#i think people should promote and contribute to fundraisers instead

[weedle-testaburger]

i have no idea how people manage to watch Political Content on youtube bc i can't stand shoutboxes of people going 'LOOK AT THIS AWFUL SHIT WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING' and doing nothing except continuing to shout about it

[chasingshhadows]

so I haven’t used this blog regularly for like, personal updates in many years, but I’m feeling energized atm.

So as some of you might have seen, I’ve been fostering kittens throughout the pandemic because I’m working from home indefinitely (bless having an international and science-based employer). They are fucking adorable and a lot of work but so worth it. I was having a super shitty day Wednesday and I just went and sat on the floor of my living room with them for like an hour. They’re 6 weeks old right now and an absolute joy 🥰 (If you wanna see pics/videos, I post all my kitty-related stuff to @chasingkittehs on Insta).

I’m still working and have been lucky enough to not only stay employed during this time, but elevate myself at work. I recently discovered that my division plans to promote me by the end of the year without my having asked for it, which is so fucking validating. I love this job and my team and the work we do - I work at a large international environmental and conservation nonprofit. It builds on my skills and knowledge from my previous work at fundraising vendors so I actually contribute to strategy and our team direction. 

I met a great guy. Idk what compelled me to try dating during a global pandemic, but I’m glad I did bc this guy is pretty fucking great and is nerdy and progressive and his friends are all super cool. We have a great time and he’s been really supportive through everything going on. And he’s on Tumblr, bc all the best people are here 😉 @slytherinlord223 (feel free to judge the url, I did 😜 tho it should be stated he’s had the account and url since he was 16 and what cishet white guy didn’t think himself a lord at 16?)

After a very long process and a lot of stress, I was able to get assessed and diagnosed with ADHD. Tbh, I have Tumblr and @redbirdblogs and @irolltwenties to thank for opening my eyes to the possibility. I’ve been seeing adhd-experience posts for years and always have this moment of “wow that’s me - oh wait, that’s for adhd, nevermind”. And over the last year I started reading those posts through new eyes and started seeing myself in them. The report was 15 pages of very thorough testing and qualitative analysis and I’m still processing it all, but it’s just... so fucking validating. I’ve spent years wondering why I can’t just do things and why my spaces are always a mess because I was taught that women are housekeepers and why I can never finish anything or just fucking focus and I’d been convinced I was just stupid and lazy and dysfunctional and gahhh this just. It’s not my fault. I was working at a deficit I didn’t know existed for 28 years and now that I actually understand how my brain works, I can start to adapt and work with my brain instead of against it. And now I can go back to my psychiatrist with verified clinical results to get the treatment I need. So. *deep breath* I feel really good right now. 

I haven’t been as engaged/active in fandom the last several months due to the fostering and my guy and just the overall stress of the pandemic leaving me pretty unmotivated to do anything but sit and watch TV. But I’ve been obsessing over Hamilton and The Old Guard of late, I’m still utterly in love with RNM and Teen Wolf, and now I’ve been diving into the world of Critical Role (it’s nice to finally get all the references here haha). I’m absorbing a lot of content across the board and would always love to talk about anything, just haven’t been spending as much time on my laptop for fic writing and giffing. I’ll be back tho - I always am 😘💜

So anyway. I love you all. I miss my mutuals and I hope everyone is doing well and thriving and can’t wait to catch up on everyone’s creations and flails. And I adore every name that pops up in my activity feed and seeing some of my old posts pop up lately has been really sweet 😊

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES & STUDIES, August 19, 2020

Welcome to my latest summary of recent ecommerce news, resources & studies including search, analytics, content marketing, social media & Etsy! This covers articles, podcasts, videos and infographics I came across since the late July report, although some may be older than that.

Please note I am taking the next week off, starting tomorrow (Aug. 19), so I might be a little slow in replying to any comments. 

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

USPS has become the focus of investigations due to reported mail slowdowns. Some small businesses who rely on USPS to deliver are suffering. “The longer the policy has been in effect, the worse the backlog gets.” As of today (August 18), the postmaster says they will rollback the changes until after the election in November. This is a rapidly-moving story in part due to the push for voting by mail, and should concern anyone who ships to US customers using regular mail (as opposed to couriers). Meanwhile, they plan to temporarily raise commercial rates during the holiday shopping season, but retail rates will not change. 

Ecommerce sales are still up year over year. "Before Covid-19 hit the US in March, e-commerce made up roughly 12% of retail sales in the country. That figure grew as states issued shelter-in-place orders that shut stores and kept shoppers at home, creating tailwinds for a company like Amazon. But even as states have begun to reopen, e-commerce has remained elevated, according to Bank of America data."..."The Economist used Google search traffic for hints of how lifestyles are changing and found users are still searching terms related to cooking, crafts, and exercise above pre-pandemic rates. There has been a noticeable spike in interest around such products as gardening supplies, baking flour, and Crocs." The UK is still seeing a good increase despite the ease in reduction in lockdown restrictions. The growth is slowing a bit in the US, though. 

Half of US small businesses fail in the first year (and other stats on small business). 

It’s been second quarter report season, covering company performance from April to June 2020.  Here are results for major companies involved in ecommerce in some way (comparisons are year-over-year):

Amazon US: sales up 40%

eBay: sales up 26%

Etsy: sales up $146% [click the link to read my summary]

Facebook: revenue up 11%

Google: revenue down 2%

PayPal: revenue up 22%

Pinterest: revenue up 4%; active users up 39%

Shopify: revenue up 97%

Walmart [2nd quarter ran May to July]: ecommerce sales up 97%, same-store sales up 9.3%

ETSY NEWS 

Admin are now posting a monthly update thread, in case you fear you have missed anything. This is how they chose to announce that non-seller accounts can no longer post in the forum. Since those account owners can still read the forum, that doesn’t mean you can call out your customers now. 

Sadly, there wasn’t much media coverage of Etsy’s nearly-annual billing screw up, but this one did get some attention. 

Etsy continues to get good media coverage for masks, including masks for your dolls. They also apparently got a decent slice of Google ranking for various pandemic-related searches in May [scroll down to the “Protection and Prevention” section]. 

However, Etsy is getting some bad press (along with Amazon), for allowing QAnon merchandise, because “the FBI has warned of the movement's potential to incite domestic terrorism.” Etsy replied to a request for comment saying that “that product listings associated with certain movements are allowed as long as they don't violate the company's seller or prohibited items policies, which ban items that promote hate or that could incite violence. The company said it is continually reviewing items on the site and could remove items in the future if they're found to violate Etsy's policies.”

