#divi sale

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

[curiositasmundi]

Ascolta, vent’anni fa non era così figo avere un orologio-calcolatrice, giusto? E passare tutta la giornata in casa a giocare con l’orologio-calcolatrice era un indice molto chiaro del fatto che socialmente non te la cavavi troppo bene. E i giudizi come “mi piace” e “non mi piace”, e i sorrisi e le espressioni corrucciate erano riservati agli studenti delle medie. Qualcuno scriveva un biglietto che diceva: “Ti piacciono gli unicorni e gli adesivi? Sorridi!”. Cose così. Ma ora a farle non sono più solo i ragazzi delle medie, le fanno tutti, e certe volte a me pare di essere entrato in uno specchio, una specie di zona invertita dove la merda più sfigata del mondo è assolutamente dominante. Il mondo è degli smanettoni più sfigati.» «Mercer, è importante per te essere fico?» «Perché, ti sembro fico?» Si passò una mano sullo stomaco protuberante, sui jeans stracciati. «È evidente che non sono il più fico. Ma non ho dimenticato che una volta tu vedevi John Wayne o Steve McQueen e dicevi: wow, questi bastardi sono cazzuti. Viaggiano a cavallo e in motocicletta e girano il mondo raddrizzando i torti.» Mae non riuscì a trattenere una risata. Guardò l’ora sul cellulare. «Sono passati più di tre minuti.» Mercer tirò dritto. «Oggi i divi del cinema implorano la gente di seguire i feed che postano su Zing. Inviano messaggi supplichevoli chiedendo a tutti di sorridergli. E porca puttana, le mailing list! Sono tutti diventati portalettere di spazzatura! Sai come passo un’ora al giorno? Pensando a come cancellare l’iscrizione a qualche mailing list senza urtare i sentimenti di nessuno. C’è questo nuovo bisogno: pervade ogni cosa.» Sospirò come se avesse fatto una dimostrazione molto importante. «È semplicemente un altro pianeta.» «È un altro in senso buono» disse Mae. «È diventato migliore in mille modi, e te li posso elencare. Ma se tu non socializzi non posso farci niente. Volevo dire che il tuo bisogno di socializzare è così scarso…» «Non è che non socializzo. Io sono abbastanza socievole. Ma gli strumenti che create voi in realtà producono bisogni di socialità innaturalmente estremi. Nessuno ha davvero bisogno del numero di contatti che fornite voi. Non porta a nessun miglioramento. Non è nutriente. È come le merendine. Sai come le studiano? Determinano con scientifica precisione di quanto sale e quanti grassi hanno bisogno per farti continuare a mangiare. Tu non hai fame, non senti il bisogno di mangiare, quello che hai davanti non ti stuzzica, ma continui a mangiare queste calorie vuote. Ecco quello che spacciate voi. La stessa cosa. Un numero incalcolabile di calorie vuote, il loro equivalente digitale e sociale. E le calibrate in modo tale da rendere altrettanto dipendenti i loro consumatori.» «Oh, Gesù.» «Hai presente quando finisci un sacchetto di patatine e ti vorresti prendere a schiaffi? Sai che non hai fatto nulla di buono per te stesso. È la medesima sensazione, e tu lo sai, che si prova dopo una sbornia digitale. Ti senti vuoto, sprecato e diminuito.» «Io non mi sento diminuita.» Mae pensò alla petizione che aveva firmato quel giorno, per chiedere altre opportunità di lavoro per gli immigrati che vivevano nei sobborghi di Parigi. Era stimolante e avrebbe avuto il suo peso. Ma Mercer non ne sapeva niente, come non sapeva niente di quello che faceva lei, né di quello che faceva il Cerchio, e Mae si era ormai troppo stufata di lui per spiegargli tutto. «E ha distrutto la mia capacità anche solo di parlare con te.» Mercer non aveva ancora finito il suo discorso. «Cioè, non posso inviarti delle mail, perché tu le inoltri subito a qualcun altro. Non posso inviarti una foto, perché la posti sul tuo profilo. E intanto la tua ditta legge tutti i nostri messaggi per cavarne informazioni da monetizzare. Non ti sembra una follia?»

Da Il Cerchio - Dave Eggers

[ayansujon]

Need a modern and eye-catching WordPress landing page to make a stellar first impression and capture leads effectively, thus increasing your sales? Look no further! you are right place.

[knightlightminiatures]

It’s me again. And I’ve got some fun news. I’ve resurrected my original Custom Chapter scheme with the release of Leviathan. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with them at first. I usually make all my models space wolves or divy them into my “for sale” pile to help fund my studio but I want getting any strong vibes from the space marine half of the box.

However, the tyranid half has been going into expanding my fathers tyranid army. Hive fleet Rhamnusia. And I thought, with his original concept getting love, why shouldn’t I do so?

