#based off that poll that I said was for “research purposes“

[le-agent-egg]

You did this to yourselves.

I might have another thing related to this but it’s still cooking…

[azuremist]

Alterhumanity and Autism (Script)

During my panel at this year's Othercon, I said that I would publicly post my panel's script, and my survey's results onto my tumblr, for easy archival purposes! (There is no way to submit Google Docs to archive.org that I'm aware of...)

This is the panel's script! What I said before the QnA part of the panel. Once the panel recording is uploaded, I'll reblog with the link to it, as well! The results for the survey will also be posted to this account shortly.

Here is the blurb that I originally wrote for the panel, on the schedule:

"This panel aims to explore the relationship between autism and alterhumanity, by looking at the history, the modern autistic community and what real alterhumans have to say on the topic. Why it is that neurodivergency is seemingly so common in the alterhuman community? Is it correlation, causation, or perhaps something in between?"

And, below is the script itself!

Hi, everyone! I am so excited to be speaking at Othercon this year and I hope everyone else is enjoying the 'con so far. My name is Azure! You may also call me Bede, as I answer to both. I like he/him, she/her and bun/buns pronouns, and I am a multitude of things! I am a demon (a fallen angel if you wanna get technical), and my main fictotype is, you'll never guess who based off my names, Bede from Pokemon. Shoutout to any Pokemonkin listening. I've been active in the alterhuman community for around 5 years now, and was the head and sole mod of ‘From Fictionkind’, which is a zine released in 2022, aiming to explore the experiences of those who have a fiction-based identity. If you are interested, you can download it here. (Send link)

I am a grab bag of disorders and disabilities, most of which I won't list, but what is relevant to this panel is that I am, in fact, autistic. Not only that, but I have done, by all metrics, way too much research into autism, and I am an autistic activist!

To preface: although this panel is going to specifically namedrop and talk about autism a lot, I am sure that a lot of different beings can relate to what I am going to talk about today. Not just other neurodivergencies and disabilities, either. Much of what I am going to be talking about today could resonate with any oppressed being's experiences. I welcome all discussion about the similarities of different experiences with open arms!

But, for the sake of transparency, I am not very good at talking off the cuff. So I am going to spend the bulk of this panel reading from a pre-prepared script. If anyone is interested in a transcript, it is available on Google Docs for viewing! I will send it in the panel chat right now, so that anyone who needs to may read along, for word-processing purposes. (Send link) This also means that I am not going to be looking at the chat a whole lot, so if there's something you'd particularly like for me to see, I encourage you to hold it until the end so that I can be sure to see it and give it the thought and recognition that it deserves. All this being said, I still will be looking at the chat occasionally.

To prepare for this panel, I took a survey polling autistic alterhumans, which was taking responses from March 7th to July 1st, so around 4 months. I was hoping for about maybe 90 participants, but that number was blown out of the water with over 500 responses!! I will be going over those results later on in the panel, and will also be referencing the anonymous freeform responses.

The very last point of my preamble here is to warn that this panel may not be suitable for all audiences. This lecture contains extended discussion of ableism, and, while I try to keep the mentions brief, there will be specific talk of disabled folks, including children, being hurt. If you're unable to handle that at this time, that is absolutely fine. Take care of yourself and have a great con!

This panel aims to explore the relationship between autism and alterhumanity, by looking at the history, the modern autistic community and what real alterhumans have to say on the topic. I hope to, perhaps not explain, but look into why it is that neurodivergency is seemingly so common in the alterhuman community, and whether it's because of correlation, causation, or perhaps something in between.

Now, let's start off with a question and feel free to try and guess: What do fairies, aliens, and crystals all have in common? Do we have any guesses?

The correct answer is that all 3 of these things have been used to try and claim autistic children are nonhuman!

Let's get into the specifics, starting from the top with fairies.

The changeling is a form of fairy found in European folklore. Also referred to as an "oaf" historically, a changeling is a fairy that is left in the place of an identical human child, when they are stolen away by other fairies. This is to say, parents believed that their human child was being replaced by an identical fairy child. There were multiple tricks that were thought to fend this off. When you believe you already have a changeling, though... There were less ways to go about that. Historical records and tales about changelings unfortunately imply that the solution chosen for a changeling child was often times infanticide.

Many modern psychologists now believe that most tales of changelings developed in an attempt to explain disabled children. This includes, but is not limited to, deformities, Down syndrome, Williams syndrome, cerebral palsy, and, of course, autism. The fact that boys are more often born with birth defects lines up with the touted belief that boys were more likely to be taken by fairies.

Furthermore, see "regressive autism". This so-called phenomena occurs when a child appears to develop, quote-unquote, "normally", until they start showing symptoms of autism in their later years. Now, what actually happens in these cases is that they never noticed their child's autistic traits until those later years. But the fact that there is still a name for this sudden perceived shift in an autistic child shows the sheer amount of cases there are like this, even today. Now, imagine how bad it was hundreds of years ago, before we even had a word for autism. This "sudden shift" perspective very much parallels the supposed markings of your child being replaced by a changeling.

Second verse, same as the first: aliens. Although the term "starseed" has been picked up in the alterhuman community as a way to describe one's self as an alien, "starseeds", or "star children", didn't originate in the alterhuman community. Their existence is a theory put forth by Brad Seiger in his 1976 book, titled "Gods of Aquarius". It posits that some humans originated as extraterrestrials, and arrived on Earth through either birth or by taking over an existent human body.

Generally agreed-upon signs that you or someone you love is a starseed, according to believers, include that person feeling like they don't belong, being hyperempathetic (which is a sign of autism, despite what the stereotypes would have you believe), introversion, and... Actually, I'm going to quote this in its entirety. In "What Is A Starseed & 50 Clear Signs You Are One", published by The Spirit Nomad, the first listed sign is, quote, "You are highly sensitive. You easily feel overwhelmed and drained when you are in a place with many people and with intense stimuli – like shopping malls, clubs, and networking events. You might also be sensitive to stimulants like coffee, alcohol and even dark chocolate." Endquote.

You think I'm joking about these things just listing autism symptoms. I'm not!

Finally... Crystals. Crystal children and indigo children are both believed to be sort of the next step in scientific evolution, according to New Age circles. More specifically, crystal children are the newest generation, while indigo children were the first wave, from around the 70s to the 90s. I'll just be calling both of these 'waves' crystal children for the sake of simplicity, but know that they are just two waves of the same thing. Crystal children are believed to possess special or supernatural abilities, such as telepathy. Autistic children having telepathy, as we all know, is the plot of Mob Psycho 100.

Signs that your child is a crystal child include high empathy, being perceived as 'strange' by others or intelligent for their age (see the autistic gifted kid phenomenon), and being sensitive to the point of fussing in crowded spaces. It's also said that crystal children may struggle in socially conventional schools, because of their dislike of rigid authority, being smarter than their teachers, and their lack of response to guilt, fear, or manipulation-based discipline. (Read: indirect communication.)

It is actually a noted phenomenon that many parents, when confronted with a diagnosis like a learning disability, ADHD, or autism, will alternatively label their child as a crystal child. Autism researcher Mitzi Waltz noted this phenomenon, and spoke about it in a 2009 issue of The Journal of Religion, Disability & Health. He suggests that parents recategorize autistic symptoms as telepathic powers to attempt to reconceptualize these autistic traits as a part of a more conventionally positive identity. He also puts into words why this can be harmful, stating that parents could refuse to acknowledge their child's impairments, refuse accommodations, and, quote, "transmit belief systems to the child that are self-aggrandizing, confusing, or potentially frightening." Endquote.

Believe it or not, there are actually MORE examples of myths or conspiracy theories that attempt to explain autistic children as nonhuman. But, I will leave it at those three.

Let's take a brief look into modern media now. Specifically, the "autistic-coded robot" trope. A lot of times, when humans try to write robots, or AI or such, they think that they can just take all essential things that make humanity what it is, and take away a few things. Make them not express empathy, they don't get nonliteral phrases, they obviously speak in monotone. We could sprinkle in a little bit of feeling out of place with humanity for flavor aaaand it's autistic. Your robot is autistic. To name some examples of this trope, think Data from Star Trek, or Zane from Ninjago.

This trope is more or less echoed, beat for beat, with the autistic-coded alien trope. Examples of this flavor of the trope include Peridot from Steven Universe, Spock from Star Trek, or, and I'm sorry for anyone who I'm about to violently throw back into 2016 with this, Keith from Voltron.

Because nonhumanity is so often linked to autistic beings by the culture around us, desiring to be nonhuman or connecting with nonhumanity is now a recognized part of autistic culture. We often feel out of place in neurotypical society. Join autistic spaces, and you’ll see jokes like, “What kind of nonhuman did you think you were as a kid?” (In case you’re wondering, the answer is werewolf for me.) Growing up thinking that the reason behind your autistic traits is because you are secretly nonhuman is a common experience. Jokes about desiring a tail and to purr often go viral within autistic spaces, because they are forms of natural and nonverbal communication that shows those around us that we are happy. The topic of nonhumanity within autistic culture is also talked about within professional settings, such as in Kim Duff’s speech, “The Role of Changeling Lore in Autistic Culture”, at the 1999 Autreat conference of Autism Network International.

There is also discussion of how autistic beings oftentimes connect with animals better than with humans. For example, Temple Grandin is an autistic animal behavioralist who has written extensively on how her being autistic helps her understand how animals feel. For example, she speaks in 2004’s, “Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior”, and in 1997’s “Thinking the Way Animals Do: Unique Insights from a Person with a Singular Understanding”.

In more modern times, we have the 2022 article, “How Autism Connects Me With Animals”, in which Emily Moran Barwick, writes, quote, “I knew how profoundly frustrating, isolating and demoralizing it was to be unable to convey what I wanted to convey. I knew how it felt to never be truly understood. And it broke my heart thinking of what non-human animals were experiencing at the hands of humans; that no matter how desperately and clearly they communicated their terror and pain, they were ignored and discounted.” Endquote.

All of these connections have led to the creation of subcultures created in an attempt to reclaim the dehumanization put onto us. To name one example, voidpunk is a subculture created by tumblr user arotaro in the 2010s, and more or less hinges on this idea. Key points of this subculture include the rejection of the norm, embracing nonhumanity, and comfort in the unknown. In the words of it’s creator, quote, “It’s not the same as otherkin because it’s not really like, “Ah yes, I am a cat/dragon/wolf/that one guy from Homestuck/etc.”, it’s not necessarily something specific, and it’s not necessarily literally believing you’re something other than human. It’s, well, punk. Society puts out a lot of messages about What It Means To Be Human (trademark) that can make a lot of people who don’t completely fit the bill feel lost, broken, alone, or like they’re doing something wrong; Voidpunk is about taking that message of “you’re not human”, making it your own, and throwing it back in society’s face. You say I’m not human? Sure, ok. That’s chill. Why does being Human (trademark) have to be a goal to aspire to anyway? What’s so great about humanity?” Endquote. She then goes on to specifically namedrop neurodivergents as one of the target audiences for the subculture, as well. She also later answers an ask to clarify, quote, “Someone who doesn’t face dehumanization cannot be voidpunk.” Endquote.

So, where does all of this information intersect with the notable number of autistic alterhumans? Well, that’s just the question, isn’t it? Is it possible that alterhuman identity may correlate with those who have identities and neurotypes which are demonized by society? After all, queer beings are common within alterhuman spaces, too. And, if there is a correlation, is there causation there, as well? There are already some terms coined to describe when alterhuman identity is caused or influenced by autistic traits; such as ‘otherspin’, a term for when one’s alterhuman identity is caused / influenced by special interests. Furthermore, ‘altervexo’ attempts to describe identifying as alterhuman out of spite for the dehumanization one has faced. However, to my knowledge, no term has been made or extensive talks had about, voluntary or nonvoluntary, alterhuman identity, as possibly having origins within dehumanization.

So, I set out to have that conversation. As stated at the start of this panel, I ran a survey, mostly promoted on tumblr, from March 7th to July 1st, posing questions to the autistic alterhuman community about their personal experiences, which got over 500 responses! 537, to be exact. I’d like to share the results of this survey with you now. The raw data collected is available here. (Send link) I will also be posting both the raw data, and the script for this panel, to my tumblr, @azuremist, but that’s mostly for easy archival purposes. Now, it’s NUMBERS TIME, baby!

I asked everyone to indicate if they agreed or disagreed with the statements I made. For the statement, “I believe that my autism has influenced my alterhumanity in some way, shape, or form,” 92% of those who took my survey agreed, and 8% disagreed, which is a WILD split. Far beyond notable.

For the statement, “I feel like the way that autistic beings are seen by society has influenced my alterhumanity”, the split is a bit more even, with 72.4% agreeing, and 27.6% disagreeing.

This means that, of those who I polled who agreed that autism influenced their alterhumanity, 78.6% (rounding down) also agreed that the way autistic beings are viewed in society influenced their alterhumanity. This is a rate a bit over 3 in every 4.

This next question is one of the things that I asked more out of personal curiosity, which is, whether or not they feel more safe to be openly autistic in alterhuman spaces, when compared to other community spaces. Of those polled, 89.4% agreed, and 10.6% disagreed, which makes me quite happy! One anonymous being commented, quote, “I generally find that most alterhuman spaces are a lot more accepting of autistic beings than wider society if that makes sense? Going into an alterhuman space, I'm never concerned that it may not be safe or accessible for me.” Endquote. Someone else wrote in that they could testify to the opposite being true, as well; autistic spaces, in their experience, had a higher likelihood of being accepting of alterhuman identities. However, one being who answered ‘no’ to this question stated that they avoid alterhuman spaces for things related to this subject. They list as an example, quote, “Like the refusal of tone tags? I understand not wanting them to be used for you but banning them from the space all together? And also a lot of spaces, despite being accepting of autistic beings, still find a way to hate those beings for being autistic.” Making community spaces safe for autistic beings is an ongoing learning process for everyone involved. So please make sure to consult your local autistic advocate to make sure everything is accessible for those of all neurotypes.

