#best marketing campaigns 2021

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Even if you're paying for the product, you're still the product

There’s something oddly comforting about the idea that “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” namely, the corollary: “If you can afford to pay for a product, you won’t be the product.” But it’s bullshit. Companies don’t make you the product because you don’t pay — they make you the product because you can’t stop them.

The theory behind “if you’re not paying for the product…” is that old economist’s saw: “incentives matter.” Companies that monetize attention are incentivized to manipulate and spy on you, while companies that you pay just want to make you happy.

This is a theory of corporate behavior grounded in economics, not power, a creature of theory and doctrine that never bothers to check in with the real world to see how that theory and doctrine map to actual events. Reality is a lot uglier.

Apple has blanketed the planet with billboards and print and online ads extolling its privacy-forward system design (e.g. “Privacy. That’s Iphone.”). There’s something to this: in 2020, the company made it very easy to opt out of third-party Ios surveillance, and 96% of its users opted out:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

That decision cost Facebook $10 billion in a single year, and the losses keep coming. Facebook launched a campaign that accused Apple of privacywashing an anticompetitive maneuver, claiming that Apple didn’t care about its users’ privacy, they just wanted to eliminate competition for Apple’s own ad brokerage:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/facebooks-laughable-campaign-against-apple-really-against-users-and-small

Facebook’s campaign poses itself as the true champion of its users, accusing Apple of shamming. It’s laughable. Facebook manifestly despises its users and proves that fact every day in a thousand ways, large and small. Facebook’s true objection to Apple’s privacy tools is that they reduced Facebook’s earnings by $10b. Obviously.

But that doesn’t mean that Facebook is wrong about Apple’s cynicism. Apple exercises enormous control over its users. It’s a direct control. Apple blocks you from installing software of your choosing or from using third-party repair services of your choosing. They pour millions into engineering to make this technically challenging, and lead a coalition of large corporations that kill right to repair legislation whenever it is mooted:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

Some of Facebook’s critics accuse it of exercising similar control, but via a far more insidious method: they say that Facebook’s voracious surveillance of its users, combined with machine learning, allows Facebook to control its users’ minds, stripping them of their free will and turning them into algorithm-addled zombies who do whatever Facebook directs them to do.

This is an extraordinary claim, given that every previous claim of mind-control turned out to be bullshit, from Mesmer to MK Ultra. The best evidence for these mind-control claims comes from Facebook’s own marketing materials, where the company assures advertisers that they should spend their money on FB’s platform because of its mind-control features.

When FB critics repeat these claims, they’re engaged in “criti-hype,” Lee Vinsel’s useful coinage describing criticism that serves to bolster the target’s own propaganda. If FB are evil geniuses, well, at least they’re still geniuses.

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Some Facebookers doubtless believe their own hype, but that doesn’t mean we have to join them in self-delusion. We can criticize Facebook for seeking control over its users, and for using that control to do things that serve its own interests at the expense of its users’ interests.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

That’s the true sin of Big Tech: using deception and coercion to control users. Companies that gain this control can be reliably expected to use it in whichever ways they can get away with. They are paperclip-maximizing artificial life-forms bent on devouring the human race, not ethical actors.

Apple’s commitment to privacy is best understood as instrumental. Apple thinks that protecting your privacy will attract your business, and they’re right. I would like to have privacy! But while Apple can increase its revenues by telling you they’ll protect your privacy, they can increase them even more by lying about it.

That’s just what they do. Earlier this month, a small security research firm called Mysk released a video revealing that when you tick the box on your Iphone that promises “disable the sharing of Device Analytics altogether,” your Iphone continues to spy on you, and sends the data it collects to Apple:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JxvH80Rrcw

The data Iphones gather is extraordinarily fine-grained: “what you tapped on, which apps you search for, what ads you saw, and how long you looked at a given app and how you found it.”

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-analytics-tracking-even-when-off-app-store-1849757558

It doesn’t stop there: “The app sent details about you and your device as well, including ID numbers, what kind of phone you’re using, your screen resolution, your keyboard languages, how you’re connected to the internet — notably, the kind of information commonly used for device fingerprinting.”

The researchers had to jailbreak an Iphone in order to find this lie. Apple has gone to extraordinary lengths to make jailbreaking illegal. Apple claims that allowing users to disable the locks on their phones will make them vulnerable to bad actors who will install deceptive, coercive software.

That is true, but it’s also true that these locks make it impossible to determine whether Apple’s software is deceptive and coercive. The walled fortress that keeps you safe from third parties is also a walled prison that leaves you at the mercy of the warlord who owns the fortress.

Once a company attains a certain scale, it becomes too big to jail, and then it monetizes you however it can. If you think the future of technology is battle is between Google’s approach and Apple’s, think again. The real fight is between the freedom to decide how technology works for you, and corporate control over technology.

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

Apple and Google are like the pigs and the men at the end of Animal Farm: supposed bitter enemies who turn out to be indistinguishable from one another. Google also has “privacy” switches in its preference panels that do nothing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#goog

Indeed, there are so many places in Google’s location privacy settings where you can tick a box that claims to turn off location spying. None of them work. A senior product manager at Google complained to her colleagues that she had turned off three different settings and was still being tracked:

https://twitter.com/jason_kint/status/1398359580275523590

Apple is now the subject of a California class action suit over its deceptive practices, which violate the California Invasion of Privacy Act.

https://www.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/LibmanvAppleIncDocketNo522cv07069NDCalNov102022CourtDocket

As Gizmodo’s Thomas Germain notes, Apple has a good — if self-serving — reason to spy on its users. It has launched its own ad network, and is selling advertisers the ability to target its customers based on their activities:

https://gizmodo.com/apple-iphone-privacy-analytics-class-action-suit-1849774313

Companies will only protect your privacy to the extent that it is more profitable than not doing so. They can increase those profits by advertising privacy promises to potential customers. They can increase them more by secretly breaking those promises, And they can increase them even more by using privacy claims to block their rivals’ spying, so they’re the sole supplier of your nonconsensually collected personal information.

That’s what’s happening with Google’s endless proposals to “increase privacy” in Chrome that block third parties from spying on users, while letting Google continue to invade our privacy:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/03/googles-floc-terrible-idea

If we want our privacy, we need both transparency (so third parties can investigate companies’ claims to protect privacy) and regulation (so cheating companies will face consequences when they’re caught by those third parties).

That’s why it’s so exciting that the FTC has announced its intention to treat privacy invasions as antitrust violations:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

For so long as corporations can use technology and law to hide their misdeeds and power to avoid consequences for those misdeeds, “voting with your wallet” is as useless as opting out of Ios tracking.

We had advertising-supported media for generations — centuries — without mass surveillance. The problem with advertising isn’t incentives — it’s impunity.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[Image ID: An Apple 'Privacy. That's iPhone.' ad. The three rear-facing camera lenses have been replaced by the staring, red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey.]

[bringbacktentoo]

“Rose is actually happy in a parallel universe with a half-human Doctor.” - Russell T. Davies

Hello, Whovians — we’re excited to announce the #BringBackTentoo movement!

Sign the petition

In July 2008, millions of viewers tuned in to watch ‘Journey’s End’; where the Doctor and Rose were left hand-in-hand on Bad Wolf Bay.

While fandom has remained active, continuing to generate endless works inspired by this iconic pairing, there's sadly been little official content from the people who launched the ship!

Nonetheless, our devotion remains unwavering. We persist, loving the OTP; ceaselessly spreading love and fan-made content worldwide!

The purpose of this movement is to show there is still an audience that is very interested in revisiting these two. One that would love to see the Doctor and Rose together again, on-screen or off, living their best lives in Pete’s World. 

Regardless of whether it’s a spin-off, comics, audio adventures, or — and this, we believe, is crucial — anything at all, we would just love to have them back in some way. We’ve realized that perhaps there hasn’t been enough collective buzz to bring this into reality, which is why we’re looking to rally up as much support as we can.

