#for example '50% off retail price' becomes '50% ofF REtail pricE' becomes 'FREE'

[freshthoughts2020]

DON'T GET GREEDY AND WAX FOR NO REASON

DON'T GET GREEDY AND WAX FOR NO REASON

August 21, 2023

I.EVERYDAY I’M HUSTLING

In these survival days, hustling is all that really matters, and people hustles varies from person to person. No matter what hustle it is, don’t get greedy and start being super tax man, this is mostly in reference when dealing with celebrities.

You may have saw the video where Meek Mill is attempting to purchase the Nike SB x Air Jordan IVs (man those are some beauties) and the guy on the video wants to charge Meek the tax price. Meek urges that he can get the sneakers at retail from the store, so why would he pay him the tax price plus if he would’ve showed love, Meek would’ve been incentivized to shop even more with the young bull.

First, Meek is capping, you can’t get those sneakers at retail, maybe a lower price than what buddy was selling them for but they will be above retail, too much hype around them. These days everything work off hype. If you don’t get them at release you ain’t getting them without paying the resale ticket, unless the shoe sat on the shelf, you might get an under retail price.

Secondly, his point still stands and he’s absolutely correct in theory. Taking off shoe guy and putting it on general hustlers for a minute. When you are selling a product and its fire and consistent, eventually you will catch the eye of a celebrity, maybe multiple.

II.SHOW YOU HOW TO DO THIS SON!

I can attest to this personally multiple times, I’ll just use one example for now. Some years ago I drew a pic of YG and Kamaiyah. YG dm’d me about purchasing it you know of course I was excited. This was in early corner days too, so I first started getting celebrity attention/recognition. Before I could respond you know I told some of my people.

You know what they said instantly after I told them the news. “You need to charge him a band”, “Oh yeah he gotta at least drop 4Hunnid on the pic”, and other nonsense.

No disrespect to the people that told me this but this is why people can’t scale up because they wanna do stupid stuff like that and tax for no reason.

III.CAN’T TEACH NO ONE HOW TO HUSTLE..

Just because someone’s a celebrity do not mean you charge unwarranted high prices, it instantly throws smut on your name and can close doors that you ain’t even noticed that was opened. Let me explain why I didn’t tax YG in the first place.

1) the picture was only 8” x 10”, 2) that is a small picture , and 3) it was a sketch without much detail. It was colored and great in my style but my pricing is always on what I would pay for it. Also, the bigger the size the more it is reasonable to charge high prices.

I wouldn’t pay over a few hundred for a small picture unless it was by an artist whose work was unattainable, if it was to personally support an artist I know, or if it is extremely detailed but the canvas chosen is just small.

This particular picture did not fit my laid in criteria, if any normal person wanted that same picture I wouldn’t have charged them more than $50 at that time. Now he never followed through on the purchase but imagined if I would’ve came at him saying give me a rack for this. If he’s smart with his money, he would’ve instantly been off put and possibly stopped any other doors that could’ve been opened.

When it comes to celebrities you have to think more than the money, they carry an audience. Why do you think they get so many free items in the first place? They are walking billboards plus they can actually employ if you’re actually dope enough.

That YG interaction I had could’ve went a thousand ways, now it didn’t go anywhere but I definitely wouldn’t had helped if I came out the gate thinking “get as much money as I can out of him.” That’s short sighted, fast-money, flip everything thinking. You may get a payday but you lose out on the long term. I couldn’t play myself like that in life I think in long term for everything!! Its how I maintained the patience and faith to become a lawyer and run this website because there are extreme peaks and valleys!

So if you got a hustle going on learn from that vid with Meek and this article. Think about the bigger opportunity, think about what is attached to a person with clout, how doors can be opened if you treat this rare interaction the way its supposed to go. Don’t lose out your blessings beloved, Get money..

visit gettothecorner.com

follow me on Twitter (X) twitter.com/onlyonejaevonn

[dreamharmonies]

Discount Vouchers Explained: How to Find and Redeem for Maximum Benefits

In the modern world of online shopping, savvy consumers are constantly on the lookout for ways to save money. One of the most popular methods that has stood the test of time is the use of discount vouchers. These little gems can transform a regular shopping experience into a smart, cost-effective opportunity, allowing shoppers to grab their favorite products for a fraction of the original price.

A discount voucher is essentially a tool that provides a reduction in the total amount you pay for an item or service. It can come in various forms, from a percentage off the price, to a fixed dollar amount reduction, or even free shipping. The appeal is obvious—who doesn’t love getting a deal? But the true trick lies in finding these vouchers and learning how to redeem them properly for maximum savings.

What is a Discount Voucher?

A discount voucher, in its simplest form, is a code or ticket that gives shoppers a reduction in the price of goods or services. Whether physical or digital, vouchers are handed out or made available as part of promotions or marketing campaigns. They're a great way for businesses to incentivize purchases and for customers to get the best bang for their buck.

Vouchers typically have conditions attached. Some are time-sensitive, expiring after a certain period, while others may only be redeemable on specific items. But when used wisely, they can lead to massive savings.

The History of Discount Vouchers

Discount vouchers have been around for longer than you might think. Originally, they appeared in the form of physical coupons in the late 1800s, offering discounts on various goods and services. As the retail landscape evolved, so did the nature of vouchers. By the time the internet revolutionized shopping, discount vouchers transitioned into the digital space, with online retailers offering promo codes and special offers through websites and apps.

This shift to digital vouchers not only made it easier for consumers to find discounts but also allowed businesses to track voucher usage, customizing future offers based on customer preferences.

Why Discount Vouchers Matter Today

In the age of e-commerce, discount vouchers have become a crucial tool for both shoppers and retailers. With the rise of online shopping, particularly during the pandemic, more people have been looking for ways to stretch their budgets. Vouchers serve as an excellent way to do just that, providing shoppers with significant savings on everyday items, big-ticket products, and even services.

For retailers, offering vouchers helps retain customers, increases engagement, and drives repeat purchases. It’s a win-win situation for both sides—shoppers save money, and businesses see a boost in traffic and sales.

Different Types of Discount Vouchers

There are several different types of discount vouchers that you can come across, each with its own set of benefits and uses.

Percentage-Based Vouchers

These are the most common types of discount vouchers. They offer a certain percentage off your purchase. For instance, a 20% off voucher would reduce your total bill by 20%. These vouchers are perfect for when you’re making larger purchases because the savings can add up quickly.

Fixed Amount Off Vouchers

Another common type, fixed amount off vouchers, deduct a specific dollar amount from your total. For example, a $10 off voucher on a $50 purchase lowers the price to $40. These are usually best for mid-range purchases where the percentage off doesn’t make as big of a difference.

Free Shipping Vouchers

Free shipping vouchers can be incredibly valuable, especially when ordering bulky or expensive-to-ship items. Shipping costs can add up quickly, so these vouchers are often a favorite for online shoppers.

Buy-One-Get-One (BOGO) Vouchers

BOGO vouchers are popular for obvious reasons—they give you double the product for a fraction of the cost. Whether it’s buy one get one free, or buy one get one 50% off, these deals can significantly increase the value of your purchase.

Loyalty Vouchers

Loyalty programs often reward customers with vouchers that can be redeemed after a certain number of purchases or points earned. These are ideal for frequent shoppers who want to make the most of their repeat purchases.

Where to Find Discount Vouchers

Finding the best discount vouchers might feel like a treasure hunt, but with the right resources, it becomes second nature.

Online Platforms and Retailers

Many websites are dedicated to curating and sharing discount vouchers. A quick search can lead you to platforms that aggregate daily deals and vouchers from a variety of retailers. Some retailers also provide exclusive discounts through their own websites or apps.

Social Media and Email Newsletters

Another great place to discover vouchers is on social media or through email newsletters. Brands often send out exclusive vouchers to followers or subscribers as a way to reward loyalty and encourage future purchases. Signing up for newsletters from your favorite stores can be an easy way to stay informed about ongoing deals.

In-Store Promotions

If you’re a fan of brick-and-mortar shopping, don’t overlook in-store promotions. Many retailers still hand out physical vouchers, especially during special events or seasonal sales.

Exclusive Membership Programs

Certain membership-based platforms or loyalty clubs offer their members access to exclusive vouchers. These can include early access to sales, special discount codes, or even birthday rewards.

To get discount vouchers, visit https://www.couponius.com/

How to Redeem Discount Vouchers

Redeeming a discount voucher can vary depending on the platform or store, but the process is usually simple and straightforward. Here’s a basic step-by-step guide:

Online: After selecting the items you wish to purchase, head to the checkout page. Here, you’ll usually find a field labeled "Promo Code" or "Voucher Code." Simply enter your code, click apply, and watch the discount appear.

In-Store: If you’re using a physical voucher, you’ll likely need to present it at checkout before the cashier processes your payment. Some stores also allow you to scan digital vouchers directly from your smartphone.

Maximizing the Benefits of Discount Vouchers

To get the most out of your discount vouchers, it’s crucial to be strategic about how and when you use them.

Stacking Vouchers for Extra Savings

One of the best ways to maximize savings is by stacking vouchers. Some stores allow you to use multiple vouchers on a single purchase, combining a percentage off with free shipping or an additional fixed amount off. Always check the store’s voucher policies before attempting this, as some may restrict stacking.

Timing Your Purchase for the Best Deals

Timing is everything when it comes to redeeming vouchers. If you know a big sale is coming up, hold off on using your voucher until then for double the savings. Combining a voucher with a sale can lead to massive discounts.

Understanding the Fine Print

Always make sure to read the terms and conditions associated with your voucher. Expiration dates, minimum purchase requirements, and product restrictions can make or break a deal. Understanding these details ensures you won’t miss out on savings due to simple mistakes.

The Psychology Behind Discount Vouchers

Why are people so drawn to discount vouchers? The psychology behind it is fascinating. The idea of getting a deal triggers a sense of accomplishment in shoppers. It’s a form of instant gratification, where the savings create an emotional reward that makes the shopper feel like they’ve "won" at shopping. The perceived value, even if small, adds excitement to the shopping experience.

Mistakes to Avoid When Using Discount Vouchers

While discount vouchers can lead to incredible savings, there are a few common pitfalls to avoid:

Letting Vouchers Expire: One of the most frustrating mistakes is finding a great voucher only to realize it has expired. Always double-check expiration dates and set reminders if necessary.

Overspending Because of a Discount: It’s easy to fall into the trap of buying something simply because you have a voucher. Stick to your budget, and only use vouchers on items you genuinely need or have planned to purchase.

The Benefits of Discount Vouchers for Retailers

It’s not just shoppers who benefit from discount vouchers—retailers gain a lot from offering these deals as well.

Customer Retention and Engagement

Vouchers are a great tool for customer retention. Offering regular discounts keeps shoppers coming back and builds long-term loyalty. It also creates an opportunity for retailers to engage with their customers through targeted promotions.

Increased Sales and Brand Awareness

Discount vouchers can lead to a significant increase in sales, especially when they’re part of a broader marketing strategy. Offering deals encourages more customers to make purchases, and in the process, helps boost brand awareness.

Future Trends in Discount Vouchers

As technology continues to evolve, so too will the world of discount vouchers. Expect to see more mobile-first voucher strategies, with apps offering personalized deals based on your shopping habits. Artificial intelligence and machine learning are already playing a role in shaping future discount programs, providing more targeted and relevant offers.

Are Discount Vouchers Worth It?

The short answer is yes—discount vouchers can be worth it when used wisely. The time spent searching for and redeeming vouchers often results in significant savings. That said, it’s essential to balance the effort with the potential reward. If you’re spending hours searching for a small discount, it might not be worth it. But for larger purchases, the savings can be substantial.

Tips for Smart Shopping with Discount Vouchers

Plan Ahead: Before making a purchase, do a quick search to see if any vouchers are available. Even a small discount can add up over time.

Sign Up for Alerts: Subscribe to newsletters, follow brands on social media, and consider joining deal platforms to stay informed about the latest vouchers and promotions.

Conclusion

Discount vouchers are a powerful tool for shoppers looking to save money and maximize the value of their purchases. Whether you're a seasoned bargain hunter or just starting to explore the world of vouchers, understanding how they work and where to find them can transform your shopping experience. By strategically timing your purchases, stacking deals, and staying informed about the latest offers, you can unlock a world of savings that will leave both your wallet and your shopping cart happy.

