#best immigration software

[mylegalsoftware]

Do you need any legal assistance? A paralegal can provide you with a variety of benefits before you hire one. Our website can provide you with more information about this. Visit us now.

[imagilityimmigrationsoftware]

Imagility offers powerful Immigration Software for Paralegals designed to streamline workflows and boost efficiency. With easy-to-use features like automated form generation, document management, and case tracking, Imagility empowers paralegals to handle complex immigration cases with precision and speed. Stay organized, reduce errors, and ensure compliance with the latest regulations—all in one platform. Enhance your legal support services with Imagility, the trusted software solution for immigration professionals.

[pingtreesystemssoftware]

Drive Business Success with Premium Auto Insurance Leads

In the competitive world of auto insurance, acquiring high-quality leads is crucial for sustained growth and success. Premium auto insurance leads offer a strategic advantage, providing businesses with targeted, motivated prospects. By investing in the best auto insurance leads, companies can optimize their marketing efforts, increase conversion rates, and ultimately boost revenue.

The Importance of Quality Auto Insurance Leads

Understanding the Value of Premium Leads

The auto insurance market is saturated with providers vying for customers' attention. To stand out, businesses need to focus on acquiring premium leads—prospects who are actively seeking auto insurance and are ready to make a purchase decision. These high-intent leads can significantly reduce the time and effort spent on cold calling and chasing uninterested prospects.

The Impact on Conversion Rates

Utilizing the Best Auto Insurance Leads ensures that your sales team spends their time and resources on prospects with a higher likelihood of conversion. This not only improves the efficiency of your sales process but also enhances the overall customer experience, leading to higher satisfaction rates and better retention.

Strategies to Acquire Premium Auto Insurance Leads

Leveraging Advanced Data Analytics

To acquire the best auto insurance leads, businesses must leverage advanced data analytics tools. These tools can analyze vast amounts of data to identify patterns and trends, helping you to target prospects more effectively. By understanding the demographics, behaviors, and preferences of your ideal customers, you can tailor your marketing strategies to attract high-quality leads.

Utilizing Multi-Channel Marketing

Diversifying your marketing efforts across multiple channels can increase your reach and visibility. Utilize digital marketing techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing, and email campaigns. By maintaining a strong presence on various platforms, you can capture the attention of potential customers wherever they are.

Building Strategic Partnerships

Partnering with complementary businesses can also help in acquiring premium auto insurance leads. For instance, collaborating with car dealerships, repair shops, or financial advisors can provide access to a pool of potential customers who are already in need of auto insurance services. These partnerships can create a steady stream of high-quality leads.

Maximizing the Value of Your Leads

Implementing a Robust Lead Management System

To fully capitalize on the best auto insurance leads, it’s essential to have a robust lead management system in place. This system should track and manage leads throughout the sales funnel, ensuring that no opportunity is missed. Automated follow-ups, personalized communication, and detailed analytics can help in nurturing leads and converting them into loyal customers.

Training and Empowering Your Sales Team

A well-trained sales team is crucial for effectively handling premium auto insurance leads. Continuous training programs should focus on improving communication skills, product knowledge, and customer relationship management. Empower your team with the tools and resources they need to succeed, such as CRM software and sales automation tools.

Personalizing the Customer Experience

In today's market, personalization is key to winning over customers. Use the data collected from your leads to offer personalized solutions that meet their specific needs. Tailored quotes, customized policy options, and targeted marketing messages can enhance the customer experience and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Measuring Success and Adjusting Strategies

Analyzing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Regularly analyze KPIs such as conversion rates, cost per lead, and customer acquisition costs to measure the success of your lead generation efforts. These metrics can provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of your strategies and highlight areas for improvement.

Adjusting Your Approach

The auto insurance market is dynamic, and consumer preferences can change rapidly. Stay agile by continuously reviewing and adjusting your lead generation strategies based on the latest market trends and customer feedback. This proactive approach ensures that you remain competitive and continue to attract the best auto insurance leads.

[innerxcrm]

The Best Choice For Immigration CRM Software: Innerx Premium CRM

 Immigration CRM Software is without a doubt the need of the hour for all the study abroad agencies if they want to have the competitive edge. As the number of immigration consultants rises exponentially, the need to streamline the efforts of the whole team needs to be in the right direction.

[mariacallous]

Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, is best known for calling out the hype surrounding artificial intelligence in his Substack, AI Snake Oil, written with PhD candidate Sayash Kapoor. The two authors recently released a book based on their popular newsletter about AI’s shortcomings.

But don’t get it twisted—they aren’t against using new technology. “It's easy to misconstrue our message as saying that all of AI is harmful or dubious,” Narayanan says. He makes clear, during a conversation with WIRED, that his rebuke is not aimed at the software per say, but rather the culprits who continue to spread misleading claims about artificial intelligence.

In AI Snake Oil, those guilty of perpetuating the current hype cycle are divided into three core groups: the companies selling AI, researchers studying AI, and journalists covering AI.

Hype Super-Spreaders

Companies claiming to predict the future using algorithms are positioned as potentially the most fraudulent. “When predictive AI systems are deployed, the first people they harm are often minorities and those already in poverty,” Narayanan and Kapoor write in the book. For example, an algorithm previously used in the Netherlands by a local government to predict who may commit welfare fraud wrongly targeted women and immigrants who didn’t speak Dutch.

The authors turn a skeptical eye as well toward companies mainly focused on existential risks, like artificial general intelligence, the concept of a super-powerful algorithm better than humans at performing labor. Though, they don’t scoff at the idea of AGI. “When I decided to become a computer scientist, the ability to contribute to AGI was a big part of my own identity and motivation,” says Narayanan. The misalignment comes from companies prioritizing long-term risk factors above the impact AI tools have on people right now, a common refrain I’ve heard from researchers.