Already with us? Sign the petition! Our petition will be emailed directly to the powers that be; including Russell T Davies, Big Finish, the BBC, and more.

Have questions? Doubts? Need a little more convincing? Then read on…

Why now?

Because there’s never been a more perfect time for it. 

Already, Russell’s return has been bringing former fans back in droves. Everyone’s waiting with bated breath for RTD2 and the sixtieth anniversary; plus Ncuti, David, and Catherine. With so many fans dipping back into the Doctor Who world, why not strike while the iron’s hot? 

At the fifteen-year mark, it might never be this “hot” again!

Plus… nostalgia is a massive market.

A return of Tentoo and Rose after all of these years would be the perfect cherry on top of all of it: closure for so many fans, as well as validation for the only happy ending a Doctor-and-companion pairing ever got in Doctor Who.

And don’t forget — fan campaigns work, especially in the social media age!

A spin-off — too much? 

As much as we’d love to see David and Billie back on-screen together as the proper Meta-Crisis Doctor and Rose, we understand that we already have David coming back in a big way, as well as Ncuti Gatwa — our brand new Doctor. It’s a big, BIG ask, trying to get a spin-off out of this. We recognize that.

However, as famished fans who are living off of little more than canonical crumbs and dreams, we will greedily devour anything we can get.

Such as:

More Big Finish audio adventures

Big Finish has done incredible work for Doctor Who, including one of the only official ‘glimpses’ we’ve gotten into Pete’s World: A couple of short audios featuring Tentoo and Jackie.

Big Finish understands and respects these characters, their relationships, and the overall source material. They’ve shown time and time again that they’re more than capable of doing justice to Doctor Who! 

Audio adventures with a focus on the Meta-Crisis Doctor and Rose Tyler would be fantastic. Anything from their adventures with Torchwood and/or UNIT, imaginings of their life with a TARDIS, etc — there are endless possibilities! 

Comic book adventures

In 2021, Titan Comics published ‘Empire of the Wolf’, a lovely comic book that gifted us with the best glimpse we’ve ever had into the lives of the Doctor and Rose in Pete’s World:

It was a beautiful, if brief imagining of these two (and includes their daughter), but even so, the vast majority of the story involves Rose being trapped with the Eighth and Eleventh Doctors. We only get a few pages of Tentoo. 

Comics would be an excellent way to dive into the parallel world again!

Novels

There are loads of Doctor Who novels with amazing stories about Rose and the Tenth Doctor (like 'The Stone Rose' by Jacqueline Rayner). But, here's the thing: there's just one official novel that dives into the whole Metacrisis and Rose relationship... And guess what? Fans are really craving content that stays true to RTD and Julie Gardner's original vision for this couple.

The good news is, there are tons of talented writers out there who would jump at the chance to create legit Meta-Crisis stories, and some would even do it for free!

An animated series

We recognize that this would be a tremendous undertaking, but imagine: You can do incredible things with animation that aren’t possible with film. It would appeal to fans of all ages, and Billie and David have more than proven themselves to be excellent voice actors. There are all sorts of stories that could be created in this medium.

But let’s say we went with the first choice…

A spin-off/miniseries

RTD has been very vocal about his plans for spin-offs. Billie and David are willing, and it hasn’t been so long that the pairing has lost relevance… Although, in Doctor Who, does anything ever really lose relevance? The show is known for bringing back old characters. Enemies, companions… Doctors:

It’s obvious that David seems to have no issue with playing the Doctor. Furthermore, even Billie Piper has recently expressed interest in a spin-off!

In 2019, she told Doctor Who magazine: 

“I would like to see a one-off dark comedy about Rose and the Doctor in the parallel universe”. 

Then, even more recently in December 2022, she told Buzzfeed [on returning to Doctor Who]:

“If it was like four episodes all shot in London, then yeah, I’d be like a rat-up-a-drainpipe for that.”

Four episodes of Tentoo and Rose in London? What could be more perfect than that?

Wouldn’t a spin-off overshadow Ncuti Gatwa?

It doesn’t have to! If a spin-off were to happen, it wouldn’t necessarily have to happen immediately — it can happen after Ncuti has been established as the Doctor, and after RTD has re-established himself as showrunner. We’d just like for it to be part of the conversation, and let those in charge know that people are interested.

So… What about the people who didn’t like the ending?

Yes, there are some naysayers out there. People who refuse to acknowledge Tentoo’s legitimacy as the Doctor; others who refuse to believe that Rose could ever be truly happy with him, and vice versa.

This, sadly, is willful ignorance. Not only has Russell T. Davies, the man who wrote Journey’s End — who created Tentoo and Rose — confirmed that they're happy; the Doctor himself, David Tennant, will be the first person to tell you that those two are blissfully shagging their lives away at all times. And god bless him for it.

We’ve come to find that a lot of people who aren’t on board with the ending just didn’t understand it, which is fine — what better way to understand this pairing than by seeing more of them? 

On that note…

How can I help? 

Sign the petition!

Petitions are old school, but they are proven to be effective at affecting change, even in today’s world. We can preach to the ends of the earth about how much we want to bring these two back, but without numbers to back it up, the prospect is null and void. 

Don’t just like this post — please reblog!

This is a grassroots effort that is counting on the power of fans to help spread the word. Unlike most social media platforms, there is no algorithm on Tumblr. Likes do nothing for visibility, so please reblog to make sure as many people see this as possible! 

Participate in Tentoo x Rose Month

This is a multi-medium fan event for creating content of the OTP throughout all of July! All works will be featured on the @tentoorosemonth2023 page, with certain works even shared on the BringBackTentoo Instagram.

Buy the already-existing content

If you haven’t already, buy the ‘Empire of the Wolf’ comic. Buy the Big Finish audios ‘The Siege of Big Ben’ and ‘Flight Into Hull!’. Show these fantastic creators that we will gladly consume any content about these two that we can get!

Spread the word

Know anyone who likes Doctor Who? Any former fandom friends who might’ve outgrown all of this, but would enjoy more Tentoo/Rose content? Or maybe even just a random IRL friend who supports your obsessions? Link them to the petition!

Join the movement by following this page and our Instagram (which is brand new, give it time to grow ♥️). Keep on creating content, using #BringBackTentoo to tag any of your fanart, well-wishes, or whatever you like across platforms — just please be sure to keep it positive!

Feel free to DM/ask if you have any other questions, concerns, or ideas that weren’t touched upon in this post. 

And please, for goodness' sake, be kind. This is a labor of love inspired by passionate fans and creators who just want to see our OTP again. ♥️

[reasonsforhope]

"A new World Health Organization (WHO) report highlights that 5.6 billion people – 71% of the world’s population – are now protected with at least one best practice policy to help save lives from deadly tobacco – five times more than in 2007.

[Note: Going by the math, that means just (roughly) 14% of people were covered by tobacco control policies in 2007. Talk about a huge increase!]

In the last 15 years since WHO’s MPOWER tobacco control measures were introduced globally, smoking rates have fallen. Without this decline there would be an estimated 300 million more smokers in the world today.

This WHO Report on the global tobacco epidemic, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is focused on protecting the public from second-hand smoke, highlighting that almost 40% of countries now have completely smoke-free indoor public places.

The report rates country progress in tobacco control and shows that two more countries, Mauritius and the Netherlands, have achieved best-practice level in all MPOWER measures, a feat that only Brazil and Türkiye had accomplished until now.

[Note: In late 2021, the former Turkey changed official its name to Türkiye, shedding the English/Anglicized spelling.]

“These data show that slowly but surely, more and more people are being protected from the harms of tobacco by WHO’s evidence-based best-practice policies,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General...

Smoke-free public spaces is just one policy in the set of effective tobacco control measures, MPOWER, to help countries implement the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and curb the tobacco epidemic.

Smoke-free environments help people breathe clean air, shield the public from deadly second-hand smoke, motivate people to quit, denormalize smoking and help prevent young people from ever starting to smoke or use e-cigarettes.