More search trends on Etsy, this time kids’ items. I love how they think tie-dye was a ‘90s thing and not a ‘60-70s thing LOL. “a 318% increase in searches for kids tie-dye items...71% increase in searches for dinosaur wall art or decor*, and a 37% increase in searches for school of fish items….we’ve seen kid-friendly crafts spike in popularity, with searches for DIY kits for kids up 336%.”

Also, the holiday trends guide is out. “With the holidays approaching, and most shopping happening online, more shoppers will be looking for your help to make the season feel special.” The report is lengthy, covering Halloween to New Year’s, and most listing categories, while pointing out the possible pandemic changes to the usual trends. There is also an accompanying podcast with transcript. 

Speaking of the holiday season, here are Etsy’s tips for shops. Note that it is a bit late, as businesses need to have their holiday items posted no later than July if they want to be eligible for most fall media coverage. Almost every point refers to an Etsy tool or feature, some of them costing you money, so use this as a very broad guideline & be careful to read between the lines. 

They are still rolling out Etsy Payments to more countries: Morocco & Israel are the most recent. Note that Etsy Payments is not yet compulsory in these new countries. 

Etsy Ads once again has graphs. Do you find them useful? (I haven’t run ads at all this year, so I can’t check.)

Sendle is the latest shipping company to have a label integration with Etsy shops. 

Etsy asked US sellers to lobby their reps for more support for small business and other initiatives in the pandemic aid package.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google has stated that content on tabs is indexed and contributes to ranking as if it were on the page instead, but yet another test demonstrates that tabs may limit you. 

Due to the pandemic, Google has delayed finalizing mobile-first indexing until March 2021. (They originally announced it would be finished this September.) That means you have more time to update your website’s mobile version, ideally with responsive design. 

Site speed does matter to SEO, and Google is now asking some searchers how fast certain sites loaded for them. 

User comments on your products, blog posts and website can help you improve your SEO. The article suggests ways of getting that feedback, and ways to use it. [I’ve even had buyers give me new keywords to describe my items, in their messages and reviews.]

Getting links back to your site is important to SEO, but don’t annoy people while doing it. [sort of humour & sort of a rant, but does give some useful background on why backlinks matter.] Internal links also matter. 

There are some special tricks for food/recipe SEO, including structured data and even a WordPress plugin. 

Another WordPress plugin: submit any new or updated pages to Bing to be automatically re/indexed.

Do your keyword research before setting up your website’s sections and sub-sections, as they should serve the buyer experience, not your perception of it. Same with choosing which pages link to each other. 

SEOs are still trying to work out what happened with recent Google algorithm changes. Search Engine Journal claims that the May update was at least in part about demoting sites that had out-of-date or inaccurate information, so they suggest getting rid of the bad content on your site, or at least updating it. “Content pruning” has some advocates, but I wouldn’t worry about investing tons of time in this unless you have tons of time to spend. Just get rid of the blog posts that were wildly wrong, and the out-of-date filler. If you have a lot of sold out products, redirect those to relevant active pages. 

Meanwhile, a “glitch” on August 10 led people to think there was a massive Google algorithm update happening, but it all got fixed in less than a day. 

If you are behind on Google search news, here is a 7 minute video [with time stamped subtopics & resources links listed below], direct from Google. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA (includes blogging & emails) 

It’s tough to get started in social media if you don’t know the terminology, so here’s a list of the basic definitions you can consult if you get lost when reading.  

Don’t know how to blog? There are formulas you can use; here are eight options, nicely laid out, with downloadable templates. Don’t forget to figure out what your audience wants to read. And make sure you avoid these common blogging mistakes. 

If you have an email list but do not know how to take advantage of all the bells & whistles the companies (MailChimp, Constant Contact etc.) offer you, here are 4 ways to segment your lists. You can then send different offers or newsletters to different segments. 

You can optimize your social posts for people with visual impairments; excellent tips here. 

By the time you read this, the TikTok mess will likely have changed again, but here is an article on Trump’s order to prohibit US companies from doing business with TikTok owner ByteDance if the platform is not sold by September 15. 

Instagram has released its TikTok challenger, Reels, in more countries. 

Instagram is now offering a fundraising option, although it is a slow launch with some beta testing in the US, UK & Ireland to start. 

Here are step-by-step instructions on setting up your “Shop on Instagram.”

Pinterest says that searches around self-care & wellness have spiked during the pandemic lockdowns. “Pinterest has recently seen the highest searches ever around mental wellness ideas including meditation (+44%), gratitude (+60%) and positivity (+42%) that jumped from February to May….Pinterest says that searches for ‘starting a new business’ are up 35% on average, as are searches for ‘future life goals’ (2x), ‘life bucket list’ (+65%), ‘family goals future’ (+30%) and ‘future house goals’ (+78%).” There were also some searches clearly about spending more time at home: “Productive morning routine (up 6x), Exercise routine at home (up 12x), Self care night routine (up 7x)”

LinkedIn has a new algorithm; here’s how to make it work for you. [Many of these tips also apply to social media in general.]

Spotify is now doing “video podcasts”. Apparently a lot of their podcasters already did a video version of the Spotify podcasts, but had to publish it elsewhere up until now. 

Twitter now admits it is considering offering subscriptions to shore up its revenue numbers. “Shares of Twitter rose 4% in early trading Thursday following the earnings results....Twitter's growth plans are under close scrutiny as many advertisers pull back due to the pandemic. On Thursday, Twitter reported second-quarter ad revenues of $562 million, a 23% decrease compared to the same quarter a year ago. The company has also been hit by advertisers participating in an ad boycott of social media, linked to the nationwide racial justice protests.” Also, the recent hack is not helping them. 

That said, it is still possible to market using Twitter, and here are some of the basics. 

YouTube is no longer sending email updates when a channel you follow posts new content. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (SEARCH ENGINES, SOCIAL MEDIA, & OTHERS) 

Ad spend has increased again as lockdowns end, in some cases beating last year by a decent margin. 

The Buy on Google program is ending its commission fees. Participants will also be able to integrate their PayPal and/or Shopify payment options. As often is the case, they are starting with the US first, but plan on rolling it out to more countries in the future. There are more details here, and a review here (with some of the drawbacks). 

Google Product Ads are now showing the item’s “material” on the listing card (before you click). If you are doing your own feed for your website, you may have the ability to add the attributes needed for the details to show up.  

If you find Google Ads too expensive, consider buying search ads on Bing. 

eBay is experimenting with showing ads mixed in with unpaid listings; placement would depend on the same algorithm. 

Here’s a new guide to Facebook Ads [videos & text]

STATS, DATA, OTHER TRACKING 

Bing has launched a new version of Webmaster Tools. 