Much of the hype and misunderstandings can also be blamed on shoddy, non-reproducible research, the authors claim. “We found that in a large number of fields, the issue of data leakage leads to overoptimistic claims about how well AI works,” says Kapoor. Data leakage is essentially when AI is tested using part of the model’s training data—similar to handing out the answers to students before conducting an exam.

While academics are portrayed in AI Snake Oil as making “textbook errors,” journalists are more maliciously motivated and knowingly in the wrong, according to the Princeton researchers: “Many articles are just reworded press releases laundered as news.” Reporters who sidestep honest reporting in favor of maintaining their relationships with big tech companies and protecting their access to the companies’ executives are noted as especially toxic.

I think the criticisms about access journalism are fair. In retrospect, I could have asked tougher or more savvy questions during some interviews with the stakeholders at the most important companies in AI. But the authors might be oversimplifying the matter here. The fact that big AI companies let me in the door doesn’t prevent me from writing skeptical articles about their technology, or working on investigative pieces I know will piss them off. (Yes, even if they make business deals, like OpenAI did, with the parent company of WIRED.)

And sensational news stories can be misleading about AI’s true capabilities. Narayanan and Kapoor highlight New York Times columnist Kevin Roose’s 2023 chatbot transcript interacting with Microsoft's tool headlined “Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’” as an example of journalists sowing public confusion about sentient algorithms. “Roose was one of the people who wrote these articles,” says Kapoor. “But I think when you see headline after headline that's talking about chatbots wanting to come to life, it can be pretty impactful on the public psyche.” Kapoor mentions the ELIZA chatbot from the 1960s, whose users quickly anthropomorphized a crude AI tool, as a prime example of the lasting urge to project human qualities onto mere algorithms.

Roose declined to comment when reached via email and instead pointed me to a passage from his related column, published separately from the extensive chatbot transcript, where he explicitly states that he knows the AI is not sentient. The introduction to his chatbot transcript focuses on “its secret desire to be human” as well as “thoughts about its creators,” and the comment section is strewn with readers anxious about the chatbot’s power.

Images accompanying news articles are also called into question in AI Snake Oil. Publications often use clichéd visual metaphors, like photos of robots, at the top of a story to represent artificial intelligence features. Another common trope, an illustration of an altered human brain brimming with computer circuitry used to represent the AI’s neural network, irritates the authors. “We're not huge fans of circuit brain,” says Narayanan. “I think that metaphor is so problematic. It just comes out of this idea that intelligence is all about computation.” He suggests images of AI chips or graphics processing units should be used to visually represent reported pieces about artificial intelligence.

Education Is All You Need

The adamant admonishment of the AI hype cycle comes from the authors’ belief that large language models will actually continue to have a significant influence on society and should be discussed with more accuracy. “It's hard to overstate the impact LLMs might have in the next few decades,” says Kapoor. Even if an AI bubble does eventually pop, I agree that aspects of generative tools will be sticky enough to stay around in some form. And the proliferation of generative AI tools, which developers are currently pushing out to the public through smartphone apps and even formatting devices around it, just heightens the necessity for better education on what AI even is and its limitations.

The first step to understanding AI better is coming to terms with the vagueness of the term, which flattens an array of tools and areas of research, like natural language processing, into a tidy, marketable package. AI Snake Oil divides artificial intelligence into two subcategories: predictive AI, which uses data to assess future outcomes; and generative AI, which crafts probable answers to prompts based on past data.

It’s worth it for anyone who encounters AI tools, willingly or not, to spend at least a little time trying to better grasp key concepts, like machine learning and neural networks, to further demystify the technology and inoculate themselves from the bombardment of AI hype.

During my time covering AI for the past two years, I’ve learned that even if readers grasp a few of the limitations of generative tools, like inaccurate outputs or biased answers, many people are still hazy about all of its weaknesses. For example, in the upcoming season of AI Unlocked, my newsletter designed to help readers experiment with AI and understand it better, we included a whole lesson dedicated to examining whether ChatGPT can be trusted to dispense medical advice based on questions submitted by readers. (And whether it will keep your prompts about that weird toenail fungus private.)

A user may approach the AI’s outputs with more skepticism when they have a better understanding of where the model’s training data came from—often the depths of the internet or Reddit threads—and it may hamper their misplaced trust in the software.

Narayanan believes so strongly in the importance of quality education that he began teaching his children about the benefits and downsides of AI at a very young age. “I think it should start from elementary school,” he says. “As a parent, but also based on my understanding of the research, my approach to this is very tech-forward.”

Generative AI may now be able to write half-decent emails and help you communicate sometimes, but only well-informed humans have the power to correct breakdowns in understanding around this technology and craft a more accurate narrative moving forward.

[shesthespinstersimmer]

Graduates (5)🎓

Abeba Girma

Valedictorian / President, Young Lawyers Association / Broussard Justice Recipient

Abeba has done it again - highest GPA, on the fast track to make Junior partner before she even moved into her desk at the law firm. Her parents, Ephrem and Mazaa are over the moon. 

She will be taking a position in international law to help refugees and people who cannot afford to pay with immigration issues. She also secured a grant so that she can offer her services pro bono. Now to find a home for her and her Fiancée Baldwin.