“While smoking rates have been going down, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in the world – largely due to relentless marketing campaigns by the tobacco industry,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, WHO Global Ambassador for Noncommunicable Diseases and Injuries...

Eight countries are just one MPOWER policy away from joining the leaders in tobacco control: Ethiopia, Iran, Ireland, Jordan, Madagascar, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain...

This report demonstrates that all countries irrespective of income levels can drive down the demand for deadly tobacco, achieve major wins for public health and save economies billions of dollars in health care and productivity costs."

-via World Health Organization, July 31, 2023

[what-eats-owls]

In all your publishing knowledge - can you shed any light why authors/publishing companies seem to release en masse on certain months of the year, rather than parsing out releases over 12 months??

So this is gonna be split between stuff I know for a fact/from personal experience, and stuff I have gleaned through context/hearsay, because publishing is both intentionally and unintentionally opaque about what actually benefits book sales. (Among other things. That's for another post, though.)

So let's start with stuff that's concrete. First off, authors don't actually set their own release dates if they're traditionally published. That's at the sole discretion of the publisher, apart from contractual clauses (e.g. they can't sit on a complete and printable manuscript for five years.)

Now the bummer thing is, books actually do come out year-round, not all at once. You just don't hear about 95% of them because they don't get mega marketing campaigns; these tend to be what's called the midlist. Midlist books get modest publisher support but aren't expected to be smash hits, just turn a (modest) profit.

What I also know is that certain times of the year are perceived as better for certain titles. E.g. a book by an established mega author can come out anytime and make bank. A book expected to take off with kids is gonna launch near summer vacation. Anticipated holiday bestsellers tend to launch in October/November... unless it's a presidential election year.

What I have heard/gleaned from context is that post-Christmas is not great for sales, generally, unless you have something like the B&N BOGO sale of December 2021. Earlier in a month is considered better for best-of and top-seller lists, which is why the first Tuesday is usually crowded. (Why books mostly release on Tuesdays is a funny story for another time.)

There's a range of opinions on whether it's better to release the same day or month as an anticipated blockbuster, but no real consensus. On the other hand, what may look like a suboptimal release day is often pitched to an author as "less competition for the bestseller lists." The, uh, consistency of this is... varied.

But yeah! In short, there's a blend of observable trends and dubious superstitions, but books actually do release year-round. My recommendation would be to ask your local booksellers what their favorite new release is that month. Alternatively, you can check out the Indie Next lists, which are bookseller-picked recommendations posted monthly for adult books, and bimonthly for YA and kid lit!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

Donald Trump’s presidency ended in chaos and disgrace, as a deadly pandemic ravaged the country and a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. In the years since, he has doubled down on the “rigged election” lies that helped incite the insurrection and proposed a nakedly authoritarian vision for the country. He’s also been indicted four times, convicted on 34 felony charges, and ordered to pay $355 million in a civil fraud suit and $88.3 million after being found liable for sexual assault and defamation. But on Thursday night, Trump once again accepted his party’s nomination for president after a series of runaway victories in the Republican primaries. His meandering address to the Republican National Convention featured more than 20 falsehoods, ramblings about his assorted grievances, repeated lies that Democrats stole the 2020 election — and a vow that “we’re never going to let that happen again.”

Trump owes his party’s total capitulation in no small part to the fervent support he received from the right-wing media apparatus. Outlets like Fox News are a powerful force within the GOP, and they could have tried to move on from the former president after he left office — but instead they bent the knee and helped him glide past his legal calamities, steamroll his opponents, whitewash the January 6 insurrection, and return to power.

Rupert Murdoch, whose right-wing media empire includes Fox, the propaganda network that aided Trump’s political rise and served as an adjunct of his White House, privately signaled in the days following the January 6 insurrection that Trump’s time was over. “Fox News very busy pivoting,” he told a former network executive a few days later. “We want to make Trump a non person.” Murdoch instructed Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott: “Best we don’t mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him.”

This did not happen. Trump’s relationship with the network and the broader Murdoch empire went through a series of twists and turns over the next several years, including a reported “soft ban” from the Fox airwaves. But Murdoch never closed the door on a Trump revival — in the increasingly fractured right-wing media ecosystem, that would have left his outlets vulnerable to attack from rivals promoting themselves as more supportive of the former president. Instead, his network, in pursuit of the market share that Trump’s supporters bring, followed its competitors back into Trump’s fold. Rather than break with Trump, right-wing conspiracy theorists, led by then-Fox star Tucker Carlson, concocted a January 6 counternarrative in which the rioting Trumpists were gentle patriots who had been victimized by the deep state, the Democrats, and the media. This revisionist history ultimately won over the Republican base, demolishing the initial consensus that a violent attempt to overturn an election was unacceptable.

[...] By reinforcing Trump’s personality cult, his media allies helped make it impossible for his rivals to gain traction. When Trump began campaigning for president in March 2023, his core message was that he is an avatar of retribution against corrupt elites who are targeting him to get at his supporters, including the unfairly maligned J6 “hostages.” That aligned perfectly with what the Republican base had been hearing from the right-wing media for years, cutting off potential avenues that other candidates might have used to win over voters. Trump ended up crushing his primary opponents, who spent the final days of the primary complaining about how his dominance of the right-wing press had hamstrung their campaigns. And with Trump triumphant, Fox and the rest of the right-wing press returned to their roles as his propaganda force.

In the imminent aftermath of the January 6th Insurrection in 2021, Rupert Murdoch wanted to cut and bail on Donald Trump.

Seeing the threat of Newsmax, OANN, Lindell TV, and Real America’s Voice-- all of which were more strident than Fox “News” in their MAGA sycophancy-- eat into their ratings, Fox decided to stick with Trump instead come what may, and they are rewarded with it, as Donald Trump secured the nomination for the GOP.

[qweenofurheart]

hi!!! you dont need to answer if it's too much of a hassle but I love your F1 oc art so much and I'm kind of DYING to know the story here. like, what's Santana's story? what's the deal between him and Logan? is it like hero worship gone sour?? I'm so curious!

seeing this in my inbox made me so happy i screenshotted it and sent it to my friends to show off ty anon !!

so if you want to know the story, i will try to explain! basically I really want to create an animated short film called "Santana Siempre" (Santana Always) which i've described in my portfolio as 'a story about motorsport culture, disconnection, and masculinity where three Formula One drivers clash at the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. '

i am still in the early stages of scripting and visual development (which means i am just drawing the characters over and over trying to psych myself into committing to this project) so most of my art doesn't really reflect the story i want to eventually accomplish.

here is the third driver carmen (with santana lol) and i am still working on his design.

so the three main characters here are: (adding a line break bc i wrote a novel under there)

santana marsh: 27 years old, Spanish/Catalan/American, Ferrari. he's a former NASCAR driver who has caused an upset in the racing world because he was recruited by the Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team after a lucky stint in the 2021 WEC (World Endurance Championship) in which he placed first at the 24hr of Le Mans. People denounce this victory as luck because he had a teammate who was a former WDC (F1 World Drivers Champion.) furthermore, people accuse him of being a marketing ploy to "sell" Formula One to the United States. i wanted to include this because i feel it is important to examine the dynamic between the f1 institution and the united states, especially in last years Las Vegas GP for example where setting up the race left thousands unable to commute to work., overpriced tickets and merch, etc..

logan abujhaad: 23 years old, French Moroccan, Mercedes, he is in his second year in F1 after a very tumultuous first season. his teammate, Carmen, is the current reigning world champion which puts a lot of pressure on him. He is relatively insecure about his performance after an incident in F2, in which a title fight with Johan Vogelstein (another character i made) resulted in Johan earning the Ferrari spot instead of Logan. despite being neurotic, he's also extremely desperate to win and gets emotional about it. he has also experienced a lot of discrimination in karting and formula racing for being north african and muslim, especially by a secular conservative french audience that even went to lengths to boycott IWC iwc schaffhausen when they released an ad campaign featuring logan. i felt it was an important part of his character to include because there is a lot of racism and islamophobia within f1 and other sports like futbol that is not really talked about often.

carmen iglesias: 30 years old, Spanish, Mercedes, he is the current WDC and logan's teammate. he and santana are very good friends as they are both from spain and share a lot of interests. despite being a popular driver, he is known to be angry and abrasive, but it adds to his 'masculine' image. him and logan have a bit of a rocky relationship as logan is rumored to outperform him in the 2024 season and logan also beat him at his home race at barcelona in 2023. the mercedes team tries to spend equal resources on the two of them but it's difficult when trying to decide between a promising rookie or the reigning world champion.