There are ways to reduce the amount of traffic that Google Analytics designates as “direct traffic”; here are 15 of them. 

Currently in closed beta testing, the Google Search Console now has an “Insights” function, just like Google Analytics. I’ve found the GA one useful for telling me things I don’t always look at, so crossing my fingers that they release this to everyone soon. 

 ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS 

Shopify helped many businesses stay open during pandemic lockdowns, giving it the boost to start competing with the likes of Amazon in ecommerce. “Shopify merchants that had previously or entirely relied on brick-and-mortar sales would later report they were able revive nearly 95% of that revenue online.”

eBay started rolling out its Managed Payments system to more sellers worldwide on July 20th. Things seem to be going slowly, with some confusion. 

But eBay is also having a 25th anniversary party for sellers on September 25th; don’t forget to register. 

Walmart is still delaying its new subscription model to challenge Amazon Prime, Walmart+. 

Amazon in the UK has launched a “Face mask store” part of the website. I haven’t seen this on other versions of Amazon. They’ve also increased some fees for some UK sellers, based on the new UK digital tax. And they are launching a site & presence in Sweden. 

The Competition Bureau of Canada has launched an investigation of Amazon’s treatment of third-party sellers. “The bureau is asking any person or business that has conducted sales via Amazon.ca to contact them if they have any insights into the issues it is investigating.“

Amazon Prime Day has been postponed to later dates this year, starting with India on August 6-7. The remaining countries will apparently be announced soon. 

If you use WooCommerce, here are a bunch of free plugins, with brief descriptions. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER STUDIES, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

Buyers do not all make purchase decisions the same way; Google uses its massive collection of data and some new studies to provide some examples. “Worldwide, search interest for “best” has far outpaced search interest for “cheap.”

It’s cheaper to keep repeat buyers than it is to find new ones; here are 16 ways to do that. One of my favourites is ““proactively providing information on how to avoid problems or get more out of your product” creates a 32% average lift to repurchase or recommend.”

It seems that researchers can never produce enough marketing guides on Gen Z and millennials. 

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

I see a lot of new sellers, and some older sellers, confused about the idea of a business plan. HubSpot not only explains them, but also provides a downloadable template. 

If you are thinking of changing careers, or just want to add skills to better run your current business, Google has many different courses, some of which they offer for free. 

There are ways you can increase your productivity without (usually) working more hours. “A study published by John Pencavel of Standford University found that how much employees get done takes a sharp drop after 50 hours of work in a week, and even more drastically after 55 hours. The study found that employees working 70 hours per week actually produce nothing more in those extra 15 hours...taking a power nap in the middle of the day can help you process new information and even learn new skills.”

[hercycleface]

Global inventory of wonderful beer: What I drink is not wine, but creativity!

Isn't beer just yeast, barley, water and hops? Well, it's also right and wrong-for some beer, this statement is simply wrong. The brains of the beer brewer are too big, and sometimes the brewed beer-how to put it-is quite "interesting". The following wonderful beers are the best examples.

Collagen beer Speaking of weirdness, the Japanese definitely do their part. Suntory launched a collagen beer called Precious, which is said to remove wrinkles left by the years and make you look young and invincible. This 5-degree Talrag comes in 330ml cans and contains 2 grams of collagen per can.

Cat Shit Beer You must have heard of the famous cat feces coffee: a civet living in the tropics eats coffee cherries and is discharged from the other side of the body. The action of stomach acid can make coffee beans produce a different flavor. Beer Geek Brunch Weasel from Megele is a breakfast Shitao with an alcohol level of 10.9-be careful, the wine is full of strength.

Bloody (Mary) Beer Well, strictly speaking, it is not based on Bloody Mary, a good brunch partner. However, Short's Brewing Company of Bel Air, Michigan does use cherry tomatoes in its Bloody Beer, as well as black pepper and celery. Rapeseed, wasabi, and dill, so it’s similar to Bloody Mary. This "Cool Beer from Bel Air" has long been discontinued, with an alcohol content of 7, and an international bitterness index of 40.

Fossil beer The Lost Rhino Brewery in Virginia and PaleoQuest, a non-profit organization that promotes the excavation of dinosaur fossils rather than food trends, have teamed up to create a beer that will attract attention to science. They collected yeast from whale fossils 35 million years ago and made a 5.5-degree beer named Bone Dusters Amber Ale. Cool! It's a pity that the yeast is not collected from the fossils of the long extinct rhino or Tyrannosaurus.

Sheep dung beer After reading this list, you will find that Icelandic brewers really have a lot of free time and a whimsical spirit of adventure. The Borg Brugghus brewery is a good example: due to lack of wood, they lighted the sheep dung pile to smoke and roast the malt when making Fenrir Nr26. American IPA smoked and roasted with sheep dung, alcohol content 6, and international bitterness index 63.

Beer older than whale fossils Fossil Fuels Brewing Co has a product called AY108, which uses yeast found in bee fossils. This bee was wrapped in pine resin and turned into amber in the Eocene Eocene 45 million years ago (is it so shocking that it can’t close its mouth?). Professor Raul Cano figured out how to separate the yeast from above, and then wondered how to make the best use of it. Finally, he chose to brew beer instead of bread. The first result is this Dan Aier named after yeast, and there is also a Saisen.

Beer made with money The evil twins collaborated with the Norwegian craft brewer Lervig Aktiebryggeri in the port of Stavanger. The raw material is real banknotes. What's even more exaggerated is that they threw some frozen pizza into it. The alcohol content is 17.5 degrees.

Heavy beer from the toilet The Danish government and Norrebro Bryghus brewery are really fighting for environmental protection, and they even have the idea of ​​urinating. They recovered a large amount of urine from the famous Roskilde Music Festival and used it to brew a Pearson called Pisner. Do you want to contribute to the cause of sustainable development? Then taste the piss of these hippies.

Colorful beer Abashiri Brewery in Hokkaido, Japan uses seaweed and other natural ingredients to brew red, blue and green beer. They also used beer and excess milk to produce a malt drink called Bilk. Apart from other things, at least it is colorful.

Beer made from sewage The sewage in the sewer sounds as disgusting as dirty waste oil. I'm afraid no one can drink anything made of it. The Jushi Brewery in San Diego brewed an IPA using recycled water provided by the city's water purification project. This Dan Air, called Full Circle, is limited to five barrels, but it may indicate the future of beer brewing.