[chloeunitfive]

Slow fashion

Slow fashion is a fashion industry movement that pushes for environmental and social justice. Its distinguishing feature is that it focuses on the problem of overproduction and overconsumption. Slow fashion emerged in tandem with the "slow food" trend. Kate Fletcher, a fashion and sustainability writer and researcher, coined the word in a 2007 piece for The Ecologist. She defined fast fashion as more about greed than speed, about "selling more" and "making more money." Slow fashion, on the other hand, "is about designing, producing, consuming, and living better." “Slow” – she added – “is not the opposite of fast – there is no dualism – but a different approach in which designers, buyers, retailers, and consumers are more aware of the impacts of products on workers, communities, and ecosystems”.

When customers support the unsustainable rapid fashion manufacturing paradigm, the situation worsens. Slow fashion is equally concerned with responsible consumption. We purchase with the knowledge that our consumption has an influence on climate change.

Slow fashion's core concepts include:

A shift from quantity to quality, both in production and consumption. It’s not hell-bent on constant growth or accumulating more.

Manufacturing that respects the environment by using low-waste processes and avoiding harmful chemicals.

Providing workers a living wage and healthy working conditions. 

Producing collections in small batches or on a pre-order basis to avoid unsold inventory.

An uncomplicated supply chain where raw materials and labour aren’t scattered across the globe. It uses local materials and employs local workers as much as possible.

Transparency and honesty in its supply chain and practices. A great example is ethical jeans brand HNST, which has a “Hall of Fail” page that showcases its challenges and failures.

Using natural fibres, deadstock fabrics, or old textiles for upcycling.

The fashion industry's problems are becoming more widely known, but there is still more work to be done. According to a ThredUp poll from 2021, 74% of buyers are aware that their purchase patterns have a big influence on the earth, and 50% feel that rapid fashion is damaging to the environment. Despite this understanding, 72% of people continue to buy fast fashion because of the ease and low pricing. It might be tough to deviate from the norm and fully change your buying habits. The good news is that becoming involved in the slow fashion movement is simple, and you don't even need to buy anything new to get started!

1. Repair and Take Care of Your Clothes

Extend the life of your clothes by following care instructions. Machine wash on the lowest heat setting if you can and hang to dry to save on energy. For jeans, Levi’s even recommends washing once every 10 years to maintain the fit and fabric.

Learning basic sewing and de-staining techniques is also a great way to get more wear out of your clothes. If you don’t have time, take them to a professional or find out if there’s a repair café (a free pop-up event where volunteers and other visitors get together to repair various items) in your town or city.

2. Wear Second-hand Clothing

We have finally bid good riddance to the stigma of wearing second-hand clothes. Today, thrifting is so widespread that it is even covered on the pages of glossy high-fashion magazines, something unimaginable until not even two decades ago. 

There are many options for getting second-hand clothes. You can borrow from your family or friends’ closets for one-off events. You can also do clothing swaps or offer your own unused clothing to someone you know will love it.

Freecycling groups are also a goldmine for “new” old clothes. These are online sharing groups where people can donate or request free items. It facilitates gift-giving and communication among members of a local community because the exchange is often done in person. It has become increasingly popular as people are looking for ways to donate their stuff without having to go to charity centres. Unfortunately, statistics show that up to 80% of donations end up either incinerated, in landfills, or sent overseas to be sold. Search for a Facebook freecycling group in your area or check out websites like FreeCycle.org or Trash Nothing.

Looking for the thrill of the hunt? There are always one-of-a-kind and stylish pieces from thrift and vintage stores. Online thrifting is easier today thanks to platforms like Poshmark, Depop, Etsy, or Vestiaire Collective; there is something for everyone’s tastes and price points. 

3. Shop Mindfully

In Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, somewhere between 50%- 80% of people’s wardrobes are unused. A closet bursting with clothes you only semi-love or never wear is also a sign of constant impulse shopping. The next time you feel the itch to shop, check your closet first. Do you really need a fifth new dress/pair of pants/crop top in your closet? Chances are you don’t. Your overfull closet will thank you, and so will the planet. 

If you absolutely need to shop, support local creators in your country. Choose high-quality fabrics that last longer, single-composition fabrics that can be easily recycled, or natural fibres that biodegrade easier.

Shopping mindfully also means being aware of companies’ greenwashing tactics. Slapping an “eco-friendly” tag isn’t proof that an item is sustainable. Do some background research on a brand by Googling or checking on the Good on You app. For unbiased and educational sustainable fashion content, websites like Fashion Revolution and Fashion Takes Action are great sources.

Remember that expensive price tags don’t always guarantee better quality and practices. Brands like Versace, Prada, Nike, and Adidas were implicated in a Clean Clothes Campaign paper that reported on these companies’ below-legal worker wages and terrible working conditions in their Eastern European factories.

Reference:

RASHMILA MAITI. (2023). Slow Fashion[Online]. earth.org. Last Updated: 21 May 2023. Available at: https://earth.org/what-is-slow-fashion/[Accessed 6 November 2023].

[lockadeal3]

What are the best Brookstone deals you've ever seen?

I have seen some great Brookstone Deals in the past. For example, right now they have a deal where you can lock in a price on a purchase and then pay for it over time. This is a great way to get your hands on some of their more expensive items without having to pay for them all up front.

Another great deal that they are running right now is free shipping on any order over $50. So if you are looking to buy something from Brookstone, make sure to take advantage of this deal and save yourself some money on shipping costs.

What do you think of Brookstone's business model?

If you're not familiar with Brookstone, they're a retailer that specializes in unique gadgets and gifts. They've been in business for over 50 years, and despite some ups and downs, they seem to be doing quite well recently.

Brookstone's business model is based on selling unique products at a good value. They partner with suppliers to develop exclusive products that you can't find anywhere else, and they offer great deals on these items. For example, right now they have a "Lock a deal" where you can save up to 50% off select items.

I think Brookstone's model is working well for them. They've been able to survive even during tough economic times because people still want to buy unique gifts and gadgets. And with their recent focus on online sales, I think they're positioned well for the future.

What does Brookstone sell?

Brookstone is a store that mainly sells physical things like furniture and decorations for your house. They have a website where you can order online, but the majority of their business happens in physical stores. Most of what they sell are quality items that will last you a long time, although they do have some cheaper items as well. They specialize in unique items that you might not be able to find in other stores.

In recent years, Brookstone has been really focusing on deals and offers. They want to make sure that their customers are getting the best possible price on what they're buying.To this end, they offer a variety of deals both online and in-store. One popular deal is their "Lock a Deal" promotion, where you can save up to 50% off select items. They also offer free shipping on orders over $50, which is a great way to save money if you're planning on buying multiple items.

What are some of Brookstone's most popular items?

Brookstone deals in a variety of items, ranging from tech gadgets to home decor. Some of their most popular items include:

Home speakers

Bluetooth headphones

Charging docks and cables

Smartphone case

Virtual reality headset

Kitchen appliances

You can often find great deals on Brookstone items by checking their website or visiting third-party deal sites. Right now, for example, you can get 20% off select items sitewide at Brookstone.com when you use the code presidentsday20. So if you're looking for some Arresting Savings, be sure to check out Brookstone!

How did Brookstone get its start?

Brookstone started as a small shop in Boston that sold luggage, pens, and other small items. It was founded by two men who were friends since childhood. They got the idea for the store after a trip to Japan, where they saw all of these cool gadgets and novelties that weren't available in the U.S. at the time.

The store was a huge success and quickly grew into a nationwide retailer. One of the things that set Brookstone apart from other stores was its emphasis on customer service. The founders believed that if customers had a good experience at the store, they would be more likely to come back and recommend it to their friends.

Brookstone is still going strong today and has become a go-to store for unique gifts and gadgets. Even though the landscape of retail has changed a lot since Brookstone first started, they've been able to adapt and remain successful.

What are some of the challenges Brookstone faces?

Like any retailer, Brookstone faces challenges related to the ever-changing landscape of retail. One of the biggest challenges they face is competition from online retailers. It's become easier than ever for people to shop online, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Another challenge Brookstone faces is the need to constantly innovate. They need to always be on the lookout for new products and trends so that they can stay relevant. This can be difficult and expensive, but it's necessary if they want to remain successful.

Despite these challenges, Brookstone is still a strong company with a loyal customer base. I think they'll continue to be successful in the future as long as they continue to adapt and innovate.

Who typically buys Brookstone products?

From yoga mats to memory foam pillows, Brookstone has something for everyone. But who exactly buys their products?

The answer is quite diversified. die-hard shoppers looking for a good deal can find some amazing Brookstone deals online (we recommend Lock a Deal Brookstone). On the other hand, people who appreciate quality and innovative design flock to Brookstone for items like Bluetooth headphones and portable projectors. And of course, Brookstone also attracts gift-givers searching for that perfect present.

[bondsmagii]

I have never read something more stupid than your examples lol what do burn wounds even have to do with it?? Also therapy HELPS stop spreading anti-recovery bullshit oh my godd... Ur point still stands but ur examples were baaad. A better one is that since ur not a psych you may not know how slowly to try to change someone's behaviour and you might make them feel even worse by reminding them they can't do certain things.

the question was “how can well-meaning advice cause harm/be dangerous?”. my answer was “well, in this example, someone told me to do something to a physical injury that would have made it worse”. I think that answers the question and was relevant. 

the question was “how can well-meaning advice cause harm/be dangerous”. my answer was “well, in my case, I have trauma related to the psychiatric community and therefore therapy would hurt me, yet people insisted I go to therapy”. I think that answers the question, and as it’s talking about me specifically. actually, I think I said that! let me check – apologies, as I’m sure you read my post thoroughly and so already know this, as it was right in front of your face and as someone with what I’m sure is basic reading comprehension you must have seen it – ah, here we go: “I have negative associations of the psychiatric community and being involved with any aspect of it would have severely worsened my illnesses and set back the progress I was making privately.”

I’m not going to talk about instances I have no experience with – that would be ironic, considering what I was talking about. someone asked me how well-meaning advice can cause harm, and I provided three solid examples I have personal experience with, where advice would have caused me harm. I’m not sure why you’re calling them “stupid” when they’re directly relevant, and when you agree with my point. if my examples were that absurd, surely they would have been detrimental to my point? 

I think, personally, you’re just annoyed because you mistakenly thought that I was being anti-recovery, and it angered you. I’m not. if therapy helps you, go for it. but remember that everyone doesn’t have the same associations. you say “therapy HELPS” and yes, for some people it does. but for some it doesn’t, so don’t come to a person with trauma related to psychiatric abuse and yell at him that therapy HELPS, and that he’s full of “anti-recovery bullshit” for saying that in his personal experience, personally, based on personal things that personally happened to him personally, therapy would not help. therapy would harm me, but that’s not to say I don’t fully support others seeking it if they think it will help. it’s just, in my person experience, people talking over me and insisting therapy will help me was well-meaning advice that would have been dangerous. I was never speaking about anyone other than myself there, which I stated. at no point did I tell people not to seek out therapy. also, to draw your attention back to the point where I said “the progress I was making privately” – how is that anti-recovery? I was working towards recovery then and I still am now. just because I’m not doing it through therapy doesn’t mean I’m not taking steps to improve myself and my mental health every day. I have come a very long way over the last few years.

please, read closely and use a little critical thinking before you burst in with opinions. this is exactly what I meant when I talked about context being important. all of this would have been evident if you’d just read closely and thought about what I was saying before you skipped over here to call me stupid and anti-recovery.

[thatsmallwallflower]

Some Updated Tips On Effective Plans For Business Home Based Ideas

The content directly below on the subject of a Home Business Ideas That Work is absolutely attention-grabbing. You should investigate it.

Advice To Help Make Your Home Business A Hit

Home businesses are a perfect example of the entrepreneurial spirit. Home businesses let ordinary citizens create their own company. They can be their own bosses, set their own hours, and create their own pay scales. If having a home business sounds interesting to you, then pay close attention to the tips in this article.

Have another phone line dedicated just for your home business. You don't want your child answering your business phone, and you want a separate message box as well.