OBVIOUSLLYYY an animated film isn't really the best medium to express all of these aspects of their characters. a short story or novella might be better. I have tried to script in ways that reveals some of this naturally, but i don't have much experience writing screenplays, so i might have to cut out a lot of it.

what is the plot of the film?

basically, the film will encapsulate the 2024 spanish grand prix. the two mercedes cars will collide with each other (i actually made up this premise before i learned of the 2016 rosberg-hamilton spain collision ...art imitates life and all that...) and the rest of the film will follow the consequences and the relationships between the three drivers after such an event.

i don't want the story to be only focused on the characters but the sport as a whole, which is why i think it's less about their personal feelings and more about the external challenges?

omg. the amount of research i have to do though. i have been watching every movie and short film based about motorsport under the sun. reading espn and fox sports articles. wading through wikipedia. it's both daunting and very fulfilling.

to answer anon's questions directly (although i'm sure i've made it far past the scope of the question by now 😭) i don't think there is necessarily a "hero worship gone sour" dynamic between logan and santana. logan has admired santana for a long time, especially after the 2021 le mans. they aren't close friends but i think they probably share a lot of mutual respect and are similar in terms of ambition. both of them are trying to "break" into F1, with santana in his first year and logan in his second year, and so the challenges they face are a bit mirrored.

I AM NOT A VERY TALENTED ARTIST HOWEVER LMAOOO. i just have a lot of time on my hands and i love formula one so i started this project. i am not a very good animator or director, and so this project may go nowhere IDK. i could just be drawing silly little pictures of them for the rest of my life with no film made.

still, thank you for the question!! i'm glad you like my characters in their current incarnation and are interested in them.

bonus: three hypothetical movie posters i've made for the film. i may not be a great animator, but i can graphic design my ass off.

[bizarrequazar]

GJ and ZZH Updates — June 11-17

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

Late addition to last week: The Singaporean paper Shin Min Daily News (aka Zaobao) published an “email interview” article about “Zhang Zhehan” (ie. taking the Zhang Sanjian scam and concerts as legitimate) with the first line of the article saying that Zhang Zhehan visited Yasukuni Shrine. This article was celebrated by whalers, with some blatantly omitting this first line; when confronted about this, they claimed it was no big deal for the very smears at the centre of 813 to be repeated here. The article also went on to say that Zhang Sanjian was “grateful for the opportunity” that his cancellation gave him.

06-11 → An article about Word of Honor was published by the Collider, an English language film news media company, promoting the drama as “one of the best queer historical dramas”.

06-12 → #Chen Lu's suspected extortion case enters the review and prosecution stage# got on Weibo hotsearch, about a legal case involving Huo Zun (a singer who performed 锦书来 for Word of Honor) and his ex-girlfriend that started in summer 2021.* All the featured posts under the hotsearch were from marketing accounts affiliated with CAPA and presented Huo Zun in a more positive light than his ex, indicating that he likely reached some sort of agreement with CAPA for them to back him. At least one post was written in a way that can also be read to allude to Zhang Zhehan’s case, saying that “there's no benefit to making your enemy go to jail, seek a win-win result and don't insist on them going to jail.” (CAPA seems to be scared as of late, no?) *I have not been following this case and have no opinion on it. 

06-13 → 361° posted nine photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun donated 230,000 RMB to the China Charities Aid Foundation for Children, including the 30,000 RMB he received as compensation in one of his lawsuits against an anti.

06-14 → On Aura Tout Vu (see 06-05 under last week) posted a blog article about Zhang Sanjian, in which they mentioned Yasukuni Shrine and the Nogi Shrine wedding photos without clarifications, and said Zhang Zhehan was banned by “authorities” who “also suspected him of homosexuality[.]” [screenshots] This was edited twenty minutes later to remove the specific mention of the shrine, referring to it as a defamation campaign, then was edited again several hours later to remove the mention of homosexuality. [records showing the editing history]

→ Xie Yihua made claims that she had won a defamation suit against an “anti” account. There is no record of any such suit existing [1] [2], the “apology letter” posted that was supposedly written by the person sued does not include a UID number, and the account mentioned only has five followers. The UID that was later found was discovered to belong to someone who had had a hand in 813. It was subsequently passed around whaler circles that Zhang Zhehan must not be pursuing his case because otherwise Xie Yihua’s wouldn’t have concluded first, as if the two could be compared even if Xie Yihua wasn’t a compulsive liar.

→ ELLE magazine posted a teaser video for their photoshoot with Gong Jun they would release later. Caption: “In the July issue of ELLE, we talked about music, movies, work, study plans, and even childhood memories with the cover character @ Gong Jun Simon. We have seen a Gong Jun who regards sincerity and frankness as the wall of his comfort zone, we have seen Gong Jun who likes strong-paced pop music and brain-burning suspense movies, we have seen Gong Jun an actor who treats each character with heart, and we have seen Gong Jun who is willing to learn more. Gong Jun who takes a little time, and Gong Jun who has too many ideals. Stay tuned!”

→ L’Oreal posted a photo ad of Gong Jun from Cannes.

→ ELLE posted the covers of their issue featuring Gong Jun. Caption:  “For more than a year, @ Gong Jun Simon has been in a crew almost all the time, ‘Legend of AnLe’, ‘Rising with the Wind’, ‘Fox Spirit Matchmaker: Red Moon Red Chapter’... Meeting ELLE on the long-lost holiday, it seems that everything can trigger his joy. At the shooting scene, Gong Jun lamented the good weather, beautiful scenery, and enjoying the beauty of nature. What's even more rare is that his happy personality doesn't have much purpose. In his opinion, the foundation of an actor's life is his work. He already has happiness, and now he wants to ‘walk more steadily step by step’.” This was reposted by Gong Jun’s studio with the added caption: “Perched on a canoe, leaning on the prow of a small boat, @ Gong Jun Simon listens to the gurgling water~” Fan Observations: The covers use the famous first line from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, one of the poems written about the Fair Youth believed to have been his male lover.

→ ELLE posted eleven photos from their shoot with Gong Jun. Caption: “We are naturally happy to see the person opposite speak crisply; but for public figures who need to be cautious in their daily words and deeds, will this kind of directness cause trouble? @ Gong Jun Simon said that he is very satisfied with his personality and does not need to change: ‘If you want to express it, you can express it directly, and if you have a request, you can express it directly. The friends around me are also the same kind, and they are all straightforward people.’ When we discussed the topic of ‘most recently listened to music’, he directly opened the music app in his mobile phone, showed me the playback history and favorites, and even played the song he listened to the most recently to invite us together listen. Parson James' Sad Song sounded in the dressing room. It didn't sound so sad, but the rhythm made people feel the urge to dance.”

→ Gong Jun posted nine photos from the ELLE photoshoot. Caption: “Fresh summer! Thanks @ ELLE” He also posted nine to his Xiao Hong Shu, caption: “Vacation  Just a joke 😱” and ten to his Instagram, caption: “Fresh summer😉” Fan Observation: The Weibo post was at 11:06, which wouldn’t really be notable except the post from his studio an hour later was at 12:01. 🤔

→ Tangle Teezer posted a promotional video spoken by Gong Jun. (1129 kadian)

→ ELLE posted a video of their photoshoot. Caption: “Everyone likes the contagious smile of @ Gong Jun Simon, the kind of smile that stretches the brows and eyes and is full of vitality, as if the surrounding is always sunny and the air is fresh; his personal temperament is also happy and bright, even as long as you mention this the name, the face that comes to mind is the smiling one. In an industry that is often overworked, it is not easy to stay energized and positive. It may take a little bit of luck, but also some determination to be yourself. The warm and loving family endows Gong Jun with a bright and optimistic personality background, while his straightforward social attitude guards a pure heart.” This was reposted by Fresh. Fan Observation: The straw hat looks similar to that of Luffy from One Piece, the character Zhang Zhehan used as his Weibo pfp. 