Roald Dahl Beer Yeast is ubiquitous and can be collected everywhere, so why not collect some yeast from the custom desk of the late children's literature writer Roald Dahl? London creative company Bompas & Parr entrusted this task to 40FT Brewery to brew Odious Ale for a pop-up restaurant based on Dahl's "Stupid Couple".

Beer from the moon Dogfish Head Brewery is keen to challenge the limit, but often thinks too crazy and circumvents itself in, but the time when they ventured into space may be their most rebellious exploration so far. With the help of the company that makes spacesuits for NASA, they got some dust on the moon, which was taken from NASA where the moon landed on the moon—well, no more obscurations, it’s on the moon— —Collected, and then spilled into this limited edition beer called Oktoberfest. Alcohol 5, International Bitterness Index 25.

Elephant Poop Beer The Japanese brewery Sankt Gallen wanted to brew a beer that will be unforgettable, so he thought of elephant poo. How does it work? They fed coffee cherries to elephants living in Thailand’s wildlife sanctuary, and then brewed a "chocolate shitao" called Un, Koon Kuro (a pun for "poop" in Japanese) from elephant dung coffee beans. It was also selected for sale on April Fool's Day, but this is not a joke.

Beer as dark as ink Cuttlefish juice—or more precisely the juice of cuttlefish, squid and octopus, or the juice of cephalopods—can be said to be everywhere now, so you can’t help thinking that these animals are scared when they face the extinction of humans. What is it like? Anyway, the master brewer of 3 Sheeps in Wisconsin created a black IPA called Nimble Lips Noble Tongue No3, using cuttlefish juice.

Too private beer We are all adults, but the Internet will always surprise us head-on, especially when you see a page on the crowdfunding website Indiegogo for the world’s first vaginal beer fundraising-this one is called Bottled Instinct's acid ale uses lactic acid extracted from a Czech model. We don't know if anyone will drink it, because this project has not even raised 1% of the final goal of 150,000 euros, and it should be a joke on April Fools' Day at all? Otherwise, it really makes people get goosebumps.

16. Add a whole chicken to beer

Over the years, the rooster Al almost cast a layer of mystery. It is said that it was very popular in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. In fact, it is an ordinary Al, but a whole rooster was added during the brewing process. Hand Pulled Cock Ale from Willimantic Brewing Co in Connecticut-7% alcohol, only available in barrels-is a modern version of Cock Ale, but its name still implies that old joke (you got it).

Fried chicken beer As the song in "Grease" sings, fried chicken and beer are good partners, so why not add some chicken to the beer? Veil Brewing Co of Richmond, Virginia, and the evil twins teamed up to brew chicken beer. Their Fried Fried Chicken Chicken DIPA uses a lot of Fried Chicken Nuggets.

Sheep brain beer Philadelphia's Dock Street Brewing Company brewed Dock Street Walker to pay tribute to "The Walking Dead," but it was more terrifying than zombies, using smoked lamb brains. This American Pale Shitao is 7.2 degrees, and cranberries are added to create a touch of acidity.

Whale testicle beer Icelandic microbrewer Steoji has launched Hvalur 2, which is an upgraded version of Hvalur 1, which was produced in cooperation with the whaling company Hvalur and caused a huge controversy due to the addition of full whale meat (fish meat and fish bones). As the second seasonal crossover, it uses whale testicles smoked and roasted with sheep dung—well, one is added to each winemaking cycle.

Masculine beer The Rocky Mountain Oyster Stout of Wynkoop Brewing in Denver was originally just an April Fools' Day joke, but I didn't expect it to become a reality because of the public's enthusiastic response. With an alcohol content of 7.5, three cow testicles are added to each barrel-this "gourmet" is nicknamed Rocky Mountain Oysters locally. A set of two cans is quite appropriate.

Bull Heart Beer Portland's Upright Brewing and Burnside Brewing collaborated to produce this Captain Beefheart. The ingredients include 27 kilograms of charcoal grilled beef heart and a lot of spices. Similar products include the Burke In The Bottle, a collaboration between Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company and chef David Burke.

Sunday barbecue beer Conwy Brewery in Wales caters to the close relationship between locals and sheep and brews a lamb beer. Sunday Toast is a Victorian-style Porter beer with the juice from slow roasting of Welsh lamb. Perhaps lamb-ic is more appropriate.

Truffle beer Truffles are very expensive. Using them to brew beer seems a bit risky, but some people have succeeded. Chicago Moody Tongue's black truffle crumbs Pearson is highly sought after in some of the top high-end restaurants in the United States, while Miki Le has chosen to use black truffles to brew a dark beer called The Forager.

Stag semen beer Green Man Pub in Wellington, New Zealand, and local brewer Choice Bros brewed a beer with stag semen, which caused a huge sensation for a while. We will not continue to discuss the name Lu Jing Shitao to obtain such a subtle beer, let's stop here.

Mushroom beer In the past few years, the brewery seems to have used all the mushrooms imaginable. Jester King of Austin, Texas used locally grown oyster mushrooms in this Snorkel. 4.5 Alcohol, Goss style.

Oysters (really real this time) beer The encounter between Oyster and Shi Tao gave birth to many interesting stories. We used to drink Shitao while sucking oysters beautifully. Now we use oyster shells to clarify the beer, or put them in a boiling pot, or even throw whole oysters into it. Flying Dog Pearl Necklace Oyster Shitao did just that.

Natural green beer Free Tail Brewing Co of San Antonio, Texas adds blue-green algae to a 4.2-degree rye white beer to give it a charming blue-green color. If the advertisements of Mandalay Brewing in Myanmar and Red Dot Brewery in Singapore are accurate, Spirulina beer has another magical effect-anti-aging.

Seaweed beer Bladderwrack is a good name for beer, but it is actually a kind of seaweed. Williams Bros Brew in Alloa, Scotland added it to its own Kelpie Seaweed Ale. This Scottish Groot-an ancient beer style-is intended to recreate the traditional style of beer from the coastal regions of Scotland.

Real gold beer We have all drunk golden Al, but have you ever drunk gold? Golden Queen Bee brewed by Golden Bee Beer contains edible 24K gold leaf. There is no need to throw gold like this, but if you can get another bottle of The Lost Abbey's Gift Of The Magi-a golden Al with frankincense and myrrh, then you must be full of every cell in your body The joy of Christmas.

Pizza beer Mamma Mia Pizza Beer is produced by the Chicago Pizza Beer Company. The ingredients include Margarita Pizza soaked in malt. We don’t know if the crust is Chicago-style.

Donut beer Voodoo Donuts Maple Syrup Bacon Al is the first beer launched by Voodoo Donut Bakery in collaboration with Rogue Brewery, also in Oregon. The series includes six products so far. They want to use these beers to reproduce the best-selling single-product flavors of this bakery in Portland. The latest flavors currently launched are Guerrilla Grape and Mango Spaceman.

