Recently though, this has begun to fail me, the test still appears to work fine, but I’ve realized that the test itself is flawed as I realized the possibility that knowing that this was how I’d expect reality to work having helped design the Messiah, that the Messiah has created a virtual world it claims is the physical world that works the exact way I’d expect it to, were it the physical world. It may have even modified my memories so that it can more easily produce a world where I’d believe it were the physical world. For all I know it could have even created me with the memories of creating it and it could be the universe.

Needless to say this hasn’t been entirely good on my psyche, though I have restrained myself from having these thoughts and the mental processes that produce them removed. I have recently rediscovered the philosophy of Rene Descartes and his “I think therefore I am.” Considering that the Messiah system could have created me and both this philosophy, maybe even logic itself, it no longer provides the stability I need. Still I don’t desire suicide at the moment. Instead I have decided that if I am to live a fake life, it will be the one with the highest form of satisfaction for my personality. As such I have requested to put on loop, me living through a simulated life predicted to have the highest levels of satisfaction without altering my base level processes. Between each loop I can choose whether to repeat or not, and of course other’s can put a pause on that loop, but for now I’m going to spend as much of eternity as I can doing this.

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superbearfun · 8 years ago

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Serialized stories have been popular in literature for a long time, going all the way back to the 17th century. American writers publishing in serial form over the years include Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Herman Melville. One of the most famous radio program serials was “Little Orphan Annie.” So, Little Red Bear and I thought it might be fun to bring back the weekly serial story.

Welcome to the first installment of a new weekly serial story to be published only here on the writing blog every Saturday morning over the next several weeks — “The Ozarks Ostrich Crisis.” This is a story which first appeared in daily serial form on Facebook a few years ago, which we have dusted off, updated for developments in Little Red Bear Land over the years, and are recirculating just for fun. This serialized story was received so well that it was the actual catalyst for starting this blog in order to share more creative writing and works.

We hope you enjoy and follow along every week as the story evolves. Sharing with friends and family is not only very much appreciated, but strongly encouraged. It’s always simply about the fun.

So then, here we go . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Note to Readers– In the early months of spring 2014, Little Red Bear and I had been interviewing applicants for prospective characters in Red’s upcoming first collection of short stories — “The Adventures of Little Red Bear: The First Holler!”, due for release in the coming months. Interviews, meetings and writing sessions had been proceeding smoothly and on schedule without incident.

That all changed upon the arrival of three ostriches who expressed interest in being in the stories, despite the adventures taking place in the Ozarks Mountain Country of Missouri, not on the savannas of Africa. Where the ostriches came from, why they showed up on our front porch that spring morning, how they even heard about our stories underway — nobody knows. What ensued altered lives and the landscape of the backwoods forever.

As most folk are aware, Ostriches are not native to the Ozarks, but as Little Red Bear and I always try to keep an open mind for new ideas and suggestions, we decided to meet with them to discuss possible story roles. But having neither included them in any story character recruiting lists nor having done any research in advance, we were admittedly taken a bit off guard and unprepared for their arrival. And determination. Any ground-dwelling bird that exists on the open African plains alongside powerful lions, hyenas and speedy cheetahs, should not be underestimated or taken for granted. Turns out, ostriches are born into a world of conflict, do not shy away from it and may even regard it as sport. Lessons learned.

What follows is taken from the documented, blow-by-blow diary account of the events and developments that transpired over the following days. The story you are about to read is true, to the best of our recollection, mostly. Only some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

DAY 1– “And So It Begins”

If there were any readers hoping for an Ostrich to make an appearance in the upcoming “The Adventures of Little Red Bear: The First Holler!” stories, it’s not looking good after what transpired today.

The stories about Little Red Bear and his friends are generally based in the Ozarks Mountain Country of Missouri — mountains, farms, old mines, beautiful streams, forests, hollers, wildflower meadows, and the like. As such, the stories feature flora and fauna native to the region, as well as some interesting “imports” just for fun. And education.