If you're depending on your home business for most of your income, you need to create a backup plan just in case. Have a backup plan in case your website crashes or your product shipment does not come on time. If you plan for these eventualities, you won't be stuck without an income while you try to recover. A key tip for those planning to launch a home business is to carefully research any and all legal and insurance requirements that may apply to the specific type of enterprise being contemplated. By doing so, it will be possible to avoid unnecessary future business disruptions resulting from disputes with regulatory authorities.

Working at home can make it easy to become a hermit. At times it can be empowering, but it can also be lonely being by yourself most of the time. Take time in your schedule to connect with others, and just get out of the house. Do whatever you like to do that reminds you that you are part of the world.

Always know what your products cost you to make. This is important for many reasons, but if someone should unexpectedly show interest in retailing your products, you will need to know off the top of your head what your cost is, and where you want to set your wholesale price. As a rule of thumb, the retail price is about two times your wholesale price. The wholesale price is your costs plus a fair profit margin for you.

You should try contacting a local radio station and making a deal with them to barter products for a small bit of airtime. They can use your products for prizes in contests or free giveaways and in turn, they can mention your business as the place where they got these products.

Develop a description for your home business that can explain what it is that you do in less than three sentences. If you have to spend a good bit of time explaining what it is that you do, you may not have the plan that you need to have to succeed. You need to set up a separate checking account for your home business. It is important to keep your personal finances and the business finances separate. This is so that you can show the IRS that you are not embezzling money or trying to evade paying taxes on your business. It will make for less hassle when tax time comes around.

Keep an attitude that will bring you success in your home business venture. If you go about your day thinking of your home business as a hobby, you are not going to see the success that you would if you really considered it to be your real job. Keep a business attitude even when your business is in your home.

Be forthright and pragmatic with the prospects and goals you have for your home-based business. Do you offer a great product that people will always be interested in? Do you have what it takes to run an honest business?

As was mentioned earlier in this article, a home business can be both appealing and intimidating. Hopefully you have gleaned some good information and advice from the tips shared in this article. Put that advice into action, and watch as things begin to work more smoothly for your home business.

    Business must invest in cyber for remote work: Theta Global advisors

Since lockdown was imposed in March last year, all shops in IT park have stayed closed

  THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With IT companies in Technopark here entertaining work-from-home culture since the pandemic hit, the past 10 months have been a nightmare for people running non-IT businesses inside the park. Since the lockdown was imposed in March last year, all the shops, including restaurants, in Technopark have stayed closed. The work-from-home policy adopted by the government and IT firms has hit around 50 vendors who depend on the techies for revenue.

While the government intervened and provided the vendors a three-month rent waiver from April to June last year, the Technopark authorities later asked them to either pay the pending rent or quit.“Around 50 shops, including restaurants, in Technopark depended on techies. Now, our future looks bleak,” said Tigy Tankachan, secretary, Technopark Vendors Association (TVA). “Even IT companies are promoting work from home as they are making profits and the productivity of employees is good. None is concerned about our plight,” he said. 

The Group of Technology Companies (GTech), the industry body of IT and Business Process Management organisations in Kerala, has said employees can come to office after getting vaccinated. While the decision would benefit the vendors, they are unsure about an immediate turnaround in their situation.Most of the vendors are engineers and other professionals providing support services like restaurants, automatic car wash, laundromats and tailoring shops. 

“We cater to several techies and our services are exclusively offered to employees in Technopark. We are fully dependent on them. We invested substantially in our ventures and are employing over 1,000 people in all the units, besides indirectly employing more than 3000 people. Though we reopened some restaurants in January, we could not make decent revenue,” Tigy said. Vineeth Sankar, a laundry shop owner in Technopark, said all the shops closed in March last year, immediately after the state government announced the lockdown.

“We immediately sent our employees home and paid them salaries for a few months. Now, we have no resources to pay them. Since our shops are inside Technopark, there is a standing instruction from authorities that we cannot cater to people outside. We are fully dependent on employees here,” said Vineeth. 

The TVA filed a memorandum in January before Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, ministers Kadakampally Surendran and T M Thomas Isaac, the IT secretary and the Technopark CEO seeking exemption from rent till March. However, it is yet to get a response. IT secretary Mohammed Y Safirulla told TNIE that the requests of non-IT establishments are under the government’s consideration. 

“We already gave them a six-month waiver from April 2020. They have submitted a petition now and it is under the government’s consideration,” he said. Vendors said they got only a three-month waiver.

https://www.captiveinternational.com/news/businesses-must-invest-more-in-cyber-security-for-remote-workers-theta-global-advisors-3925

    We had been brought to that editorial on Home Business Ideas Online from a good friend on a different blog. Sharing is nice. You just don't know, you may very well be helping someone out. Thanks so much for going through it.

[burnouts3s3]

The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 50 USD Digital Copy (MSRP): 17.99 USD for 12 episodes How much I paid: 83.98 USD for Physical copy and an Amazon Video digital copy. Animation Studio: J.C. Staff Licensed and Localized by: Funimation Entertainment Audio: Japanese Audio with Subtitles and English Dub available.   English Cast: Jerry Jewell as Saiki Kusuo, David Weld as Nendo, Chuck Huber as Kuniharu Kusuo, Tia Ballard as Teruhashi, Megan Shipman as Chisato Mera, Morgan Garrett as Kurumi Saiki, Micah Solusod as Shun Kaido Number of Episodes: 24 Episodes Length per Episode: 25 Minutes on average. 21 Without Intro and Ending song. Number of Discs: 4 Blu-ray Discs in total Episodes per Disc: Episodes 1-9 on the first Blu-ray disc with Episodes 10-12 on the second Blu-ray disc along with the special features. Episodes 13-21 on 3rd Blu-ray disc and Episodes 22-24 on 4th. Bundle also includes: Digital Copy that can be redeemed on Funimation Now. Also on: Netflix, Google Play, Amazon Video, Funimation Now, Funimation’s streaming service that requires a subscription. Bonus Features: Textless Openings, Textless Ending and Trailers for other Funimation Licensed Shows. Episode 1 Commentary. Episode 24 commentary. Notable Localization Changes: Because of the nature of the dub, the voice performers are considerably slower than their Japanese counterparts and may annoy viewers. The English script uses multiple puns and other wordplay to add humor. (i.e. when Saiki addresses his father dressed up in a Santa outfit, he replies “You’re a lost Claus”. When Saiki takes off his transparent gloves to psychically read an object, he goes “But now the gloves are off!”) In Episode 24, Chiyo’s dialogue changes to “You jerk-ass writers! You couldn’t come up with any clever ideas so you had to dig through a bin of tired tropes?” My Personal Biases: I never heard of Saiki K until I saw an advertisement in a My-Hime blu-ray and seeing him featured on the roster of J-Stars Victory Vs. My Verdict: Saiki K manages to spin multiple plates at once by delivering a memorable character, establishing his powers and giving the audience gut busting dialogue masterfully executed. If you can forgive J.C. staff’s lackluster animation, you’ll have a good time. Check it out when you get the chance! The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, a review 

During the summer of 2016, 2 shows about psychics premiered. One was the hit juggernaut, Mob Psycho 100, praised for its beautiful animation, interesting characters and take on psychic characters. The other show was J.C. Staff’s The Disastrous life of Saiki K, an anime adaptation of a gag manga found in Weekly Shounen Jump. Saiki Kusuo is a 16 year old psychic with all the powers known. He possess telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, psychokinesis and other traits not even mentioned. He’s seemingly the luckiest boy in the world… or it would seem. In reality, Saiki is, in his own words, the most miserable boy in the world. The show opts to answer of a character having an overpowered skill-set by giving said character new problems. Having telepathy means being spoiled on movies and video games. Having super strength and super intelligence means having to balance the skills just so he appears mediocre in school. Having telekenisis means having an unreliable father who constantly begs for help. The trick is that Saiki’s narration is always constant and we’re allowed to hear the other character’s internal thoughts, while Saiki himself provides commentary. It should also be noted that we never ‘see’ Saiki’s mouth move, implying he’s communicating via telepathy. (It also helps that Saiki’s powers come with a number of limitations. For example, he can restore something back to its original state but it takes a day to recharge). As Saiki explains his powers to us, we’re also allowed to hear the other characters and why they’re doing what they’re doing and how Saiki wants nothing to do with them… or does he?

Yes, the formula of ‘jerk suddenly wants to do the right thing’ is easy, but Saiki K makes it work. See, Saiki constantly doesn’t want to draw attention towards himself for fear of things such as experimentation and paparazzi, and the path of least resistance is usually the best and easiest for him. But, seeing each of the side character’s constant struggles and dedication moves him. At the same time, allowing us to be with Saiki also lets us see the hypocrisy of his own actions and how the seemingly all knowing psychic can’t see past his own weaknesses or nonsense. At one point, Saiki is set to swindle a salesman out of an expensive television, but Saiki’s weakness for coffee jelly damns the effort. Granted, I’m an easy target for the ‘jerk with a heart of gold’ trope and Saiki’s sarcasm is on the level of Justin Cook’s interpretation of Yusuke Urameshi, but it all looks easy. Each episode contains 5 segments detailing a certain obstacle in Saiki’s life (though certain segments such as a trip to Okinawa can last over multiple segments and episodes). We usually go into problem of the segment issues, but Saiki’s powers shows us how it affects him differently. It’s a Slice of Life for superpowered teens. Things like a noisy neighbor or a cute girl are usually pains in the ass for Saiki. The supporting cast also impressed me a great deal. For example, anyone that’s followed me online knows popular girls such as Sachiko from Maria watches over us or Chikane Himemiya from Kannazuki no Miko tend to annoy me, but Teruhashi isn’t just popular and pretty, but so dedicated to the part of keeping appearances, she’s willing to debase herself and eat disgusting ramen. At the same time, Saiki, because of his powers is so off-put by Teruhashi’s uncanny ability to get what she wants that he’s willing to alienate her, but he’s slowly won over by her commitment. It works. The rest of the cast also compliment Saiki in interesting ways. Nendo, despite being so dumb that not even Saiki can read his mind, has a genuine good heart and tries to help his single mother. Kaido, despite being a weakling and possessing no powers of his own, shows genuine courage in the face of danger. Hairo, despite being an overly excited jock who’s super competitive, is dedicated to the point of being an actual leader. Toritsuka, a spirit medium who can see ghosts but would rather see girls’ underwear, feels like a side character meant to become a lead in a spin-off. If the show has a weak spot, it’s definitely the animation. Don’t go into this show expecting the animation to be the same quality as Mob Psycho 100. Still shots, panning movements and lazy animation make it clear that animating the show was not a priority. I give this a pass because action is clearly not the emphasis of the show, humor is. And there’s just enough there in the editing, the music and the voice acting (both the original Japanese and the dubbed) to make it work. Funimation Entertainment did the localization of the show. For the most part, the English script stays as close to the original Japanese as much as possible. The English script uses multiple puns and other wordplay to add humor or change jokes that wouldn’t work in English. (i.e. when Saiki addresses his father dressed up in a Santa outfit, he replies “You’re a lost Claus”. When Saiki takes off his transparent gloves to psychically read an object, he goes “But now the gloves are off!”) Jerry Jewell as Saiki is noticeably slower in his delivery than the Japanese Seiyuu but Jewell’s use of deadpan as well as adding the appropriate amount of emotion at the right time more than makes up for it. (Fans may recognize Jewell from other Funimation roles such as Jimmy Kudo in Case Closed and Licht in Black Clover) Mainstays such as David Wald as Nindo, Kyle Phillips as Hairo, Megan Shipman as Mera and Chuck Huber as Kuniharu all add to the work. Tia Ballard (who plays Marron in Dragon Ball Super) is especially good in playing Teruhashi. THE ORIGINAL JAPANESE AUDIO WITH SUBTITLES IS AVAILABLE FOR THOSE WHO PREFER IT. CAVEAT: I don’t know if Saiki K is anything revolutionary in terms of comedy in the age of Nichijou, Lucky Star, and K-on! It’s a cheaply produced anime based off a gag manga. But, I’d be lying if I didn’t have a hell of a time watching it. It takes skill to balance exposition, character motivation and humor into 24 episodes, but Saiki K makes all look effortless. 50 USD for 24 episodes is steep, but I loved every moment of it. Plus, the bundle also includes a Funimation Digital copy that can be redeemed on Funimation Now, the company’s streaming service. Verdict: If you’re not sure, try checking it out for free on Crunchyroll or if you already have a Netflix subscription, check it out there. 