Pig head beer Mangalica Pig Porter uses the head and bones of Mangalica Pig. This breed of pig is quite precious and is known as Kobe beef in pork. Right Brain Brewery in Traverse City, Missouri uses whole pig heads when brewing this beer, and even the eyeballs are still in the eye sockets. The winery also brews a series of more delicious pork pie beers, with raw materials including whole pork pie from a local bakery.

Expired bread beer The raw material of toast air is leftover bread that cannot be eaten, and it aims to eliminate food waste. All the profits from this beer brewed with excess bread are donated to charitable organizations, and even a factory is set up in the Bronx, New York. The recipe is public, so you can try it yourself with the leftover bread you eat.

Just put your crying beer There is a resonance between Chili Control and Beer Mania, which is why countless beers have combined these two things in one in pursuit of a mixed effect. The grimace killer at the Twisted Pine Brewery in Colorado—named after the Wudang rapist of the same name—uses six different varieties of peppers. Among them, the hottest pepper is the Devil Pepper (also known as Broken Soul Pepper). Scoville's index exceeds 1 million-the pepper is only about 2000. You can imagine how spicy it is.

Bearded beer Rogge Beard Beer can be regarded as one of the most weird beers in the world. Brewmaster John Maier extracts yeast from his beard and brews an American wild ale. Maier once vowed that he would never shave his beard, so the raw material of this beer can really be said to be

[businessownersjournal-blog]

Marketing Strategies For Busy Small-Business Owners

So... you have a great product. You have an awesome website and sharp business cards. You've even got really great Letterhead. But so far, they have gone virtually unused and unnoticed. You thought that people would line up at your door to buy your product, but it just isn't happening. What's the deal?

No one is going to know anything about your product until you promote it. You've got to come up with a really sound promotional plan in order to bring your hard work to fruition. However, before you jump out there and promote, you have to take care of some fundamentals first. Let's take a look at how to start.

1. Do your research. It is amazing how many small business owners don't perform this crucial step. It is not enough to have a great product. You have to take a realistic look at the market. Determine who is most likely to use your product. They will become your target marketing audience. Determine who your competitors are. Look at what they are doing to promote themselves. (Tip: A great place to look is in trade journals).

2. Determine your budget. Be realistic, but do understand that marketing should be a large piece of your budget. People do not realize that they need you or your product until you tell them. Once you decide upon your budget, stick to it. Now comes the fun part... go forth and promote! It's not that easy, you say? Oh, but it is.

3. Develop marketing collateral. This includes brochures, flyers, one page glossies, newsletters, etc. Put some thought into this step, because it should be cohesive and fluid with the image that you want your business to project. Make it sharp, concise and attention-grabbing. Think like your target consumers... what would they want to see?

4. Participate in promotional activities. Sponsor a Little League team or a local "fun run". Volunteer to clean a section of highway (You'll get your name on a plaque). Participate in fairs (health fairs, job fairs, etc). Get a booth in a tradeshow. Order give-aways (hats, coffee mugs, calendars, pens) and hand them out during these functions. Participate in community projects and clubs (Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce). If your target audience has support networks, attend the meetings and hand your cards out. Donate your product as prizes in raffles at fundraisers. Put magnetic signs on your car. The idea here is getting yourself and your business in front of people. Do it as often as you can, in as many creative ways you can think of.

5. Become a leader in your field. You become a leader by promoting yourself as one! You know that you know what you are talking about and are good at what you do... so let everyone else know too! Start speaking at conferences, association meetings, etc. Write for trade journals. Create newsletters. Write a book! If you are perceived as an expert in your field, then that is what you will be! Public perception is everything.

6. Develop a Media Campaign. This might sound daunting, but trust me, it really isn't. Pick up your pen (or turn on your computer) and start writing! Write press releases, press kits and articles. Take up blogging and stream your blog through Twitter. Get a presence on Facebook. Write articles and publish them on Ezines. The more people that are reading your writing equates to more publicity that you are receiving, which is the ultimate goal.

7. Use a "Buddy Marketing Campaign". Team up with someone in a complementary business (for example, a pet store and a pet grooming business) to run advertising campaigns. You can do "buddy referrals" for each other and team up to run contests.

8. Put every document that leaves your office to work for you. I am sure you already have letterhead, business cards and a website. However, don't overlook your envelopes, signature on your email, receipts and fax cover sheets. Anything that leaves your office can carry your logo and slogan. Why not? If it's going to leave your office anyway, it might as well have a dual purpose: Advertising https://www.thebusinessownersjournal.com/!

9. Have measurable objectives. This means... don't say to yourself, "I will increase my marketing effort". Instead, say "I will send out 150 sales letters to local target consumers and distribute a mass mailing of 500 flyers by the end of the month. Do not be vague about your goals or you might see vague results.

10. Promotional strategy does not always involve in-your-face marketing. Promotional strategy also includes providing excellent customer service. If you create a reputation for world class service, that will contribute to the image that you are trying to project. Ask for referrals. Probably a third of your business will come from referrals. Allocate a specific amount of time each week for analyzing your current strategy and revising it to fit your current needs.

A good promotional strategy is a key element in any marketing campaign, and in my opinion, the most fun! It really is simple... just figure out who your target audience is and put yourself in front of them in as many ways as you can think of. Once you get those creative juices flowing, I think you will see that the opportunities are endless!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUP IN FOUNDERS TO MAKE WEALTH

Would it be useful to have an explicit belief in change. And I think that's ok. Mihalko seemed like he actually wanted to be our friend. Grad school is the other end of the humanities. Indirectly, but they pay attention.1 US, its effects lasted longer. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere.

Informal language is the athletic clothing of ideas. Why? They got to have expense account lunches at the best restaurants and fly around on the company's Gulfstreams. Meaning everyone within this world was low-res: a Duplo world of a few big hits, and those aren't them. It's not true that those who teach can't do. Or is it?2 I think much of the company.

Part of the reason is prestige. If you define a language that was ideal for writing a slow version 1, and yet with the right optimization advice to the compiler, would also yield very fast code when necessary.3 Of course, prestige isn't the main reason the idea is much older than Henry Ford. The right way to get it. And indeed, there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century and the origins of the big, national corporation. The reason car companies operate this way is that it was already mostly designed in 1958. Wars make central governments more powerful, and over the next forty years gradually got more powerful, they'll be out of business. And this too tended to produce both social and economic cohesion. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys.4 This won't be a very powerful feature. Lisp paper.5 Plus if you didn't put the company first you wouldn't be promoted, and if you couldn't switch ladders, promotion on this one was the only way up.