I had abandon my army in 2018 for a full space wolf legion. And two years before that I had changed the armour design. Still, all wolfified. But, I never felt the primaris marines really fit the space wolf vibe. So most of them waited patiently for me to decide how I’d go about adding them into my space wolf army. And a few did. But many received no such love.

So with Pops nids getting love, I revived my original army. The Angry Dragons. And returned to their original scheme, eating up all the ignored primaris marines and building a fully fledged primaris army. Pulling most of the units from leviathan, Shadowspear, indomitus, Dark Imperium and wrath of the soulforge. My dragons have returns stronger than ever before.

With this new development, my dragons will sport no firstborn. My wolves will take them all for themselves. And I’ll just run both chapters uniquely. It’s nice because I don’t have to really customize the bits to fit the chapter as much. I can take the models at face value and add my colors.

And should the inevitable phasing out of firstborn ever happen, I still have a full functioning army and a super sexy firstborn Space Wolf army to reminisce about.

[tseneipgam]

"

Avush has the less remunerative job, so he takes the children to school; as Luke says, Economics is life, life is economics: As always, Ayush tries surreptitiously to scrutinize the faces of passers-by to see if some kind of knowledge imprints their faces, their eyes, when they pass him and the twins, a quantum of a pause, a double take, a second look to pull together a middle-aged South Asian man and two white-ish children into meaning, but no, he is spared today. After drop-off, Arush takes the Tube to his office near the Embankment. He works for Sennett and Brewer, part of a vast international publishing conglomerate. Sewer, as it's commonly known, is a self-styled literary imprint, as opposed to an upfront commercial imprint, of which the parent company has several. Self-styled because that's the window-dressing. Behind the deceitful window, what everyone would really like to publish are celebrity biog- raphies and bestsellers. But the performance of literariness is important and does vital cultural work (i.e. economic work): it pushes the definition of literary towards whatever sells. Ayush knows that the convergence, unlike the Rapture, is going to occur any day now. Maybe it has already happened, but he's still here, playing the old game because it still has residual value. Soon it won't."

"Which more water, washing single portion of strawberries or or cherries, or w/ing entire punnet in one go?' He makes the mistake of looking at both Animal Clock and Kill Counter on his computer before he heads to the meeting room. His breath races with the rhythm and speed of the numbers ratcheting up, as if his respiration is in competition with it. The list is headed by fish, which is already in the seven figures the very moment he opens that page and advancing five figures, in the tens of thousands, every fraction of one second. What goes up every full second is buffalo, which is number 15 of 17 on the list, arranged in descending order of numbers slaughtered: from wild-caught fish, through pigs and geese and sheep and cattle, to 'camels and other camelids'. The clock begins the moment the page opens: it says, 'animals killed for food since opening this page'. Luke would be pleased: he believes in the truth of numbers over the truth of representation. Ayush closes the tabs to stop himself from hyperventilating."

"There is one about Richard Johnson, an elderly Jamaican vegetable-stall owner in Brixton, and the steady, casual, unthinking abandonment he faces from everyone, from the bureaucrats in Lambeth Council and the local Jobcentre Plus to his grown-up son and white daughter- in-law, to his customers who begin to move their business to a fancy organic store a few metres from his shop. Only his ageing, arthritic, halitosis-ridden coal-black dog, Niggah, is faithful to him. Then one day the dog goes missing. On the final two pages of the story, the man walks the length and breadth of Brixton, from Coldharbour Lane to Loughborough Junction, down Railton Road to Brockwell Park, shouting 'Niggah! Niggah!' The passers-by take him to be vet another black person. with mental-health problems that Brixton is notorious for. The page had blurred for Ayush as he reached the end."

"

Ayush has to get the book through the acquisitions meeting this afternoon and he needs to have all his cards ready. He has shared the manuscript with colleagues already - with Anna, of course, but also the director of the paperback imprint, Juliet Burrows, with the sales director of the divi- sion, the marketing people (all men), the publicity team (all young women) - and talked it up, making sure to tick all the necessary boxes instead of actually talking about the literary and, to his mind, quietly explosive qualities of the book. So he had discussed the collection in terms of comparison titles ('as thunderclap of a debut as White Teeth or Conversations with Friends'; he had really wanted to say Lantern Lecture or Counternarratives but he knew that he had to hit topical, buzzy books that were being talked about right now, for ten or even five years earlier risked blank looks), talked up projected sales figures (I think we could be looking at a best- seller like Oueenie or You Know You Want This'; the