For the next questions, I asked about everyone’s specific experience with alterhumanity. Another question that I asked, mostly out of curiosity, is, “Would you consider alterhumanity, as a subject, a special interest?” 64.8% of respondents answered ‘no’, and 35.2% answered ‘yes’.

The next question, though, is really quite interesting to me. It asks, “If you have any kintypes which originate from a piece of media: Would you consider that kintype's source material a special interest?” 69% of respondents (nice) answered ‘yes’, and 31% answered ‘no’. That’s a pretty close percentage to the question about alterhumanity as a special interest, but with the answers flipped. Indeed, many times in the section where I invite others to talk about their experience, there are respondents specifically namedropping that they believe their special interests contribute to their alterhumanity. Some, but not all, of these instances include a space conceptkin who has space as a special interest, two catkin, with one having Warrior Cats as a past special interest, and the other, cats in general as one, and someone who specifically wrote, quote, “I also feel as though my special interests in some medias have influenced the fact that I identify with both real and fictional species. For example, I have a large number of original characters who are demons and I feel like my special interest in them may have led me down the path of discovering myself as demonkin.” When discussing the subject of autism influencing alterhumanity, special interests were easily the thing that came up the most, other than how autistic beings are seen by neurotypical society.

The final multiple choice question I had asked, “If you have a nonhuman kintype of any kind: Do you experience species dysphoria and/or euphoria?” To this, 85.9% answered ‘yes’, and 14.1% answered ‘no’.

We can compare this to a survey not aimed at autistic alterhumans; specifically, the ‘Alterhumanity and Gender Survey’, as conducted by Eli, at pantomorph on tumblr. These results were posted on July 22nd of 2019, and reported that, in response to the question, “Do you experience species dysphoria?”, 4.9% answered ‘I used to,’ 8.9% answered ‘unsure’, 22.7% answered ‘no’, 36% answered ‘sometimes’ and 27.6% answered ‘yes’. Adding up the percentages of ‘I used to’, ‘sometimes’ and ‘yes’, we get 68.5% of respondents who are certain that they have, at some point, experienced species dysphoria.

This means that, according to these surveys, autistic alterhumans appear to have a higher chance of experiencing species dysphoria, with a 17.5% difference. Though, keep in mind, I included euphoria in my question, and Eli did not. This would certainly require more data to confirm, however, this at least would warrant further polling, in my opinion.

All of this talk about autistic beings and species dysphoria may have you thinking about the fact that autistic beings are statistically more likely to identify as transgender, with some estimates stating that transgender individuals are up to 6 times more likely to be autistic than cisgender individuals! This is because gender is stupid, and autistic folks are not. Multiple respondents to the survey brought this point up. One being specifically wrote in, quote, “Statistically, autistic folks are more likely to know they're trans than allistics, and I support the theory that that's got something to do with autistic beings seeing things without the lens of social cues and societal pressures, including more awareness of who we are and how we see ourselves. … Society is like, "You should be like this," and autistics are like, "But why? It doesn't really make sense, plus I don't fit in to those standards anyway, so why not choose my own path in life?"” Endquote. I definitely agree that the reason so many autistic folks identify as transgender may be similar to, or the same, reason that autistic folks seem to be more likely to be alterhuman.

Hello to all trans autistic alterhumans listening! Call that a triple threat.

Now, the final question that I asked. I listed multiple different alterhuman identities, and asked everyone to indicate which, if any, of the provided labels that they identify with. And, indeed, my hypothesis when going into this question was proven correct. Of the terms that I provided, it was “nonhuman” that most autistic alterhumans identified with specifically, with 74.9% of respondents identifying as nonhuman. Other popular answers to this question included ‘therian’, with 57.5%, and fictionkin with a nonhuman fictional character. Indeed, I did put two separate options for fictionkin, where they could indicate if their fictional kintype was human or not. 45.1% of respondents had a nonhuman fictotype, and 41.2% of respondents had a human fictotype. So, autistic fictionkin appear to have around a 9% (rounding down) higher likelihood to identify with nonhuman fictional characters. Unfortunately, I could not find another survey to compare this statistic against, but it is a statistic we have now, nonetheless.

Furthermore, I specifically listed 3 common kintypes that have been associated with autistic beings, as previously discussed: fairies, aliens, and robots / technology. Of these, techkin was easily the most popular, with 19.9% of respondents identifying as such. Alienkin and fairykin were close in numbers, with 11.2% identifying as alienkin, and 11.9% identifying as fairykin. On the subject of being robotkin, one being wrote, quote, “I do not on a literal, physical level believe I’m a robot, however, tropes related to robots and the way they behave and are treated feel analogous to my own lived experiences, so in some ways it feels as though I experience my life as a robot would.” Endquote.

Which segways nicely into the final question, which is the filled in responses. For this question, I prompted, “If you have anything you'd like to add, please tell me about your experiences involving your alterhumanity and autism.”

Many took the chance to speak on if they felt like their autism and alterhumanity were connected. As previously mentioned, lots of folks mentioned special interests as a factor. Lots of folks also said that they felt the two were connected, but couldn’t explain how, with a common sentiment being that it is a ‘chicken or the egg’ situation. Two different beings whose kintypes are their past lives wrote in, and both said that a hypothetical allistic version of them wouldn’t be able to get memories as easily. Multiple beings also wrote that they felt like the awakening process was made easier due to their autism. They were so used to seeing themselves as different from everybody else, and not understanding social cues, that they were more willing to take on, quote-unquote, “weird” solutions as the source of their feelings. Other commonly-mentioned points include dehumanization as a reason for alterhumanity, autistic traits being seen as similar to animalistic traits, and the possibly-related high rate of autistic pagans and witches.

Something that I didn’t expect going in, but perhaps should have, is the amount of autistic alterbeings who wrote about their struggle to find words to describe themselves. One ghostkin wrote they felt like their nonconformity to their kintype’s typical associated traits (like darkness, doom and gloom, et cetera) was due to their autism, but that they felt they didn’t belong with other ghostkin because of it. And a LOT of folks wrote in saying that they had a lot of trouble figuring out what terminology to use, especially regarding the ever-dreaded ‘identify with’ or ‘identify as’ question. One being wrote in that they see themself as psychological otherkin, but would be more accurately described as having a neurotype-based, or neurology-based, origin, due to their autism. However, this has caused some issues, as it is not seen as a, quote-unquote, ‘valid’ origin. Someone else describes having issues with this because the community does a lot of gatekeeping, and because it is easier to find beings complaining about words being misused than the actual use of words.

Now, there are some responses that I would like to read in full, or mostly in full, for your listening pleasure.

The first one is as follows. Quote. “When I was 6-ish, I started noticing that people treated me a bit like they treated our old Windows ‘98 Dell computer. The computer was inhuman when it worked (and praised for its distance from humanity! “Yes, it can play videos from the internet! Isn’t technology cool?”) and human when it broke down (“He’s getting overwhelmed, give us a sec.” “She’s blinking at me. I have no idea why this is such a difficult task.” “It ate my fucking CD. Stubborn POS.”). It’s a bit frustrating that my autistic traits are only praised when they make me convenient for others to use... I’m self-sufficient, I’m quiet, I’m a fast learner and a thorough researcher, so I rarely need to bother another person to complete the tasks I’m given. But because that’s all anyone ever seems to want me for... It’s a self-fulfilling cycle which is useful for the neurotypicals but exhausting for me, and when it ends in a burnout (inevitable) then I’m finally treated as human, but only because I’ve failed to be the computer they wanted. So I’m a computer when someone’s pleased with me, and I’m human when I’ve disappointed them. You can see why I might like the idea of being a PC more than a person. Also, when something’s wrong, computers’ error messages are both clearer and harder to ignore than a human’s requests for accommodation. This is a bit of a bummer, sorry. The upside is that I’m crazy good at data analysis now.” Endquote. This was excellently put, and I’m sure something that may resonate with autistic techkin.

Another write-in reads, quote, “One does not have to be autistic to be alterhuman or nonhuman, but one does have to be autistic to be my species. My species does not have human neurology, or allistic neurology. To be my species one must be autistic… though it’s more that my species has neurology which allistics will refer to as autism. I could not be my species if I wasn’t autistic.” Endquote. This is a very interesting response, and, to be honest, I sort of wish I knew what this being’s species was so that I could look more into it. It’s almost like a sort of alternate view of autistic nonhumans or autistic aliens, which is just lovely.

Then, there is this submission. Quote, “Diagnosed with autism at 15, explained a lot, I can't help but wonder - if I'd known, would I still dehumanize myself in the way I do? Other kids called me "cat boy" because when they would pick on me, I'd hiss at them. I don't know why. I think I just saw my cats do it and it was the only way I knew how to retaliate. But it just made them laugh. ... I stopped seeing myself as human a long time ago, more of an animal for people's amusement. ... But when I found out about otherkin, it was like suddenly this experience of mine I was certain I was alone in was shared. For some people it's spiritual, but even in our differences, our feelings were the same. The community  taught me to love this nonhuman side of me, and they were understanding of my diagnosis. I didn't feel like an outcast there, they made me feel like it was something to cherish, and I do.” Endquote. Again, absolutely very well-said. Reclaiming and celebrating nonhumanity is, from what I’ve gathered, a large part of the autistic alterhuman experience, and this response phrased it just wonderfully.

Lastly, in regards to responses: shoutout to the one guy who said, “I just finished making my first ever tail, isn’t that sick?”, because yes, yes it is.

Thank you so much again to all the respondents to my survey!

And so, we have now reached the discussion section, which will last until my time runs out. This is where I will cease looking at a script, so please send anything you’d particularly like me to see now! Also, feel free to ask me questions, and I will answer to the best of my ability. Alternatively, tell me about your experiences, or just give general comments!

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Covidization (Worldcrunch) COVID-19 is killing people even without the virus. Spain’s Lung Cancer Group, a research body, believes lung cancer will have killed 1,300 people more in the country in 2020 than predictive models had anticipated before the pandemic struck. Between January and April this year, lockdowns and diverted healthcare resources meant 30% fewer initial oncology consultations than during those months in 2019. This is just one of the many pathologies with significantly worse data for what many are calling a “covidization” of healthcare. Covidization is a term coined by Madhukar Pai, a tuberculosis researcher at Montreal’s McGill University to describe the pandemic’s distorting effect on resource allocation, prioritization and media attention in fighting other pathologies. Data appear to have confirmed his opinion. Since April this year, the European Commission has devoted 137 million euros to research on the coronavirus, or twice all the monies spent in 2018 on tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.

Travel in the COVID-era (Foreign Policy) In a signal of what travel in a pandemic world will look like, a group of U.S. airlines have called on the United States to drop travel restrictions banning citizens from Europe and elsewhere in favor of a pre-flight negative coronavirus test requirement. The airlines have backed a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) proposal to create a global program for testing travelers prior to entering U.S. borders. Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, is due to discuss the proposal during a meeting today.

Golf is not essential travel (AP) The speculation began with curious activity by U.S. military aircraft reported circling President Trump's Turnberry golf resort in western Scotland in November. Then the Sunday Post in Scotland reported that Glasgow Prestwick Airport “has been told to expect the arrival of a US military Boeing 757 aircraft, that is occasionally used by Trump, on January 19.” Could the American president, on his last full day in office, wing his way to his ancestral Scotland to hit the links at his shuttered resort, possibly missing the inauguration? On Tuesday, the leader of Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, was asked if Trump was headed her way, and what might be her message to him? At her daily news briefing, Sturgeon said, “I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know. … But “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose.” The White House said that the reports of a Trump trip to Turnberry were “not accurate. President Trump has no plans to travel to Scotland.”

Divided U.S., Not Covid, Is the Biggest Risk to World in 2021, Survey Finds (Bloomberg) With the global economy still in the teeth of the Covid-19 crisis, the Eurasia group sees a divided U.S. as a key risk this year for a world lacking leadership. “In decades past, the world would look to the U.S. to restore predictability in times of crisis. But the world’s preeminent superpower faces big challenges of its own,” said Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer and Chairman Cliff Kupchan in a report on the top risks for 2021. Starting with the difficulties facing the Biden Administration in a divided U.S, the report flags 10 geopolitical, climate and individual country risks that could derail the global economic recovery. An extended Covid-19 impact and K-shaped recoveries in both developed and emerging economies is the second biggest risk factor cited in the report. Biden will have difficulty gaining new confidence in U.S. global leadership as he struggles to manage domestic crises, the report said. With a large segment of the U.S. casting doubt over his legitimacy, the political effectiveness and longevity of his “asterisk presidency,” the future of the Republican Party, and the very legitimacy of the U.S. political model are all in question, it added. “A superpower torn down the middle cannot return to business as usual. And when the most powerful country is so divided, everybody has a problem,” said Bremmer and Kupchan.

Venezuela’s socialists take control of once-defiant congress (AP) Nicolás Maduro was set to extend his grip on power Tuesday as the ruling socialist party prepared to assume the leadership of Venezuela’s congress, the last institution in the country it didn’t already control. Maduro’s allies swept legislative elections last month boycotted by the opposition and denounced as a sham by the U.S., the European Union and several other foreign governments. While the vote was marred by anemically low turnout, it nonetheless seemed to relegate into irrelevancy the U.S.-backed opposition led by 37-year-old lawmaker Juan Guaidó. The opposition’s political fortunes have tanked as Venezuelans own hopes for change have collapsed. Recent opinion polls show support for Guaidó having fallen by more than half since he first rose to challenge Maduro two years ago. Meanwhile, Maduro has managed to retain a solid grip on power and the military, the traditional arbiter of political disputes.