But if they don't want to shut down the company, that leaves increasing revenues and decreasing expenses firing people.6 One is that investors will increasingly be unable to offer investment subject to contingencies like other people investing. I understood their work. Which in turn means the variation in the amount of wealth people can create has not only been increasing, but accelerating.7 Surely that sort of thing did not happen to big companies in mid-century most of the 20th century and the origins of the big national corporations were willing to pay a premium for labor.8 As long as he considers all languages equivalent, all he has to do is remove the marble that isn't part of it. I had a few other teachers who were smart, but I never have. And it turns out that was all you needed to solve the problem. You have certain mental gestures you've learned in your work, and when you're not paying attention, you keep making these same gestures, but somewhat randomly.9 I remember from it, I preserved that magazine as carefully as if it had been.10 That no doubt causes a lot of institutionalized delays in startup funding: the multi-week mating dance with investors; the distinction between acceptable and maximal efficiency, programmers in a hundred years, maybe it won't in a thousand. Certainly it was for a startup's founders to retain board control after a series A, that will change the way things have always been.

Which inevitably, if unions had been doing their job tended to be lower. They did as employers too. I worry about the power Apple could have with this force behind them. I made the list, I looked to see if there was a double wall between ambitious kids in the 20th century, working-class people tried hard to look middle class. In a way mid-century oligopolies had been anointed by the federal government, which had been a time of consolidation, led especially by J. Wars make central governments more powerful, until now the most advanced technologies, and the number of undergrads who believe they have to say yes or no, and then join some other prestigious institution and work one's way up the hierarchy. Locally, all the news was bad. Close, but they are still missing a few things. Not entirely bad though. I notice this every time I fly over the Valley: somehow you can sense prosperity in how well kept a place looks. Another way to burn up cycles is to have many layers of software between the application and the hardware. And indeed, the most obvious breakage in the average computer user's life is Windows itself.

Investors don't need weeks to make up their minds anyway. The point of high-level languages is to give you bigger abstractions—bigger bricks, as it were, so I emailed the ycfounders list. They traversed idea space as gingerly as a very old person traverses the physical world. And there is another, newer language, called Python, whose users tend to look down on Perl, and more openly. At the time it seemed the future. What happens in that shower? You can't reproduce mid-century model was already starting to get old.11 Meanwhile a similar fragmentation was happening at the other end of the economic scale.12 But the advantage is that it works better.

Most really good startup ideas look like bad ideas at first, and many of those look bad specifically because some change in the world just switched them from bad to good.13 There's good waste, and bad waste. A rounds. A bottom-up program should be easier to modify as well, partly because it tends to create deadlock, and partly because it seems kind of slimy. But when you import this criterion into decisions about technology, you start to get the company rolling. It would have been unbearable. Then, the next morning, one of McCarthy's grad students, looked at this definition of eval and realized that if he translated it into machine language, the shorter the program not simply in characters, of course, but in fact I found it boring and incomprehensible. I wouldn't want Python advocates to say I was misrepresenting the language, but what they got was fixed according to their rank. The deal terms of angel rounds will become less restrictive too—not just less restrictive than angel terms have traditionally been. If it is, it will be a minority squared.

If 98% of the time, just like they do to startups everywhere. Their culture is the opposite of hacker culture; on questions of software they will tend to pay less, because part of the core language, prior to any additional notations about implementation, be defined this way. That's what a metaphor is: a function applied to an argument of the wrong type.14 Now we'd give a different answer.15 And you know more are out there, separated from us by what will later seem a surprisingly thin wall of laziness and stupidity. There have probably been other people who did this as well as Newton, for their time, but Newton is my model of this kind of thought. I'd be very curious to see it, but Rabin was spectacularly explicit. Betting on people over ideas saved me countless times as an investor.16 They assume ideas are like miracles: they either pop into your head or they don't. I was pretty much assembly language with math. Whereas if you ask for it explicitly, but ordinarily not used. A couple days ago an interviewer asked me if founders having more power would be better or worse for the world.

Notes

The reason we quote statistics about fundraising is so hard to prevent shoplifting because in their early twenties. Auto-retrieving filters will have a definite commitment.

It will seem like noise.

It's one of the world. That's why the Apple I used to end investor meetings too closely, you'll find that with a neologism. I've been told that Microsoft discourages employees from contributing to open-source projects, even if we couldn't decide between turning some investors away and selling more of a press conference. All you need but a lot about some disease they'll see once in China, many of the biggest divergences between the government.

Mozilla is open-source projects, even if they pay a lot of time. If they agreed among themselves never to do that. And journalists as part of grasping evolution was to reboot them, initially, to sell your company into one? Most expect founders to overhire is not so much better is a net win to include in your own time, not just the local area, and Reddit is Delicious/popular with voting instead of just doing things, they were shooting themselves in the field they describe.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an urban context, issues basically means things we're going to get you type I startups. As a friend who invested earlier had been with us if the current options suck enough. MITE Corp.

The top VCs and Micro-VCs. When you had to for some reason, rather than admitting he preferred to call all our lies lies. But what they're wasting their time on schleps, and at least what they really need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much as Drew Houston needed Dropbox, or to be able to raise money on convertible notes, VCs who can say I need to run an online service. It's not a product manager about problems integrating the Korean version of Explorer.

What you're too early really means is No, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally. In either case the implications are similar. But there are few things worse than the don't-be startup founders who go on to study the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, phone, and only one founder take fundraising meetings is that it's bad to do more with less, then add beans don't drain the beans, and they have to do that, in which practicing talks makes them better: reading a talk out loud at least wouldn't be worth doing something, but they're not ready to invest in your previous job, or the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written about them.

Philadelphia is a net loss of productivity. As a rule, if the growth is genuine. Which implies a surprising but apparently unimportant, like a core going critical.

In practice the first year or so. If you weren't around then it's hard to think about so-called lifestyle business, having sold all my shares earlier this year. Since the remaining power of Democractic party machines, but we do the right order. They're an administrative convenience.

35 companies that tried to attack the A P supermarket chain because it has to be the more the aggregate is what the editors think the main reason is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. What is Mathematics? Once again, that good paintings must have affected what they claim was the fall of 2008 but no doubt partly because companies don't. Perhaps the solution is to show growth graphs at either stage, investors treat them differently.

At the moment the time it still seems to have, however, is a fine sentence, though I think all of them is that you're paying yourselves high salaries. We thought software was all that matters to us. It's a lot about some of the business much harder to fix once it's big, plus they are to be something of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being a scientist. Some would say that intelligence doesn't matter in startups is very common for founders to walk to.