[coworkingspacechicago]

Looking For an Office Coworking Space Near You?

Why do people use coworking spaces?

  Why do people use coworking spaces?

Having a shared space and creating a sense of community is another reason why people chose coworking spaces. Officing in a coworking environment lets you surround yourself with goal-oriented and high-achieving professionals. Having so many professionals in one room means your networking opportunities are endless.

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The average price of Hot Desk option offered by WeWork is $392 per month. The most expensive space is located right at Hollywood with monthly price of $450 per month, while the cheapest price is $350 per month for several spaces.

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What does coworking space mean?

Coworking is a business services provision model that involves individuals working independently or collaboratively in shared office space. The typical user of a coworking facility is self-employed, a telecommuter, or a freelance worker.

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Do Coworking spaces work?

Coworking spaces don't come with the high costs and commitments of a traditional office leases. They also provide the chance for small teams to interact with others in the space. These spaces also may even help entrepreneurs find a co-founder for their start-up by connecting the right people at the right time.Sep 12, 2018

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How many coworking spaces are there in the US?

This statistic shows the number of coworking spaces in the United States from 2007 to 2022. In 2017, there were 4,043 coworking spaces in the U.S., and this is forecasted to increase to 6,219 in 2022. In 2017, there were around 1.18 million people working in coworking spaces worldwide.

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Should I get a coworking space?

Some coworking spaces even require that several current members vouch for you before you're eligible to apply. ... They may offer a free coworking day each month so you can drop in and get a feel for the space. The coworking spaces that I jived the most with were the smaller, more laid-back spaces.May 30, 2017

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$3000 per month for 1200 square feet. So now we know how much startups pay for office space. If you have enough revenue or have raised enough capital to have 10 employees, your startup can expect to pay around $6,100 in rent per month.Feb 26, 2014

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Best Shared Office Space Summary Table

Shared Office Space Best For Pricing From* Industrious Another coworking and/or private office space option $495/month Servcorp Virtual office space $112/month Davinci Another virtual office space option $50/month

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How many coworking spaces are there in the world?

Coworking now takes up 27million sq feet of office space across the US, and 19 more growth statistics that prove coworking is the new normal. There are currently 14,411 coworking spaces in the world today. The number of coworking members will rise to 3.8 million by 2020 and 5.1 millionby 2022.Mar 15, 2018

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What are the benefits of coworking?

7 Benefits of Coworking Spaces

Productivity. Imagine an environment without the stuffiness of a corporate office space but still more structure than your home office. ...

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New Business. ...

Increased Well Being. ...

Diversity. ...

Cost Efficient. ...

Flexibility.

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What are the steps to start a coworking space business?

Plan your business. A clear plan is essential for success as an entrepreneur. ...

Form a legal entity. ...

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Set up business accounting. ...

Obtain necessary permits and licenses. ...

Get business insurance. ...

Define your brand.

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6 Top Tips For Managing a Coworking Space

Be Selective With Members. A coworking space is as much about the people within it as the physical premises. ...

Embrace Diversity Among Members. ...

Encourage Members to Use Other Coworking Spaces. ...

Design Your Space For Interaction. ...

Monitor How People Use the Space. ...

Encourage Engagement.

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Here are some personal tips to help you create the perfect creative space.

Visualize your creative space.

Comfort is the key ingredient.

Surround yourself with inspiration.

Let the sun shine in.

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Develop a mantra.

Facilitate creativity with music.

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What are shared office spaces?

Office sharing is a concept that allows companies who own or manage an office, that have redundant office space to share or rent the workstations or self-contained units to smaller companies looking for flexible workspace. ... Higher office management costs (cleaning services, printer ink, office supplies and so on)

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What is GCUC?

Fun fact: GCUC (short for the Global Coworking Unconference Conference) is the largest coworking conference series in the world, and it's way more than that, too. ... The coworking conference movement has exploded, and we're shaping its evolution.

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Coworking members are not only tech professionals and startups; part-time workers, freelancers and small enterprises are joining the coworking world. By 2022, there will be over one million coworking members in the U.S. alone. Forecast of coworking members in the U.S. Source: GCUC.

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How big is the coworking industry?

We expect the number of coworking members will grow from 1.74 million in 2017 to 5.1 million in 2022. This is an average annual growth rate of 24.2%. The faster coworking member growth is due to coworking spaces getting bigger in square footage as well as members per square foot.Dec 18, 2017

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Can you write off coworking space?

Renting office space produces significant tax deductions during tax season. ... While many of the expenses incurred at a coworking space can be deducted — such as the cost of renting a conference room, printing costs, networking events, etc.. — the IRS is clear that the cost of commuting and parking cannot be deducted.Apr 2, 2019

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How do I rent out office space?

Steps

Check whether you can rent. You might not be able to rent a home office. ...

Determine the rent. You should look at how much office space rents for in the nearest business district. ...

Decide what amenities to provide. ...

Tell people you know that you are renting. ...

Confirm that you want to rent out a home office.

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How much does it cost to lease a space?

How much does it cost to lease a space?

So for 1,900 square feet, that would cost approximately $3,642 per month. A similarly sized stand-alone building located one-half mile from that store may only be $11 per square foot. For the purpose of writing a business plan, using an average price of $17 per square foot would be a safe assumption in this example.Dec 31, 2018

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Can you work in a storage unit?

Commercial storage units have slightly different rules than regular storage units depending on the scale of the business. But remember, unless you rent an office, retail or commercial space specifically, you're not allowed to work or conduct business inside a storage unit.Nov 10, 2017

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The six steps to find and lease office space include:

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Research & Tour Available Office Space for Rent. ...

Organize Your Business' Financials. ...

Choose an Office & Negotiate Your Lease.

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Rent Per Square Foot

Example with annual quote: A 2,200 square foot office space is quoted a rent of $11.50 per square foot. 2,200 X $11.50 = $25,300 per year for rent.

Example, same building and rent for monthly amount: 2,200 X $11.50 = $25,300. Divide by 12 months to get a monthly rental amount of $2,108.33.

Jan 22, 2019

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Looking For an Office Coworking Space Near You? was first published on

[talenlee]

MTG: It's Not Gacha

I try not to shoot from the hip on matters like these.

I try not, generally speaking, to do long-form articles about important topics where the subject matter is high impact and there are well-intentioned people who look uninformed to me. It's a sure-fire way of wading into a complex situation where I contribute no actual value, just noise.

Plus, this is the intersection of Magic: the Gathering, game development, and human incentive systems, which I'm sorry to say I'm rapidly doing things that make me kind of expert on, even if I shy from being considered an expert. There's a whole gulf of information between where I sit and where a lot of other voices on the matter sit, which can make me feel like I'm either talking over them (because they don't know what they're talking about, and don't realise that) or that I'm getting into an extremely contentious fight (because they know what they're talking about, and are presenting falsehoods and do not care).

Still, it's April, it's my month, you're here on my blog so sit down, shut up, and learn why every time people compare Gacha to Magic: the Gathering I roll my eyes so hard it makes my skull ache.

Differences of Scale

In any given Magic: The Gathering set in a modern printing, there are about sixty rares, and twenty-three mythic rares. Mythic rares happen about once every eight packs. So, if you want one mythic rare, and you want to pop boosters for it for a chance to get it, you hypothetically need to pop 184 boosters to have a 'statistical chance' to get the mythic rare you want, or about a .5% chance to get that mythic rare.

Now, again, let's set aside just how bad an idea this is. Let's just say this is how you're going to do it. Pop boosters until you get the card and you get a .5% chance, give or take some rounding.

Gacha games obviously vary, and those games use a host of variable systems to make your chances more or less reliable, so it's hard to say what those chances are on average for their rarest stuff, but some games - some very popular and very well liked Gacha games, Gacha games I've seen my friends playing have rates for their rarest pulls during fortnight-long events at .007%.

Not 7%. Not .7%. .007%.

Magic: The Gathering's rarest game objects by the worst method of obtaining them can be hundreds of times easier to get. And these Gachas offer paid boosters at roughly the same prices as Magic boosters too!

Which honestly doesn't matter, because Gacha games and Magic purchases aren't comparable in this way because of...

Differences of Ownership

Magic Cards are physical objects. When you pop a booster, you don't get a bunch of digital stuff on a drive, you get actual physical devices, objects that are exchangeable, and tradable. You might find that other people want what's from your boosters, and that stuff is yours to trade away. You can even sell it for money. Is it worthless? It's probably not worth a lot, because value concentrates around the best cards in any given set, but the point is this stuff is yours and you can make choices about that.

In Gacha games, by default, there's no trading mechanism, and why should there be? There's no reason for you to be able to play swapsies with these digital items. Heck, from the perspective of the company doing it, trades are probably really annoying to implement.

Since the cards are a physical object, and unregulated, you can trade them with other people, and there are even stores that exist, and those stores have a reason to want to maintain a stable business, so you can take your cards to them, and sell them to them and they'll get you involved in the business of trading and playing the game. They get more money over time if you keep coming to them, so their motivation to rip you off isn't exactly strong.

And these stores will sell you specific cards you want.

Let's use that idea of you gunning for a specific Mythic Rare by popping boosters. Let's use the most expensive mythic from Guilds of Ravnica as an example, Arclight Phoenix.

As of the time I write this, Arclight Phoenix is $30 on Starcity Games, and it is out of stock at that price. The demand for this sucker is pretty high and the card is pretty good. Don't worry about why, it doesn't matter. The point is, you can have this card for the price of 5 boosters, which beats the snot out of buying 184 boosters to hope and crack it (at a rate of around $1,104).

Now, yes, that is pretty pricey, and we'll get to that later, but the point is, this card is good but expensive and in an external market, there's a way to get it that costs you way less. Gacha doesn't typically have a secondary market (though we'll get to Artifact later).

Do I recommend you go out and buy a playset of Arclight Phoenixes? No, not really. This is not a card you should be buying as your first point of investment in Magic: The Gathering and there's no urgent need for you to have it right now unless you have some really weird priorities. The 'default way' of playing Magic: the Gathering isn't going to ask you to have an Arclight Phoenix.

There are other, even more expensive cards out there, and we'll get to that later.

For now, though, the introduction of this secondary market is important, because of...

Differences In Distribution

Know who makes money off Gacha purchases? The company that runs the game. They spend some of that money on running servers (which are often in-house), they spend some of that money on developing new services for their game, and they spend some of that money on promotion and advertising and all that stuff, but the root purchase goes straight to the company, and that company then decides how they spend it.

Know who makes the most money off a Magic: The Gathering booster? Well, based on current industry metrics, the people who drive the trucks transporting those boosters around. Around 50% of board and card game purchases are made up of transport and distribution costs. Some of the booster sales go to the store where you bought them, and they purchased the boosters off Wizards, but between Wizards and the game stores, there's the distributors, who pay a large percentage of their costs in getting the objects around the world.

I swear with corporate diagrams like this I'm surprised I'm defending these people

Now, Wizards still make a profit on Magic: the Gathering, because lots of people buy boosters, and supplemental products. But the people getting paid for Magic: the Gathering includes a host of people who aren't Wizards. Boosters go up and down based on the cost of paper, disposal methods, localisation teams, and a lot of what's going on involves a number of intermediary businesses, and changes in those businesses has impacts on Wizards.

Now, this isn't to say that Wizards have a more moral position than anyone else, but it changes the relationship between Wizards on the profit-per-sale and the demands on what a booster is worth. Because if a Gacha game sets a price for a booster, that's how much they get. That means from their perspective, they get a lot more profit per-booster, and therefore, they have a very direct reason to want you to buy lots of boosters. Wizards want you to buy a lot of boosters too, and ideally, they'd like you to buy more. But if you buy twenty boosters trying for one card, you're not paying them twenty booster's worth of money. You're paying that to your local store, to transport, and distributors, and printers.

And that secondary market? The explosive rares like Arclight Phoenix? That's not valuable from Wizards' perspective, not really.