Few reforms would benefit Japan as much as digitising government (Economist) It is a ritual almost as frequent and as fleeting as observing the cherry blossoms each year. A new Japanese government pledges to move more public services online. Almost as soon as the promise is made, it falls to the ground like a sad pink petal. In 2001 the government announced it would digitise all its procedures by 2003—yet almost 20 years later, just 7.5% of all administrative procedures can be completed online. Only 7.3% of Japanese applied for any sort of government service online, well behind not only South Korea and Iceland, but also Mexico and Slovakia. Japan is an e-government failure. That is a great pity, and not just for hapless Japanese citizens wandering from window to window in bewildering government offices. Japan’s population is shrinking and ageing. With its workforce atrophying, Japan relies even more than other economies on gains in productivity to maintain prosperity. The Daiwa Institute of Research, a think-tank in Tokyo, reckons that putting government online could permanently boost gdp per person by 1%. The lapse is all the more remarkable given Japan’s wealth and technological sophistication. Indeed, that seems to be part of the problem. Over the years big local technology firms have vied for plum contracts to develop it systems for different, fiercely autonomous, government departments. Most ended up designing custom software for each job. The result is a profusion of incompatible systems.

An ‘orchard of bad apples’ weighs on new Afghan peace talks (AP) Afghan negotiators are to resume talks with the Taliban on Tuesday aimed at finding an end to decades of relentless conflict even as hopes wane and frustration and fear grow over a spike in violence across Afghanistan that has combatants on both sides blaming the other. Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government advisor, said the government and the Taliban are “two warring minorities,” with the Afghan people caught in between—“one says they represent the republic, the other says we want to end foreign occupation and corruption. But the war is (only) about power.” The stop-and-go talks come amid growing doubt over a U.S.-Taliban peace deal brokered by outgoing President Donald Trump. An accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops ordered by Trump means just 2,500 American soldiers will still be in Afghanistan when President-elect Joe Biden takes office this month. The Taliban have grown in strength since their ouster in 2001 and today control or hold sway over half the country. But a consensus has emerged that a military victory is impossible for either side.

Iraq, Struggling to Pay Debts and Salaries, Plunges Into Economic Crisis (NYT) Economists say Iraq is facing its biggest financial threat since Saddam Hussein’s time. Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills. That has created a financial crisis with the potential to destabilize the government—which was ousted a year ago after mass protests over corruption and unemployment—touch off fighting among armed groups, and empower Iraq’s neighbor and longtime rival, Iran. With its economy hammered by the pandemic and plunging oil and gas prices, which account for 90 percent of government revenue, Iraq was unable to pay government workers for months at a time last year. Last month, Iraq devalued its currency, the dinar, for the first time in decades, immediately raising prices on almost everything in a country that relies heavily on imports. And last week, Iran cut Iraq’s supply of electricity and natural gas, citing nonpayment, leaving large parts of the country in the dark for hours a day. “I think it’s dire,” said Ahmed Tabaqchali, an investment banker and senior fellow at the Iraq-based Institute of Regional and International Studies. “Expenditures are way above Iraq’s income.” Many Iraqis fear that despite Iraqi government denials there will be more devaluations to come.

Qatar ruler lands in Saudi Arabia for summit to end blockade (AP) Qatar’s ruling emir arrived in Saudi Arabia and was greeted with an embrace by the kingdom’s crown prince on Tuesday, following an announcement that the kingdom would end its yearslong embargo on the tiny Gulf Arab state. The decision to open borders was the first major step toward ending the diplomatic crisis that has deeply divided U.S. defense partners, frayed societal ties and torn apart a traditionally clubby alliance of Arab states. The diplomatic breakthrough comes after a final push by the outgoing Trump administration and fellow Gulf state Kuwait to mediate an end to the crisis. The timing was auspicious: Saudi Arabia may be seeking to both grant the Trump administration a final diplomatic win and remove stumbling blocs to building warm ties with the Biden administration, which is expected to take a firmer stance toward the kingdom. Qatar’s only land border has been mostly closed since June mid-2017, when Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain launched a boycott of the small but influential Persian Gulf country. The Saudi border, which Qatar relied on for the import of dairy products, construction materials and other goods, opened briefly during the past three years to allow Qataris into Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic hajj pilgrimage. It was unclear what concessions Qatar had made regarding a shift in its policies. While the Saudi decision to end the embargo marks a milestone toward resolving the spat, the path toward full reconciliation is far from guaranteed.

[juliadelme02]

briefing 25 / Making a new app

Mix two App or social media programs with each other and create a completely new service out of it.

Idea

Today I had a little bit of a creative off day. I had a little bit of a slow kick off but when I got to work I got a few of idea’s. Between my research and thinking I got distracted by episodes of Danny op straat where he follows unusual people or groups and their activities. I saw an episode about a religious family who protests in front of abortion clinics and try to convince those women to not do it. They bring a self decorated ambulance with them with photographs of baby’s after the abortion, horrible. But although this is horrible I think almost all of these women have a good reason to do this and struggle with the decision themselves. Sometimes these women are pregnant because of sexual abuse or the woman have an unstable home situation which a baby can’t grow up in. I agree with freedom of speech but I think this is just not right. 

These are situations where you have supporters and opponents. Shows like Danny op straat start the conversation just like the episode with the pedophile who said that children who are 2 years old can decide if they want an ice cream or not and that that is the same as deciding if they want to have sex. In this situation you have more opponents than supporters but it is another case of 2 sides against each other, although the group of supporters are afraid to speak out. Both of these topics start protests or petitions against or for it.

I want to make an app based on the idea of youtube but more with the intention to encourage people to speak out for what they think but not in real life and provoke each other but through an app. There will be channels just like on youtube but these channels will be managed by the app itself to make sure no extreme videos will be posted, although the video’s can go a little further in this app. The videos that will be posted are made by organisations related or journalist who speak out for the topics. This is because we want to give organisations who speak out for social issues and/or problems a platform. Viewers can also submit their videos but these will be checked before posting.

There will be no comment section to react because there is a big changes supporters and opponents will attack each other with words. People will stay anonymous because of this. There will be no like or dislike buttons but there will be a few surveys and polls you can fill in. The polls will be shown directly bellow the video where you can see how many people agree with you and how many don’t. The surveys will be available to organisations, the government, journalist etc. who are doing research into these topics. In the video description there will be links to petition if these are available. Organisations can contact us if that is the case. 

The purpose is to give people and organisations a platform to spread their message in a peaceful way. The topics defer from religious, politics, gender, sexuality, society etc. You can speak out by reacting on a poll, filling in a survey or if possible sign a petition. After you fill in a poll you don’t only see a percentage but also the amount of people.

Name

I Thought of the name SYO which stands for Show Your Opinion. I first thought of Speak Out but you can’t actually speak or write your opinion. 

Logo

For the logo I was thinking about something green because it is a relaxing colour and has to do with nature. Your opinion or something you strongly believe in is in your nature. I want the logo to look friendly and not very serious and heavy because it maybe will scare people off but at the same time I want that people take it seriously.

But after all i thought blue fitted better. Maybe it would be taken a little more seriously. I put two different forms in it, a circle and a hexagon, to define the different meanings.

[thinkveganworld]

Friendly Fascism

The following are updated excerpts from an article I wrote on “friendly fascism” in the U.S.  This is information our schools should be teaching on history, so that the average citizen is well-informed enough to participate in the nation’s political life and make knowledgeable choices. The article relates to the Iraq War, but it also applies to fascism in the U.S. today.   Not all kinds of fascism have to equate precisely to the classic form represented by Hitler or Mussolini. Fascism doesn’t have to involve mass genocidal slaughter, nor does it have to be equal in degree to the fascism practiced by members of the Axis powers.   Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press. Today all of those conditions exist in the U.S. to a degree. Let’s focus on corporate/government control of the press, specifically corporate control of U.S. television news networks. According to a March 24 article, “Protests Turn Off Viewers” by Harry A. Jessell, 45 percent of Americans rely on cable channels as their primary source of news, and 22 percent get most of their news from broadcast networks evening newscasts. Only 11 percent rely on other forms of media as their principle source of war news.

Our corporate controlled TV networks might as well be state controlled, because they promote war and policies of the oligarchy fairly consistently and have virtually eliminated all dissenting voices.  NBC fired Phil Donahue despite his good ratings, saying in an internal network memo they didn’t want to air Donahue’s antiwar views. Reporter Peter Arnett was fired for giving an interview to Iraqi TV and merely stating the obvious on a number of issues. For example, Arnett said media reports of civilian casualties had helped the growing challenge about the conduct of the Iraq war.

According to William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything which tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich … or offends the honor and dignity of Germany.’ The Nazis forced dissenting journalists out of business and consolidated the press under party control. U.S. television news networks have been consolidated under the control of a handful of corporations. America doesn’t need a press law'prohibiting the airing of anything which might weaken the strength of U.S. war policies, because the corporate owners of today’s television networks are in total agreement with the state. It is irrefutable that corporate owners of American television networks want only pro-war opinions aired, because those are virtually the only views that are in fact aired.  The Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett firings, especially when coupled with the NBC internal memo explaining the Donahue firing, also indicate this is true. Do the various TV networks do a good job of informing the public, or do they more often propagandize? Propaganda is aimed at the emotions, while news sources that disseminate factual information aim toward reason. In Nazi Germany: A New History (Continuum Publishing, 1995), Klaus P. Fischer says Hitler promoted a system of prejudices rather than a philosophy based on well-warranted premises, objective truth-testing, and logically derived conclusions. Since propaganda aims at persuasion rather than instruction, it is far more effective to appeal to the emotions than to the rational capacities of crowds. If you’ve spent much time watching the pro-war cable television news programs, you cant help but notice they manipulate (whether deliberately or not) the viewing audience’s emotions rather than appealing to viewers’ logic.That is, instead of providing the American public with a broad range of necessary facts and varied viewpoints about our wars, the TV networks exploit emotions by urging the audience to focus on and identify with the day-to-day plight of individual soldiers and their families. There’s nothing inherently wrong with empathizing with the troops. However, when that aspect of war news is heavily emphasized at the expense of hard facts and varied debate, the networks serve the purpose of managing the public mood rather than informing the public mind.

According to Klaus Fisher, the Nazis eliminated from state media any ideas that clashed with official views. He writes that permissible media topics for public consumption included war itself and the Nazi movement; support of Nazi soldiers; praise for Hitler and celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of the fatherland.  

Today’s war-promoting TV networks have also deemed only certain subjects permissible,‘as evidenced by the irrefutable fact that they only cover a narrow range of subjects. Coincidentally, the proverbial network list'would read virtually the same as the list mentioned above. Permissible topics include praise for U.S.  war policies, support for our soldiers;  and celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of’(in this case) the homeland, even though there is no rational link between attacking countries designated for regime change and defending our soil.

Of course, who needs rationality or facts from TV news when the American public already has enough information about world events?  In a March 26 article for Editor and Publisher, “Polls Suggest Media Failure in Pre-War Coverage”, reporter Ari Berman refers to a Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll. This poll showed 44 percent of respondents believed most'or some'of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqis. Only 17 percent gave the correct answer: none. In the same poll, 41 percent said they believed Iraq definitely has nuclear weapons. As Berman points out, not even the Bush administration has claimed that. Berman also refers to a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey showing that almost two-thirds of people polled believed U. N. weapons inspectors had found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction.’ This claim was never made by Hans Blix or Mohammed ElBaradei. The same survey found 57 percent of those polled falsely believed Saddam Hussein assisted the 9/11 terrorists, and a March 79 New York Times/CBS News Poll revealed that 45 percent of respondents believed Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks. TV news reporters have done little to correct the public’s misconceptions. On the contrary, network reporters and their guests have often helped bolster the false impressions by mentioning September 11, or the threat of terrorism by al Qaeda, and the threat posed by Saddam in the same breath.

Individual TV reporters aren’t always free to choose the information they pass along to the public. CNN now has a relatively new script approval'system, whereby journalists send their copy in to CNN chiefs for sanitizing. In his article, Guess who will be calling the shots at CNN,'British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk quotes a relatively new CNN document (dated Jan. 27), Reminder of Script Approval Policy.The policy says, All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval … Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved … All packages originating outside Washington, LA or NY, including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW [a group of script editors] in Atlanta for approval.  

William Shirer comments on the Nazi party’s control of press, radio and film, “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day. In case of any misunderstanding, a daily directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.

In an interview with TomPaine.com, Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), said that the group examined two weeks of nightly television news coverage. FAIR found that 76 percent of all news sources or guests on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS’s NewsHour were current or former government officials,'leaving little room for other diverse voices.In addition, FAIR found that only 6 percent of those sources were skeptical about the war. Jackson noted that on television news at night, there’s virtually no debate about the need to go to war. It would further public understanding if the TV networks would offer substantial debate on the following: The Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq has alienated many world leaders and lost this country the respect of millions of citizens around the globe. The Bush team has created instability in the Middle East and risked retaliation. They’ve undercut the U.S. economy with the financial cost of this endeavor. They’ve increased the likelihood that worldwide nuclear weapons proliferation will increase. And, according to a recent Red Cross report, they have likely helped create a horrifying number of human casualties and a rapidly expanding humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

The content of television news lacks range and diversity, but the way the news is presented is also disturbing. Television reporters often deliver news of the war'with apparent breathless excitement, as if they’re giving play-by-play descriptions of football games.

People are dying in this conflict. Civilians are caught in the middle, being blown to pieces or losing loved ones. Children are left behind when their soldier-parents are killed. Instead of presenting news of this war'with giddiness, wouldn’t it be more appropriate, more human, for network reporters to take a somber, respectful approach?

On TV, we see bombs dropping from a distance. Network commentators seldom offer the public close-ups. In his article, Military precision versus moral precision,'Robert Higgs, writes that the much-used JDAM bombs dropped in Iraq kill most people within 120 meters of the blast. According to Higgs, such a bomb releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction.