Baldwin Levesque

Computer Science Major / Young Innovators in Tech Award Recipient 🥇/ Valadictorian

Baldwin has hit the ground running - he’s already begun working for Meditech ™️ and is on the fast track to running his own team. He’ll be creating medical software that will play a role in medical surgery. Needless to say, his mother Xio is beyond pleased. His father Manu and his sister Zora are proud, but expected nothing less.

He and his fiancé Abeba just have one task aside from wedding plans – finding a home.

Micah Broussard

Journalism Major / Writer, Foxbury Insider

He made it, y’all. His parents, Bruce & Esther had their fingers crossed most of the time, but we’re here.

Although he originally wanted to be a sports journalist (if you’ve been following along, you know why… but let’s not bring her up right now), but thanks to his professor, he decided to go down the novelist path, while working for a digital paper in the meantime.

Now that he’s about to be a father, this suits him just fine. It will give him time to bring in a steady paycheck while working on his first book. Lucky for him, there are plenty of writers in the family to help guide him through the process. And Bubbe Ida and his sisters Shalom & Noa pie, of course.

Next up? Finish moving, baby shower, wedding. Possibly in that order. 

Alma Ramos

Journalism Major / Editor-In-Chief, Foxybury Insider / Latina Writer’s Guild / Foxbury

Granted, this is not how Alma saw her Uni experience ending. However, as all writers know, some of the best experiences are the plot twists. And maybe this is just a detour; plenty of young mothers manage to raise their children and have careers. She has a loving, committed partner in Micah, so anything is possible. Not to mention a strong family in her Abuelo Luis, her Tia Benni and her prima Yadira and Ya’s fiancée Ciara.

Previous / Next / Beginning

[myobsessionsspace]

Caller’s honest, human and wholesome response to the racist rhetoric being purported; further highlighted after the heartbreaking tragedy in Southport, England.

“Shelagh Fogarty could listen to caller Darren 'for hours', as he tells of his mentality around multiculturalism in Britain, shutting down fears over immigration as 'absolute nonsense' and adds that it has only 'enriched' his life.

Shelagh proclaimed the call 'the best call of my entire career', encouraging other to 'be more Darren'.

Aggressive protests have broken out across the UK this week following a stabbing attack in Southport which left three little girls dead and others critically injured, but the Southport community have condemned the violence displayed.

The riots were sparked after misinformation spread online - possibly orchestrated by Russian trolls - that the suspect in the killing was a Muslim asylum seeker.

Keir Starmer (British Prime Minister) said on Thursday that he was launching a special unit to tackle the violent disorder, that would share information across forces and use facial recognition software to identify criminals.”

[tomorrowusa]

It's obvious that RFK Jr. picked his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, because he needed somebody who was filthy rich to fund his campaign. Shanahan is the ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin who probably has enough money to buy one of the smaller Hawaiian Islands.

Why Shanahan doesn't mind being an ATM for the worm-brained RFK Jr. is that she shares his idiotic conspiracy theory which falsely links autism to vaccines.

It’s easy to see why the controversial heir to the most prestigious liberal name-brand in American politics chose Shanahan, a relative unknown, to be his nominee for vice president. As an ambitious and athletic millennial who surfs and grows her own food with her boyfriend, a cryptocurrency software developer she met at Burning Man, the 38-year-old attorney brings a woman’s presence, and youthful energy, to a race dominated by octogenarian men, not to mention the 70-year-old Kennedy. And as the former wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the seventh richest man in the world, Shanahan brings another factor crucial to the campaign: unfathomably deep pockets. Her backing enables Kennedy to skirt questions about why the notoriously anti-immigration GOP megadonor Timothy Mellon is financing the super PAC supporting Kennedy’s campaign, American Values. Mellon has poured millions into Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc., while donating $53 million in stock to the state of Texas to build the former president’s border wall.

As an aside, shouldn't the RFK Jr.-curious be concerned about the loot he's getting from MAGA megadonor Timothy Mellon? 🤔

Back to Shanahan...

So how did Shanahan end up on a “spoiler” ticket praised by right-wing ideologues like Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, the notorious GOP mischief-maker who called an alliance between Kennedy and Trump his “dream ticket”?

The turning point in her life came in 2020, she says in an Instagram video, when (daughter) Echo was diagnosed with autism. The Daily Beast claims that Shanahan “chafed at Brin’s left-brain thinking” about the best practices for raising a child on the spectrum, and the Google co-founder filed divorce papers shortly thereafter, citing “irreconcilable differences.” She initially contested their prenuptial agreement and sought $1 billion of Brin’s fortune but eventually settled out of court.

"Left-brain thinking" is often a euphemism for being logical and analytical. In other words: rational. Rationality is not a strong point for conspiracy freaks.

But while she claims that world-class experts keep her apprised of cutting-edge autism research, her ideas about her daughter’s condition seem stuck in the 1990s; during that era, actress Jenny McCarthy was hailed as an autism expert, and Andrew Wakefield triggered a global panic about vaccines with the publication of a paper in The Lancet linking autism to vaccines. That paper was later retracted after multiple investigations found it based on fraudulent data and riddled with conflicts of interest.

So Nicole Shanahan is fixated on a debunked and retracted article from three decades ago.

For somebody who is allegedly concerned about her autistic daughter, why is she the running mate for a candidate who calls people with autism "zombies"?

And you wouldn’t know it from listening to Kennedy, who routinely caricatures people on the spectrum as “vaccine-injured” zombies. “They get the shot ... and three months later, their brain is gone,” Kennedy told an audience in 2015. Insisting that previous generations of autistic people simply never existed—when in truth, they were often hidden away in institutions because of a thoroughly discredited theory that autism is caused by bad parenting—the candidate told radio and TV host Michael Smerconish last year: “I have never in my life seen a man my age with full-blown autism, not once. Where are these men? One out of every 22 men who are walking around the mall with helmets on, who are non-toilet-trained, nonverbal, stimming, toe-walking, hand-flapping. I’ve never seen it.”