collection was light years away from those reference points in every imaginable way). Later today there would be the usual cavils about short stories, the usual deliberate confusion between what sells and what is a good book. There are five other books presented at the meeting by other editors before it's Ayush's turn. One book, by a 'mid. list American writer, is turned down because there really is no place for yet another quiet, beautifully written literary novel'. An Israeli writer, whose first three books in transla- tion they have published, has his fourth declined because the sales record is poor. Everyone has done his or her homework in the only domain that matters here: sales figures of past books. No mention of reviews, no mention of prizes, which, admittedly, have negligible traction on sales apart from one or two brands, no mention of reputation, the meaning of the work (this would be embarrassing to bring up), or anything that cannot be monetized (Luke would have loved publishing), Two non-fiction debuts are given the green light with almost indecent eagerness - one, a book on new motherhood, another on why the author made the life-choice' of not becoming a mother. Both by white women, Ayush notes; reproduction is clearly hot. The book on volitional non-motherhood is based on a blog, the commissioning editor says, and its growing popularity among younger millennials, attested by the author's Twitter following, should assure high sales. There are the usual formulae to talk about books: 'Come for The Handmaid's Tale, stay for Bridget Jones by way of Derry Girls', Kafka meets Fleabag meets anti Female Genital Mutilation social activism', etc. Some of these references pass over his head - Derry Girls? Fleabag? Such a fever of excitement, such hopes of having caught the zeitgeist by its throat. As he tries to dress the words inside him to demur in a way that would appear seemly at a meeting, someone else, someone junior, has the foolhardiness to murmur something, which Anna cuts short with her tart High-minded books won't butter any parsnips.' He feels that she is speaking pointedly to him. Economics is life, life is economics. Several years ago, during the company's Christmas lunch, Anna, after a couple of glasses of prosecco, had observed, We just throw things at the wall and see what sticks. This isn't a science.' She thought she had been making a joke."

"

When Avush's turn comes, he leans forward and speaks of his book as the future of British publishing, the voice of a new demographic, diverse (the buzzy term used to be 'multi- cultural' when he had started out all those years ago), a voice as at ease with hip-hop and Brooklyn drill as with Dickens, a new voice, he repeats, looking back to White Teeth in its vibrancy and to Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas in the way discrete, disparate narratives come together cleverly to make a unified whole that we call a novel', *a big-L literary work that is also a big-P page-turner' - in moments of extreme despair, he has always fantasized about selling the last free corners of his soul and joining an ad agency - and it would be a terrible missed opportunity to let this book, "so of its moment and so timeless at the same, erm, time', go to another publisher. If self-loathing had material form, like vomit, he would be an abundant fountain now. Is there other interest? Are there any offers already? This from Juliet Burrows, Head of Paperbacks. Of course. No industry is run more by herd behaviour than publishing: we want this book because others want this book, so there must be something in it, but we are not capable of discerning first, we'll take cues from others."

"when the chief fiction buyer of the biggest bookshop chain had decided not to "get behind it'. Whereas before, it was a book evervone had believed in', or said they had, it became, overnight, something like a leper who had walked in from the gutters and stationed himself in the middle of the office: everyone felt embarrassed, full of pity and aversion, and walked in a wide radius around the leper, refusing to acknowledge his presence. Ayush is prepared for Juliet's question. He lies without the barest flicker: I think Jessica said there was strong interest from' - he reels off three names - but no offers on the table yet. I'd like to try a modest pre-empt."

"Ayush grates generous amounts of pecorino onto their bowls of steaming pasta with white-hot attentiveness so that not a single wisp of cheese falls on to the table. Let there be a hundred more years of a better, a healing world, if the tabletop remains untouched by a single particle of cheese. He will go blind with concentrating."

"

*Are you indoctrinating the kids?' Ayush takes a deep breath; if it has to be done, why not begin now. 'I wouldn't call it indoctrination. I think we should teach them about choices and their consequences. Certainly about things that don't appear to be choices, things that are given to us as natural, things we fall into with such ease, such as what we eat, what we are trained to eat. I'd like them to question the so-called naturalness of that.' Luke is silent for a while, assimilating. Then he says, "Sure. But it can't become costly for us.' In their twenty-odd years of being together, Ayush knows 'costly' is the econ-speak for not just the literal meaning of the word, but also for anything that is inconvenient. According to Luke, people simply won't do things, or at least not in any sustained way that would make a difference, if you make it difficult or inconvenient, i.e. costly, for them. 'There are more important things than convenience. If we all thought a little bit less about convenience, not a whole lot, god knows, I'm not asking for much, if we gave up just a tiny bit of our convenience, then maybe we wouldn't be in the state that we're in now.' Whoa, whoa,' begins Luke. Thank god, he hadn't said, What state are we in? Ayush thinks. Most of us can agree on something,' he says, - the badness of eating meat or Facebook - but why are we unwilling to pay the private cost of giving those up? Why has the respon- sibility for action been shifted to the never-arriving public policy or, in your thinking, market solutions to make that large change? Where has the idea of individual agency gone?' Because individual actions are low yield. Policing how much loo roll you use, going on marches, these things achieve nothing. The change needs to be on a different scale."