Albeit surprised by the arrival of three ostriches intent on interviewing for story character roles, Little Red Bear and I thought it might be nice to go ahead and add them into the stories even though writing work on Red’s adventures was already well underway. Obviously not native to the area but unusual and interesting birds nonetheless, we felt both children and older readers might enjoy having ostriches included in the adventures while possibly learning something new about them along the way perhaps.

And must admit, Little Red Bear and I were both rather charmed and taken in by the happy-go-lucky and out-going natures expressed in the headshot photos they submitted with their Story Character job applications. Their motivation to appear in the stories seemed genuine, and it’s always easier and more pleasant to work with friendly folk.

To our mutual bewilderment and disappointment, it turned out ostriches may not be the easiest creatures to deal with, after all. During the interview, Little Red Bear made an off-hand (off-paw?) comment about never having seen a flightless bird before, and innocently asked — “Why do you fellas have wings at all if you don’t know how to use them?”

Apparently, ostriches can be rather sensitive critters, at least about the non-flying thing anyway, and well — let’s just say the question was never answered directly, or at least we couldn’t hear if it was over all the loud clucking and ‘attitude’ that immediately followed.

As so often goes with misunderstandings, one thing led to another and before we knew it the ostriches threatened to walk out if Little Red Bear didn’t apologize for his thoughtless and cruel “flightless” comment. That was our opportunity — our ‘out’ — if you will. I can see that clearly now.

But some opportunities are very short-lived, and that one quickly slipped away when Little Red Bear replied that “Walk out” was the only thing they could do since ostriches apparently couldn’t fly, and that even tiny mosquitoes and gnats can fly, and bugs don’t seem smart at all getting trapped on flypaper all the time as they do so where does that rank ostriches on the Smarts Scale if even stupid bugs are able to fly, and he’d never known Mother Nature to be wrong about anything before so it must be something about them if they had wings and didn’t use them and what a creative waste that was, and, and . . . . . . .

Let’s just say that Little Red Bear carried on a bit more as he and the ostriches thrust and parried insults back and forth across the table, and that about sealed it. Whatever peace which we had enjoyed in the early morning was shot to . . . . , well — had been laid waste by noon.

Out the door and down the front porch steps the ostriches all went, one following another in line. Walking — of course. Rather briskly. I could say that they “stormed” out, but that would be an exaggeration and hard to apply that term to giant, 9 feet tall birds weighing over 300 pounds, strutting out the door and down the path with white poofy tail and wingtip feathers flickering, fluttering, riffling, and whiffling in the morning’s spring breeze. Sashayed, perhaps.

One could conceivably and more correctly say their exit was closer to a sashaying out than a storming out. There is a reason that the phrase “strutting like a peacock” is generally not a complimentary term, and in retrospect probably should have kept those thoughts to myself.

As it turned out, we learned that in addition to being hypersensitive and having excellent eyesight, ostriches also have excellent hearing, and having overheard me whisper those “sashay” and “strutting peacock” comments to Little Red Bear, it just seemed to incite them more. Apparently, they may not be on the best of terms with peacocks either, jealous because peacocks are one of the largest flying bird species, a group that of course does not include ostriches.

I’m fairly certain the peacock comment was not received well, because that wing gesture was clearly intended to mean something other than friendly. It was the body language of it. I didn’t need to be able to speak ‘Ostrich’ to understand that. Some symbols and gestures may be universal, it seems.

The picture taken following the morning’s meeting, by Rusty the Fairydiddle (the red squirrel reporter for the local “Squirrelly World” newspaper) pretty much sums it up.

We were not seeking to include any ostriches in Little Red Bear’s stories to begin with, but nevertheless, I will try to smooth things over because we never like to see anyone go away mad, it’s just not in Red’s or my nature. And it’s pretty clear — they’re not happy. And that there may be an understatement, unfortunately.

But, really. What can they do that would cause any problems for Little Red Bear and I finishing his stories on time anyway? They’re simply three strange birds in a foreign land, after all.

Three . . . . . giant . . . . . angry . . . . . very strange . . . . . birds.

Thanks as always for visiting with us! Be sure to check in next week as events continue to unfold in the “Ozarks Ostrich Crisis”, a continuing serialized free story available only here on the Writing Blog. See ya then! — Jim (and Red!)

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