Just yesterday I heard a TV reporter describe certain casualties with the sterile phrase, “This is what war does”.Well, it isn’t “war” that bursts sinus cavities and rips away limbs - nothing as nebulous as that. George W. Bush and his administration have done these things. They have directly ordered that these things be done. The bombs’ shredding of flesh and crushing of human cells didn’t just passively happen.

In an April 5 article for The Mirror, “The saddest story of all,” reporter Anton Antonowicz describes an Iraqi family’s loss of their daughter. Nadia was lying on a stretcher beside the stone mortuary slab. Her heart lay on her chest, ripped from her body by a missile which smashed through the bedroom window of the family’s flat nearby in Palestine Street. Nadia’s father said, “My daughter had just completed her PhD in psychology and was waiting for her first job. She was born in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said I have a fabulous daughter. She spent all her time studying. Her head buried in books. Nadia’s sister Alia said, “I don’t know what humanity Bush is calling for. Is this the humanity which lost my sister? It is war which has done this. And that war was started by Bush.”

Today we’re again getting a whiff of fascism from U.S. promoters of regime change war, including war with Iran,  This isn’t the equivalent of Hitler or Mussolini - just sort of a creeping fascism light, and the corporate controlled television news networks are only one example of the way even light fascism undermines what little democracy remains in the U.S.  

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

We’ve officially entered silly season in the Democratic primary, which means we’re at the point where you can get pretty far by just stating the obvious. So here are a few rather obvious truths about the Democratic primary:

Only one candidate can be nominated.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two of the more likely people to be nominated, have heavily overlapping bases of support.

But Warren narrowly trails Sanders in the national polls (both candidates trail Joe Biden) and Sanders is perceived as having momentum.

There are less than three weeks to go until Iowa.

What might you expect to happen under circumstances like these? Well, you’d probably expect the Warren campaign to become less risk-averse. If, for example, it had a damaging piece of opposition research on Sanders, now might be the ideal time to drop it. You’d disrupt the current, good-for-Sanders-and-not-so-great-for-you news cycle and shake things up a bit. But there would also be just enough time to pivot to a more positive message in the final week or so before Iowa.

Of course going negative can be risky, for any number of reasons. But campaigns have to assess risk and reward — and campaigns in third place have to take more risks. Virtually all campaigns show some ability to throw a few elbows when needed, combined with also driving an affirmative message. In primaries, the positive messages mostly prevail — after all, everybody’s in the same party. But primaries can also get really nasty, and this one has been relatively tame by comparison.

So some of the assessments of Warren’s recent strategy toward Sanders have seemed off-kilter to me. For instance, people on Twitter — where both candidates have lots of support — seem shocked that Warren would escalate conflict against Sanders, first over the relatively minor matter of a script that Sanders volunteers were using that described Warren as a candidate of the “elite,” and later, over the more serious accusation that Sanders allegedly told Warren that a woman couldn’t be elected president.1

In fact, this is all pretty normal at this point in a presidential campaign — especially for a candidate in Warren’s situation. And there’s even some initial evidence that her strategy is working! Voters in our post-debate poll with Ipsos gave Warren the highest grade of any candidate for her debate performance — which mostly featured a positive, policy-oriented message along with a couple of chilly moments between her and Sanders. Meanwhile perceptions of Warren’s electability improved among voters in the poll after the debate, while Sanders’s favorability ratings worsened.

More nuanced analyses of the Sanders-Warren conflict suggest that maintaining a nonaggression pact would be mutually beneficial because otherwise Biden could run away with the nomination. But the word “mutually” is debatable. I’d argue nonaggression toward Warren is pretty clearly in the best interest of Sanders, who was in the stronger position than Warren heading into the debate and who would probably prefer to focus on Biden. But it’s probably not beneficial to Warren. Any scenario that doesn’t involve Warren winning Iowa will leave her in a fairly rough position — and winning Iowa means beating Sanders there.

Let’s take a look at the results of 10,000 simulations from Wednesday night’s run of our forecast model, which accounts for the effects that Iowa could have on subsequent states. Below are the results of simulations showing all the possible ways the top four candidates in Iowa — Biden, Sanders, Warren, and Pete Buttigieg — could finish, and the subsequent effect this would have on Warren’s chances of eventually winning the majority or plurality of pledged delegates. (You can read more about how the model works here; we’ve put in a lot of thought about how to measure bounces, as well as how the various candidates’ bases of support overlap with one another. Note that for purposes of this article, I ignored candidates beyond the top four, although some of them — most notably Amy Klobuchar — have outside chances in Iowa.)

Warren’s best- and worst-case Iowa scenarios

How the top four national candidates could finish in Iowa, according to FiveThirtyEight’s primary forecast, as of Jan. 15, 2020

Order of finish* Warren’s chances of a delegate… Warren Sanders Biden Buttigieg Majority Plurality 1 3 4 2 63% 67% 1 4 2 3 55 59 1 3 2 4 54 59 1 4 3 2 52 58 1 2 4 3 50 61 1 2 3 4 50 56 2 4 3 1 17 21 2 3 4 1 16 20 3 2 4 1 8 12 2 1 3 4 8 11 3 4 2 1 8 11 2 4 1 3 8 10 2 3 1 4 6 8 3 1 4 2 6 7 2 1 4 3 5 10 3 2 1 4 4 5 3 1 2 4 3 5 4 3 2 1 3 5 4 1 3 2 3 5 3 4 1 2 2 3 4 2 3 1 2 3 4 3 1 2 1 2 4 1 2 3 1 2 4 2 1 3 <1 <1

* Does not consider other candidates, who may finish in the top 4 in some simulations.

No surprise, but by far the most important consideration for Warren is that she wins Iowa herself. Case in point: The worst winning scenario for Warren — where the order of finish is Warren-Sanders-Biden-Buttigieg — is still about three times better for her in terms of her chances of eventually winning a delegate majority than the best losing scenario, which is Buttigieg-Warren-Biden-Sanders.

The next-most-important consideration for Warren — although it’s an order of magnitude less important than whether Warren herself wins — is whether Buttigieg wins Iowa if she doesn’t. Because he’s the weakest of the four front-runners in polling in states beyond Iowa, a Buttigieg win would be easiest for Warren (or Sanders or Biden) to tolerate.

But if Warren had to choose between Biden and Sanders winning Iowa, it’s not clear which she’d prefer. On the one hand, Biden is in a stronger position nationally than Sanders, so giving him any kind of running start in Iowa would make him harder to beat. On the other hand, lanes do matter to some degree, and our model assumes (with plenty of evidence in the polling data) that a lot of the gains that Sanders might realize in his Iowa bounce could come at Warren’s expense; he’d essentially have won the progressive semifinal.

If you look at the scenarios in detail, a lot of fairly nuanced questions involving the exact order of the top four finishers come into play. (To take a subtle example: While Warren might not mind Buttigieg winning Iowa, she also might not mind him doing really badly there, badly enough that he dropped out, since Buttigieg voters often have Warren ranked relatively highly as a second choice option.) That said, when looking at the table, keep in mind that the sample sizes are fairly small for some of the scenarios, so in some instances, there’s a fair bit of noise in the data.

Bottom line: Warren’s job is to figure out how to win Iowa, or failing that, to finish second to Buttigieg there. That inherently involves beating Sanders — and Biden. Whether she’s pursuing the right strategy to achieve that goal is another question and beyond the scope of the model.

As for our overall forecast, it remains largely unchanged from previous days. Biden is the most likely winner, with a 41 percent chance of a delegate majority, followed by Sanders at 23 percent, Warren at 13 percent and Buttigieg at 8 percent, with a 15 percent chance no one wins a majority.

The forecast doesn’t yet include any post-debate polling — the poll I mentioned earlier that we conducted with Ipsos did not include any horse-race questions and so does not factor into the model. The model will be relatively aggressive about accounting for post-debate polling once we get some, however, so stay tuned.

[aliexpresspro-blog]

Bang for Your Buck With Mobile Coupons

Mobile has surfaced on the scene quicker than any other new moderate within the previous 90 decades and cellular coupons would be the category to see, based Borrell Associate's"2010 Local Mobile Advertising & Promotions Forecast," (Mobile Commerce Daily newsletter, April 2010).

A recent poll of over 2,250 U.S. adult Internet users, conducted by Harris Interactive, found that almost half (46 percent ) who have a cell telephone are somewhat inclined to test mobile coupons. Mobile coupon redemption rates averages are 10 times greater than conventional coupon and with cellular phone penetration in the U.S. well over 90 percent, it's the one most direct advertising channel there's. Mobile vouchers are only going to have increasingly popular.

Mobile Coupons

Mobile voucher are, consent based promotions where retailers send digital vouchers into some readers' mobile phones. Unlike other forms of electronic couponing (email / web) mobile coupons are read instantly with a 95% read rate. Mobile coupons may be delivered in a verity of digital forms, such as QR or data matrix barcodes, Universal Product Code (UPC), or via unique coupon code. The coupons can then be redeemed through special barcode scanners that read them or by inputting the unique number to a relevant website or a point-of-sale (POS) machine that prints out a paper coupon. Typically with small businesses the customer is required to simply showing the coupon at a retail outlet or restaurant to redeem the coupon.

Benefits of Mobile Coupons vs Traditional Coupon

Mobile coupons (m-coupons) are much more efficient in both delivery and cost than paper coupons. Using newspapers and coupon books sent through the U.S. mail do not offer any direct link between your business and the person who uses the coupon. A legitimate mobile coupon campaign is permission based, another words, there is a direct connection between your business offering the mobile coupon and the person choosing to use it. Thus, advertising and promotions using mobile coupons have a higher value and offer a direct link to the person using the coupons. For this reason mobile coupon promotions make for a great loyalty program.

In comparison, paper coupons cost anywhere between $0.25 and $0.40 per mailed coupon, with average redemption rates of around 1-3 percent, according to Frost & Sullivan, a market research firm. According to Frost & Sullivan, effective m-coupon solutions can benefit from high redemption rates. Email coupons have a redemption rate of 8 percent but lack the instant open rate of M-Coupons. For example, in August we launched a multi-channel campaign with Amigos Tex-Mex Restaurant which resulted in 24% redemption rate or 109 guests redeem the m-coupon, plus through a 'refer a friend campaign" we added an additional 70 new subscribers during the 30 day campaign. A&P supermarket chained launched a m-coupon campaign with double digit redemptions rates and recently iHOP's m-coupon redemption hit 12% according to Mobile Commence Daily.

Business ROI

"For companies, m-coupons supply a fantastic ROI," said Peter Conti, junior executive vice president at Borrell Associates, Richmond, VA."Redemption prices are 10 times that of email - or paper - distributed vouchers. Small companies are adapting to the cellular channel since it is cost effective and compels outcomes. By way of instance,traffics been a lite lately, it is possible to formulate and implement a m-coupon advertising in a matter of moments (no printer or mailer demanded ) and if you believe 95% of text messages have been read over a 30 minutes of receipt it is possible to see double digit results within hours, depending on the value proposition of your advertising of course. My small company customers are about average are receiving a 12-15% boost in visitors only a single station cellular advertising (not radio or print ).

Consumers Benefits

Based on Frost & Sullivan, customer expectations from cellular coupons could be outlined as follows:

Convenience of reliability - customers Don't Have to carry paper coupons together Ease of usage (redemption) No added costs to Get supplies Privacy coverage Non-intrusive voucher shipping (junk mail) Single port for multiple provides Effective storage and demonstration of delivered vouchers Automatic upgrades Enhanced interactivity alternatives Simple device requirements Challenges of Mobile Coupons

The challenges related to m-coupons are the way that it is managed to prevent misuse and the way to attain mass distribution. Unlike direct mail where you can essentially junk your neighborhood with newspaper coupons equally email and m-coupons need the consumer to provide consent or"opted into" the m-coupon campaign.

Redemption Abuse

Redemption abuse or voucher is when a guest or even a client presents exactly the identical coupon multiple occasions to redeem the offer. Unlike newspaper vouchers, the restaurant or retailer can not actually collect the voucher upon salvation, unless they utilize bar code scanners, hence the voucher may be redeemed again and again or plotted to buddy to be utilized again. Paper coupons do not experience this issue however they've a large problem with counterfeit coupons.

In my experience most small companies I consult to create m-coupon programs do not experience broad spread abuse. Best practices demand each of promotions to have a challenging expiration date, coaching staff on the advertising as well as also the redemption requirements and monitoring the redemptions, typically with a designated"promo" key on the POS or register. Adding special coupon codes is just another very affordable way to monitor redemption though it needs your staff to document the code . The current development of QR code scanning programs, it is possible to download to a smart phone is going to be the alternative to beating the matter.

In addition, we need to remember the purpose of a marketing is to push companies and when a client gets off with redeeming a m-coupon double that means that they made two purchases, that's the purpose of this effort anyway.

Building Your "Mobile VIPs"

In order to accomplish mass distribution you want to construct your subscriber bases, the more clients that opt-in to your cell advertising and marketing program the higher your achieve, thus the higher your supply. Mobile subscriber lists aren't as simple to construct as a email list as most individuals do not have spare mobile phone numbers such as the perform email addresses. Mobile works best within a muti-channel effort. Another words, such as your brief code (6 or 5 electronic number) and key words (text"Pizza") in your print ads, Facebook webpage, site, radio campaigns and your email campaign using a distinctive value proposition for picking in key. Depending upon your current marketing plan and marketing budget, a company wants 60 to 90 days to construct a decent mobile contributor program. Restaurants that currently use mobile phone pager systems have an edge. They possess the guest mobile number so as to seat themnow they just send a follow up message that provides a marketing in the event the guests contributors to their own"Mobile VIP" app. Assembling that first data base is essential moving forward and by picking out the ideal mobile advertising partner will determine just how successful you'll be in the long term.