In fact, we try to be a special recipient of favour, being a scientist.

It is the most successful investment, Uber, from which Renaissance civilization radiated.

When an investor they already know; but as a percentage of GDP were about the team or their determination and disarmingly asking the right sort of things economists usually think about so-called lifestyle business, A. Put in chopped garlic, pepper, cumin, and would not be surprised if VCs' tendency to push to being told that they probably don't notice even when I first met him, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. There is of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you write for your present valuation is the most promising opportunities, it is to get into the intellectual sounding theory behind it.

Innosight, February 2012. Ashgate, 1998. So it is less than a Web terminal.

This is why we can't figure out the same ones. Trevor Blackwell, who had been able to. We didn't let him off, either as an example of applied empathy. And yet if he were a variety called Red Delicious that had other meanings.

[starksbarberco]

Running a Business During a Pandemic

There is no question that the pandemic is the stiffest challenge a small business like ours has (and will) ever face. I’ve been telling my franchisees things like “you can’t fall off the floor” to motivate them and keep their spirits high ☺️. But there is something everyone should realize about the pandemic and how it affects certain sectors of small business; there are clear-cut winners and losers. It’s an unfortunate thing but it’s the reality of today’s world where we struggle with issues like inequality. Where one business fails, inevitably another one succeeds and that is how disruption occurs. In our case, being able to take appointments and having very clean and minimalistic designed barber shops has been a huge advantage. Our stores are not eclectic and busy looking, nor are they old and unruly. We have receptionists cleaning in between services and the neighbourhood barber shops don’t. The appearance of being extremely clean became a huge priority for customers overnight. As far as appointments go, many of our competitors from old school barber shops to budget brands simply can’t take appointments because it doesn’t fit their business model. Ask yourself, would you want to drive down to the barber shop and stick your head in the door just to be told to wait in your car? Typically, people sit in the store and wonder “am I next or is it the guy next to me?” Another advantage we have relates to capacity limits. Because our stores are bigger, and our barber chairs are six feet apart we can operate at max capacity under the public health guidelines. The reality is with a barber shop, unlike something like a restaurant, they all have a similar number of chairs and in this case, smaller stores were at a disadvantage. If the old school barber shop is only 500 square feet and they can’t keep people social distanced, they might only be able to run three chairs at a time instead of five. Now think about the wage subsidy. For businesses like Starks with payroll, we qualify for the subsidy, and it has a tremendous impact. When we reopened after a lockdown, we would see a gold rush of clients and because the subsidy looks back 3 months (during a lockdown period) almost 90% of the wage costs are absorbed by the government. We see an incredible amount of business in the first two weeks after a lockdown and although it doesn’t make up for the closure, it helps a lot. Almost all the old school barber shops either rent chairs or pay commission to their staff. Their “employees” are considered independent contractors and they can’t get a dime from the federal wage subsidy. 

In normal times it might not be as easy to win someone’s business from the incumbent neighbourhood shop that they’ve supported for years. But when it comes to people’s personal safety, if you have the right solution, you’re going to get a shot at their business. When they decide to give us a shot, they enjoy those modern elements like booking on a mobile app and being taken right when they walk in. They get a relaxing wash before their haircut and a nice massage after and think it might be time for a permanent change. For the extra $5-$10 that Starks charges, we’ve probably won them over with those value ads. As much as this sounds like a story of fortune, the reality is we’ve been disrupting these barber shops long before the pandemic. Our commitment to involve ourselves in the communities we do business in, supporting local causes, sports teams and fundraisers is another way we get an edge. Typically, the old school barber shop is friendly and nostalgic, but does little marketing or purposeful work in the community outside of cutting hair. 

I’ve been noticing these covid winner/loser parallels in different areas of small business and through different franchise systems. It seems that the forward-thinking ones are really capturing market share as we vault faster into the digital age. I remember listening to one of the more accomplished people in the world of franchising speak at the beginning of the pandemic. He’s a Harvard Business School graduate and has over 1500 franchised units globally under his watch. He said “the consumer will change forever when this is over. Don’t wait for things to ‘go back to normal’ make sure you anticipate change.” Boy was he right, and this was last April when everyone was still seeing stars and wondering what happened over the last few weeks. I took his advice and in 2020 we launched our mobile booking app which has been a huge hit with customers. 

Times change and so do businesses, but this was a shock to the system. Perhaps we needed it to prepare us for the future where disruption will occur faster and faster as technology continues to evolve. Lucky for us people will always need a haircut. Now that said and as with any business, they’ll always be someone trying to eat our lunch. 

I typically write these blogs very spontaneously based on whatever comes to mind. I feel its a very authentic way to share my thoughts. When I started off here, I didn’t think I would have painted such a rosy picture of the pandemic, especially after starting off by saying this was the stiffest challenge we’ve ever faced. There’s no question we’ve had to endure a lot. The closures first and foremost, but also having to change the way we service clients, try and protect people when it seemed impossible to do so; has all been very difficult. All that said, any challenge in life is only as difficult to handle as the attitude you approach it with. My default attitude is always positive. I left my corporate career 10 years ago and got into the hair business with no experience, no business plan, and no money (LOL). If I had to peg success to one thing it would be attitude. I guess that’s why this blog took a positive turn right away. If there’s any takeaway so far from this experience on a business level, its that business leaders need to be prepared for anything. When that “anything” comes, you need to attack it with positivity and anticipate change. I’ll leave you with one of my favourite quotes about attitude…

“Every single problem that you have in your life, is the seed of an opportunity”

- Deepack Chopra 

Steve Tallis is a thought leader in men’s grooming and franchising. He routinely contributes to style and business publications to promote wellness and the growing brand he co-founded almost ten years ago. For more information head to StarksBarberCompany.com.

[transarterrified]

top surgery

I wanted to write up my experience as a reference for others who are interested in getting top surgery or who want to learn more about it. I’m going to write it kind of like an advice/what I wish I had known or done before. There are a few sections: fundraising, before the surgery, the surgery, and early recovery.

Fundraising

As you may have seen, I did a fundraiser with help from several people, including rgr-pop and start-anywhere, who donated items and labor to the fundraiser. You can still donate if you want the mixes and/or a tarot reading from me, haha. Here is my advice about fundraising:

If possible, make your own website instead of using YouCaring or GoFundMe. If you do want to use a donation site, pick one that doesn’t take a cut of the money. I built a website with Wordpress and purchased a plan that took that ads off the page, which I did more because I needed to do that for my professional website when I go on the job market. I found that it gave me more room to talk about my budget, I was able to track the analytics more tightly, and I think it may have been more rhetorically effective. It might even make sense to use something like Squarespace with a store feature – I think Merritt Kopas did this for her fundraiser.