"You think American Civil Rights protests, for example were low yield? Market solutions brought about the end of that discrimination, at least on paper?' Luke hesitates. Ayush notices the gap and rushes to fill it in: We are all so willing to follow the "no pain, no gain" dictum when it comes to improving our bodies, looking good, about all things feeding our general narcissism. What about "no pain, no gain" for the weightier matters?' You must change your life. "The end of that line of thinking is good old socialism - everyone should have enough; if you have more, we'll take it away and give it to others who have less."

"

Spencer can hear and smell the night's dominion. There he goes, sniffing that low mound of fleabane growing out of a crevice in the boundary wall between 51 and the garage with great, slow intent, then raising his leg and sprinkling it with his piss. What would the moth coming to visit it think? What would it think, what would it think? Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. How funny, that the verb for the only agency we have, the only thing left to us, the act of noticing, should be one of cost, as if you're buying something in exchange. Lukey would be privately smug about it. If Ayush can step on every alternate slab on the footpath and get to the junction of Half Moon Lane with Milkwood, Norwood, and Dulwich Roads and Herne Hill without one false or extra step or break in his stride, then. If he can get to number 153 without a single vehicle going up or coming down the road, then. His breathing ratchets up. For here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life. If the traffic lights ahead stay green until he hits the front door of the pharmacy, if Spencer doesn't mark the lamp post whose base he's sniffing, if, then, if then."

"

sectors. Wow, someone from Editorial asks a question. The answer is a succession of PowerPoint slides with blue, green, pink histograms. A joke about data visualization; everyone laughs in a way that the only salient thing is the sound's lack of energy and sincerity. Emails. Meeting for discounts for volume sales in online distri- butions. Meeting for distribution optimization in the bookstore chain. Recently, unconscious bias meetings, at which everyone looks at the floor, their inner selves caught up in a frenzy of eye-rolling, and Ayush feels a strange sensation, both superi- ority and a kind of low-stakes paranoia, as he imagines all his white colleagues hating him for the temporary edge his brown skin gives him at these meetings. Publicity meeting about emerging social media platform targeting. A different stripe of herd behaviour obtains here. Publicists work hard for authors who are already successful, well known; in fact, the more famous an author is, the more publicists work for them, the more attention these writers get, the more famous they become, in a nice, cosy circular feedback loop. Ayush had once dared to ask, in the years when his star was in the ascendant at Sewer, whether it wouldn't be more equitable to redistribute publicity budgets. While everyone had instantly and in unison, as if directed by a choreographer's cue, looked at their papers on the table, trying to find the meaning of life in them, Anna had declared, staring at the whiteboard with a kind of truculent energy, 'We are talking about taking things to another level, not throwing good money after bad."

"The trees look down and ahead and in all directions. The hornbeams and ilexes and oaks in this sector of the forest know each other intimately. They look in all directions, feel and see the birds sitting or landing on them, the humans and squirrels and dogs and the dozens of other creatures below flitting by, so quickly that their passage should be impercep- tible. Would humans register something that flickers across their senses for the tiniest fraction of a second? The trees' unit of time is so great that the smaller calibrations of time among other living things, the creatures that move through the forest, should mean nothing to them. They think of the seasons, of

all the work they need to do, relentlessly, to stay alive and to propagate - the stomata under their leaves opening to let out oxygen; the auxin gathering in the leaves during the autumn and turning them red and yellow; the water going up the xylem, the sucrose going down the phloem to be circulated everywhere. But, wait - do they actually think that? Do human beings think - Here's our heart pumping blood, whooshing out through the ventricles; here it goes down the veins and arteries to carry oxygen to all the tissues and cells and organs? No, they don't. It would make a good children's book to make trees think about their biological processes. Surely, there must be several already? There's moss on their bark and maps of lichen archipelagos. A stand of towering lime trees is perfum- ing the air. What a strange flower - you stick your nose in the blossom and it hardly smells of anything, but, amassed, they create a cloud of the most astonishing fragrance. How much longer will they be here? he thinks. How much longer? Spencer thinks, looking at the wood- land stretching in every direction. How much longer? think the trees."

"opposing philosophical or moral positions as long as the dialogue is not (as it is not in Coetzee) expository, what they call an 'information dump' in creative writing courses? What if the characters are involved, in a way organic to the story, in such discussions or arguments? Can ideas be discussed openly as ideas, or do they always need to be disguised under drama and action and emotional development and all that rubbish, like vegetables smuggled into food for children? Opie writes. Ayush has no meaningful answer to give. "

"How does arrangement confer meaning?