The Forecast

Market researchers have found a strong correlations with the rise of smart mobile users and m-coupon usage. We are aware that the iPhone revolutionized the mobile phone as the Swiss Army knife for both customers and companies as well as the adaption of smart phones will increase exponentially within the next 3 to 5 decades. In terms of cellular coupon usage, over 300 million users around the globe will have used cellular coupons by 2014 and this use will bring in a redemption worth near $6 billion worldwide, according to a prediction and report by Juniper Research. Do your clients have cellular telephones, if so provide them the chance to receive and receive your cellular coupons.

[aleacampagnone]

Vanity Metrics(The high and the lows on the Social platform)

I have analyzed the following non-profit organization Food4hungry social media accounts to the best of my abilities and here is my option on each one of them. I will start with Instagram, I thought they were doing good on Instagram but there were some notes I would make about how they are doing based on their vanity metrics. On one post, that I have noticed was that people enjoy talking about the families they helped or donation contribute. From the content that I viewed, the highest was 8 comments which was asking the names of the children that their followers helped. I would suggest engaging more in that form, because people love recognition for good deeds. With going off of what I said in the comment section I would suggest to spread their awareness of that clean water is a privilege, to ask their followers to create a post explaining 3 things they do in a day that includes clean water or 3 reasons why they are grateful for clean water and tag them for a chance for their post to be presented on their story. Moving onto Twitter, my overall conclusion is that I don't think they are using Twitter to the best of their abilities. Overall on their twitter platform they have very little engagement on the outer surface and I would say they don't fully understand their audience and should take the time to do research and polling to see what their audience are interested in learning more about. I would recommend them expanding into creating from shareable content. It seems that their organization will grow with more awareness so creating content that makes people share is key! As for Facebook, Their actions on Instagram are the same on Facebook, so one more possible tip is I find that engagement is the key on Facebook due to the purpose behind the platform which is connecting with family and friends, or clients is good engagement. A good example to follow is, there was one post on Instagram that asked what was the name of the child that they donated to, and it got more people to engage compared to the other posts. People love when their good deeds are highlighted.

[josephbinningyoumatter]

HOW TO LIVE AN AUTHENTIC LIFE, ON PURPOSE

We live in a fast-paced, ever developing, and ever-changing world. Full of Tweets, Likes, and shares. In an instant someone’s life can change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. All by hitting send. We decide based on them. What we wear. What we buy. Where we go. How we act and yes, how we show up in life. We decide if we like someone, something, or someplace based on popularity. It is part of our culture now and has become the new social norm, so we all accept it. But are we being authentic? Are we being true to ourselves, or just being marketed and tricked into thinking this is how we should be, act, or show up? You are one decision away from an original life. Only you can decide which way it will turn out. Merriam-Webster defines Authentic as: not false or Imitation: REAL, ACTUAL, and true to one’s personality, spirit, or character. Moving your life in the direction that is not false or Imitation: REAL, ACTUAL, and true to one’s personality, spirit, or character aligns you with the things in life you want and desire and will prevent you from living in fear of thinking “what will happen if I say no?”. Using any method to attain something will NOT work if you do not know what you want as the outcome. The mistake we all make is we focus on the person, place, or thing we think will save us and we focus on something way too big. This creates an enormous gap between where you are verses where you want to be that you think will rescue you from your miserable life right now. That gap can be the thing that can make you feel lost in figuring out what you want, and discovering what your passion or direction is, or should be. Those in life who are genuinely happy in life understand the power of, and vehemently stick to, being their authentic selves.   EXAMPLES OF A NON-AUTHENTIC LIFE EXAMPLE 1 Your friends' lives may look more exciting than yours on Facebook, but recent research reveals that is because they might be faking it. A recent survey has found around two-thirds of people on social media post images to their profiles to make their lives seem more adventurous. And over three quarters of those asked said they judged their peers based on what they saw on their Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook profiles. A published British survey, by smartphone maker HTC, found that, to make our own pages and lives appear more exciting, six percent also said they had borrowed items to include in the images to pass them off as their own. More than half of those surveyed said they posted images of items and places purely to cause jealousy among friends and family. 76 percent of those asked also said seeing items on social media influences them to buy them, with men more likely to take style advice and buy what they see.     EXAMPLE 2 Over 5,000 people have taken the free online test “Does Your Job Require High or Low Emotional Intelligence?” And after analyzing the data, they made a scary discovery. It was discovered that 51% of people said that they Always or Frequently have to ‘act’ or ‘put on a show’ at work. But they made an even bigger discovery; 51% who must ‘put on a show at work’ are 32% less likely to love their job. Or put another way, if you do not have to fake your emotions at work, you are 32% more likely to love your job. And not only will you be more likely to love your job, you are also much less likely to have negative feelings about your job. People that do not have to put on a show are 59% less likely to dislike or hate their job. This data also suggests that many people would probably enjoy taking a deep look at their own emotional intelligence, particularly to discover whether they must do lots of acting on the job. The more they are forced to act like they have the right attitude, the less happy they will ultimately be.         EXAMPLE 3 Another related construct is the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Sociologist Robert K. Merton coined the term to describe a phenomenon that dates to Ancient Greece. Basically, a prediction about the outcome of a situation can invoke a new behavior that leads to the prediction coming true. For example, if I believed that I would fail an exam, that belief may have led me to alter the strategies I used for preparation and taking the test, and I would probably fail it. While I may have had an excellent chance to pass, my belief hindered my performance, and I made this belief become a reality. Psychological research shows that the self-fulfilling prophecy works for both negative and positive predictions, showing again that the beliefs you hold impact what happens to you.         EXAMPLE 4 In a yearlong study it was found that those ringing the alarm bells the loudest about climate change are the least likely to change their own behavior. They just want everyone else to. The study divided 600 adults who reported on their climate-change beliefs into three groups: "skeptical," "cautiously worried" and "highly concerned." Then the researchers — from the University of Michigan and Cornell University — tracked how often they reported doing things like recycling, using public transportation, buying environmentally friendly consumer products, and reusing shopping bags. And they asked about support for government mandates like CO2 emission reduction, gasoline taxes and renewable energy subsidies. The Journal of Environmental Psychology published the findings. What they found was very illuminating. The researchers found that the "highly concerned" group was the least likely to take individual action, but they were the most insistent on government action. The "skeptical" group, in contrast, was the most likely to recycle, use public transportation and do other environmentally sound things all on their own. Skeptics were least likely to endorse costly government regulations and mandates. "Belief in climate change," the researchers explained, "predicted support for government policies, but rarely translated to individual-level, self-reported pro-environmental behavior." In plain English: The position of climate-change genuine believers is: Do as I say, not as I do. This study supports a YouGov poll reported on recently, which found that most of those who believe in catastrophic global warming are not doing anything on their own to combat it. More than half said they are not cutting back on their use of fossil fuels or changing their recycling or composting habits. Another study found that "conservation scientists," have carbon footprints that do not differ from those of anyone else. The study found that these scientists "still flew frequently — an average of nine flights a year — ate meat or fish approximately five times a week and rarely purchased carbon offsets for their own emissions."   EXAMPLE 5 A study by Deloitte found that 61% of millennial's who rarely or never volunteer still consider a company’s commitment to the community when deciding on a potential job even though 60% of hiring managers see the act of volunteerism as a valuable asset when making recruitment decisions according to a study performed by Career Builder. 92% of human resource executives agree that volunteering can improve an employee’s leadership skills. Only 4% of college graduates, 25 years or older, volunteer each year. Millennial's ages 18 to 30 are more likely to have gone to a protest since the election than any other age group, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted from Feb. 1 to Feb. 3. Millennial's are also more likely than older groups to think protesting is an effective form of political action. In recent days America has seem mass protests and unrest which has in every corner of the country left charred and shattered landscapes in dozens of American cities over the death of George Floyd. They estimate that the damages left behind will total in the billions. Cities who encountered the most loss and damages include:     Minneapolis, Minn. Los Angeles California New York, NY Philadelphia, PA Nashville Tenn. San Francisco, CA. Detroit, Mich. Portland, Ore. Chicago, Ill. Atlanta, Ga. Washington, D.C. In a national survey reported by the National Service Knowledge Network of Volunteer Rates by State they ranked the followings states in this order. Minneapolis, Minn.             Minnesota #1 with a 43.23% volunteer rate statewide. Portland, Ore.                     Oregon #13 with a 31.42% volunteer rate statewide. Washington, D.C.                District of Columbia #14 with a 31.07% volunteer rate statewide. Philadelphia, PA                  Pennsylvania #22 with a 28.03% volunteer rate statewide. Detroit, Mich.                       Michigan #26 with a 26.64% volunteer rate statewide. Chicago, Ill.                          Illinois #31 with a 24.85% volunteer rate statewide. Nashville Tenn.                    Tennessee #33 with a 24.12% volunteer rate statewide. Los Angeles CA                   California #34 with a 23.89% volunteer rate statewide. Atlanta, Ga.                          Georgia #39 with a 23.00% volunteer rate statewide. New York, NY                      New York #49 with a 19.61% volunteer rate statewide.   This survey points out that except for Minnesota, the cities who had the most people who marched to support the problem, volunteered, and supported in the community the least.They estimate that over one million people will attend a George Floyd protest, yet most have never volunteered in the neighborhoods who need the help the most. Some officials estimate that most still will not.   How to Live an Authentic Life, On Purpose   Most of us struggle with the need to be seen, heard, respected, and yes, Loved. We all want to stay true to ourselves, but we also want to fit in. Therein lies the dilemma. How do we stay true to ourselves, yet still stay in our Tribe? We were born and created Tribal, a community, a family, and not meant to do this alone. Our Tribe is who we associate with, trust, and allow to influence us. They are that powerful group who are our biggest support system and cheerleaders. They become a family and we can sometimes know them all our lives. They make you feel relevant, seen, heard, important, and valued. But are they the right tribe for you? Are they really your family, or just your influence? Living an Authentic Life will prevent you from joining the wrong tribe and surround yourself with only those who will make you better by being honest with you. Calling you out when you mess up. Praising you on the victories, and yes, walking next to you in the dark valley’s that life will always throw at you. When you do not know WHO you are, someone else will decide it for you and it might or might not be the person you want to be. So how do we do it? How do we keep the passion, yet still be authentic? How do we be REAL, NOT FAKE?   Here are some suggestions. - Start with the person in the mirror first. Too many times people seek approval first, and acceptance second. Stop it! Look in the mirror at the person you see and accept them, warts, and all. You are not perfect and need not be, but you are perfect for you. Accept that! - Own your life, do not borrow one. Successful and Happy people need not prove anything to anyone, and they do not need other’s approval. The beautiful thing about life is if you dislike yours, you can always change it. When the haters hate, and they will, let them. And forget them. When you make a mistake, and you will own it 100%, then move on. It's in our mistakes we learn what will and will not work. - Be honest, do not live a lie. Do not pretend to be something or someone you are not, for someone else’s sake. If people do not accept you, as you are, where you are, for WHO you are they should not be in your life, let alone influence you. - Be ALL IN. A living example, more than words, will create action. If you believe in a movement, LIVE the movement 100%. If you believe in a cause, LIVE the cause 100%. Show me how you want me to see you and I will see you. Tell me and it will get lost in the noise. Give 100% every day to everything, especially yourself. Just be All In! - Forgive easily, and often. Successful and Happy people do not hold a grudge, they cannot. It impedes progress. It holds them back. It makes you bitter. Give others the same break you give yourself and forgive yourself, often. Others, and you, will be glad you did. - Put your own oxygen mask on first. We have all heard the warnings on airplanes, “if they deploy the oxygen masks, puts yours on first, then those who are with you next”. Make a habit of taking care of yourself, first. Self-care is the most important care you will ever receive. Make it a regular occurrence and do it often. - Live your life in Service to Humanity. Countless studies have shown that those who put other's needs above their own live longer, happier, more fulfilling lives. Care. Genuinely care. About others, about issues, about people. Then serve them. Do not save them, rescue them, or bail them out. Serve them by allowing your help to be about them, and not you. Do it with no expectations. If you need to be thanked, you did it for the wrong person. - If you have a choice between being right verses being kind, be kind. Successful and happy people can “give others a break”. They do not always need to be right. It is not a reflection on them. Sometimes it is better to lose the battle and win the war. - Pay everything forward. We deserve nothing in life. Life is not fair; it is designed that way. When you receive anything, it is a gift, be thankful, and share it. If you clutch on to life with a clenched fist so nothing can escape, nothing can enter either. Be generous, and life will be generous back. Volunteer, donate, serve, contribute, take part, mentor, and ask nothing in return. Remember, if you need to be thanked, it is a bribe, not a gift. - Life rewards the brave, so be brave. Take a chance, be vulnerable, be approachable, be teachable, take the first step, start the conversation, listen intending to listen and without thinking of what you will say next. Step outside of your comfort zone. That is where you will grow the most. A plant, transplanted from a pot to the ground will grow bigger and stronger, naturally. - Be more understanding. We are a divided world today. Friends lose friends over politics. People are against someone, someplace, or something without ever attempting to understand things from the other people's point of view. Take the time to ask why they believe what they believe, then shut up, do not interrupt, or interject, and just listen. Ask questions, with the desire to learn something and let them believe it even if you do not. People do not care what you know until they know you care. - Be more accepting of others Allow others to coexist around you as they are, not how you think they should be. Successful and Happy people are not threatened by what they do not understand. They attempt to understand it and accept that whatever it might be is the right choice for the other person even though it might not be the right choice for them and is no reflection on them. Accepting others as they are, where they are, for who they are, just as they are is one of the greatest ways to understand others and have a meaningful conversation with them. Do so intending to understand them, not to prove them wrong. If you have enjoyed this article please visit me at www.JosephBinning.com for more helpful tips and articles. You can also get more helpful information in my book You Matter, even if you don’t think so which you can purchase on Amazon here Amazon You Matter, even if you don't think so For my free report Happiness Is A Choice click here: Happiness Is A Choice Free Report Remember: Happiness is a choice, so choose to be happy. Read the full article

[ericvick]

Employers rethink offices, and function matters most

The Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) headquarters stands in Kent, Washington, U.S., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.

Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Last August, REI listed its newly built corporate headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, for sale without ever even moving into the building.

It marked a stunning reversal. In 2016, when REI announced plans for the campus, it said it would create a gathering place to foster creativity and bring together thousands of employees. But with many of its employees working remotely because of the pandemic, the outdoor recreation retailer decided to put the 8-acre complex on the market. It quickly pivoted its plans for office space to incorporate smaller, satellite locations throughout the Seattle suburbs.

The Bellevue building was sold to Facebook by September. And in February, REI announced its first satellite office in Issaquah, Washington — a nearly 70,000-square-foot building that can hold up to 400 people and is surrounded by hiking trails, lakes and parks. The company is also testing a model that allows employees to work from home for up to five days each week.

“We want to create an environment that’s very flexible for our employees,” said Chris Putur, REI’s executive vice president of technology and operations. “We were amazed in 2020 at how incredibly agile and innovative and productive the team could be.”

The Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) flagship store stands in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Thursday, May 14, 2020.

Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images

REI’s blueprint for its future workplace is just one story in a bigger shakeout happening in the commercial office market.

One year after many companies sent office workers home to help prevent the spread of Covid-19, corporate leaders are still grappling with how to safely reopen work spaces. They face even bigger questions about how much office space they really need and what incentives they might require to lure people back. Many have learned over the past 12 months that their employees can work from just about anywhere. So that means the office must serve a much more compelling purpose: A hub for collaboration that can’t be accomplished virtually and a place to retain and train an incoming workforce.

“If you look back, maybe a decade or two decades ago, the workplace was a means to an end,” said Sanjay Rishi, CEO of the real estate services firm JLL’s corporate solutions business in the Americas. “Now, workplaces are becoming as much an end in themselves, because … everybody is aspiring to get something more out of the workplace.”

While a number of companies are using the health crisis as an opportunity to get out of leases, some are bucking the trend. Tech companies in particular have been gobbling up office space. That’s despite many of them being first to embrace the remote-work lifestyle. They’re taking advantage of suppressed rents and more flexible lease terms. Many of these businesses also view the office as a perk to lure top talent in the coming years.

According to a report by CBRE, tech companies were the leaders in signing and renewing office leases last year, accounting for 24% of leasing activity by square footage. Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google all added office space in New York City in 2020, mostly during the pandemic.

“There will be organizations that will look at their [office] portfolio and look at rationalizing some level of that,” JLL’s Rishi said. “But we see this as a trend of dynamically allocating space, and then better managing that space.”

A slow and staggered return

Some employees are more eager to return than others, craving moments like afternoon water-cooler talk or post-work happy hours. Others have adjusted to their work-from-home setups and don’t miss the anxiety-ridden office commutes.

Most executives agree there are advantages to both. As Americans return to work at a staggered pace, plans may favor a hybrid model.

“Most organizations recognize that there is a shift in the way work is going to get done,” said Julie Whelan, head of occupier research for the commercial real estate firm CBRE’s Americas division. “They have recognized it, and no matter how traditional they are about their views, they understand that there is going to be a level of flexibility that they now have to contend with, in terms of office planning.”

For now, though, Whelan noted that most executives seem to be holding off on announcing sweeping plans and detailed timelines to bring people back. There are a few outliers, however, such as Tiffany’s new parent LVMH, which in February started bringing the jeweler’s workers in the U.S. back to the office for two days per week.

In January, CBRE polled 40 of its office clients, which collectively span 245 million square feet of office space globally and found 9% of businesses had already, slowly started bringing people back to work — using socially distanced floor plans, temperature checks, reservation systems and other precautionary measures.

Twelve percent planned to do so during the second quarter, and 21% during the third quarter. Forty percent of respondents still had no plans to return to the office, as of January, CBRE said.

Many business leaders are still monitoring the rollout of Covid vaccinations. President Joe Biden said earlier this month that the United States is “on track” to have enough vaccines for every adult by the end of May. They also are taking into account lifestyle changes that might have transpired over the past 12 months — children still learning from home, new pets, more time spent outdoors, and people relocating from populous urban areas to the suburbs, where there’s less access to public transportation.

“We’re looking at how we can leverage technology, so that those who are physically not present can have the same immersive experience as those who are present [in the office],” REI’s Putur said. “We really want to find a way. And we’re going to try different methods, and I’m sure it’s going to evolve.”

Currently, about 25% of employees across the country are going into offices, according to Kastle Systems, an office security firm that pulls data from more than 3,500 buildings in the U.S.

Employees wear protective masks at a JLL office in Menlo Park, California, U.S., on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2020.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Of course, that number has ebbed and flowed with the state of the pandemic. Office visits cratered last March and into April, Kastle found, as the health crisis took hold all over the country. They slowly inched up from then, but took another tumble around Thanksgiving, as infections surged over the winter holidays. This year, visits have since been ticking back up — particularly so in Texas, which is likely due to the eased pandemic-related restrictions in the state and lesser reliance on public transportation, Kastle said.

When less is more

As the shakeout progresses, decisions to permanently trim space will stem from many different motivations. Some companies may need to cut costs, or will have fewer corporate workers. Others are pledging to merge teams from different buildings to encourage cross-collaboration.

The upscale clothing retailer Ralph Lauren announced in February it will be cutting as much as 30% of its corporate real estate in North America, to “embrace new ways of working.” Similarly, CVS Health said it will slash its office space by 30%, as part of a cost-saving initiative.

Nordstrom said it chose not to extend a lease at one of its office towers in downtown Seattle, taking into account the personal preferences of its workforce and the state of its business.

“While we will not be a fully remote headquarters, it’s clear remote work can and should continue to play a part in how we operate,” the Seattle-based department store chain said.

Old Navy is also vacating the apparel brand’s headquarters in the San Francisco area to move in with its parent, Gap Inc., just a few neighborhoods over. The company said the move should allow it to foster a stronger culture of collaboration, by mixing employees across its clothing brands.

Office owners coax tenants back

Office owners, eager to get people back to their desks, mostly expect a wave of businesses to return by late summer. Brokers say they have conducted more tours of office buildings since the new year started, especially in key markets such as Manhattan.

Last year, transaction activity largely dried up. JLL tracked 125.6 million square feet of newly leased office space last year in the U.S., a 47.3% decline from 2019. Total vacancy was at 17.1% by year-end.

Boston Properties Chief Executive Owen Thomas said he expects there will be a “much more intense return” to the office by the start of summer and an even bigger return by Labor Day. Boston Properties is one of the largest owners of so-called Class-A office space in the country.

Thomas said not many of the real estate investment trust’s tenants have made major overhauls to their spaces. Instead, he said he’s seeing more “cheaper and more interim measures,” such as adding plexiglass barriers and spreading desks apart, buying contact-free hand sanitizer machines and even sensors that allow for doors to open and shut automatically.

Senior human resources and financial executives say work will be hybrid, with both work from home and some return to offices part of a new normal, and figuring out how to relieve employee stress and isolation are top concerns.

Clara Margais | picture alliance via Getty Images

“There will be more spacing requirements, particularly for employees that have been pressed closer and closer together,” Thomas said. “I don’t think that’s going to work going forward. Even if the virus has been largely eradicated.”

“Employers are also going to have much more collaboration space, for people to eat and collaborate, because I think there’s going to be a lot more of that that goes on in the office,” he added.

Related Companies, a New York-based real estate developer of office, retail and residential spaces, is eyeing unique perks to entice tenants. It’s launching an outdoor workspace program for its four office towers at Hudson Yards, where tenants can book spaces outdoors with Wi-Fi for meetings and calls. Related has also partnered with Mount Sinai Health System to provide employees with weekly on-site Covid testing. It also debuted an on-site child-care program.

Making tough choices

Some workers just want more certainty.

Last March, Melissa, a 32-year-old employee for a retailer’s e-commerce arm, was living in a studio apartment in the New York area with her then fiance, also 32, when both of their offices closed their doors. As stressful as squeezing into a 600-square-foot space with her partner was, the couple successfully worked from home together until June, said Melissa, who asked to keep her last name and place of work private.

She and her now-husband opted not to renew their studio lease and landed a one-bedroom in Brooklyn over the summer, hoping for a swift return to work in the fall. But that still hasn’t happened, and the one-bedroom has quickly grown to be too small, too, Melissa said.

“Talks of even going back to the office — who knows?” she said, adding that she’s heard little from her employer on the issue.

“What do we do now? Our lease is up again in June. Should we stay? Or should we just take the plunge and move to the suburbs?” she said. “If they don’t get us back in the office soon, I’m going to have to make life decisions.”

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/fact-checked-on-facebook-and-twitter-conservatives-switch-their-apps/

Fact-Checked on Facebook and Twitter, Conservatives Switch Their Apps

Corey Adam, a political comedian from Minneapolis, joined a mass social media switcheroo last week.

That was when Mr. Adam, 39, a conservative and libertarian, watched Twitter and Facebook add labels to social media posts from President Trump and other Republicans who falsely claimed he had won the election. Many of the labels said the assertions were disputed. And on Twitter, some of Mr. Trump’s tweets were hidden completely.

To Mr. Adam, the social media companies appeared to be singling out conservative voices. So he decided to shift to Parler, a social networking app that he has used on and off for a year, and to largely ignore those two big platforms, he said.

“Facebook started muting, deleting and labeling every conservative political post in my feed,” Mr. Adam said. “If you’re going to do something, you have to be fair to both sides. You don’t just get to pick one side to promote.”

Mr. Adam was one of millions of people who have migrated away from Facebook and Twitter since the election. As the companies have clamped down on misinformation, they have clashed with Republicans and conservatives who have spread lies about the election’s outcome, leading to claims that the tech platforms are censoring them.

Among those who have spoken out are Mark Levin, a far-right radio host with millions of listeners, who vented on his show last week that the tech and media companies were not representing the conservative point of view. Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News anchor, also expressed frustration with Twitter and said it was blocking conservatives’ statements.

But Mr. Levin, Ms. Bartiromo and others did not stop there. They directed their followers to other social media apps and news sites that have positioned themselves as alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. The beneficiaries are Parler, a Twitter-like app that describes itself as the world’s “premier free speech social network,” the right-wing media app Newsmax, and other social sites like MeWe and Rumble, which have purposely welcomed conservatives.

Over the weekend, Parler shot to the top of Apple’s App Store in downloads. As of Monday, it had eight million members, nearly double the 4.5 million it had last week. Rumble said it projected 75 million to 90 million people will watch a video on its site this month, up from 60.5 million last month. And Newsmax said more than 3 million people watched its election night coverage and that its app has recently been in the top-10 daily apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store.

While social media sites marketed at conservatives have existed for years, they have often struggled to catch on more widely. Their invigoration now may add to a fracturing of the information ecosystem.

“There are real dangers around a fractured misinformation system, especially as it relates to organizing against our electoral integrity,” said Shannon McGregor, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and senior researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

But Ms. McGregor said she was skeptical that any migration would lead to permanent departures from Facebook and Twitter. “If there is no one to argue with, no omnipresent journalists or media entities to react to, how long will it last?” she said.

Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. The companies have denied censoring conservatives and typically point to their terms of service when an account breaks the rules. And while many conservatives are upset about their content being labeled or hidden, they are less willing to acknowledge that their posts can often clash with Facebook’s guidelines around disinformation and harmful content.

Next week, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, are scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing over their sites’ treatment of an unsubstantiated New York Post article that was critical of Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. The hearing was called by Republicans who were incensed that the sites initially limited the distribution of the article.

Despite the conservative ire, Facebook and Twitter have long taken a mostly hands-off approach to digital speech. In recent months, however, the companies ramped up their efforts to prevent election misinformation. Facebook and Twitter said they would label false posts and slow down how quickly they could be shared, among other moves. They said many of the changes would be temporary.

Last week after the polls closed, Facebook and Twitter began using many of those measures. When Mr. Trump posted that the election was being stolen from him, the companies labeled his messages. Facebook on Thursday also took down a rapidly growing Facebook group, Stop the Steal, which promoted the idea of a stolen election.

That moved people like Mr. Adam to switch to alternative apps like Parler, which is owned in part by the conservative media personality Dan Bongino. Founded in 2018 by two Nevada-based software engineers, John Matze and Jared Thomson, Parler — which is named after the French word meaning “to speak” — has said it is a free speech platform, with much looser guidelines around what people can post to the site.

On Parler, users can see posts about MAGA fodder and QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that asserts that some top Democrats are satanic pedophiles. Anti-Semitic theories abound. Donald Trump Jr., Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, all have Parler accounts.

“Parler is a breath of fresh air for those weary and wary of the way they’ve been treated by our competitors,” Jeffrey Wernick, Parler’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Our growth is not attributable to any one person or group, but rather to Parler’s efforts to earn our community’s trust.”

Updated 

Nov. 11, 2020, 6:57 p.m. ET

Parler’s recent growth has been so staggering that thousands of users have complained about how difficult it was to sign up because of the logjam of people creating new accounts. Mr. Matze said in a letter to Parler’s community on Tuesday that the influx “strained our networks’ capacity and caused some glitches and delays,” but the site was fixing the problems.

Some new Parler users said the site was an alternative to extreme platforms like Gab, another social media site that has been a haven for racist memes and content. Andrew Torba, founder and chief executive of Gab, said in an email, “Jesus is King, speak freely on Gab.com.” He also sent a link noting that Gab had seen record user growth over the last week.

Others have gravitated to Rumble, a video site founded in 2013 that has emerged as a conservative YouTube. Rumble makes money in a variety of ways, including by running ads and selling its technology.