RFK Jr. is intent on being the 2024 version of Ralph Nader. In 2020 Nader, as the Green Party candidate for president, hoodwinked enough gullible progressives into voting for him so that he helped George W. Bush take Florida – the deciding state in the 2000 election. Bush then gifted the US with two recessions (including the Great one), two wars (one totally unnecessary and one which could have been avoided if he had paid more attention to terrorism), two rightwing appointees to the Supreme Court (one bad, one horrendous), and two rounds of tax breaks for the filthy rich.

One way to undermine RFK J.'s support among some people on the left is to strongly debunk his autism vaccine conspiracy theory.

Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania published a new survey showing that 12% of Americans feel that a link between the MMR vaccine is either definitely true or probably true.

False Belief in MMR Vaccine-Autism Link Endures as Measles Threat Persists

While anti-vaxxers tend to be Trumpsters, there's a sizeable number of misinformed people on the left who share this view regarding MMR. So debunking the MMR-autism bullshit should be a routine part of your anti-Trump activism.

[44gamez]

The 10 best games for low end PCs

We are able to’t all be working the most recent and best PC {hardware}; it prices a fortune and takes an age to be taught to put in. Working an older PC might reduce a number of the AAA video games out of your library. Nevertheless, some superb video games run completely on low end PCs.

10. Valheim

Screenshot: PC Invasion Welcome to the land between worlds. In Valheim, you play as a Viking, now deceased, and dealing in the direction of Valhalla. Valheim takes place in purgatory, and it's as much as you to defeat the varied gods of the realm. Valheim could have you and your folks amassing assets, constructing unbelievable bases, and attempting to outlive the varied biomes. You could degree up and survive the onslaught of enemies, slowly turning into robust sufficient to defeat the gods and take their energy. It is a splendidly immersive recreation greatest performed along with your different low end PC mates.

9. Stardew Valley

Screenshot: ConcernedApe Stardew Valley was launched again in 2016 and continues to be being up to date with unbelievable content material. This farming recreation is one of the best within the style by a mile and deserves all of the reward it will get. After inheriting a dilapidated farm, it's as much as you to get it up and working once more. The journey will take you thru caves, cities, communities, and lots of extra thrilling locations in your quest to construct the right working farm. The sport’s easy graphics might be run on even probably the most low-end PCs, making it accessible to all.

8. Risk of Rain 2

Screenshot: Gearbox Publishing For prime-octane video games that may simply run on even probably the most low-end PC setups, you might do lots worse than choosing up a replica of Risk of Rain 2. This recreation has created one thing distinctive and might be simply obsessed over. Alone or with mates, it's as much as you to defeat the varied bosses of the realms you enter. In your journey, you'll decide up many wild and great power-ups, ultimately turning into a damaging pressure. Your base character determines simply how every one works, however relaxation assured, no recreation is ever the identical.

7. Hotline Miami

Screenshot: Devolver Digital Each Hotline Miami 1 and a couple of are masterpieces of recent gaming. The highest-down slaughter-fest is as quick and intense as gaming will get. It's as much as you to shoot, slash, and hammer your approach by way of enemies, doing all of your greatest to outlive. Each foe can one-tap you, and your reactions must be lightning-fast. The sport’s easy graphics, together with the extreme gameplay and soundtrack, make this good for any low-end PC setup.

6. Papers, Please

Picture through Lucas Pope Ever wished to reside the lifetime of an immigration officer? No? Nicely, it's best to. Papers, Please units you up because the immigration officer of an Jap Bloc-type nation. It's as much as you to remain on high of the brand new laws and your personal funds. This straightforward but extremely lovely recreation could have you admitting, rejecting, detaining, and questioning individuals as they attempt to enter by way of your gate. Empathy and ethical dilemma all characteristic on this great artwork piece by 3909.

5. DOOM

Screenshot: id Software program It’s DOOM, and for those who don’t know what that's, perhaps it’s time to surrender PC gaming altogether and return to card video games. DOOM is the OG shooter that may have you ever mowing your approach by way of hordes of monsters in an try to avoid wasting the Earth. Sure, that is an outdated title, however it’s a traditional. This may simply run in your low-end PC. In truth, I believe you might most likely run it on a Samsung good fridge.

4. Terraria

Screenshot: Re-Logic A easy, procedurally generated world awaits in Terraria. Alone or with mates, the easy 16-bit 2D recreation invitations you to mine, craft, discover, and survive in a world bursting with adventures and alternatives. With over 44 million copies bought, it’s one of the vital profitable video games of all time. Terraria has an enormous scope of prospects hidden throughout the easy graphics. Sources and loot might be mixed to create all kinds of loopy objects, with advanced construct bushes and uncommon finds. It's as much as you and your folks to construct your characters and bases up as you defeat the varied bosses.

3. Cuphead

Screenshot: Studio MDHR Leisure Inc. I like the artwork model of Cuphead, and it's the good recreation for low-end PCs due to it. The easy side-scrolling shooter recreation is adorned with lovely, traditional cartoon graphics and superb sound. Nevertheless, don’t let the cutesy graphics idiot you — this recreation is significantly arduous. Alone or with a good friend, you should work your approach by way of the colourful world of Cuphead to defeat the side-scrolling ranges. Then, on the finish of every is an amazingly designed boss with distinctive assaults and implausible animations. The sport may nearly be Souls-like if it weren’t so cute.