→ ELLE posted their interview with Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a video of behind the scenes footage from the photoshoot. Caption: “In the lush season of summer, record the cool moment of @ Gong Jun Simon” BGM is White Lies (Instrumental) by ODESZA. 

→ Hogan posted four of the ELLE photos, highlighting their clothes. Caption includes “Go into the mountains and start an adventure.”

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted six behind the scenes photos from the shoot. Caption: “Watching nature quietly, @ Gong Jun Simon is at leisure, enjoying the peaceful world beyond the turmoil.”

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a douyin of behind the scenes footage from the shoot. Caption: “@ Gong Jun Simon takes grass and trees as a seat and lies flat!” BGM is After Hours by The Weeknd.

→ 361° posted three photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

06-15 → EHz.Z changed recipient companies again, this being the eleventh time since October 2022. (see 06-03)

→ Tangle Teezer posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ The Instagram posted six photos of “Zhang Zhehan”.

→ Huang Xiaoming posted a photo to celebrate Go Fighting! season 9 wrapping, with the regular cast members who weren’t present for the photo poorly photoshopped in. Gong Jun commented, “Ge, why do I blend in more naturally than you in this picture?” to which Huang Xiaoming replied, “This is the extent of my photoshopping skills 😂”

06-16 → STELLAR, the production company for Rising with the Wind and Fox Spirit Matchmaker, posted a video celebrating their 5th anniversary with brief messages from various actors. [subbed cut of Gong Jun]

→ Louis Vuitton posted a teaser video of Gong Jun from when he was in Seoul in April.

→ Gong Jun posted the full video for Louis Vuitton, showing him spending a day in Seoul with Jin Chen, who was also there in partnership with LV. [subbed video] Caption: “Set off with a comfortable mood and unlock an unforgettable adventure. Roam Seoul with @ Louis Vuitton and explore the infinite joy of travel.”

→ The 不想匿名 account was deactivated. It’s unknown if this was done by the account itself or the platform.

→ The Instagram posted a video of “Zhang Zhehan” playing a new song.

06-17 → Fresh posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ L’Oreal posted a promotional video spoken by Gong Jun.

→ The Instagram posted a video of “Zhang Zhehan” having a photoshoot.

Additional Reading: → A Twitter event, #ShineWithTheMoon, is being organized for 08-03 for fans of Zhang Zhehan to share positive messages about the fandom. Update: This event has been postponed due to concern over recent bot activity.

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This post was last updated 2023-06-20.

[goldenpinof]

Yeah in my opinion Phil would still be up for some dapg and podcast and regular joint content and whatnot because he knows that 1) their audience (at least what’s left of it) loves it, 2) HE loves it, 3) Dan loves it. The problem is the usual: Dan wants to do something big and important so he can be taken seriously or whatever, but let’s be real — his attempts so far have led to mixed responses. The book? Wasn’t that great, we can say it now. DD? Still trying to figure out what it was for other than promo for the tour (and the content itself wasn’t good and so 2016). I still can’t believe he decided to ditch the gaming channel and joint content for *gestures vaguely* that. I wish him well and I’ll always root for him, but he really needs someone to give him career advice

i can't believe you're pulling me back with this shit redhgfs i was peacefully existing for weeks not thinking about Dan's failing career ffs. god help me!

RIGHT!!!!! all of what you said! not only career advice but also a reality check, and i mean it in a very nice way. i guess we can agree that he grew out of youtube and doesn't want to do it anymore (partially because of what happened with youtube originals. fuck them). and that's okay. and wanting something bigger, more serious, conceptual, and right for him is also okay. i support that. but every piece of, let's say, work he was trying to do outside youtube turned out to be tied to youtube anyway. and not because he wasn't trying hard enough (well, debatable), but because most of his experience that he is willing to talk about is either already mentioned on the platform or happened because of his youtube career. and also it's the best place to promote whatever he is doing, so he can't escape it unless he hires a marketing team and invests thousands of dollars in a real promo campaign. PHYSICAL as well (non-existent billboards and posters for wad shows will haunt me to death).

the book. i have a question (lots of them, but whatever). have you read it? and if yes, was it interesting from a fan's pov? and god, would i love to know the opinions of people who aren't familiar with Dan and his content. i bought the book in 2021, can't make myself read it because i'm afraid to get annoyed at him repeating himself.

yeah, i also can't believe he is too fucking stubborn to return to what clearly works for us and him with Phil. because it can be a side thing, and he can focus on his stand-up bullshit at the same time. on the other hand, i watched Lilly's interview with Anthony about how her late night show was taking ALL of her time and she couldn't continue to make youtube content. and i thought, maybe Dan is in the same situation. his new projects take everything? but there's a difference! he is not shooting 2-3 episodes per day. and for wad he delegated lots of work to other people. some of them did a shitty job, but that's a different topic. that's why i would pay my own money for dnp to talk about the work processes in detail. that could explain where all these weeks and months go. dd was shot within a few months, partly during the tour. so even that didn't take that much time. and i know there are scripts, and logistics, and rehearsals, and pitches to networks or whatever, and he is probably doing a lot of manager's work himself sometimes. but damn, math is not mathing.

[my-vanishing-777]

LONDON: Two decades ago, the International Wages for Housework Campaign called for a “Global Women’s Strike”. “We do the work of giving birth to, feeding and caring for all the people in the world,” the campaign declared. “But this work is devalued & demeaned.”

Women from 64 countries joined the day of action, but notably none from China. In a country where feminist actions have been shut down by arrests, Chinese women are not generally protesting on the streets. Instead they are quietly quitting in their homes.

Demographers say that the slowdown would have happened anyway, without the brutality and forced abortions of the policy, due to urbanisation and increases in income.

The best explanation for the falling birth rate is the simplest: Like women the world over, Chinese women are no longer so willing to birth and bring up children.

COSTS OF RAISING CHILDREN

“From buying a house to getting married, from prenatal education to extracurriculars, from primary to secondary school, from university to employment, from helping them get married to helping them raise kids, every step makes the spirit weary,” writes Tsinghua University sociologist Sun Liping.

In other words, the choice to desist from having more children is a rational response to the emotional and material costs of raising them.

The government clampdown on private education companies in 2021 was partly a recognition of these sky-high costs — except it treated the symptom, rather than the cause. The fear of losing out in a polarised labour market drives intense competition for scarce educational resources among parents.

CHILDCARE AND WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION

Low fertility is a problem for an economic model that relied on mass labour to fuel low-cost manufacturing. But China’s government says it is past this point. Instead, it wants “high-quality growth”.

For that, it needs to build social infrastructure, particularly in early-years care in rural areas, where over a third of China’s preschoolers live. As one Beijing-based sociologist puts it: “If you really treated children as the future wealth of the country, you’d invest in them.”

The Communist Party is no stranger to what this provision could look like. Urban women of my own generation complain that our parents had it easier.

Before the state-owned enterprise reforms of the 1990s, children whose parents belonged to “work units” were guaranteed childcare from the age of two onwards. At 8am on work days, my grandparents took me to the local kindergarten, whose hours were timed with the factory’s shifts.

Workplace discrimination against potential mothers is also rampant. Each relaxation of the one-child policy has proved unpopular, despite on the surface providing more bodily autonomy.

Instead, women feared they would be suspected by their employers of harbouring gestational ambitions.

EXPECTATIONS OF DUTY

Feng Yuan, a veteran Chinese feminist activist, sees an opportunity in this moment: “The government knows it has to be better to women; yet it doesn’t listen to them.” The term “birth strike”, as used by Korean and American feminists such as the author Jenny Brown, is a way of turning low fertility into a rallying call for better conditions.