Chris Pavlovski, Rumble’s founder and chief executive, said the site had been on a “rocket ship” of growth since the summer — and even more so since the election. Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, and Mr. Bongino are on Rumble and have seen their audiences expand rapidly on the site, he said.

Mr. Pavlovski added that Rumble prohibits explicit content, terrorist propaganda and harassment. But he said it was largely not in the business of sorting out misinformation or curbing speech.

“I don’t want to pretend to sit here and know what the truth is or have the capabilities to know how to do that,” he said. On other platforms, he added, “people are not allowed to have debate anymore.”

Many people have also sought out further-right news publications. That has been a boon for Newsmax, a right-wing news website and television channel founded in 1998 by the conservative journalist Christopher Ruddy. Last week, Newsmax gained steam after Fox News called the swing state of Arizona in favor of Mr. Biden, incensing Mr. Trump’s base. (The New York Times has not called Arizona in favor of either candidate.)

Melissa Zepeda, 32, a Republican and a registered nurse in northern Mississippi, said she and several of her co-workers recently switched to Newsmax from Fox News after it showed “favoritism to Biden.” Newsmax has not called the election in favor of Mr. Biden, one of the few news outlets not to do so.

“So far, I like that they are non-biased, and cover a variety of information, not just the election,” Ms. Zepeda said.

Mr. Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive and a confidant of Mr. Trump’s, said viewership and social media interactions with his site have soared. The surge came partly from conservatives who were searching for a place where their opinions are represented, he said. He added that it was important for publishers to have ideological diversity.

“There’s a liberal echo chamber that’s pretty damn big,” he said. “Conservatives just have less options, but if they seek them out, they’re there.”

It might be too early to know whether a widespread, permanent shift away from major outlets will last, especially given the reach of Facebook, Twitter and Fox News. While conservative threats of mass migration away from mainstream apps and news have occurred periodically, people still seem to return to the biggest platforms.

Ms. Zepeda, a longtime Facebook user, said she would keep her Facebook account to maintain access to the pictures she’s uploaded over the years. But she expects to drop the social network as a daily destination, joining one of the many Facebook groups that are planning a “Mass Exit off Facebook to Parler & MeWe,” scheduled for Friday.

“I’m tired of the bias towards Democrats and liberals,” she said.

[thinkveganworld]

I’ve been writing about politics and the U.S. drift toward fascism for over 20 years.  I know the country’s recent fascistic moves are a continuation of the things I’ve investigated for decades.  I hope the public wants to be well informed about the history that led up to our present situation.  For a glimpse of that history, here’s an article I wrote 18 years ago, “A Whiff of Fascism:” During election 2000, Bush paid campaign operatives posing as ordinary voters shoved people and banged on doors at the Miami-Dade canvassing offices in an effort to stop the Florida vote recount. Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said he detected “a whiff of fascism” in their tactics.

Some people criticized Nadler for drawing the comparison, but, of course, not all forms of fascism have to equate precisely to the classic form represented by Hitler or Mussolini. Fascism doesn’t have to involve mass genocidal slaughter, nor does it have to be equal in degree to the fascism practiced by members of the Axis powers. Traits of classic fascism include: strong nationalism, expansionism, belligerent militarism, meshing of big business and government with a corporate/government oligarchy, subversion of democracy and human rights, disinformation spread by constant propaganda and tight corporate/government control of the press. Today all of those conditions exist in our country to a degree. Let’s focus on corporate/government control of the press, specifically corporate control of U.S. television news networks. According to a March 24 article, “Protests Turn Off Viewers” by Harry A. Jessell, 45 percent of Americans rely on cable channels as their primary source of news, and 22 percent get most of their news from broadcast networks evening newscasts. Only 11 percent rely on other forms of media as their principle source of war news.Our corporate controlled TV networks might as well be state controlled, because they promote the war and Bush policies fairly consistently and have virtually eliminated all dissenting voices. NBC fired Phil Donahue despite his good ratings, saying in an internal network memo they didnt want to air Donahue’s antiwar views. Peter Arnett was fired for giving an interview to Iraqi TV and merely stating the obvious on a number of issues. For example, Arnett said media reports of civilian casualties had helped the growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war. According to William Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Ballantine Books, 1950), the Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, ordered editors not to publish (among other things) anything “which tends to weaken the strength of the German Reich . . . or offends the honor and dignity of Germany.” The Nazis forced dissenting journalists out of business and consolidated the press under party control. U.S. television news networks have been consolidated under the control of a handful of corporations. America doesn't need a press law prohibiting the airing of anything which might weaken the strength of Bush's war policies, because the corporate owners of today’s television networks are in total agreement with the state .It is irrefutable that corporate owners of American television networks want only pro-Bush, pro-war opinions aired, because those are virtually the only views that are in fact aired. The Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett firings, especially when coupled with the NBC internal memo explaining the Donahue firing, also indicate this is true. Do the various TV networks do a good job of informing the public, or do they more often propagandize? Propaganda is aimed at the emotions, while news sources that disseminate factual information aim toward reason.  In Nazi Germany: A New History (Continuum Publishing, 1995), Klaus P. Fischer says Hitler promoted a system of prejudices rather than a philosophy based on well-warranted premises, objective truth-testing, and logically derived conclusions. Since propaganda aims at persuasion rather than instruction, it is far more effective to appeal to the emotions than to the rational capacities of crowds. If you’ve spent much time watching the pro-Bush, pro-war cable television news programs, you can’t help but notice they manipulate (whether deliberately or not) the viewing audience’s emotions rather than appealing to viewers' logic.  That is, instead of providing the American public with a broad range of necessary facts and varied viewpoints about the war, the TV networks exploit emotions by urging the audience to focus on and identify with the day-to-day plight of individual soldiers and their families. There's nothing inherently wrong with empathizing with the troops. However, when that aspect of war news is heavily emphasized at the expense of hard facts and varied debate, the networks serve the purpose of managing the public mood rather than informing the public mind. According to Klaus Fisher, the Nazis eliminated from state media any ideas that clashed with official views. He writes that permissible media topics for public consumption included war itself and the Nazi movement; support of Nazi soldiers; praise for Hitler and celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of the fatherland. Today’s Bush-friendly TV networks have also deemed only certain subjects permissible, as evidenced by the irrefutable fact that they only cover a narrow range of subjects. Coincidentally, the proverbial network list would read virtually the same as the list in the paragraph above. Permissible topics include praise for the war; praise for the administrations policies; support for our soldiers; praise for Bush and the celebrating the thrill of combat and the sacredness of death when it is in the service of  (in this case) the homeland, even though there is no rational link between attacking Iraq and defending our soil.Of course, who needs rationality or facts from TV news when the American public already has enough information about world events? In a March 26 article for Editor and Publisher, “Polls Suggest Media Failure in Pre-War Coverage,” reporter Ari Berman refers to a Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll. This poll showed 44 percent of respondents believed most'or some'of the September 11 hijackers were Iraqis. Only 17 percent gave the correct answer: none.In the same poll, 41 percent said they believed Iraq definitely has nuclear weapons. As Berman points out, not even the Bush administration has claimed that. Berman also refers to a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey showing that almost two-thirds of people polled believed U. N. weapons inspectors had found proof that Iraq is trying to hide weapons of mass destruction. This claim was never made by Hans Blix or Mohammed ElBaradei. The same survey found 57 percent of those polled falsely believed Saddam Hussein assisted the 9/11 terrorists, and a March 79 New York Times/CBS News Poll revealed that 45 percent of respondents believed Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.TV news reporters have done little to correct the publics misconceptions. On the contrary, network reporters and their guests have often helped bolster the false impressions by mentioning September 11, or the threat of terrorism by al Qaeda, and the threat'posed by Saddam in the same breath.Individual TV reporters aren't always free to choose the information they pass along to the public. CNN now has a relatively new script approval'system, whereby journalists send their copy in to CNN chiefs for sanitizing. In his article, Guess who will be calling the shots at CNN,' British foreign correspondent Robert Fisk quotes a relatively new CNN document (dated Jan. 27), Reminder of Script Approval Policy. The policy says, “All reporters preparing package scripts must submit the scripts for approval . . . Packages may not be edited until the scripts are approved . . . All packages originating outside Washington, LA or NY, including all international bureaus, must come to the ROW [a group of script editors] in Atlanta for approval.” William Shirer comments on the Nazi party's control of press, radio and film, “Every morning the editors of the Berlin daily newspapers and the correspondents of those published elsewhere in the Reich gathered at the Propaganda Ministry to be told by Dr. Goebbels or by one of his aides what news to print and suppress, how to write the news and headline it, what campaigns to call off or institute and what editorials were desired for the day.  In case of any misunderstanding, a daily directive was furnished along with the oral instructions.” In an interview with TomPaine.com, Janine Jackson of the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), said that the group examined two weeks of nightly television news coverage. FAIR found that 76 percent of all news sources or guests on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBSs NewsHour were current or former government officials,'leaving little room for other diverse voices.In addition, FAIR found that only 6 percent of those sources were skeptical about the war. Jackson noted that on television news at night, there's virtually no debate about the need to go to war.'It would further public understanding if the TV networks would offer substantial debate on the following: The Bush administration's invasion of Iraq has alienated many world leaders and lost this country the respect of millions of citizens around the globe. The Bush team has created instability in the Middle East and risked retaliation. They've undercut the U.S. economy with the financial cost of this endeavor. They’ve increased the likelihood that worldwide nuclear weapons proliferation will increase. And, according to a recent Red Cross report, they have likely helped create a horrifying number of human casualties and a rapidly expanding humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The content of television news lacks range and diversity, but the way the news is presented is also disturbing. Television reporters often deliver news of the war with apparent breathless excitement, as if they're giving play-by-play descriptions of football games. People are dying in this conflict. Civilians are caught in the middle, being blown to pieces or losing loved ones. Children are left behind when their soldier-parents are killed. Instead of presenting news of this war'with giddiness, wouldn’t it be more appropriate, more human, for network reporters to take a somber, respectful approach? On TV, we see bombs dropping from a distance. Network commentators seldom offer the public close-ups. In his article, Military precision versus moral precision,'Robert Higgs, writes that the much-used JDAM bombs dropped in Iraq kill most people within 120 meters of the blast. According to Higgs, such a bomb releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction. Just yesterday I heard a TV reporter describe certain casualties with the sterile phrase, This is what war does. Well, it isn’t “war” that bursts sinus cavities and rips away limbs - nothing as nebulous as that.  George W. Bush and his administration have done these things. They have directly ordered that these things be done.

The bombs' shredding of flesh and crushing of human cells didn’t just passively happen .In an April 5 article for The Mirror, “The saddest story of all,” reporter Anton Antonowicz describes an Iraqi family's loss of their daughter.  “Nadia was lying on a stretcher beside the stone mortuary slab. Her heart lay on her chest, ripped from her body by a missile which smashed through the bedroom window of the family's flat nearby in Palestine Street.”  Nadias father said,”My daughter had just completed her PhD in psychology and was waiting for her first job. She was born in 1970. She was 33. She was very clever. Everyone said I have a fabulous daughter. She spent all her time studying. Her head buried in books.” Nadias sister Alia said, I don't know what humanity Bush is calling for. Is this the humanity which lost my sister? It is war which has done this. And that war was started by Bush.” Today we're again getting a whiff of fascism from the Bush administration. This isn't the equivalent of Hitler or Mussolinijust sort of a creeping fascism light, and the corporate controlled television news networks are only one example of the way even light fascism undermines American values. With the Bush administration and television networks currently fixated on the high melodrama of winning the war and sprucing up its aftermath, they don't have much time to reflect on whether winning at any cost is a good idea. Whether the slaughter in Iraq and its aftermath go well, the war has already destroyed many lives in Iraq and the U.S. and damaged the American character and democracy at home. For thoughtful people in this country, the question has never been will we win, but at what cost?

[remelitalia]

How to Use Promoted Videos to Generate More E-commerce Sales

Organic and promoted videos serve multiple purposes for consumers in their increasingly multi-channel B2C journey.

More than half of the participants said they switched between search and video channels (Google and YouTube) to make an informed decision about a purchase in a YouTube study.

But it’s not just YouTube—Instagram’s video content consumption has shot up by 80%, and Facebook users consume one million hours of video content every day.

All these platforms—along with most other social media sites—are ones consumers go to regularly. So as online sellers, these should become your go-to places for running promoted video content. In one study, US online shoppers said they expect to see at least three videos connected to each product when making an online purchase.

But how do you use promoted videos from paid campaigns that translate to tangible results for your e-commerce store?

Create Your Promoted Video E-Commerce Goals

Goals of promoted videos for e-commerce businesses mostly come down to these three:

Increasing brand awareness: -This essentially means if you make and sell, say, scarves, people looking to buy scarves know about you. Promoted videos are a great tool for building brand awareness as people are increasingly discovering new products through videos. In a YouTube survey, more than 90% of shoppers said they’d found new products and brands on the platform.

Boosting consideration: You want to know if people looking for scarves and checking you out are actually considering buying from you. When done right, promoted videos can push your “aware” audience base to the consideration stage. More than 50% of shoppers say online videos have “helped them decide which specific brand or product to buy.”

Generating more sales: YouTube’s “which product to buy” video watch time doubles each year.  Promoted videos can give shoppers the push they need to choose your product.

Translate Your Promoted Video Goals Into KPIs

Take your goals for promoted videos and choose KPIs that reflect them.

Bigger e-commerce brands often use KPIs like ad recall, message association, and purchase intent, among others.

However, if you’re just starting out or are in your early stages of growth, these KPIs won’t make so much sense for you. Instead, you should map your goals to the more “real” KPIs, like upper funnel metrics like views and impressions, middle funnel metrics like watch time and view-throughs, and bottom-funnel metrics like click-throughs, signups, and sales. (Here’s a primer on e-commerce attribution modeling that can help you with this.)