Can one leave the different strands that constitute a story or a novel seemingly unknit and hope - trust - readers to bring them together into meaning?

Why not knit them for the reader? But Avush deletes the question."

"Luke had sighed - a clear indication that he did not want to get embroiled in another Econ 101' war with Ayush - and said, almost in resignation, You want them to live in the greater world, don't you, not be like hermits or holy fools or children forever? They must know the ways of the world.' And here they are, learning, unbeknown to themselves, that economics is life, life is economics. Ayush decides to concentrate on every ticking second of doing the washing-up this is his version of meditation, an almost Zen-like space he enters by throwing himself into the task at hand in all its particulars so that his mind is drained of everything except the minute acts of pouring washing-up liquid on the sponge, sudsing, scrubbing, rinsing, turning a pot this way and that turning on the hot water tap, the cold water tap, getting the temperature just right, a second scrub after the first rinse to get everything sparkling clean. "

"seriously, if this had been happening in one of his authors' books, he would have written 'RE, take one out, you can't have both, esp. so close together' in the margin with his blue pencil - RE' is 'Repeated Example' but this is not a book and reality does not have to satisfy certain conditions of realism, which is, after all, a highly artificial model of the mess that is life. All this goes through his head as Luke rushes over to the children, pulls them into his arms, and says in his tenderest voice, Oh, sweethearts, You were trying to help, weren't you? You were trying to help, My loves,; as he strokes their heads, kisses their cheeks, and placates their tremulous lips and red faces. Ayush is suddenly held in the beam of an illumination: is this, then, what it takes to grow up comfortable in your own skin, comfortable and at ease with the world, the knowledge that there are no negative consequences, however trivial, that you are entitled to kindness and forgiveness and love regardless of what you do? "

"He now thinks that so much of the frequent articulations of impatience and boredom with plot and plotting by writers is nothing more than an inability to know what to do with time, its representa- tion, the modelling of its passage in 200 or 350 or 600 pages. These writers, all enthralled by the self, are hectically caught up in signalling the breaking of new ground when, in reality, they are just trying to dress up their limitations as cool, daring, new, adventurous."

"everything in the world makes one think that the solution lies within private choices, personal responsibility, that it is the individual at the centre of things, that personal agency is everything - taking antidepressants, going running, going to the gym, going for therapy - that these actions, within a person's power, are going to solve everything, because the problems are at the level of the self, the self is everything - look at the chattering monkeys' unceasing din about the zeitgeisty, crapulous 'autofiction'… But what if this centrality accorded the self is entirely misplaced, erroneous, or, as a scientist once joked, not even wrong?"

"

in Aldeburgh on that dirty romantie one weekend getaway, he had picked up a smooth piece of prey stone, marked with an entirely inset map of milk white fat reproduced perfectly the stone's shape. The map had two concentric rings of light grey around it, again, in the perfect shape of itself, as if it were a section of a diagram showing iso- therms or the way the depth of the water shaded in deeper and deeper bands away from the shore. He keeps it on his desk at work. It had begun as a reminder of a time of togetherness, then of a fading time, but that too had disappeared, leaving it silent and marooned as just a decorative object. Thinking of its earlier roles caused Ayush slight discomfort, even embar- rassment. But of late it has started speaking to him again, with the exact words it had used at the very beginning: I shall be your good luck charm, for you have saved me from the fate of millions of my brethren, which is getting caught by wave after wave after wave, then dashed on to the shore, unceas- ingly, over and over and over, until everything is worn down to finer particles of themselves, or until the end of time. No sooner have you thought this is the last dragging-and-flinging, that you'll be out of reach of the next wave that comes along, left to rest with those who have also been liberated, than you're sucked back up again and thrown down. No rest, only motion, motion forever. Here I have perpetual rest.' But now the words mean something entirely different. He often stares at the stone with something tending towards longing, even envy."

//

"Later, she will remember the external geography of the revelations, such as when he said his name was Salim, not Karim, her bafflement had the setting - objective correlative, in her thinking - of the broad avenue running diagonally across Victoria Park, with the Old English gardens, nestled inside topi- aried walls, on their left, the expanse of the manicured parkland stretching out in front of them on either side of the avenue...The red spot under the yellow beak of one just a few feet away from her on the pavement made her want to retch again. That information about correct ownership of the car - or was it the incorrect one that was the admission? - wore the face of the Jehovah's Witness hall on the other side of the road."

[sales-funnel-tips]

🎙️ What is a One Click Upsell and Why Does Your WooCommerce Store Need It?

Welcome, folks, to today’s deep dive into the world of eCommerce growth hacks! Let’s talk about a game-changer that’s been helping WooCommerce store owners rake in extra revenue effortlessly: One Click Upsell.