See, the secondary market is typically driven by a few forces. One is a few chase formats like Vintage and Commander where players will often spend a disproportionate amount on cards that seem weird to everyone else, but which largely don't matter, and don't drive play or attendance. One of them is casual appeal (and we'll get to that). Then there's tournament success, where players will buy cards to build constructed decks that are likely to win in constructed formats.

But remember, Wizards make money on the boosters. They don't make money on the sale of the Arclight Phoenixes that have already been popped. Those sales go to a secondary seller. If a card becomes too valuable, what happens is, stores start popping boxes of product in large volumes to get the chase card, and sell that chase card at the highest rate they can.

Booster boxes have fixed value from Wizards' perspective; they sell them for (about) $100, and retailers pay less for them, for about 36 boosters. That means that any given mythic should show up once every six boxes... which means if a card becomes worth (say) $100 on its own, card stores are better off opening boxes and selling all the singles in them. This puts a ceiling on the possible prices of a mythic rare, and that means the rest of the cards in that box wind up being 'free.'

We've seen this happen, by the way. Wizards deliberately started putting in chase cards in a few sets to push down the prices of other rares and it resulted in some very good, reliable cards selling very cheaply and that made the formats they were good in very accessable. It was a cool thing.

But again: Wizards don't control the secondary market. They don't run these stores. They don't profit off them, they profit off the sales of boosters. From their perspective, what changes the amount of money they make is not single overpowered cards, but lots of people playing the game a lot. They want you to engage with the secondary market by coming to the store more and playing more, not so they can scoop up some kind of kickback for buying Arclight Phoenixes, but because you playing the game makes it more likely other people will play the game with you, and you'll all buy boosters, because boosters are fun and cool.

By the way, this is why I side-eye Artifact. Because the people who make that game have that game's secondary market, which gives them an incentive to make people turn over their collections often so they can collect the fees.

Differences of Purpose

All this talk of Boosters and math makes my head hurt anyway, because it acts as if Boosters are how you get the Magic cards you want, which they're not. Boosters are not a tool for getting cards. If they were, they'd be garbage at it. You saw those odds, .5%? Hundreds of dollars to get a card that may be at best, worth, what, $30?

Boosters are boosters. Boosters are made, and designed to be a game-complete unit on their own.

There's a way to play Magic: The Gathering called Booster draft. It is one of the two easiest to approach tournament formats that exist, and it is a format full of creature math and building tight decks, and it both rewards very specific skill, and strives to sort out for random good or bad luck.

What you do in Booster Draft is you get three boosters - that's usually the price of entry, by the way, just the cost of three boosters. You open the first booster, take one card, and pass the rest on. The player to your side did the same thing, and now you have a different booster, minus one card, to choose from, and so on. This is a great format, it's a good way to build skill, and it's a good way to build a collection. If you want to play tournament magic, this is absolutely one of your best starting points.

Some of the articles harping on this point used the entry point for formats called Legacy and Vintage as their data points. This is pure crap. Those formats are functionally vestigial. Wizards are not looking to recruit players into playing Vintage or Legacy, because those formats are both fundamentally constricted (the number of cards) and entirely secondary (Wizards have promised not to print the cards that define those formats ever again).

Oh, and because this is my month, fuck it, here, let's get really petty: I see you, Person I Don't Even Remember The Name Of, complaining about the high prices of Legacy sideboard card Moat keeping him from playing Legacy competitively, and therefore, a sign of how much of a bad game Magic: The Gathering is and how problematically exploitative it was. I see you passing off the high cost of a bad format as a proof of Magic: The Gathering's tournament scene being inaccessible.

In that article, you said that Legacy was a 'financially rewarding' tournament environment and all I could think is are you kidding me and my balls. There is going to be one Magicfest in 2019 that's Legacy. There were four Limited Magicfests in February alone. If you fail to get rich playing Legacy, it's not because of the price of Moats, buddy.

Differences of Data

Wizards markets Magic. They want you to think it's cool and buy it. They do this by making the game serve a whole variety of communities, with different axes of art, gameplay, expression and culture. Straight up, I am 100% certain that for all the moral footing of making Magic more inclusive and pushing to get more queer and millenial people into their market, is because there are people in that age range with money.

Yet because Magic is a product on cardboard that has to be mailed around the world, if they want to make art for a card they hope you, specifically, will like, they have to decide that months in advance, pay for the artwork, get it out there, and hope that you find it and hope it makes you want to buy their products. And they have to make that decision knowing that they're putting this stuff out there for a lot of people, and what product they release, even in varied bits, is going to be trying to appeal to a very big audience with a lot of different people in it. They can't make the game display Tity Witches for one player and make it show Tity Witches Waving Flags Saying Trans Rights for another.

Meanwhile, Gacha games weaponise the data gathering of your phone.

This isn't a controversial issue, by the way. This isn't some secret sleazy practice that some companies do, but the majority of Gacha game makers think, no, we are noble and honourable and would never. It is fundamental to these games that run out of your phone that they are absolutely gathering all the data they can on you, and they are setting up algorithms to tailor that game experience to you on your phone so that your version of the game is as psychologically satisfying as possible.

Some of these games go so far as to subtly change the success sound on a Gacha pull until they find the one you'll consistantly listen to all the way through. And why shouldn't they? There's nothing stopping them from doing these intensely creepy things. They're not just selling you an object they've made, they're marketing an experience to you to get you into their platform so you will keep giving them money. It's straight up platform capitalism, and it's so different from the studies that show that 'the moment you open a booster is exciting.'

Now, this is not a fixed point. After all, there's no reason to believe that if Wizards of the Coast could take the thumbprint reactions off your phone to the types of Magic card that you liked best, they wouldn't do that, because they are still a company. But they're trying to make something in a different way, and they can't tailor their product to your unique psychological responses.

Differences of Access

Fact is, if Wizards shut down tomorrow, every single card you own (with the exception of Urza's Head) would work. They would work fine. If they banned your favourite card tomorrow, there is nothing they can do to make you stop using that card.

Because all of this talk about tournament formats and secondary markets is ignoring the single most common Magic format. It's called Casual, and the cards legal in it are 'what I own.'

Players, broadly speaking, play Magic without a central authority, without tournament structures, without net decks, without an eye towards the next stage of the pro tour and without anyone able to stop them. And this is the biggest thing with Magic: The Gathering that sets it apart from Gacha games and why the comparison between Magic and its ludicrous secondary market as a booster purchasing motivator, in that none of those things are necessary to play the game in the vast, vast majority of ways the game is played.

Is any of this to say that Magic: the Gathering is a perfectly moral game system? No, not insofar as it's a capitalist system. It's connected to and rewards Hasbro, who do shady shit, and it's in the same company that makes 5th Edition D&D, which has both uplifted and tried to defend (in the past) the actions of utter monsters (Mike Mearls Retire Binch), even as it now tries to make amends.

Does it reward gambling in children? Not really, I don't think. Even if it does, that's a different conversation, and maybe one we can have. But it's hard to have that conversation when there are these other, much more bullshit conversations happening, like the conversation that wants to compare Magic: The Gathering having a Legacy format and Fate: Grand Order asking you to spend five thousand dollars in a week to get a character wearing a sexy bikini.

Don't worry, if you've made these comparisons. It's okay. This is a topic where there's a lot of complicated things going on, and it's hard to know them all. One commenter on my twitter feed remarked that when it comes to Magic it's either a topic you know nothing about or something you have a mini-PhD on, and yeah, I guess that's where I'm coming at this from.

This isn't even the thing that pisses me off the most about the conversation around Magic: the Gathering.

After all, some business assholes have taken to comparing Magic: The Gathering to bitcoin.

[is6621]

The Evolution of Black Friday by Hannah Fay

It’s emptied wallets, drawn crowds, induced breakdowns, and even claimed lives since the first half of the twentieth century -- for better or for worse, Black Friday remains the biggest shopping day of the year. Whether you love it or you hate it, it isn’t going anywhere. But it is changing and evolving along with technology, *mostly* for the better.

BRICKS TO BYTES

As the reputation of Black Friday deteriorated over the years with reports (and experiences) of crowds, long lines, stampedes, and even deaths, less and less consumers were getting excited about trekking out after their tryptophan-induced naps. Combined with sales that began well before Friday and extended well after, the sense of urgency that once had consumers camping out at malls simply did not exist any longer.

This 2015 article even explicitly urges shoppers not to go into stores on Black Friday, and to instead shop online. As such, the rise of online shopping has been the largest disruptor of Black Friday “business as usual.” The idea of dodging stampedes, fighting over limited inventory, waiting in long lines, and dealing with overworked employees combined with increased convenience of online shopping had by and large driven consumers away. Cyber Monday has rivaled Black Friday since its inception in 2005 and since it passed the mark as the largest online shopping day of the year in 2014. In 2016, online spending made up just under half of all Black Friday sales.

In 2018, much of the same remains true. But the 50% of consumers that plan to do all their shopping today in-store should expect to see much of their experience improved with tech rollouts, and even those who are shopping online might notice some differences.

E-Commerce sales 2008-2017 (Statista) 

HOW YOUR SHOPPING EXPERIENCE WILL DIFFER

1. AR CAN HELP YOU BEFORE YOU GET TO THE STORE

We’ve talked a lot about AR as the future of retail in class, but this Black Friday may be the first time many consumers get hands-on experience with it. In addition to more standard uses, such as the Macy’s app that allows consumers to virtually place furniture into their home, retailers are capitalizing on the wow-factor of this new tech. DSW, for example, is launching a ‘smile-meter’ ad that will allow users to interactively unlock Black Friday discounts based on their perceived happiness level.

2. THEN SKIP THE LINES WITH MOBILE PAYMENTS

Even if you get a discount that makes you smile, that happiness can wear off pretty quickly when faced with the mile-long lines that accompany Black Friday deals. Luckily, large retailers like Walmart and Target are rolling out mobile checkout stations this holiday season that allow customers to bypass lines. While they aren’t exactly at the level of Amazon’s completely cashierless stores, these new systems take advantage of handheld devices and Bluetooth receivers that let the customer quickly swipe their card and get a receipt at the most traffic-heavy parts of stores. This can be especially useful for big-box items that are a pain to lug through narrow checkout aisles.

3. … OR JUST SKIP THE STORE ENTIRELY WITH ALEXA

Those who choose not to go to stores on Black Friday at all may have a new option for online shopping. “Alexa, order me an XBOX for my daughter,” or “Alexa, I want to buy a swingset for my son” might be overheard in homes this December as Amazon rolls out voice shopping. All that owners of the Amazon device have to do is ask “Alexa, what are my deals?” and Amazon will do the rest. Many of these deals were even offered to Alexa owners well before today.

4. YOUR DECISION MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY YOUR OWN

What’s suggested to you for purchase online is data-driven any day. Black Friday data, though, happens to be a little more robust -- what you’re purchasing could be suggested based on your own behaviors, or based on your categorizations. Or it could be based on years of information on how consumers shop on Black Friday compared to other days, from what products are suggested to what deals you’re offered. A more in-depth explanation (plus some shopping tips) is available here.

5. BUT YOU’LL STILL GET WHAT YOU ORDERED QUICKER THAN BEFORE

Amazon Prime isn’t the only retailer that will offer expedited shipping this year! Retailers like Target are following the success of the giant by offering 2-day shipping on all orders regardless of price.

WHAT’S THE TREND?

While a few of these advances give shoppers more incentive to head out to stores, getting consumers to brick-and-mortar doesn’t seem to be the main focus. This is the one day of the year that retailers don’t want their customers to spend as much time in-store as possible, but rather try their best to minimize the time spent. If customers don’t leave stores angry about long wait times and exhausted by battling to get what they want, it follows that they’ll be more likely to come again next year. Perhaps minimizing time spent in stores is actually a way to increase sales on this day and this day only if retailers can make customers’ lives easier and help them make decisions quicker. For example, it still may be worth coming out to a brick-and-mortar store even if what a customer wants is out-of-stock if an employee can quickly and efficiently help them order it free of charge, and if that product will arrive relatively quickly.

WHAT’S NEXT

Even with these major improvements, Black Friday can still bring significant headaches. Not everything can be controlled for by retailers: there will still be parking jams, there will still be shortages in inventory, and there will still be grumpy employees. Or will there?