Analytics in most video platforms will report on the general performance of your promoted videos, including:

Views

Watch time

Clicks

CTR

Engagements

Unique viewers

Viewership

Different video platforms have different ways of calculating these metrics. For instance, watch time of three-seconds counts as a view on Instagram (where video content maxes out at 60 seconds), whereas for YouTube,  a view happens when someone watches the video content for at least 30 seconds.

Tap Into Your Users’ Moments of Need

Now that you’ve taken care of the “business side” of using promoted videos for your e-commerce business, it’s time to look into the “people side.”

One way to go about this is to tap into the idea of “moments of need” that drive video search and consumption. These are the things consumers want at this exact second.

The four key micro-moments of needs you must factor in when planning video content for paid promotions are:

I-want-to-watch

I-want-to-do

I-want-to-know

I-want-to-buy

These micro-moments represent opportunities for engagement, and videos fit seamlessly into them.

For example, if you sell skincare products, you could run a sponsored video on YouTube that targets users in your target market who also Googled “skincare products,” capitalizing on an I-want-to-buy moment. Google’s research has found advertisers who use YouTube video ads and Google search ads report 3% higher conversion rates and a 4% lower search cost/acquisition.

Or you could target broader audience segments and educate them about their top relevant concerns (ingredients, benefits, etc.). This is geared toward the I-want-to-know moments.

When you brainstorm ideas for videos using moments of need, don’t only think in terms of pitching your products. Some of these moments aren’t moments of buying but opportunities to connect with your users via meaningful video content.

The idea is to meet your users with relevant video content wherever they are in their buying journey with you—unaware, considering, or ready-to-buy.

Identify What Drives Your Users to Different Video Platforms

Each video platform has a unique video consumption pattern driven by the viewers’ intents.

For example, Pinterest users appear to have an appetite for “inspirational” video content, with searches for this content increasing 31 percent. “Inspirational,” in this context, means things like how-to guides and backstories of companies and products, making this platform great for “I-want-to-know” and “I-want-to-do” moments.

For YouTube, on the other hand, the top four content categories are comedy, music, entertainment/pop culture, and “how to.” And, 68% of their users take this information and make purchase decisions—so, you can find all sorts of opportunities to use “moments” on this site to make your sales.

It’s also worth exploring how a user engages with the platform you’re using to promote your videos. Pinterest, for instance, serves as a wishlist for many users, as people save images and videos from all over to their personal pages. Meanwhile, a customer who uses YouTube may watch videos to learn how to use a product they want.

Instagrammers’ “moments” can fall into any category, but they want to use the information right now. When you create videos for Instagram, they need to be fast, informative, and provide easy purchasing information.

Before you pick a platform, dig into its demographics and research data. This information can help you set expectations for your promoted videos.

Optimize Your Video Content For Paid Campaigns

When it comes to creating video content you’ll pay to promote, the only rules are the ones mandated by the video platforms. These rules are about the formats supported and the approval policies, plus a few best practices.

Content-wise, there’s no one right way to do video. You need to know your company, your audience, and what works for similar brands.

For one brand, simply using stock photos, text, and music could do the trick.

Another brand might do better if they use video showing a product in action.

While there’s no one single way to create videos that work, some video types more consistently deliver results when promoted:

Product explainer videos: Sometimes simple product explainer videos—videos showing products in action—work as excellent content for promoting.

Storytelling/Sneak peeks/Behind-the-scenes videos: For some platforms, like Instagram, video content that tells a story, gives viewers a preview of new products, or shows them how things were created or who the workers are can generate great ROI.

How-tos: How-to videos directly address the “i-want-to-do” moments and often offer opportunities for showing products in action.

Unboxing and haul videos: Depending on your product(s), unboxing, or haul videos, too, can work well in paid campaigns. These are videos showing customers opening their new purchases and talking about their initial responses to the items.

Shop with me: In a two-year period, the watch time for “shop with me” videos increased tenfold on mobile alone, making this yet another video content type that can work well when promoted. These are videos where influencers literally share their shopping experiences with viewers.

Videos answering the “W” questions: Video consumers often have “W” questions— “what to buy?” “where to buy,” and “when to buy?” This may also include, “who should I buy this for?” Depending on your paid video campaigns’ goals, these questions can make good jumping-off points for promoted videos.

The above ideas for promoted video content may often overlap with the video content you’d produce for typical partnerships—but not always. It’s common for brands to create content specifically for partnerships and use it in addition to their other ads.

Alongside these promoted ads and partnerships, UGC (user-generated content) and testimonials can act as good ideas for promoted video content.

No matter what video type you choose, you need a video creative brief to prepare for your campaign. Below, Nic Burrows from Google shares a simple yet effective creative brief you can use to create compelling videos.

His template forces you to think about and research every aspect involved with creating useful, action-inspiring videos:

You can download your copy here (no opt-in needed).

To learn how to make your video content pop, Ben Jones and his team from Google review 1,000 video ad creatives each month and share how brands can improve. Check it out here:

Experiment With Your Promoted Videos

Like your other marketing assets, experiment with your promoted videos to know which ones drive the most revenue.

You can test pretty much everything, from your video’s length and opening sequence to the background music and interactive elements.

You’ll be surprised to realize significant savings with even simple experiments, so don’t shy away from trying all sorts of different things.

For example, when the coffee and bakery brand Dunkin’ experimented by creating an Instagram video ad with poll stickers and another version without them. By comparing these two concepts, they discovered a 20% lower cost per video view for those with stickers.

Avoid testing too many ideas in a single experiment because you likely won’t be able to tell why the winning version succeeded.

Document your findings to save on the next campaign. Additionally, your discoveries can fuel your follow-up experiments.

Analyze and Improve Your Promoted Videos

As with any other marketing channel, you may improve your ROI with your store’s promoted videos if you analyze their performance.

Just remember to look a little deeper than the top-of-the-funnel metrics like views and shares to uncover the “real” performance. No matter how impressive those numbers may be, they don’t necessarily translate to sales and profits.

So keep an eye on your sales volumes and value.

Also, when you use promoted videos on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube, you can get instant feedback from your users via their comments, likes, dislikes, and shares.

Listen to the feedback they give and use any insights to optimize your videos.

Conclusion

When trying promoted videos for generating more sales, you should try a variety of platforms one by one.

That way, you’ll be able to identify which platforms produce the best ROI for your promoted video campaigns without needing to invest in complex attribution modeling.

Also, don’t think you need the most high-definition production equipment or the best creative agencies to produce the video content for promoting your products. Audiences crave for authentic content the most—so focus on that.

Remember, you’re competing against your own benchmarks, as there are no industry standards here.

Dive in, try different things, listen to your viewers, and—perhaps—have a little fun along the way.  

Have you tried promoting videos on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or any other platforms? Share your experience in the comments!

The post How to Use Promoted Videos to Generate More E-commerce Sales appeared first on Neil Patel.

Original content source: https://neilpatel.com/blog/promoted-video-ecommerce/ via https://neilpatel.com

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[gibsongirlselections]

Trump and the Troops: The Media’s Latest Self-Satisfied Grift

Watch how this is done: Joe Biden plans to resign after only one year in the White House, according to someone with direct knowledge of the Bidens’ plans.

A senior official at Northern Virginia Community College confirmed that Jill Biden reached out recently to see if she could resume teaching if her husband was elected—Dr. Biden famously taught there while her husband served as vice president and had befriended the official. The College immediately offered her a four-year cycle of classes. She wanted, however, to make only a one-year commitment. “We won’t be in Washington for the full term,” Biden reportedly explained. “Joe’ll stay in office for a year and work on some signature issues like cancer research, but Kamala will be doing the heavy lifting from day one. Joe will quietly resign and give her plenty of time to make the job her own. It’s set in stone I’m afraid. I wouldn’t let him run any other way given his health.”

I made that up. See how easy it is? Start with a known bias, that many people believe Joe Biden won’t serve his whole term. Play off the fear that he’s a Trojan Horse. Tell people what they already believe: Harris is selected, not elected. Include some truth (Dr. Jill Biden did teach at Northern Virginia Community College during the Obama administration). And then take advantage of the magic of anonymous sources.

This comes in the context of an article in The Atlantic by Jeff Goldberg, where anonymous sources claim the president disrespected America’s military. Goldberg’s piece was followed by former Russiagate FBI agent Peter Strzok telling another Atlantic writer that Trump is controlled by the Russians. Then came the return of Alexander Vindman (powered by an anonymous source, er, “whistleblower”) and excerpts from Bob Woodward’s book Rage claiming without details that Dan Coats and Jim Mattis planned “collective action” against the president.

Those are only a few recent examples. Amid a four year tantrum, the media has recklessly published anything anti-Trump without concern for truth, little better than the minor celebs who take to Twitter to announce #TrumpisaPedo. Journalism has become farce, its purpose not to inform but to advocate. Influence ops. Propaganda.

It’s worth making an example out of Goldberg’s article because of its exclusive use of anonymous sources in pursuit of advocacy, in this case, trying to chip away at Trump’s pro-military base. Though Goldberg talks about events from as long as four years ago, the actual article was released alongside a Military Times poll showing Biden gaining some support among service members, and dovetailed with fuzzy reporting that Trump ignored Russian bounties on Americans in Afghanistan.

The questions of timing and motive make the validity of the sources ever more important. How do we know Goldberg didn’t make things up, or at least allow himself to be used for a partisan end as he did in advocating for the whole false narrative of WMDs in Iraq? Unless you’re Goldberg’s mother or the town mayor from Jaws, credibility comes from sources, not a writer’s inner soul. Goldberg is lacking.

As a diplomat, I staffed overseas presidential visits from Reagan to Obama. I sat in on planning meetings and got a pretty close-up view of the Secret Service. The president exists inside a series of bubbles, like Russian nesting dolls (forgive me). The innermost bubble, the one where someone might hear his personal thoughts, is reserved for very, very few people. The universe of those who could have been physically close enough to Trump (or any president) to overhear such sensitive remarks is tiny.

So if we know the names of the sources, it will be easy to place them in that special group, or not. It will be easy to check photos to see if they were where they would have needed to be to overhear. Fact-checkers could determine who else was around to confirm or deny the story (11 Trump officials deny it by name, zero confirm). Knowing the names resolves the risk. Trust but verify.

Goldberg’s sources say Trump remarked to former White House chief of staff and retired Marine General John Kelly, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” A real reporter would also provide context (Bob Woodward in Rage is also guilty of this, dropping a turd quote in the public punch bowl and then moving on), asking what was said before and after the damning remarks. It is not uncommon for civilians to respectfully inquire as to what motivates men to run into fires, to sacrifice themselves for a buddy, to stand in harm’s way.

Trump supposedly said this at the Arlington National Cemetery gravesite of Kelly’s son, a Marine killed in Afghanistan. This photo shows who was there—Kelly, two family members, Trump, and Pence. This would have been the moment when Trump would have made his remark, and those are the only five people on earth who would have heard it. Trump and Pence deny it; the Kelly family has been silent. The same photo set shows Trump meeting later with other Gold Star families, none of whom claim he made any disparaging remarks.

There is also a sniff test to be applied. The credibility of journalism should not depend on the reader’s biases; that’s the domain of late-night Trump Sucks You Guys comedy. Trump mocking Kelly’s son at graveside would be among the most horrible things anyone could do to a parent. Who would say such a thing? There is no record of the worst humans in history, men like Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot, saying such things. There is no record of concentration camp guards, men capable of killing children, saying such things. Would Kelly, a blooded Marine, stand silently with his family as accomplices in their humiliation, then release the information only years later while hiding behind the skirt of a journalist to score a glancing political point?

Though it got much less attention, The Atlantic followed up Goldberg with a piece that included a named source and allowed him to list out baseless accusations of treason. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok sees grassy knolls everywhere. The Atlantic helps him along, introducing a back-and-to-the-left theory by saying, “Despite multiple investigations by the FBI, Congress, and Mueller’s team, Americans have still never learned the full story about the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia.” Like what?

Well, Strzok says he doesn’t really know, but it must be hidden in Trump’s taxes (which the IRS has reviewed for decades). The writer feels it in her ample gut, too, stating in her best Kevin Costner voice, “Strzok was getting too close to the truth.” Ah, from Strzok: “I do think the president is compromised, that he is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well.” That is a straight-up accusation of treason.

And there both the writer and the source leave it, no specifics, no follow-up questions, not even a pee tape. We’re left to infer that They Are All In On It, everyone who could have blown this wide open is dummied up—FBI, CIA, NSA, DOJ. Remember Mr. X, the character in JFK played by Donald Sutherland? Strzok wants to be him. Problem is he’s not good enough for an Oliver Stone film, so he’s just out there pimping his book.

The Atlantic articles are sucked oranges. Writing this after the hot takes have faded, it’s clear they had little lasting effect and thus weren’t even decent propaganda. Goldberg’s article got far too much attention for how little it had to say. But it has not gotten enough review as a marker, the place we had to end up when the media wholeheartedly advocated for the Iraq war based on lies, literally rewrote history with the 1619 Project for political ends, buried things of concern with Hillary, helped create Russiagate, and used its own freedom of speech to quash dissenting voices as unpatriotic in 2003 and as “useful idiots” and Russian bots since.

In defense of what they call advocacy, crappy journalists often cite Walter Cronkite’s late opposition to the Vietnam War or Ed Murrow’s shaming of Joe McCarthy. Not only are such gold-standard examples rare enough that the list often ends there, they ignore the negative examples above. They also ignore how Cronkite’s and Murrow’s advocacy came at the end of dispassionate study and deep introspection. Cronkite and Murrow broke the objectivity wall not for a favored candidate, but over issues of deep national importance. And they understood the difference before acting.

Peter Van Buren, a 24-year State Department veteran, is the author of We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People, Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan, and Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the 99 Percent.

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