2. BioShock

Screenshot: 2K Video games The BioShock collection of video games has all the time been on my replay lists, and I return to them over and over. Regardless of being extremely wealthy and immersive worlds, you'll find which you could play all of those video games, up till Infinite, on low-end PCs. BioShock units us in a world beneath the ocean the place science and know-how are God. Nevertheless, the heathenous people have pushed themselves too far, turning into godless mutants. It’s as much as you to combat by way of them, augmenting your self alongside the way in which. The sport is dripping in spooky environment; you gained’t neglect your first encounter with a Massive Daddy in a rush.

1. Project Zomboid

Screenshot: The Indie Stone The tip is upon you as you attempt to outlive the zombie apocalypse. The sport’s primary top-down graphics are good for any low-end PC. Nevertheless, the sport’s easy look hides a fancy and deep world to discover. You and your folks get up as a personality imbued with traits and boons of your selection. Now, setting off into the world, you should search and scavenge the whole lot you'll be able to to outlive the zombie hordes. As time strikes on, the world slowly breaks aside. After a couple of days, the water will shut off, and so will the electrical energy. Meals will spoil, and snow will start to fall. All of those affect you and your character. In the event you die or get bitten — and you'll, many, many instances — you'll ultimately flip. Nevertheless, you simply begin with a brand new character, constructing their expertise and ultimately discovering your shambling corpse. It feels bizarre killing your outdated self and carrying the garments you died in, however that’s the one solution to survive. Read the full article

[unravelingwires]

Indigencies

My father grew up dirt-poor in a village in India. My grandmother valued education, and with her prompting, he managed to get an engineering degree and an educated wife, coming to the United States.

Alternatively: my mother’s mother was the most hardworking woman in the world, running multiple businesses, doing the housework, and raising her children. As a high schooler, she held an (unsuccessful) hunger strike to promote her right to an education. She passed on that determination to her daughter. Between my mother’s ludicrous work ethic and terrifying ambition, she found a husband with her goals and gained a medical degree in two countries, settling in the United States. 

Either way, my mother and father, through luck and hard work, came here with the skills to better this great country. My mother maintained throughout my childhood that there was nowhere to gain success like the US. She worked at a hospital until the administrators determined that an endocrinologist wasn’t profitable enough to justify on staff, at which point she opened her own practice. My father worked at a bank until one of his college friends suggested an entrepreneurial software-producing business, and as such, Multicoreware was born. Both of them brought new jobs to Sunset Hills and provided a necessary service that wouldn’t have existed if they weren’t there. 

The word “indigenous” means “native to the land one is living on,” but the term “indigency” simply means “poor.” My family is, under some definitions, indigenous to India, but according to all definitions, we suffer indigence nowhere. We have, in fact, never suffered indigence in our lifetimes. My dad got his education through scholarships, but he did get his education. My mother was even more privileged. Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t have air conditioning or pasteurized milk. She was still wealthy by most Indian metrics, though, and that wealth allowed her to get a degree, which was fundamentally important in getting her green card.

That’s important. Regardless of how you spin their rags-to-riches story, neither of my parents literally started in rags. My father got closer than my mother, but ultimately, neither of them were starving on the street, and there are a lot of people in India starving on the street. Those people don’t end up in the US. 

Did you know that not all Asian Americans are wealthy? I don’t mean that literally, obviously some Indians start gambling recklessly or get trapped by a lack of universal healthcare. I mean that “Asian American” is a demographic so large as to be useless. If you break down the overall group, you’ll find we’re harshly divided between people who immigrated like my parents and refugees, making up the top 10% and bottom 10% of US earners. Isn’t that funny? 

My family’s from Missouri, Saint Louis specifically. 

In the meantime, my parents bought a suburban house and had two daughters. Becoming a doctor or engineer is well-known in India as a ticket to success, but my parents taught my sister and I to value the opportunities this country had, so we followed our hearts instead. My sister bounced around for a while, studying psychology and sociology, but she settled on educational nonprofit work, helping kids in India succeed. She works in fundraising, convincing potential philanthropists that their cause is a good enough one to sponsor. My sister is, I’ve been told, very good at her job; listening to all the office politics is always amusing. I became an ecologist and conservationist. It’s less of a non-sequitor than you’d think: my family adores national parks and hiking, and there’s something so fundamentally beautiful about this continent. Come to the Midwest: we have the best thunderstorms in the world. My job is something I would never get to do in India, and it’s good chunk of the reason I’m so grateful for this country.

On a related note, I said that indigenous means “native to the land one is living on,” but it is more complicated than that. Indians living in India, for example, are rarely called indigenous. It’s a specific kind of colonization that creates the concept of indigeneity. The settling of other people on your land is a necessary step of the process. 

Even if that wasn’t true, I wouldn’t be indigenous anywhere. I was born in Missouri: even if I return to India, I will be an American returning to the place of her forefathers, not an India returning to their home country. 

There’s actually a thriving Tamilian community in Saint Louis. That’s the reason my parents chose to move there. Of course, by the time I was old enough to really notice social atmospheres, we’d ended up alienated from said community through common drama, so that didn’t affect me much. 

By the time I was born, my family had established a pattern of traveling to visit India every year or every other year. Though it is important to understand your roots, we go there for more practical reasons. My grandparents deserve to know me, and my mother runs a charity organization.

The organization has warped over time. At first, we helped fund a school. Then, my mother began running diabetes clinics for rural Tamilians. Nowadays, my mother has been campaigning for an increase in millet-based diets instead of white rice-based diets. 