One of the most frequent complaints I hear about the Black Friday experience is the difficulty of finding a parking spot. While several apps already exist to aid parking in cities, it’s certainly possible that with improving technology malls and retail spaces will invest in Smart Parking. Tech could be integrated into new models of cars and into meters/parking spaces, and could coordinate to display empty parking spots on-screen in cars or automatically direct drivers to those spots. As self-driving vehicles become common, this process could eventually become totally automated and headache-free.  

Another issue is inventory. Customers might know what they want sort of, but may not able to articulate exactly the item they’re looking for in-store. If employees were equipped with a device that had visual search capability, neither the customer nor the employee would need to know exactly what they’re looking for. All they would need is a similar-looking item nearby, or a photo of the item. From there, they could be directed to the location where the desired item or similar item is displayed -- all without knowing the SKU number or name of the style.

It may be too late for you to utilize emerging Black Friday tech this year, but chances are you’ll interact with it at some point over the holiday season. Keep your eye out for it! If anyone’s run into what I mentioned above and had a positive (or negative) experience, I’d be interested to hear about it or any other ideas for where tech may improve the Black Friday experience in the future.

[bjerre22tonnesen-blog]

VBUCKS - Pick The best Approach

Fortnite Free V Bucks is the easiest way to make free unlimited v bucks , object with skin without having to pay any money in game. Other activities can ask participants designed for a Captcha number, prove the PayPal code or otherwise verify their personality before receiving an in-game purchase. Overwatch, for example, could ask participants to outline happening over prior to buying loot boxes. Hackers interviewed display that, because Epic does not do this, also due to Fortnite's incredible popularity, Fortnite right now, is as ready as might be for balance hacking. As revealed by, fortnite is meaningless to use. Moreover, it is clearly a hundred percent free to use, meaning that everybody is able to use this notch by using a fortnite v-Bucks generator. That online generator could end people over 90 thousands of v-bucks. However, if you are not likely to use this hack, then you will have to give hundreds of dollars to play this activity. Harvesting Application: In default, Fortnite gives you a general pickaxe for busting down walls with produce building materials and you could swap out your trusty pickaxe with a broad range of nuts skins for your trusty tool. These have no effect on your pick ability but could search very cool. There's and generally a matching harvesting tool for each group if you're a perfectionist for continuity. Harvester tools can be bought for so miserable because 500 V-Bucks and as important because 2,000 V-Bucks. When you use this tool, you will receive the most surprising features which you need to dominate the peers. Most places out there are talking about the Fortnite generator, but most are scams. Many would put you to sign and get cosmetics, items, emotes then a struggle pass to learn which you were scammed at a low price. However, that tool will give you a free v-bucks package which allows you to play the game like a pro. If you play Fortnite's PvP mode, Battle Royale, you can earn additional V-bucks with the Free Succeed with Controversy Forward. The Open Pass is available free of charge to all players. If you climb in the amount, you will get rewards like as stickers, emotes or V-Bucks for a few concentrations. Within Period 4 that's 200 V bucks up to Level 100 in the Free Go, but this could switch now additional years. If you happen to have a child between the ages of 13 and 18 opportunities are you've learned associated with new online multiplayer shooter game known as Fortnite: Battle Royal. It is a free match in which bear a silly and offbeat sense of humor and is tons of cool to sport. Wile the persons have a realistic style, Fortnite: Battle Royale, also have bright cartoonish graphics combined with slices of ridiculous costumes such as dinosaur ensemble and plot suits it is a lot of ridiculous fun. Although the sport is violent in spirit, there cartoonish handle with the entertainment seems to negate just the way violent this entertainment is. The person will need to get the surprise or debit cards on their own once they get back to their system, but next, they can easily get through that cash to get everything through those digital mass. That means they can get another game, downloadable information, or Fortnite's V-Bucks. Exactly what the person chooses to use the present card for will be around them—you have no way to force” them to use it upon V-Bucks. Fortnite has taken the activity world through hurricane. It's been the top saw also performed gaming right to the older months and it doesn't really look like it's slowing down both, so obviously we're here to give you the report on the best Fortnite locations and gear. Fortnite presents the person with fast and inspiring games in a slightly cartoony setting but do not allow apparent casual element in the activity fool you - that match is incredibly competitive. Your Fortnite sensitivity for example is an incredibly important position a person really should constantly tweak in order to make yourself the best person you can perhaps be. Benjamin Preminger, a mature intelligence expert in Sixgill noted the money laundering company were performed with general work. He said, Epic Games doesn't seem to close down in any important road in criminal activity surrounding Fortnite, money laundering or usually.” He chances that Epic Games will take measures to better watch the in-game currency and to work more thoroughly with authorities. And that's essentially what we're working with as far as digital objects useful in Fortnite. After that, there's a wide array of merchandise that's become available in the past few months. Epic Games has an official retail store, even if the mixture is somewhat limited. These steps bodies are fairly neat, with you'll get bonus points if you can determine your giftee's favorite skin and get them the physical version. Funko Pops, also, are fairly consistent and oddly mesmerizing. The sport internal currency is Fortnite v-Bucks , and you can buy for it various cosmetic products which modify the character's beginning and gear. Digital resources can be allocated for Combat Passes , allowing to unblock appeal and generate more coins. Unfortunately, many products are quite expensive, so are the groups of v-Bucks. The manufacturing gets it possible systematically earn resources in compete, for even map on the entertainment and overcoming unique problems, but these practices aren't fast. However, that possible to get Fortnite Hack v-Bucks by way of the right internal generator. Both beginners with further players use this method successfully. Footballer Antoine Griezmann did a Fortnite dance move to celebrate resulting in the Earth Cup 2018 final - estimated viewing figures: 900 million Evidence of Fortnite fandom one of the planets biggest stages is no freak accident - the game boasts no small amount of celebrity fans (including Griezmann's France teammate Adil Rami, that said to be playing Fortnite naked over the World Cup, after a few boisterous teammates broke into, threatening to increase his furniture. Rami defended himself with a passion extinguisher…leading to an flight from the hotel). The confrontation pass rewards are bad In Fortnite's latest season , you can dress like a shapeshifting ninja or even an anthropomorphic banana. In Top, you're remained mostly with drab camouflage character skins and common weapon wraps. The only unlockable items special on the game, like the banner badges and showy finisher collections, are not often seen, getting them less desirable. Respawn gone to alleviate the issue with the release of their Fortnite-like battle pass, which reports a turn system based on experience spots that rewards you for instance spent playing. Unlike Fortnite, however, there are no weekly or seasonal problems that form activities to do outside of murdering other participants. To means that casual fans, those bad sufficient to help gain matches with regularity, are laid playing against an ever-improving player bottom with small incentive to keep follow in. If you do possess a gaming PC with more advanced items and hardware, the suggested processor is an Intel Core i5 to make sure the game could function smoothly. You need a graphics card in the form of also a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 or an AMD Radeon HD 7870 to show off the full graphical abilities in the sport. With these requirements or higher, the MACHINE should have absolutely no problem rendering from the famous plan with many it is assets and participant models. A major part of the gameplay mechanics in Fortnite is the place gets minor and faithful here on the randomly generated point because game goes about. This means the game doesn't have to weight and development several things as it goes by (provided you're good enough to get that further!) making the game run smoothly. Additionally, that activity has no AI in their primary game mode ‘Battle Royale' that, in turn, doesn't position because much tension on the COMPUTER. Besides these systems, there is no other legit fashion to generate free V-Bucks. Using hacks can not simply get you barred by Fortnite, a person can even have to deal with some legal trouble While these processes do expect you to make a purchase, Battle Royale setting is free. So unlike other sports which cost you to $60 then include micro-transactions, Fortnite Battle Royale sacrifices the first part. Among those situations, forum users dropped download tie for 'œcombo lists,' hundreds of thousands of experienced forward and code combinations for Netflix, Spotify, Dominos and other PayPal-linked services. They'd been extracted from further leaks , like the 400 million-user MySpace opening and also the 164,000-user LinkedIn breach. Those combinations, Marksman told me, are the pitch to cutting Fortnite accounts. If you understand little pot of violet goodness make sure people snaffle it up, quickly. It will make a substantial distinction toward your own Fortnite gameplay. The 50% shield buff lasts for the length of the match, but, because it is a shield buff, it will not defend you from a few damage types, like falling. What's more, you can stack two, increasing the starting max health and giving you a serious advantage. So that's V-bucks. V-bucks are the most versatile thing you can offer your Fortnite-er. If you want amazing to help wrap up, your best guess is the Deep Freeze Bundle , which includes a handful of cosmetics along with several V-Bucks and lets you to give a physical reason. A person really should certainly able to locate this about store shelves: essentially the entire intention of that point is that Epic can laid a real item with projections for stumped gifters to air up for the register. Feel free to indulge. Both Epic Online sport with Vraspir agreed on the long term injunction involving Fortnite that end Vraspir from dishonest in almost any way, condition, or create Down the road. In Fortnite, you take to help to or defend the building ineptitude with certain older model gunplay. Individuals are all of the Fortnite Fight Royale recommendations Now we have for you, but what exactly views do you could cover? It is a unabashed ownership of the insanely well-liked a hundred-player absolutely free-for-all on an at any time shrinking road construction, tweaked with Fortnite's representation of center producing and source pick which adds a new twist in the components. So here's the thing…most fathers are reducing how much the child plays Fortnite of course, they want their product to have a balanced healthy life with varied activities. But that sensible approach also slows the child's ability to level up, develop the great skins and accessories and other extra's that get a Battlepass gives them. That contest is designed to make you to play a LOT and devote money, which is why the machines of Fortnite get about 300 Million U.S dollars a month! And your child wants to play as much as possible.

[billehrman]

The Past May Not Be Prologue for The Future

We have been saying for some time now that we are living in a VUCA environment categorized by volatility, uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity. The past is most probably not an indicator of the change to come. It is unpredictable. Nothing showed it more than the market reaction on Friday when the yield curve inverted stoking fears of an upcoming recession.  Stock markets fell as bond yields plummeted. While inverted yield curves have been precursors of recessions many times in the past, we do not think that indicator will be reliable this time, at least not for the United States.

Let us re state that we remain concerned about the economic environment in Europe and, to a lesser degree, Japan but not the prospects for continued growth in the United States and China. In fact, we believe that the economies of the United States and China are bottoming out such that growth will accelerate for the remainder of 2019 into 2020 especially if trade deals are reached which are highly probable. The slowdown in Europe and Japan won’t really impact the current outlook in the U.S. and China all that much. One of the conclusions of last week’s blog was that the U.S. and China will be the engines of future global growth which is a necessity if growth is to improve in the Eurozone, Japan and also the Emerging Markets.

Where would you rather invest?

Clearly Europe is falling behind competitively and desperately needs trade, financial, tax and regulatory reforms. However, we do not see how the EU can effectively negotiate trade deals and set financial, tax/regulatory reforms that serves each member self-interests. Why do you think Brexit is occurring in the first place? Just look at the internal debates in France, Greece, Italy and Spain as other examples at the heart of the Eurozone’s problems. There is a battle in Europe between the “have” and “have not” nations. And it won’t end soon unless Germany relents, especially now, and lets countries increase spending, cut taxes and increase deficits to boost their local economies. Ironically, Germany has its own problems as exemplified by its March PMI which fell to 44.7 due to sharp declines in new orders, lower work backlogs and firings. The manufacturing PMI fell to a low not seen since the financial crisis. The all-important German car market is being hurt by weakening exports clearly impacted by global trade conflicts. The French PMI was no better falling to 48.7 in March with the manufacturers PMI below 50, too, penalized especially by weakness in exports.

Japan has somewhat better prospects than Europe as the government fully recognizes the problems and is doing all that it can to bolster growth but is constrained by its huge total debt to GNP. Broad weakness is evident by the March PMI remaining below 50 with real weakness in orders especially for exports. While we expect the government to postpone a hike in the retail tax rate in the fall, that won’t do anything to stimulate growth. Japan is in a box, badly needing the end of trade conflicts.

No surprise, therefore, that 10-year German and Japanese bond yields are hovering around zero having dropped beneath that barrier on Friday. Understand that there is not much more that the ECB and BOJ can do to stimulate growth at this point as monetary policies are as easy as they can be so there needs to be either major financial, tax and regulatory reforms or trade deals to rescue their economies.