Now, you might be wondering, “What’s this One Click Upsell everyone’s buzzing about?” Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. So grab your coffee, and let’s explore why this tool is the secret sauce your WooCommerce store absolutely needs.

What is a One Click Upsell?

Alright, picture this: You’ve just bought a pizza online (classic Margherita, if you’re asking me), and right before you check out, they hit you with an irresistible offer: “Add a cheesy garlic bread for just $4? No extra hassle—just one click!”

This, my friends, is the essence of a One Click Upsell. It’s the process of offering related products or upgrades to a customer after they’ve made a purchase—all without requiring them to re-enter payment details or go through another checkout.

In WooCommerce, the One Click Upsell takes this concept and makes it ridiculously easy to implement.

Why Does Your WooCommerce Store Need It?

If you’re running a WooCommerce store, you probably already know how hard it can be to:

Get new customers through the door.

Make repeat sales without bugging them with a million emails.

Well, here’s the good news: A One Click Upsell doesn’t just solve these problems—it supercharges your revenue! Here’s how:

1. Boost Your Average Order Value (AOV)

Did you know upselling can increase your revenue by up to 30%? For example, if a customer buys a pair of sneakers, you can offer them a discounted cleaning kit or extra laces as a one click upsell. The best part? They’re already in “buying mode,” so they’re more likely to say yes!

2. Create a Seamless Buying Experience

Nobody likes friction. A One Click Upsell ensures that your customers can grab that extra deal without the hassle of filling out forms again. This convenience can be a make-or-break moment for your sales funnel.

3. Build Stronger Customer Relationships

Upselling isn’t just about making more money (although that’s a nice perk). It’s about showing your customers products they might actually find valuable. When done right, this approach can lead to greater customer loyalty and repeat business.

4. Maximize Post-Purchase Opportunities

Most WooCommerce stores stop selling after checkout. But with a One Click Upsell, the party doesn’t stop! It turns the post-purchase moment into a golden opportunity to engage and delight your customers.

How to Get Started with One Click Upsell

If you’re thinking, “This sounds amazing, but how do I actually do this?”, you’re in luck. The One Click Upsell Funnel for WooCommerce Pro plugin by WP Swings is your go-to solution.

Here’s why it’s awesome:

Custom Funnels: Tailor your upsell offers based on customer preferences.

Pre-built Templates: Use Elementor or Divi to create stunning upsell pages in minutes.

Detailed Analytics: Track your upsell performance and tweak as needed.

Seamless Integration: Works perfectly with WooCommerce and major payment gateways.

Pro Tips for Success

Before you run off to install this plugin, let me leave you with a few tips to make your upsells shine:

Keep It Relevant: Don’t offer a frying pan to someone who just bought a laptop. Tailor your upsell to complement the original purchase.

Create Urgency: Limited-time offers work wonders for conversions.

Test, Test, Test: Experiment with different upsell offers to see what clicks with your audience.

The Bottom Line

A One Click Upsell isn’t just another fancy eCommerce feature—it’s a necessity for any WooCommerce store looking to scale. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it’s a no-brainer for boosting your revenue.

So, what are you waiting for? Check out the One Click Upsell Funnel for WooCommerce Pro plugin today and start turning those “meh” sales into cha-ching moments!

And hey, if you’ve got questions or stories about how upselling has worked for you, drop me a comment below. Let’s keep the conversation going!

Until next time, happy upselling! 👋

[tanmoybiswas2420]

WordPress Website Transformation!

Welcome to Your WordPress Website Transformation! Are you ready to elevate your online presence and drive more business? Look no further! I'm Tanmoy Biswas, a seasoned website designer and developer specializing in WordPress, and I'm here to turn your vision into a stunning reality. Why Choose Me: Creative Excellence Mobile Responsive Divi WordPress Expertise Elementor Landing Pages Services Offered: WordPress Website Design: - Custom designs tailored to your brand identity. - User-friendly navigation for an intuitive browsing experience. WordPress Website Development: - Expert development using the Divi theme or Elementor page builder. - Incorporation of advanced function Elementor Landing Page: - High-converting landing pages designed to boost your sales and engagement. - Integration of persuasive elements for maximum impact. How It Works: 1. Consultation: I discuss your goals, preferences, and target audience. 2. Design: I create a visually striking design tailored to your brand. 3. Development: Your design comes to life with seamless functionality. 4. Launch: Your new website is ready to impress and drive results. Thanks Tanmoy Biswas hashtag#WebsiteDesign hashtag#WordPress hashtag#WordPressWebsite hashtag#WordPressDevelopers

[reviews-by-rachael]

Divi Scalp Care Dry Shampoo: The Clean Beauty Staple Your Hair Deserves

👋 Hey there, friends! Check out my new blog post about Divi Scalp Care and their dry shampoo! Shop their Black Friday sale right now and save. Click my link down below to learn more about them on my blog!