I don’t think either of my parents want to move back to India. It’s still important to take what we’ve learned in the US and return it to India. We owe the country that much. 

The result of all of this is that it’s accurate to say my family is from a colonized culture, not an indigenous one, but I am from neither. Within the US, we are primarily aligned with a colonizer culture, enjoying its luxuries and upholding its narratives. I’ve been saying for years that I am more American—using “American” to mean “from the United States,” which is its own can of worms—than I am Indian. I was born in the US, and I was brought up here. These are the opportunities that I have most enjoyed. This means that, regardless of my genuine love for this country, I am a colonizer that has put down roots. 

I wonder, sometimes, if I would have connected more with India if I connected more with the community in Saint Louis. I probably would have, I think. I barely know how to celebrate Diwali, and I don’t know any of our other holidays. I’m Hindu in a lazy, abstract way. I don’t speak Tamil.

On the other hand, I’m Indian enough that I don’t get to be American, not all the way. I’m not a pie chart—70% American, 25% Indian, 5% something else—but I might as well have been, the way people used to talk to me. 

I’ve gotten something else from our trips to India, though. I’ve knelt in stone temples and before my great-grandmother. I’ve wandered through drip-irrigated farmland and watched my mother bring reusable bags from India because there was nothing like our woven bags in this country. Frugality, sustainability, humility, and spirituality all mean the same thing to me, nowadays. As we were bringing our Western education to our home country, I brought pieces of my home country back to the West. 

As an ecologist, this is tricky. In a lot of ways, my field is simply an attempt to gather the knowledge that indigenous people already knew, and we have a bad habit of writing off their credits or overwriting their narrative. On the other hand, my family is from a colonized culture, and there’s a chance my perspective will be worth something because of that. I cannot turn my back on this field. It’s my duty, as somebody who has a chance of understanding the tangles in the connection between culture and conservation, to remain in this field, attempting to help where I can and uplift marginalized voices. 

I went to India in high school then again just after the pandemic, and I think I found something worthwhile there. I mean, at first I had to really search for it; I don’t know how my sister finds it so easy to love that country. I really did try, though, and I did find something. I went to this farm vaguely connected to the school my family used to help fund—I don’t think we’re involved anymore, and my mom’s current charity efforts are leaning more chaotic than anything—and I noticed that they were using drip irrigation. After that, I started looking for that sort of thing, and I found it absurdly common. The average Indian I’ve met has no concept of conservation, but they do understand waste and how to avoid it, and often there’s heavy overlap. There are also cultural values surrounding the concept of duty, mindfulness, and practicality that I think really are valuable: I doubt Rama would have much time for fast fashion, prince or no. 

As an adult who knows how to look at the world through a cultural lens, I’ve been trying to learn about other culture’s views on conservation as I do my research. UC Davis is trying to include more information on Native American views on sustainability in its curriculum, and I’ve been reading Braiding Sweetgrass in my free time. It’s important to weave scientific methods with indigenous knowledge when promoting sustainability. 

Still, I’m worried that I’ll become as complicit, as academia isn’t always built to further true understanding. We have a way of talking as though we have knowledge and indigenous groups have practices, when in reality it’s much more complicated than that.

After that, I started putting real effort in, and I think I’m doing a good job of it. I read the Gita, which was a very good book, and Sundara Kanda, which really wasn’t. I’ve been wearing churidars the last few years, and I bought a Saraswati statue to put next to my Ganeshas. I started meditating. I learned to make chapathi. How many pieces can you put together before you’ve made one whole Indian?

And I really am trying to take this understanding of why culture is important and use it to reach out to others. Solidarity is really important. Did you know that it’s an Indian who attacked affirmative action most recently, the idiot? How do they not realize that racism chips at us all—

Anyways. I inexplicably started with Judaism—well, not inexplicably, I got guilty when I realized I knew more about Nazis than Jewish people—trying to get a shape of what cultural practices look like in the US. I don’t think I did an amazing job, but there’s only so much you can get from books. After that, I started reading more international authors, which I’m not certain did anything, but I enjoyed The Locked Tomb series immensely, so maybe it’s alright. 

Cultural understanding is incredibly important work and, in ecology, time bound time bound. We are embedded in a mass extinction of our own making, and we need to work immediately to prevent everything from getting worse. As such, I’m getting a Masters degree, the a PhD, then I’ll get an entry-level government position and work steadily to— 

Of course, leaving academia and moving to direct activism would be the most morally correct thing to do, but I’m not certain I have the personality matrix for it. Perhaps I should invest more of my free time into volunteer work. 

Most importantly, I really am trying to understand the Native American perspective on the United States, specifically from within California because understanding one culture well seems better than stereotyping a million, but that’s such a massive undertaking, and I really don’t want to come off too white savoir-like as I do it, and if understanding Judaism from a book is impossible I don’t know why I’m trying with Potawatomi culture, Jesus Christ at least I’ve met a Jewish person before—

It’s not about understanding every culture on earth; I understand that. My curiosity drives me to understand everything, but from most people, all that I have are whispers. An rudimentary understanding of Chi from Iron Widow overlaid with giant mechs and messy polyamory. The Peruvian Sacsayhuaman, meaning vulture feast, after the mass of bodies that lay there after the conquistadors had finished their work. The layer of powder on temples in India, leftovers from the stuff that’s supposed to go on your forehead.

It just feels wrong to know so little about the land I’m walking on. A’nowara’kó:wa means Turtle Island, and according to Braiding Sweetgrass, that’s the actual name for North America. I learned that a month ago.