In its focus on gross domestic product growth, Beijing has forgotten that the economy is made up of humans, who also need producing.

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds

The saga of the Sacklers, a multigenerational billionaire crime family of mass-murdering dope-peddlers, is an enraging parable about how the wealthy, the courts, and sadistic high-powered lawyers collude to destroy the lives of millions, profit handsomely, and evade justice.

But there's an unexpected twist to this tale. After the Sacklers procured a sham bankruptcy that denied their victims the right to sue while leaving their fortune largely intact, the Supreme Court – yes, this Supreme Court – saw through the scam and froze the process, pending a full hearing:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement.html

The Sacklers basically invented modern, legal dope peddling. Arthur Sackler, the family's original crime-boss, revived the practice of direct-to-consumer drug marketing, dormant since the death of the medicine show, to peddle Valium. An aggressive and shrewd lobbyist, Arthur built the family fortune and, more importantly, its connections:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-sackler-family-built-a-pharma-dynasty-and-fueled-an-american-calamity/

A generation later, the family's business company created Oxycontin, and procured misleading and false research about the drug's safety kickstarting the opioid epidemic, whose American body-count is closing in on a million dead. Armed with inflated claims about opioid safety, the Sacklers' pharma reps bribed, cajoled and tricked doctors into writing millions of prescriptions for oxy.

This scam had a natural best-before date. As ODs flooded America's ERs and bodies piled up in America's morgues, it became increasingly clear that something was rotten. The Sacklers pursued a multipronged campaign to keep the truth from coming to light, and to keep the billions flowing.

On the one hand, they hired McKinsey to find novel ways to encourage doctors to keep writing prescriptions and to convince pharmacists to turn a blind eye to abuse. McKinsey had all kinds of great ideas here, including paying pharma distributors cash bonuses for every overdose death in their territory:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/business/mckinsey-opioids-settlement.html

When the issue of these deaths came up in public, the Sacklers blamed "criminal addicts" for their own misery, stigmatizing both people who desperately needed pain relief and the people who'd been deliberately hooked on the Sacklers' products. The legacy of this smear campaign is still with us, both in the contempt for people struggling with addiction and in the cruel barriers placed between people in unbearable agony and medical relief.

But mostly, the Sacklers kept their names out of it. They laundered their reputations by donating a homeopathic fraction of their vast drug fortune to art galleries and museums in a bid to make their names synonymous with good deeds.

The Sacklers didn't invent this trick. Think of the way that history's great monsters – Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, Ford – are remembered today for the foundations and charities that bear their names, not for the untold misery they inflicted on their workers, their crimes against their customers, and the corruption of governments.

But the Sacklers made those Gilded Age barons seem like amateurs. They invented a modern elite philanthropy playbook that Anand Giridharadas documents in his must-read Winners Take All, about the charity-industrial complex that washes away an ocean of blood with a trickle of money:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/10/winners-take-all-modern-philanthropy-means-that-giving-some-away-is-more-important-than-how-you-got-it/

As part of this PR exercise, the individual Sacklers kept their names and images out of the public eye. For years, there were virtually no news-service photos of individual Sacklers. When journalists dared to criticize the family, they used vicious attack-lawyers to intimidate them into retractions and silence (I was threatened by the Sacklers' lawyers).

They also worked their media mogul pals, like Mike Bloomberg, who added their names to the "Friends of Mike" list that Bloomberg reporters were required to consult before writing negative coverage:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/29/friends-of-mike-enemies-of-the-people/#sacklerbergs

But Stein's Law says that "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As lawsuits mounted, the Sacklers found themselves increasingly synonymous with death, not charitable works. But like any canny criminal, the Sacklers had a getaway plan.

First, they extracted vast sums from Purdue and shifted it into offshore financial secrecy havens:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-purduepharma-bankruptcy/sacklers-reaped-up-to-13-billion-from-oxycontin-maker-u-s-states-say-idUSKBN1WJ19V

Even as this money was disappearing into legal black holes, the Sacklers demanded – and received – extraordinary protection from the courts, who aggressively sealed testimony and materials presented through discovery:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-courts-secrecy-judges/

When this gambit finally failed, the Sacklers insisted that were down to their last $4 billion, and, with trillions in claims pending against them, they declared bankruptcy.

When a normal person declares bankruptcy, they are required to divest themselves of nearly everything of value they possess, and then still find themselves hounded by cruel arm-breakers who deluge them with threatening calls and letters:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

But for the richest people in America, bankruptcy is merely a way to cleanse one's balance sheet of liabilities for any atrocity you may have committed on the way, without giving up your fortune.

The Sacklers are a case-study in how a corrupt bankruptcy can be conducted.

Purdue Pharma presents a maddening case-study in the corrupt benefits of bankruptcy. When it was announced in March, many were outraged to learn that the Sacklers were going to walk away with billions, while their victims got stiffed.

First, they converted their victims' right to compensation into "property" that the Sacklers themselves owned. This transferred jurisdiction over these claims from the regular court system to the bankruptcy court. A bankruptcy judge – not a jury – would decide how much each of these claims was worth, and then what how much of that worth these victims (now recast as creditors) would be entitled to through the bankruptcy.

Thus tens of thousands of claims were nonconsensually settled without a trial, by an administrative judge with no criminal jurisdiction, not a federal judge who'd undergone Senate confirmation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/31/vaccine-for-the-global-south/#claims-extinguished

These "coercive restructuring techniques" are not available to everyday people who are drowning in student debt or credit-card bills – these are the exclusive purview of the wealthiest Americans, who enjoy a completely different bankruptcy system that is rigged in their favor.

Three judges – David Jones and Marvin Isgur of Houston and Bob Drain of New York – hear 96% of the country's large corporate bankruptcies:

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2021/05/judge-shopping-in-bankruptcy.html

These judges are unbelievably horny for corporations, embracing a legal theory "that casts the invention of the limited liability corporation alongside that of the steam engine as a paradigmatic development in the pursuit of prosperity":

https://prospect.org/justice/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-sacklers-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy/

Now there are more than three bankruptcy judges in America, so how do the nation's biggest companies get their cases heard by these three enthusiastic Renfields for corporate vampirism?

They cheat.

For example: when GM was facing bankruptcy, it argued that it was a New York company on the basis that it owned a single Chevy dealership in Harlem, and got in front of Judge Drain.

The Sacklers were – characteristically – even more brazen. They really wanted to get their case in front of Judge Drain, the nation's most enthusiastic supporter of "third party releases," through which bankrupt billionaires can wipe the slate clean, securing dismissals of all claims by the people they wronged.

Drain is also uniquely hostile to independent examiners, "an independent third-party appointed by the court to investigate 'fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or irregularity…by current or former management of the debtor."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3851339

If you're the Sacklers, hoping to keep two thirds of your billions and extinguish all claims by your victims, there is no better helpmeet than Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York.

So, 192 days before filing for bankruptcy, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, New York (a company may claim jurisdiction in a specific court once they've operated a business there for 180 days).

Then they filed a bankruptcy in which they altered the metadata on their casefile, inserting the code for a Westchester county hearing into the machine-readable, human-invisible parts of the documents they uploaded to the federal Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system (they also captioned the case with "RDD, for "Robert D Drain").

They chose their judge, and the judge obliged. UCLA Law's Lynn LoPucki is one of the leading scholars of these bankruptcy "megacases," and has written extensively on why these three judges are so deferential to corporate criminals seeking to flense themselves of culpability. She sees judges like Drain motivated by "personal aggrandizement and celebrity and ability to indirectly channel to the local bankruptcy bar. The judge is the star and the ringmaster of a megacase – very appealing to certain personalities."

Thus, these judges are "willing and eager to cater to debtors to attract business…[an] assurance to debtors that…these judges will not transfer out cases with improper venue or rule against the debtor…"

https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/02870w66d

This kind of judge-shopping goes beyond the Sacklers; the cases that Drain and co preside over make a mockery of the idea of America as a land of equal justice. "Prepack" and "drive-through" bankruptcies are reliable get-out-of-jail-free cards for capitalism's worst monsters: private equity firms.