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[cleopatra77777]

Hey, Check out this awesome giveaway. You can enter to win a free iMac! You can also refer your friends and get even more chances to win :) https://gleam.io/bQXRl-qpthUIT59b? https://wn.nr/Tncfk4L  l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elegantthemes.com%2Fblack-friday-2024%2F

[food-beverage-product]

🌟 Global Beta Carotene Market Report 2025: Market Share, Growth Drivers, Trends & Forecast by 2031

📊 Beta Carotene Market Overview & Growth Prospects

The Beta Carotene Market is primed for substantial growth over the coming years, driven by technological innovations and increasing global demand. As an essential antioxidant, this natural pigment plays a pivotal role in industries like food, supplements, cosmetics, and feed.

According to Straits Research, the global Beta Carotene market size was valued at USD XX Billion in 2022. It’s projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.6% from 2023 to 2031, reaching USD XX Billion by 2031.

Market Segmentation: The market is broken down into types, applications, and regions. The detailed forecasts predict revenue growth at all levels from 2023 to 2031.

Regional Analysis: We take a closer look at regional segments such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and South America. Key trends in sales, revenue, and market share are explored.

Strategic Insights: Learn how leading companies are positioning themselves in the market, understanding growth strategies and market channels.

📈 Competitive Landscape

The competitive landscape section of the report highlights the key players in the Beta Carotene market, examining their market impact, recent developments, and strategic initiatives. Companies profiled include:

BASF SE

Central Drug House

DDW The Color House

Divis Nutraceuticals

DSM, E.I.D.-Parry (India) Ltd.

AVANSCHEM

Lycored

Foodchem International Corp.

Reliance Private Label Supplements

San-Ei Gen F.F.I., Inc.

Sensient Technologies Corp.

Vinayak Corp

These companies are innovating and expanding, maintaining a strong presence in the market while adapting to consumer needs.

[kornpleyks]

Don’t Miss Out on the Divi Black Friday 2024 Sale – Huge Discounts and Exciting Giveaways!

As the holiday season approaches, so does one of the biggest sales in the WordPress community: the Divi Black Friday Sale! If you’re a web designer, developer, or business owner looking to take your website to the next level, this event is one you won’t want to miss. Divi by Elegant Themes is a top-rated WordPress theme and page builder, and this Black Friday, they’re offering their best deals of the year, along with exclusive prizes and bonuses.

Why Divi? Divi has become a favorite among WordPress users for its versatility and ease of use. With a powerful drag-and-drop builder, stunning pre-made layouts, and an extensive library of custom design elements, Divi enables users to create professional-quality websites without writing a single line of code. Plus, Divi’s responsive design and built-in SEO features ensure that your website looks great and performs well on any device.

What to Expect from the Divi Black Friday 2024 Sale Elegant Themes is known for going all out on Black Friday, and this year is no different. Here’s what you can look forward to:

Unbeatable Discounts: Elegant Themes will be offering their best prices of the year on Divi, making it the perfect time to purchase or renew your membership. Exclusive Giveaways: Get access to free bonuses, exclusive layout packs, and more with your purchase. Lifetime Access Deals: For those looking for long-term value, the Black Friday sale is an ideal opportunity to secure lifetime access to Divi and other Elegant Themes products.

[cleverwerewolfsalad]

Create a Stunning Fixed Background Scrolling Sales Page in Divi—No Coding!

In this video, learn how to create an interactive fixed background scrolling sales page in Divi Theme using Divi’s parallax background image and scroll options. We’ll walk you through each step to build a visually engaging sales page with fixed background sections, making it easy to create a seamless flow that captures visitor attention. With Divi’s customizable parallax features, you’ll be able to add depth and movement to your background, keeping your audience focused as they scroll through your sales content.

[ayansujon]

Wordpress landing page with elementor pro, divi theme

Why sales landing page so important?

WordPress Sales landing pages are crucial because they serve as the gateway to converting visitors into customers:

✅ Focused Message: A sales landing page allows you to craft a targeted message tailored specifically to your product or service. This focused message helps in communicating the value proposition clearly to potential customers, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

✅ Call to Action (CTA): Landing pages are designed with a clear call to action, guiding visitors towards the desired action, whether it's making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or requesting more information. A well-designed CTA can significantly improve conversion rates.

✅ Reduced Distractions: Unlike other pages on your website, a landing page typically has minimal distractions. By removing navigation links and other elements that could divert attention, you keep visitors focused on the offer at hand, increasing the chances of conversion.

✅ Data Collection: Landing pages are an effective way to collect valuable data about your audience. By using forms or other data capture methods, you can gather information such as email addresses, demographics, or preferences, which can be used for future marketing efforts.