Our financial markets reacted according to script on Friday looking in their rear-view mirror when 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yields fell beneath the 2-year treasury bond. (If you were a foreign investor, wouldn’t you be buying our debt with both hands, pushing our yields down but still well above their levels?) Inversion has been a reliable precursor to a recession, but we do not think so this time. Here is why.

First of all, the Fed has made a complete about turn since October becoming more concerned about an economic slowdown than virtually anything else. The only surprise to us in last week’s Fed decision was that the Fed expects to raise rates maybe only once in 2020. That’s right—2020! We had expected the Fed to be on hold hiking the funds rate for the rest of the year and for the portfolio runoff to end in 4 months or so. We were not far off the mark. Even though the Fed may not have reached their upside target funds rate, the current rate is high enough such that they can reduce rates just as much as they raised them if needed to bolster our economy. Europe and Japan cannot say that. There are tremendous benefits to our economy as rates go down beginning with business and consumer debt refinancing at lower interest rates therefore reducing annual costs boosting income. If we were so worried that higher rates would choke off the economy, then why don’t we think that lower rates could boost growth? It will! Yes, savers may earn less on their balances but only if/when the Fed lowers the funds rate. Housing, an interest sensitive sector of our economy has already begun to strengthen and we expect a strong spring selling season.

Second, the U.S. economy has added over 2 million jobs over the last year at higher hourly wage rates and there are over 7 million job opening waiting to be filled. We are confident that consumer spending which is over 63% of our GNP will remain strong.

Third, the U.S. will continue to benefit from Trump’s tax reform program enacted over a year ago. While we question whether the total package was fiscally responsible due to the large upfront deficits, it is without a doubt highly stimulative for the next few years. And we expect corporations to boost capital spending, especially for technology, due to the immediate write-off which will lead to higher productivity gains in future years. A huge plus for holding down future inflation while boosting profits.

Finally, there is regulatory relief which will continue to boost growth over the foreseeable future. We are therefore confident that the U.S. economy will continue to perform above average for the remainder of the year and may even do better once/if trade deals are reached.

We recognize that our trade balance will remain a drag on reported GNP but the primary reason is our domestic strength and weakness overseas.

We continue to believe that the U.S. economy will expand by over 2.4% in 2019 with the first quarter being the weakest. Next year could be even better once/if trade deals are reached. We also expect Trump do everything in his power to boost the economy prior to the Presidential election.

The other engine of global growth remains China. China is truly the economic wonder of the world sustaining growth well over 6% for a decade. Just the law of compounding should reduce its growth rate to around 6% in 2019. What country wouldn’t want that? The Chinese government reacted swiftly to slowing growth over the last six months by reducing financial capital ratios, flooding the system with liquidity, major infrastructure programs and sharp reductions in taxes for both businesses and individuals. We remain confident that China’s economy will accelerate for the rest of the year and will do even better if/when trade deals are reached.

The bottom line is that the two engines of global growth are doing quite well, thank you, so fears of any imminent downturn, let alone a recession in the U.S. due to the recent inverted yield curve are greatly exaggerated. The yield curve inverted due to explosive demand for our debt from abroad where rates are nonexistent. Past experiences from an inverted yield will not be prologue for the future, in our opinion.

Stay the course.

Our portfolios are comprised of great companies selling below intrinsic value. We own drug companies benefitting from new product introductions, rising margins and above average yields; capital goods and industrials growing 1.5X GNP with rising margins generating huge free cash flow; technology at a fair price to growth, including semis, with rising margins and huge free cash flow; cable companies with content generating huge cash flow; low cost industrial commodity companies generating huge free cash flow with well above market yields, housing related companies benefitting from lower interest rates and many special situations where internal developments will close the gap between current prices and intrinsic value.  Our portfolio sells at a multiple below the average of the S&P despite higher growth rates and a dividend yield above the 10-year treasury. We remain flat the dollar and own no bonds.

Remember to review all of the facts; pause, reflect and consider mindset shifts; analyze your asset mix with risk controls; do independent research and …

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman Paix et Prospérité LLC

[hempoilfrog1]

How You Can Make Money Online With CTFO CBD Oil Business

As the legalization of both recreational and medicinal cannabis sweeps across North America, the stigma around the consumption of cannabis, in all of its forms, and the purchasing of cannabis-related products like bongs, grinders, and rolling trays is waning as a result. As such, the cannabis market is expected to grow from USD $10.3 billion (2018) to 39.4 billion by 2023 according to Markets and Markets .

  Why? More and more individuals are speaking out about the amazing benefits that this plant has had for them, resulting in more products being bought and more opportunities arising for individuals to jump into the cannabis experience. One such opportunity is CTFO (Changing The Future Outcome), a free-to-join company that offers individuals interested in the CBD market, an accessible and affordable business opportunity that allows them to make money online through the buying and selling of CTFO certified products that are safe, reliable, and lab-tested. With this said, let’s take a look at how CTFO works as a business, how you can make money with them, and why it is the best option out there for making money from home.

  How Do You Become a Part Of CTFO?

Simply sign up through their website or through someone you know who already has an account and become an associate or customer. For those wanting to make money online with CTFO, join as an associate and enjoy a free website, training materials, and access to wholesale prices on products. No payment information is required to join as an associate since the business side of the company is free for all.

  How To Make Money Online With CTFO CBD Oil

  All CTFO associates qualify to receive a 20% payout commission on every customer or associate they refer into the company who purchases product. You automatically qualify for this 20% on all commission volumes for each qualifying week, without needing to purchase product yourself. If you choose to do so, you can use the compensation plan laid out below to max out how much commission you earn each week.

  What Does The Compensation Plan Look Like for CTFO Associates?

  For those who decide to become associates of CTFO, the compensation plan gives you four routes of access to income.

  1) Retail Commissions: to earn retail commissions, you must sell the product either through your online website or in-person to a customer. All products that are offered to you within your back-end office are given at a discounted wholesale price. The retail prices are about 30% higher than the wholesale price, meaning that if you sell in-person, you are going to make a higher commission than if you sell through your website. Now if you sign someone up through your website, you are still going to earn a commission, it’ll just be 20% of whatever the given commissionable volume is for that product. Regardless of what route you go, you’ll be earning a profit on every single product you sell.

  2) 5 Levels of Payment (Unilevel Pay): you receive a commission for every person you personally enroll as well as every person that they enroll. This goes down five levels deep with the first level paying you 20% commissions on commissionable volume, while levels two-five paying out 4% of each commission volume.

  3) Regenerating Matrix Pay: to put this simply, this is considered a separate downline which every single associate is placed into when they join. This is a 3×21 matrix, where each associate will have a maximum of three people under them. This matrix has 21 levels, of which levels 1-5 pays out 1%, 6-7 pays out 10% and 8-21 pays out another 1%. As you can see, teams that are relatively large can earn a nice chunk of residual income.

  4) Another part of the matrix comes in the form of profit sharing positions. These are automatically generated for you and provides you with the potential to earn additional income as every third referral creates a new matrix for you, with you at the top. Gaining a new position in the matrix is free and they pay you out based on your current rank. Keeping them is easy, as they come with no requirements.

  5) Infinity Bonus Pay: provides you with a percentage of your entire team’s commission volume. This percentage increases based on how high up you are ranked. The maximum amount earned is 19% of the total commissionable volume of your team which is divided up based on who is ranked in what position. To give an example of this, the “Top Gun Pool” and the associates who are ranked as “Top Gun” will receive a portion of the 6% of all commissionable volume generated at the end of each month.

  Why Is CTFO the Best Option for Making Money in the Cannabis Market?

  There are five major reasons why CTFO beats every single other option on the market for making money online. Not only is the income you make sustainable but you do not need to pass any ranks or hit any checkpoints to start receiving income. Beyond this, the company is free to join and you do not need to hit certain personal volume qualifications each month just to keep your rank within the company, meaning you will not lose out on access to the above compensation plan as you will never lose access to your downline. Here is a more in-depth look at these points.

  1) The Income Is Sustainable: new affiliates are going to enjoy a steady and sustainable income right off the hop and with hard work, may enjoy an explosion in growth but it won’t be wildly disproportionate to the number of sales you are making as the markup on products are not outrageous.

  2) The Compensation Plan Pays From The Start: for those who are new to this type of business and may not have a large contact list they can tap into, it can be hard to earn income in most MLM companies. With CTFO, this is not the case because you can earn a commission without ever buying the product; all you need is to get sign ups which can be done online through the free website CTFO provides. No cold-calling required!

  3) No Car Bonuses or Big Incentives: with CTFO, there are no big incentives to get you selling more, there are no car bonuses, and there are no qualifications that provide you with prizes. If you truly want to purchase a new vehicle, you can do so with the commissions you earn from the company. If you do though, it will come all from your own commissions and through your own decision to head on over to the car buying lot.

  4) No Payment Details Required to Join: it is completely free to join the company. You do not need to buy or pay for anything, including website hosting, advertising products, or training materials. Simply sign up with your personal information.

  5) Maintain Your Affiliate Rank Without Autoship or Monthly Purchases: one of the major issues with a lot of other companies is that they require you to have a certain personal, monthly purchase volume in order to maintain your rank within the company. This can range from a few hundred to a few thousands a month, while still requiring you to hit a specific monetary threshold to max out the compensation plan. Beyond this, some companies also require you to have autoship enabled.

  6) CTFO does none of this. You are not required to have autoship enabled but if you do, you will receive a 5% discount on the wholesale price. You will never lose your downline if you miss ordering for a month and there are two ways you can max out the compensation plan, either by purchasing $50 in product per month or have ten personally enrolled customers or affiliates that purchase a total of $50 a month in product.

  As you can tell, it’s very easy to hit this threshold and even if you don’t, you will still get 20% commissions on anyone who buys that you have personally signed up. As you can see, the potential for making money online with CTFO is massive and relatively easy to do. Simply join up and enjoy the automatic qualification of 20% commissions on all orders without the requirement to purchase anything yourself. Sign Up For Free Here 

  The post How You Can Make Money Online With CTFO CBD Oil Business appeared first on CTFO CBD.

from http://hempoilfrog.com/how-to-make-money-online-with-ctfo-cbd-oil/

[elchico-con-la-vergaparada-blog]

Become A Cell Phone Power User With These Ideas

Cell phones(vibration motor used in it) have become absolutely indispensable pieces of technology these days. Having moved far beyond just making phone calls, you can now surf the Web, take pictures, listen to music and sometimes even determine GPS coordinates. Keep reading this article to learn how to make the most of your cell phone.

Every few days restart your cell phone, especially if it's a smart phone. You may not realize it, but you're carrying around a miniature computer in your pocket. These computers eat up memory over time, and that can lead to poor performance. All you need to do is restart your cell phone to get memory back into play.

To extend the battery life of your cellphone, make sure that apps are not running in the background at all times. Some apps will continue to run unless you disable them, and this can drain your battery quickly. Check your settings to see what you need to do in order to turn these apps off and make your battery last longer.

Be sure to restart your cell phone every other day. This is especially important if you have a smartphone. Just as a computer, cell phones need to be restarted to fix glitches and purge memory. If you forget to restart it every other day, you may begin to experience problems.

Did you know that the battery in your cell phone has some reserved power? If you find that your cell phone battery is dead, and you have no way to charge it, enter the USSD "*3370#". You will see up to a 50% increase in power. This reserve power will charge the next time you charge your phone.

Haggle a bit when shopping for your next phone. You generally wouldn't expect haggling to work in a retail setting, but it is often effective in the case of buying a new cell phone. Try it for yourself. It can't hurt, and people often get between 50 and 100 dollars knocked off the price.

If you are buying a touch screen phone, make sure to play around with the touch screen in the store before making your purchase. Some screens are very intuitive, and others are more difficult to use. You want to make sure that your phone will function easily when you're on the go, and that won't be the case if your screen isn't touch sensitive enough.

If you are a newcomer to the world of cell phones, it really does pay to conduct an honest assessment of your needs. Not everyone needs or wants to use their phone as a a mini-computer, and therefore many can get by with a much simpler device. Paying attention to your true requirements can save you lots of money and hassle.

If your cell phone ever gets wet, turn it off immediately. Take it apart and remove the SIM card, battery and any other removable internal parts. Next, put it all into a bowl full of rice. Lave it overnight to allow the rice to dry it out thoroughly. Blow it out and it should work!