Whether PE murdered your grandmother by buying her care-home and putting each worker in charge of 30 seniors:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/portopiccolo-nursing-homes-maryland/2020/12/21/a1ffb2a6-292b-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html

or poisoned your kids by filling your neighborhood with carcinogens:

https://www.webmd.com/special-reports/ethylene-oxide/20190719/residents-unaware-of-cancer-causing-toxin-in-air

limited liability wipes the slate clean.

30% of America's bankruptcies are private equity companies using the bankruptcy system to wipe away claims for their misdeeds, while keeping a fortune, thanks to the shield of limited liability.

Take Millennium Health, JamesS lattery's fake drug-testing company, which promised to help nursing homes figure out whether seniors were abusing (or selling) their meds by testing their piss for angel dust and other drugs. Slattery defrauded Medicare and Medicaid for millions, borrowed $1.8 billion (Slattery got $1.3 billion of that). He eventually walked away from this fraud after paying a mere $256m to settle all claims, and kept a fortune in assets, including the 40 vintage planes his private company ("Pissed Away LLC" – I am not making this up) owned:

https://prospect.org/justice/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-sacklers-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy/

For the wealthy, bankruptcy is the sport of kings, a way to skip out on consequences. For the poor, bankruptcy is an anchor – or a noose. This is by design: judges who preside over elite bankruptcies speak of their protagonists as heroic "risk takers" and tiptoe around any consequences, lest these titans be chained to a mortal's fate, costing us all the benefits of their entrepreneurial genius.

PE companies helped the Sacklers design their own bankruptcy strategy, and it was a standout, even by the standards of Bob Drain and his kangaroo bankruptcy court. But now, the Supreme Court has pumped the brakes on the whole enterprise.

The judges ruled that the exceptions the Sacklers took advantage of were intended for bankrupts in "financial distress" – not billionaires with vast fortunes hidden overseas. In so doing, the court threatens all manner of corrupt arrangements, from "the Boy Scouts, wildfires and allegations of sexual abuse in the church diocese — where third parties get a benefit from a bankruptcy they themselves aren’t going through.”

The case was brought by the DoJ's US Trustee Program, which lost in the Second Circuit when it tried to halt the Purdue bankruptcy and argued that the Sacklers themselves had to declare bankruptcy to discharge the claims against them.

Now the Supremes have hit pause on the bankruptcy the Second Circuit approved, and will hear the case themselves. It's only one step on a long road, but it's an unprecedented one. Some of the country's filthiest fortunes are riding on the outcome.

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” tomorrow (Aug 12) at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Image: Edwardx (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serpentine_Sackler_Gallery,_June_2016_05.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[mwebber]

im p confused rn lol, feel free to ignore this ofc but questions are meant genuinely.

is it the domination that you have a problem with? the lack of fight at front?

or is it more simply you want seb to keep his record(s)?

or just with verstappen winning?

i understand the first 2 and hear the 3rd a lot but just ur prev posts came a lil outta left field for me lol. i'd like to hear your thoughts, with peace and love on planet earth <3

pourquoi pas les trois... actually i think it might boil down to two main things: my frustration at the continued erasure and diminishing of seb's achievements, and my pet peeve of Total Fucking Bullshit.

it's no secret that this sport has a problem with dominating teams. and yes, you could argue that's the point--hello, it's a constructor's championship, the point is to have the best car. and red bull have built beasts the last couple of years! seriously, all my respect to the team as a whole for pulling everything together. i was and remain a red bull fan at heart despite it all, and it makes me happy from an objective standpoint to see so many elements of a team come together in harmony. red bull is a well-oiled machine at work.

but i genuinely don't think there's been this level of domination by a singular driver in a singular team since like, 2013. think: if lewis' era of domination was so much "worse" than this as the dudebros like to say, why hasn't lewis come close to beating 9 wins in a row? the main phenomenon at play is the sport's short term memory--but really, the way fans like to completely forget 2015-2018 and arguably 2019 too really frustrates me. it wasn't like 2014 hit and suddenly lewis was winning everything. nico won the 2016 wdc. seb posed a real fucking threat in 2015, and in 2017-18 the messaging from the sport was that the battle between him and lewis was, quote unquote, titanic. a battle between, quote unquote, titans of the sport. fast forward to 2020/21 and the narrative is that nothing has stood in lewis' way for the last 6 or 7 years, and that his era of domination needs to be ended for ~the good of the sport.~

so seb makes a couple mistakes, fine, but mostly gets visibly cucked by his team for years, and suddenly he's nothing. his four championships mean nothing, his 3rd most wins in the history of f1 mean nothing, he's just ferrari's next failure.

but then the narrative around max. max, who's introduced in 2021 like he's an up and coming driver intent on toppling lewis' throne. it's a great narrative, right? mercedes took red bull's ball. red bull want it back. casually ignoring how max has been in the sport since 2016, max is red bull's new young golden boy, the one who's going to lead them to victory as the youngest driver like seb already did before and wow, wait, sorry for mentioning seb in relation to success there, let's keep on reinforcing that he's an old man who needs to retire. anyway, max is someone who doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone or anything except racing! max is a beast on track! max is [checks notes] our great white hope!

let's put the racism discussion on hold, because i think people try really hard to pin him down as this like, absolutely sociopathic bigot who is the most racist person in the world, and while he's not NOT racist, i don't think the extreme conclusion ppl are reaching is true. plus this rhetoric is mostly smoke and mirrors to try and find a leftist/social justice reason to hate on him anyway. so let's get fucking real: i dislike max for the same reasons i dislike taylor sw*ft. i hate that there's this blatant marketing campaign that fans buy into and perpetuate, that these people are the greatest of their generation, that they're masters of their craft. like, what? max's racecraft is just threatening to crash people out or push them off the track, something multiple drivers have been quoted saying. that's not ruthless, that's just bad fucking driving. that's an asshole on the dvp suddenly merging into your lane without using their blinkers or checking their blindspots and forcing you to pull out your defensive driving skills from that one class in drivers ed just to avoid a massive pileup on the highway. and i'm expected to suck this guy's dick?

max wins a fraudulent championship in 2021 and proceeds, for the next two years, to basically cruise at the front. it's like the second half of 2013, except it's lasting for a YEAR AND A HALF. only this time, instead of the sport trying to diminish this stint by saying it's just the car or that the golden boy has put himself above the team, people are......... celebrating? listen, i enjoy a singapore 2013 moment as much as the next seb fan but come on. get real. if every race was singapore 2013 that would be boring. and that's what we're seeing, but that's not what fom wants us to think we're seeing. it's complete bullshit.

which leads me to my posts. oh my god, i hated the comparisons between max and seb's first championships. the circumstances could not be more different--it was fucking insulting. seb won his championship fair and square, no rulebook bending required. seb's most violent moment on track that year was in turkey with mark--but he didn't park his car on top of mark's head and walk out saying that's what you get. how could people say that seb was anything like max.

seb's 9 wins at the end of 2013 were the culmination of five years spent fighting tooth and nail for his success. even for how dominant he was in 2011, there were still other teams up there! he had to fight his own teammate for so many years! and even with displays like singapore 2013, there were races where he was fighting in the second half of the season! and now we see this current streak of wins from the last two years where everyone else has tumbled behind and perez is contractually obligated to be a doormat. (not to say that teams haven't tried--i had so much hope at the start of 2022 when ferrari showed up with that pussy monster.) so look me in the eyes and say that max has fought with everything in him just to get that #1 spot. the two of them are leagues apart, but people--the same ones who have said seb is washed--are inevitably going to say that max has beaten seb, that max is on par with the third most successful driver in the sport. it's like a slap to the face.

and so we end back with the constant retconning of seb's position in f1 history. it drives me insane. he's nothing when it comes to propping max up, and then he's the benchmark to prop max up. he's a titan of the sport, and then he's just a failure. come on. come on. i'm just tired of my favourite driver never being given the credit he deserves, and i'm tired of having this fictional story shoved down my throat that max is anything like the goats in the sport. tl;dr. get real.