I kind of hate India, but I know it’s mine. It’s not like the US which I’ve had to claim over and over again. The US had to be imprinted on to me through birth certificates and accents and yelling “I am a patriot!” at disruptive times. I was Indian the moment I was born; the land itself is pressed into my skin. 

The land I was born on belongs to someone else. It’ll always belong to someone else. That’s not okay, but it has to be.

The work we’re doing is difficult, but it’s the only practical way to make a difference. 

We need a revolutionary change, and soon. Continually spinning my wheels like this is useless. 

You know how the word “Indian” doesn’t mean actual Indians in the US? I mean, it might be different nowadays, but when I was a kid, “Indian” meant Native American first. I have, in the 20 years of my life, refused to refer to Native Americans as Indians, even when that was their preference. I don’t care that it wasn’t their fault, that “Indian” was as imposed on them as it was stolen from us. It’s our word.

Well, recently I learned that “Indian” wasn’t created by Indians either. The Greeks saw people living around the Indus River and started calling them Indians, but even “The Indus River” was a Greek term: the original word for it was Sindhu.

That’s not why my parents named me Sindhu. They wanted a Tamil name, and for us, Sindhu means “music,” and music is something transcendentally meaningful. It’s funny: that’s not an Indian thing, I don’t think, but it still feels Indian. All of this feels Indian. When I think of India, I think of grime and exhaustion, but when I think of Indians, I think of bright colors and music and how God connects us to the natural cycle. No wonder their country was named after a river, after music. No wonder I am named after my country.

One of the frustrating things about engaging with culture is that it’s the kind of work that’s never finished. It feels like mental health upkeep: it’s vitally important, and if you ignore it long enough you collapse, but lord is it exhausting. We need to put the work in to understanding each other, and colonialism is so baked into the fabric of the US that I don’t think we can progress without addressing it. That doesn’t make it easier to lose and gain appreciation for your country on loop. When an immigrant assimilates, how do they differ from the colonizers that surround them? 

I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with my relationship to India. There’s always something more I could be doing, another revelation on the horizon. I don’t think I’ll ever be happy with my relationship to A’nowara’kó:wa either. I just live on it.

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The solar industry is experiencing rapid growth as more individuals and businesses seek sustainable energy solutions. In this competitive market, having a robust leads system is crucial for success. This blog will explore how to build a high-converting solar industry leads system that can propel your business to new heights.

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Timely and personalized follow-up is key to converting leads. Whether it's a phone call, email, or meeting, ensure that you address the specific needs and concerns of your leads. By providing tailored solutions, you can increase the likelihood of conversion.

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Building a high-converting Solar Industry Leads System requires a combination of effective lead generation, nurturing techniques, and conversion optimization. By implementing the strategies discussed in this blog, you can enhance your lead system and achieve greater success in the solar market. Remember, the key to success lies in providing value to your potential customers and guiding them through their buying journey with personalized and timely interactions.

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Cybernetics 控制論 with Chinese Characteristics & why we suck at the real Grand Strategy Game

If you’re someone who enjoys Crusader Kings, or Hearts of Iron, you’ll know the joy of Grand strategy games. Executing economic, political and military prowess, you can rule the world... well, just a model of it. But compared to the masters, you’re trash tier. The real Grand Strategy masters didn’t play Paradox games - they played the game of life. Imagine not just having to play the game, but building the computer from scratch and the software necessary to play the games. It’s time to introduce the real Epic tier gamers:

Everyone agrees living in the West is like living life on easy mode. Norbert Wiener and Stafford Beer were two of the best known cyberneticists in the US and UK respectively during the later 20th century, but what about those in the non-Anglo speaking world? We’re looking for the most hardcore players after all.

China is the perfect example. The country was a mess after the civil war - perfect conditions for a hard-mode run. Search for articles on China in the West and you will find plenty with titles such as “The country is perfecting a vast network of digital espionage as a means of social control” and “China’s increased surveillance capacity could be dangerous”. So who, was behind the rise of these surveillance style systems in China.

The answer, in fact, is the FBI.

Note: This is a less serious version of Dylan Levi King’s article. Link at end!

Enter Qian Xuesen ( 钱学森 )

Enter Qian Xuesen. Qian was described, by most contemporaries, as a genius and a quiet but serious man who asked very precise questions. Qian had been born during the fall of the Qing dynasty in China and had been a strongly academic child. He went on to study at M.I.T on a Boxer indemnity scholarship and found himself a position in the newly founded Jet Propulsion Laboratory during World War 2.

His contemporaries, included colourful characters such as:

Frank Malina – Stellar engineer, and later the director of the Division of Scientific Research at UNESCO and creator of kinetic artworks.

Jack Parsons – A talented engineer, and later an acolyte of Aleister Crowley’s Thelemite Occultism alongside L. Ron Hubbard. Yes, the Scientology one.

Together, with others such as Sidney Weinbaum, Qian was able to assist the US achieve it’s first rocket program.

Enter FBI

After the end of World War II, it became apparent to the United States that the Soviet Union would be its greatest threat in world politics. The rise of communism in Eastern Europe led to those such as Senator John McCarthy pushing to remove “communist influence” within the United States. Working with the FBI, the entire team of the nationally sensitive Jet Propulsion Laboratory were investigated.

Many members, such as Parsons and Weinbaum had discussed communist ideals in the past which were quickly unearthed and used to push them out of their positions in the organisation. Qian, on the other hand, was someone who didn’t particularly seem to care about politics. He mostly spent his free time at home with his wife and children, and one colleague described him as having a “typical aloof oriental attitude.”. Despite this, the FBI were able to find a connection with Malina and himself.

Sensing the changing public mood, Qian decided it would be best to leave the country and set off to return to China in 1950.