Know the cell phone laws in your state when it comes to driving. In many states, it's illegal to text on a cell phone and drive. Even if it's technically legal in your state, it's still not a good idea. Many accidents occur due to text messaging. If you must communicate, call using a hands-free device or pull off the road to text.

A screen protector may not be necessary. The latest screens generally have a protective layer already included. A screen protector may make it difficult for you to see your screen or even make it harder for you to touch and interact with your device. Therefore, when buying your phone, ask about the screen and how it was made to determine if additional protection is necessary.

Make sure your plan is the right one for you. There are many, many plans when it comes to cell phones and it is important that you get the one that best fits your needs. For instance, if you text a lot, make sure your plan covers this or you could be left paying a lot of overage.

Be sure to analyze the coverage map ahead of going away. You are probably familiar with areas that have a good signal close to home. You might have a strong signal most of the time. However, you might find out that you won't get coverage in the area you're going to.

If you tend to use a lot of data with your cell phone, look for cell phone browsers that compress data usage. One that does this is Google's mobile Chrome browser. Surfing using Chrome can lower your total data usage by 10% to 20% easily. This can save you money month after month. Eccentric Rotating Mass Vibration Motor

Consider getting your smartphone through a prepaid carrier. For example, Cricket offers the iPhone 5, and customers that switch over to them often save as much as $20 every month. Some even save more. Keep in mind that the phone itself will be expensive. The savings, therefore, come in over time.

As mentioned earlier, many cell phones now do far more than just making phone calls. You can browse the Web, click pictures and take your favorite tunes with you wherever you want, depending on your make and model. To get the most from your cell phone, use the ideas presented within this article.

[nickgerlich]

Spin To Win

Business historians will no doubt pontificate and ruminate long into the future over how companies dealt with COVID. There were some amazing success stories, tales of companies being in the right place at the right time, in line with a perfect storm. Supermarkets were certainly chief among them.

And then there were failures, companies in the wrong place at the wrong time. Caught flat-footed without the ability and/or desire to pivot on a dime, they died a quick death. Restaurants that could not convert to curbside pickup or delivery were prime examples.

But there is also the one company that experienced meteoric success, only to become the biggest flame-out of the pandemic, and maybe even the century thus far: Peloton.

Its stock price soared as sales went through the roof. People sheltering in place bought sporting goods to help pass the time, and Peloton worked perfectly. But then as we emerged from our cocoons, sales plummeted, and so did their stock price. They teetered on extinction. Their CEO left last February, no doubt embarrassed the company did so well—and so poorly—under his watch.

Barry McCarthy was brought in as the new CEO, bringing with him experience at Spotify and Netflix. He quickly changed directions for the company, which had previously been perfectly integrated, from manufacture to marketing to retailing. He shuttered a bunch of stores, and outsourced manufacturing, while at the same time refocusing on a subscription model for workouts and user interaction.

And now comes word that Peloton has inked a deal with Amazon to sell its base model bike ($1445) and the Peloton Guide strength builder ($295). Turns out that Peloton is not dead yet, and the new CEO pretty smart, because research shows there are about a half million searches each month on Amazon for Peloton products. And until now, they were not even available there.

In other words, demand may be building again.

The money, though, is in the All-Access Membership, which is $44 a month. Even with outsourcing manufacturing and selling through middlemen, which will definitely reduce front-end risk for Peloton, a recurring membership is a steady revenue stream. Can anyone say mean and lean? Because that’s what Peloton is trying to be, just like the aspirational physique it is selling to users.

Stir in commitment-free rental agreements and even a one-month trial, and it appears that Peloton is getting serious about leading the pack again. The company is lucky to still be alive, and these moves show it has solid leadership.

The only problem for me is that indoor training is self-torture. I only use my indoor bike trainer when it is absolutely, positively lousy outside. I guess I am lucky to live in a place where snow is rare, and most winter days are in the 50s, which is actually delightful cycling weather. But if you live in Minnesota and couldn’t be bothered with cross-country skiing for your off-season fitness, maybe Peloton is indeed the way to go.

But it is the Amazon deal that is best, because Peloton has effectively put its products in front of a very qualified demographic. The hints of added Amazon Prime benefits for those who buy the bike are just pure sugar. Imagine, if you will, being a Prime member and getting access to Peloton’s workout software as a benefit.

Now you’re talking, and I might be persuaded, regardless of sunshine and 55.

And maybe in a few years, those same business historians will be able to say that Peloton not only went from stock market darling to whipping boy, but also engineered a rebound of epic proportions. Keep peddling while you pedal, guys. You might just get to the top of this next mountain.

Dr “Will It Go ‘Round In Circles?” Gerlich



Audio Blog

[burnouts3s3]

Bully, a game review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 14.99 USD How much I paid: 36 USD (10 for the PS3 version and 15 for the Steam Version and 11 for the PS4 version while it was on sale). Rated: T for Teen How long I played: 10 Hours on PC while 2 hours on the PS4 version. Microtransactions: None! What I played on: PS3, PS4 and PC Performance Issues: Bully might be one of my favorite games and it might be one of the WORST PORTS EVER! Holy Shit! If the PS3 version isn’t bogged down with glacial framerates, it has pixelated graphics which are not done service on HD. (The PS3/PS4 versions are merely upscaled and have not been updated). The PS4 version runs much better with no crashes, but has been upscaled rather than remastered. The PC version, while looking better, constantly crashes and will inevitably result in lost progress as you must save manually at specific locations. And of course, that cursed plague returns, as Bully’s PC version is locked at 30 frames per second. My Personal Biases: Bully was one of my favorite games growing up during the PS2 era. So, I’ll probably be biased toward this game. CAVEAT: Bully comes in 2 versions: The original game and the Scholarship edition. The Scholarship edition contains all the content from the original game and adds features such as additional classes/mini-games, more outfits and extra story missions not found in the base game. I believe the anniversary edition is the same as the Scholarship edition only it’s released for mobile phones. (I could be wrong) Please be aware which version you’re getting. My Verdict: There’s no denying that Bully is at times juvenile, immature, naughty and that favorite word, problematic. But, if you can look past the surface, you can see, much like the protagonist Jimmy Hopkins, there’s much more underneath the surface. Buy it! Bully, a game review

"So here I am, at probably the worst school in the country, whose alumni are nothing but arms dealers, serial killers, and corporate lawyers. Real scum. And that old creep thinks he can tame me? We shall see, my friend. I only give people what they have coming to them." — Jimmy Hopkins I don’t know how I can describe Bully in a way that fascinates me and makes it so near and dear in my heart. I was never really a Grand Theft Auto fan. Even, when I was old enough to legally play the game, I always felt detached from the main characters. It wasn’t until GTA IV came out that I really fell in love with the story, only for GTA V to come out and make things go back the way they were. Bully was released during a controversial period in the United States. When Jack Thompson was legislating heavily against game developers and video games violence, Rockstar was releasing Bully, a kid version of Grand Theft Auto. Early footage shown at E3 showed the protagonist doing heinous crimes like giving other kids wedgies, putting a kid’s head in the toilet and defying authority. Parent groups were outraged and a debate occurred whether the game went too far. The end result? Probably one of my favorite games of all time. Jimmy Hopkins is a 15 year old delinquent being sent away by his cold-hearted, gold digging mother and her fifth husband. Jimmy, having been expelled from multiple schools faces his last chance at the boarding school of Bullworth Academy. After he’s dropped off, he soon meets Gary Smith, an intelligent student who might not have the best of intentions, and Pete Kowalski, a shy boy who can’t even make friends with the geeks. Jimmy plans to get the bullies off his back and rule the school by taking out the Bullworth Cliques, the nerds, the Preps, the Greasers and the Jocks. But as Jimmy helps his fellow students (and a dysfunctional staff member or two), he learns that Gary doesn’t have his best interests in mind. What’s interesting about Bully is that Jimmy, unless dictated by the player, isn’t usually inclined to cause harm. Rather, he attempts to get payback from the various cliques who do cross his paths. (There’s been a long standing rumor that says that Bully changed its story and premise after the reaction from E3, changing Jimmy from a villain protagonist to more of an anti-hero). A lot of the criticism the game received was how small the world was and how limited Jimmy’s actions are, compared to the ground breaking Grand Theft Auto 3. Jimmy won’t be able to steal cars or kill any NPC’s. Instead, he can commit petty crimes such as shooting people with his slingshot, tagging on walls or pranking people he comes across. The delinquency meter shows the various amounts of trouble Jimmy can get into. Should he commit minor crimes such as being out of uniform or ditching class, he’ll be in minor trouble. But, violence against students, disrespecting authority or trespassing into the girl’s dormitory will send the local authorities (Prefects and teachers while in school, police officers out of school) after him. If Jimmy gets caught, he’ll be sent to the Principal’s office. Detention consists of mini-games such as using the school mower to mow lawns. But, there’s a benefit to attending class. Should you go to class, you’ll be treated to a mini-game. Completing a course will earn you benefits in the outside game world. For example, passing chemistry class allows you to make have a chem set in your room where you can create ‘weapons’ such as firecrackers, while going to English Class helps you apologize to authority figures for committing various crimes. My favorite is Art Class, where in the bonus is being able to get an extra bar of health when kissing girls. Should Jimmy complete all of his coursework (that is to say, finish all 5 difficulty levels of the mini-games), he’ll be excused from class be given free time. But it’s not all schoolwork and Frenching cheerleaders. There’s a variety of mini-games in the world such as Boxing, bike races, Carnival Games and of course, a huge number of collectables found throughout the game. If Jimmy’s strapped for cash, he can always take up a paper route. The strangest thing about Bully is that it’s a very small game. Even games like Grand Theft Auto III had a variety of environments and locations to explore with its small size. But Bullworth Acadmey and the town of Bullworth are small to explore. It creates a sense of intimacy. I can’t get lost in the world of Bullworth but I can become so intimate that the NPCs become familiar to me. That’s something special a lot of games don’t do. I’d rather have the familiarity of Bully over the vastness and at times emptiness of the Grand Theft Auto games, especially the modern ones. I should mention that the composer for the game, Shawn Lee, gave some of the most memorable music I’ve heard this side of some of the best soundtracks. Where Grand Theft Auto had licensed songs from various artists, Bully only has an original soundtrack, but it’s so alive and varied that I caught myself listening to it again and again.

Tying it all together is Gerry Rosenthal as Jimmy. While it’s great to hear familiar voice actors, such as Martin Mull as the Headmaster, Rosenthal’s performance just manages to combine that weird teenage angst that makes the main character so relatable. Kudos to him. What really sold me was the story. I surprisingly found myself relating to Jimmy’s struggle to get through his school days and how he acts and reacts to the world around him. While Jimmy is no saint or perfect student, it does show that the world Jimmy inhabits is a flawed, corrupt and outright dirty society. All the cliques that Jimmy faces, whether it’d be the classist preppies, the posturing Greasers or the testosterone-filled Jocks, are shown to be bullies but in different ways. Meanwhile most of the adults and authority figures are two faced hypocrites. When Jimmy sees his gym teacher trying to sneak dirty magazines out of a pornography store, it becomes apparent why Jimmy doesn’t have any respect for authority. At the same time, I found certain NPCs not only memorable but also rather likable. There’s something about Jimmy helping out the strange homeless man in the Junkyard or spitting food with Edna, the lunch lady, that brings a smile to my face. So while the game holds up in terms of mechanic and I still find the characters and story charming, it pains me to say this has some of the worst ports to date. The PC version constantly crashes. I don’t know who was responsible for it, but given the number of crashes I experienced (as well as the frustration having to save your progress manually), I nearly broke my screen in frustration. Worse yet, Bully is locked at 30 Frames Per Second. The PS4 remastered version is more playable, but only features the vanilla version of the game. Closing thoughts: There’s a lot to say about bullying, the role of bullies and how our society now views bullies. And while I can’t comment on Jimmy’s reactions to the various groups of the schools will look like 50 years from now, I will say I had a blast firing my slingshot, riding my bike and getting into as much trouble with Jimmy Hopkins. It’s not what a game is about, it’s how it’s about it. Verdict: As long as you don’t get the PC Version, go buy it!