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

This is part of SH’s whisky campaign 🥃 in June 2021. These Covidiots behaved irresponsibly and flouted government instructions in the face of the virus. Scotland announced additional risk and uncertainty caused by the spread of the more transmissible Delta variant.

To do this, Alex travelled to Scotland, 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿breaching Scotland's legal coronavirus lockdown restrictions. SH and AN were preparing their travel marketing, enjoying rides on Harley-Davidson motorbikes 🏍️ around Scotland in search of adventure.

Why wasn't this photoshop revealed at the time? because it is illegal to ride a motorcycle under the influence of alcohol in Scotland. The best advice was not to drink alcohol if you intended to ride a motorbike.

Drink is not welcome. Scotland’s drink-drive limit is lower than the rest of the UK. To keep it simple – assume even one is one too many.

And now Alex commemorates International Whisky Day with an old video that never came to light because it broke the law. A deceptive person posing as an expert.

Posted 28th May 2024.

[beardedmrbean]

It isn’t clear if a $90 million program designed to recruit and retain math and science teachers in middle and high school is working, the Alabama Commission on the Evaluation of Services wrote in a report released last week.

The Teacher Excellence and Accountability for Mathematics and Science, or TEAMS, Program, launched at the start of the 2021-22 school year, “deviates from implementation best practices, lacks defined goals and maintains vague performance metrics,” the report’s authors wrote.

The law establishing the program lacked a specific set of measurable goals, ACES noted, leaving an evaluation of the program without metrics by which to judge the success of the program.

“Without established benchmarks, the overall success of the program cannot be determined in a verifiable way,” ACES stated.

Addressing those findings, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Education said they appreciate the authors’ findings and that they’ve identified similar issues in internal reviews of the TEAMS program.

The department has a different view about how to judge the program overall, however.

“The TEAMS program is working,” Communications Director Michael Sibley told AL.com. “Alabama now has more high-quality math and science teachers than ever before. We look for continued success and will make any positive changes necessary.”

Initially, the most notable aspect of the TEAMS program was how much more eligible teachers could be paid - up to $20,000 more depending on a teacher’s credentials and whether they teach in a hard-to-staff school. Middle and high school math, science and computer science teachers are eligible for the higher pay.

Lawmakers allocated $90 million to the program for each of the past two school years, though only $38 million was spent in the first year and $59 million has been spent for year two, which is still underway. Outside of direct costs associated with TEAMS, lawmakers allocated $1 million for a marketing campaign to highlight the program.

Teachers have to apply for an allocated TEAMs position; school districts receive one math and one science position for every 105 sixth through 12th grade students enrolled in a school district. Teachers deemed eligible must sign a contract agreeing to complete required training and to have or to be working on a professional credential - either National Board Certification or a STEM credential.

According to information the Alabama Department of Education provided to ACES, one-third of the 7,500 allocated TEAMS positions statewide were filled by a TEAMS-contracted teacher.

But that doesn’t mean the other 5,000 positions weren’t filled, authors noted, just that TEAMS contracts weren’t signed. The state department did not track whether allocated TEAMS positions were filled by highly-qualified teachers who chose not to sign the contract or if those positions were filled by teachers not certified properly.

One early win noted in the report is that districts reported more fully credentialed math and science teachers teaching during the 2022-23 school year. Further, 29 TEAMS teachers came from outside of Alabama to teach, according to reports from the 55 school districts surveyed.

An unintended consequence of paying TEAMS teachers from a higher salary schedule is that the difference in pay caused morale issues among teachers teaching subjects other than math, science and computer science, according to the report. Nearly half of administrators surveyed for the report said the program negatively affected staff morale.

“The leading motivation to sign a TEAMS contract is higher pay, but the incentive negatively affected the morale among other teachers within the system,” the report found.

Improving student achievement in math and science is also a goal, but ACES found no achievement goals have been set. Additionally, the state only requires annual testing in sixth, seventh, eighth and 11th grade.

Even in the tested grades, ACES found, the state currently does not link test scores to individual teachers and therefore can’t measure the impact of a student taught by a TEAMS teacher. Authors recommended the department develop accurate measures and goals for student growth.

The report’s authors noted the short amount of time Alabama Department of Education had to get the program up and running but were critical of implementation, starting with not knowing how many highly-qualified math and science teachers were teaching in Alabama’s classrooms before the TEAMS program began.

“Without determining how many of these teachers existed and where they were located throughout the state,” according to the report, “the growth and progress toward this outcome are difficult to measure.”

Authors said the teacher application and verification process is very slow and paper-heavy, and requires school officials to enter the information manually. That makes it difficult to get teachers into the system. The state department plans to begin automating the credential verification process this summer, but that process won’t be completed until next summer.

ACES noted other problems with the TEAMS program, including the requirement that TEAMS teachers teach only one course not on the list of approved courses. That course, however, still must be designed to improve student achievement in math, science or computer science. Nearly half of the surveyed administrators said that limitation was a “significant issue,” according to the report.

ACES issued nine recommendations for improvement, including streamlining the application process for teachers wanting to become a TEAMS teacher to establishing benchmarks and developing metrics that measure student growth associated with TEAMS teachers.

ACES has completed multiple evaluations of other education-related programs since it was created in 2019.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Peru’s mining industry is essential to the country’s economic development. It accounts for nearly 10% of GDP, while mineral export revenues reached $27.2 billion in 2021, representing 60% of the country’s total exports. Peru is the world’s second-largest producer of copper, silver, and zinc and Latin America’s largest producer of gold. Peru is among the primary producers of mineral commodities in the world. Abundant mineral resources such as copper, gold, silver, and lithium are found mainly in the mountains. [...] President Castillo and the Free Peru party criticized the extractives industry during his presidential campaign, raising fears he would nationalize or expropriate companies in the sector. Such action has not occurred, but private sector mining investment beyond normal operations has taken a noticeable pause. 

[rahulsharma07]

What are the challenges that I face in digital marketing?

As of my last update in September 2021, digital marketing is constantly evolving, and new challenges may have emerged since then. However, here are some common challenges faced by digital marketers that were relevant at that time:

Fierce Competition: The digital marketing landscape is highly competitive. With low barriers to entry, many businesses and individuals are vying for attention, making it challenging to stand out.

Constantly Changing Algorithms: Major platforms like Google, Facebook, and other social media platforms frequently update their algorithms. Keeping up with these changes and adjusting your strategies accordingly can be difficult.

Ad Blocking and Ad Blindness: Internet users have become adept at ignoring or blocking ads, which can decrease the effectiveness of traditional advertising methods.

Data Privacy and Security Concerns: Increased focus on data privacy and security regulations can impact how marketers collect, store, and use customer data, making it more challenging to create targeted campaigns.

Fragmented Audience: The digital space is vast, and audiences are spread across multiple platforms and channels. Understanding and reaching your target audience effectively can be demanding.

Return on Investment (ROI) Measurement: Determining the true ROI of digital marketing efforts can be complex due to multi-touch attribution and the influence of various marketing channels on a single conversion.

Content Saturation: The internet is flooded with content, making it harder for your message to cut through the noise and reach your target audience.

Technology and Tools: While digital marketing tools can be powerful, learning to use them effectively and integrating them into your strategy can be a challenge.

Mobile Optimization: As more users access the internet through mobile devices, ensuring your marketing efforts are mobile-friendly becomes increasingly important but can also be challenging.

Keeping Up with Trends: Digital marketing is an ever-changing field, and staying updated with the latest trends and best practices can be overwhelming.

Budget Constraints: Allocating the right budget across various digital marketing channels and optimizing spending for maximum impact can be tricky.

Brand Reputation Management: Online reviews and social media can significantly impact a brand's reputation. Handling negative feedback and managing online sentiment can be challenging.