This was generally considered a bad move by the FBI.

Qian had been personally involved in:

Helping to create America’s first missile program

The creation of the Toward New Horizons report for the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group detailing future advances in aviation

A seat on the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board

A consultancy role on the Manhattan Project (ie. Nuclear Weapons Research)

After realising the consequences of their actions, the Immigration and Naturalization Service forced Qian into a legal purgatory for five years in fear that he would leak important matters of classified national security to the Chinese. It was in this period, however, that Qian began a deep dive into the world of cybernetics.

He wrote a book, Engineering Cybernetics, published in 1954. In it, he technically outlined a field of feedback control systems for engineering purposes, inspired by the use of automatic missile control guidance systems. In his own words:

“The celebrated physicist and mathematician A. M. Ampere coined the word cyberne~tique to mean the science of civil government (Part II of " Essai sur la philosophic des sciences/' 1845, Paris) . Ampere's grandiose scheme of political sciences has not, and perhaps never will, come to fruition. In the meantime, conflict between governments with the use of force greatly accelerated the development of another branch of science, the science of control and guidance of mechanical and electrical systems.”

Importantly, he was able to build on previous work. He made the crucial step of moving away from fully assumed knowledge to systems

“...where no exact knowledge of the properties of the controlled system is necessary for the design.”

Finally released from detention, he moved overseas to China in 1955 to begin his career.

Enter China

Qian immediately set to work. The Science Planning Commission of the State Council had just begun drafting a 12-year plan for future progress in China, and Qian was quick to give his input.

From computing, to semiconductor technology, automation to wireless control systems and more he was key to the scientific advancement of the country. He was also keen to put his ideas into action, advocating for cybernetics and systems theory to be front-and-centre in agriculture and manufacturing. We can only speculate on what kind of Farmville player Qian would have been, but he definitely would have used a custom macro spreadsheet like some kind of freak.

It was in this time period that China began to import foreign based computing technologies which they sought to reverse engineer and replicate for themselves. Political instability, however, led to his ideas for cybernetics shelved for another decade, only to re-emerge in the 1970s. With the rise of Deng Xiaoping in the late 70s, Qian was able to take advantage of Deng’s opposition to the Gang of Four’s Maoist principles.

But what computing power would the cyberneticists use? Indigenous computers were, unfortunately, still pretty bad and the Chinese government had to use Soviet design machines and illegally acquired IBM machines which belonged to the Bank of China.

Not only were the Chinese cyberneticists eventually able to build their own rigs they stole their opponent's technology as well, like some kind of Dengist mainframe hackers.

In 1974, Qian and his team of researchers attended the Helsinki Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control and were astounded by the uses that Western, and Soviet, cyberneticists had been putting their computers to – namely economic planning. Inspired by Neo-Malthusian scholars at The Club of Rome, and their MIT led population overload models, Qian was instrumental in putting forward the One Child Policy.

Qian’s was also a pioneer of “legal systems engineering” – the use of cybernetics in law enforcement. The Public Security Bureau (PSB) set up Golden shield, a system which allowed law enforcement to access information on citizens tax records, personal details, criminal record and more. This is the system which has led to the current Chinese surveillance state in the 21st century.

Cybernetics vs Reality

Theory and reality don’t always mix. Qian was responsible for many policy successes, but some of his policies are responsible for a number of issues that China is experiencing today.

Take China’s One Child Policy. This is the ultimate example of theoretical idea combined with real world culture and consequences. The idea behind the policy is sound – keeping population within set limits to prevent over-burdening the country and its resources. The reality is more difficult:

The state apparatus needed the tools to enforce this policy. This wasn’t always possible, and in many rural communities many children were sent to orphanages and weren’t observable in the system of control.

Culture led to more women being aborted than men - a male child being more valued in society. This resulted in gender imbalances that still plague the country to this day.

This underlies the failings of many cybernetic systems: They cannot measure that which they can’t observe. In data-science terms, crap goes in, crap comes out. The Chinese cyberneticists were most successful where they were able to use reality to update their systems, and take into account how the bureaucratic systems functioned.

Qian, in his later years, was remote and distant. He refused to interact with anyone outside the country and eventually died in 2009.

Lessons to be learned?

So what can we learn from this?:

Persecuting people for no reason can backfire, and lead to the Chinese Nuclear Program. You would have thought people would have realised this after The Treaty of Versailles, but there we go...

Cybernetic systems are only good if they adapt to fit reality, otherwise they can make things worse. You may think that your economic strategy in HoI II is working, but if you don’t invest in your military in response to foreign force build-up then you’re fucked when they knock on the door with a blitzkrieg.

Grand Strategy Games are a great analogue for control systems - a simplified abstraction of reality. They often don’t model the difference between assumed input and what the input actually means in reality. Practical cybernetics need to take into account real world use of systems and societal/cultural/social implications.

The main fable behind this story is to do your research, and consider the real world implcations of your actions. You may be tempted to put your feet up and stick with a simplified understanding of the world - this is bad. The blind ideology of the McCarthy & his FBI investigators, and the lack of effective monitoring system for Chinese families by Qian, both led to bad outcomes.

One bad choice by the FBI led to not only Qian helping China advance technologically, but also it’s mass surveillance system and the One Child Policy and it’s now serious effects on China’s society.

Sources (I’ve missed some out, but can provide links on request):

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/10/china-surveillance-covid/

https://archive.org/details/fbi-file-tsien-hsue-shen/FBIFile_Tsien_Part1/page/n25/mode/2up

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0895717788904438

https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/10/17/the-genealogy-of-chinese-cybernetics/