✅ Tracking and Analytics: Landing pages allow you to track the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns more accurately. By integrating analytics tools, you can measure metrics such as traffic, conversion rates, and ROI, providing valuable insights into the success of your marketing efforts.

Overall, sales landing pages play a critical role in the conversion process, providing a focused and persuasive experience that encourages visitors to take action.

If you're looking for a wonderful WordPress Landing Page with Divi. just drop a message.

Direct Email: ayansujon.contact@gmail.com

or Order On

Fiverr.com

Upwork.com

PeoplePerHour.com

Follow me:

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[foodandbeverages]

Astaxanthin Market: Applications and Regional Insights During the Forecasted Period 2024 to 2034

According to Future Market Insights (FMI), global astaxanthin sales are estimated to be worth USD 273.2 million in 2024. The market is expected to reach USD 665.0 million by 2034. It is projected to surge at a CAGR of 9.3% in the forecast period 2024 to 2034.

Astaxanthin’s increasing demand is driven by its use in aquaculture, animal feed, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and food & beverages industries. It is widely used as a food ingredient for prawns and fish to enhance coloration and commercial value.

Astaxanthin benefits aquatic animals by increasing stress tolerance, performance, immune-related gene expressions, reproductive capacity, survival, and disease resistance. The market is expected to rise due to the consistent demand from the food industry, where astaxanthin is used as a food additive due to its health benefits, such as anti-inflammatory effects and prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Studies have shown that astaxanthin is set to prevent photo-aging, improve sleep, minimize obesity, protect the vocal cord, combat depression, and increase sperm motility.

Natural alternatives are gaining traction due to a number of factors, including greater awareness of the harmful effects of chemicals and expanding usage of synthetic ingredients in topical & culinary items. As a result, leading companies are implementing tactics, including the introduction of new products and alliances with key manufacturers in several sectors to boost the market share of natural astaxanthin-based products.

Information Source: https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/astaxanthin-market

Key Takeaways from the Astaxanthin Market Report:

The global astaxanthin market is expected to reach a valuation of US$ 665.0 million by 2034.

Japan is projected to hold a dominant value share of 3.5% by 2034.

The United States astaxanthin market is projected to reach a valuation of US$ 177.6 million by 2034.

India’s astaxanthin market is projected to reach US$ 43.0 million by 2034.

Germany is set to hold a dominant value share of 4.1% by 2034.

 “The astaxanthin market is experiencing innovation as dietary lutein becomes a potential substitute in the market. Leading companies are incorporating lutein-rich sources into formulations, highlighting a trend toward diversification. They are also exploring alternative natural compounds.” – says a lead analyst at Future Market Insights (FMI).

Competitive Landscape

BASF SE, Divi’s Laboratories Ltd., Cyanotech Corporation, DSM N.V., Parry Nutraceuticals, and JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation are key astaxanthin manufacturers listed in the report. Leading companies are concentrating on broadening their portfolios by launching new products. They also use strategies such as advertisements, partnerships, acquisitions, agreements, and mergers to stay relevant in the market.

For instance,

In 2020, BGG declared two key extensions of its farm capacity of astaxanthin as the company has seen a surge in its astaxanthin sales lately.

Key Companies Profiled

BASF SE

Divi’s Laboratories Ltd.

Cyanotech Corporation

DSM N.V

Parry Nutraceuticals

JXTG Nippon Oil & Energy Corporation

Fuji Chemical Industries Co., Ltd.

Kunming Biogenic Co., Ltd.

Valensa International Global

Kailu Ever Brilliance Biotechnology Co. Ltd.

Algalif Iceland Ehf

Zhejiang NHU Co., Ltd.

Atacama Bio Natural Products S.A., Inc.

AstaReal Inc

Fenchem Biotek Ltd.

Igene Biotechnology, Inc.

BGG (Beijing Gingko Group)

Cardax, Inc.

Algatechnologies Ltd.

Algaecan Biotech Ltd.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Yunnan Alphy Biotech Co., Ltd.

INNOBIO Corporation Limited.

Sinoway Industrial Co., Ltd.

KDI Ingredients

Get More Valuable Insights

Future Market Insights (FMI), in its new offering, provides an unbiased analysis of the global astaxanthin market, presenting historical demand data (2019 to 2023) and forecast statistics for the period from 2024 to 2034.

The study incorporates compelling insights on the astaxanthin market based on species type (haematococcus pluvialis, chlorococcum, chlorella zofingiensis), production technology (chemical synthesis, natural extraction), form (tablets, soft gel capsules, powder, liquid), grade (>=98%, 95%-97%, <=94%), application (aquaculture, dietary supplements, food & beverages, personal care & cosmetics, pet food), and region.