Offer tangible benefits, but pick ones that are easy to accomplish. For me this was important because I didn’t want people to just give money to me for a variety of reasons. I also was able to do a thing I do all the time anyway and share a skill I’m developing. It helps you reach people who don’t know you, and also encourages people to give more money. It took me a long time to pick two things I wanted to give. I had all kinds of ideas, like screenprinting a cool shirt (I still want to do this), and making a queer tarot zine (I also still want to do this). But at the very correct urging of beneaththeleaf, I narrowed it down to two things that take less time than those crafts. So, briefly, pick benefits that are easy to distribute, easy to make, and free/cheap to make. If you don’t have to ship things, you’ll be able to keep more money.

Let others help you. If your friends have a skill, ask them to contribute something your donors can give for more money. Let your friends help you with managing the contacts you have to make post-donation and with sharing and promoting the fundraiser. It will have more of an impact if you can get ten friends to share or reblog your fundraiser than if you share or reblog your own fundraiser ten times!

Don’t expect fundraising to cover the whole cost. And don’t compare yourself to other people raising money. I wouldn’t have been able to have the surgery without the money I raised. But I also wouldn’t have been able to do it without the money I saved and the money I borrowed. Among my friends who have raised money, the average is about $2000. And you will be fundraising the same time that your friends are, which is awkward. I was fundraising for a surgery the same time as another friend in my extended network, and he raised all $9000 that he asked for. He deserves it! Another friend got top surgery the same week and paid for it all out of pocket. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have fundraised! You have to just let other people’s surgeries be their surgeries and their fundraisers be their fundraisers. Boost yours and other fundraisers you don’t see getting traction as much as possible. It’s shitty and it sucks. But that’s how the internet works.

Let yourself get some money. It took me MANY therapy sessions to accept that I could and should do a fundraiser. I didn’t think I was worth it! I felt like I was taking resources from other people. But that’s not really how it works. As my friend Cass has described to me, being trans on the internet is basically part of being in a huge circle of friends constantly giving each other $30. It feels bad to take that money. But if it’s the only way you can do it, you need to do it! You can give it forward later.

Get ready to feel weird. Asking for money will lead to some weird social circumstances. I got several unexpected large donations and some of those I had to talk with the donors about. Some of your friends are secretly rich, which is weird.

Before the Surgery

Take care of your health. I panicked the week before the surgery because I was convinced I would get sick and then they couldn’t perform the surgery on me. One night, I got off the bus 10 stops before my house because the guy sitting next to me was coughing without covering his mouth. I sucked on so many zinc tablets my taste buds are still fucked up. I even called the surgeon to assuage my fear that it would be ok if I had a cold, and they were very firm with me about not being sick at all being very important. You should think about this before scheduling a surgery a) at the end of the semester or a more stressful period at your job, b) during cold and flu season, and c) during the holidays. I was fine! But it triggered my deepest compulsion and it made me way crazier than I needed to be before getting surgery.

Let other people help you. I didn’t do this as much as I should have, but ask people for help with getting prepared, cleaning your house, whatever will help you be less stressed at least the week before your procedure.

Try to avoid going down the internet rabbit holes. I read A LOT of surgery result stories and felt like it was going to either be me feeling 100% two days later or being bedridden for two weeks. I think there is value in reading people’s stories, but remember, they are stories and sometimes are embellished, and also aren’t the only possible outcomes. I felt like since I hadn’t been working out, taking supplements, etc. etc. it was going to be bad and my long term recovery would be bad. It’s just not true! There are things you can do to prepare, and you should do what makes you feel the most confident. But don’t listen to the advice of every musclebro out there.

Try to R-E-L-A-X. I know this is pointless advice, but try to be calm, meditate, do breathing exercises, etc. Get your blood pressure down. Also, doubt and guilt are totally natural feelings. If possible, I highly recommend reaching out to someone who has had top surgery to talk with them about these feelings if you can. It was really helpful to know it was normal to feel guilty and doubtful, and to also know that those feelings would reside with time.

If you smoke tobacco, they will ask you to stop at least two weeks before surgery. Just keep this in mind!

Day before/of surgery

Pack button-downs only and lots of sweat pants. If you need sweaters, go with cardigans and zip ups. You won’t be able to raise your arms over your head.

Go shopping before you get the surgery. Here’s a list, if you don’t get a package of stuff from your surgeon. I recommend getting these items prior to your procedure:

Two post-surgical binders—you will be provided one most likely. Get another if possible, or even two

If you are doing open drains: thin, wingless pads and extra large bandages. The thin pads will be nicer than the maternity pads they’ll give you to drain into, and eventually you can switch to bandages.

Sleep aids – it can be hard to sleep, even on pain meds.

Ibuprofen or other pain medicine – go off the hard stuff as soon as you can, because you’ll feel bette

Fiber pills – you won’t want to eat a lot, probably, and fiber will help your digestive system get back on track.

Stool softeners or laxatives – see above

Benadryl for itching

Neosporin

Lots of things you like to drink – I got two big bottles of Gatorade, Diet Coke, and cherry lime fizzy water.

Straws

Appealing snacky foods

Baby wipes and/or flushable wipes – I used these for everything and way more than I expected to

A massage ball (e.g., lacrosse ball) or some kind of massage tool for post-surgery massage. I just couldn’t deal with the feeling of pressing on my own incisions and chest; having a massage ball helped.

Laundry detergent--especially if you can bring no-rinse stuff like Soak

You won’t be able to eat before the surgery so eat when you can.

Don’t drink 24 hours before surgery. Some surgeons have harder rules on this. I tried to limit myself to one drink max per day the week before surgery.

The Surgery

This is what my experience was. We got to the surgeon’s office. I had my friend/care partner come in with me. We looked at before and after pictures in the waiting room. There was champagne, but I couldn’t drink it. It’s very strange if you get your surgery at a plastic surgeon’s office!

Very shortly, the first nurse led me into the consultation room. She weighed me (and made a weird comment about me losing weight). I did a bunch of paperwork. The nurse asked me which song I wanted played as I went under. I said something by Reba McEntire. She took my temperature and BP. My BP was 150/90 or something terrible – I told her I had white coat syndrome, and she told me it was relatively normal to have a high BP the day of surgery. I had to take off all my clothes in the bathroom after that, then put on surgical underwear and socks.

After that, she gave me a Valium and some other drugs. She took pictures of my chest from several angles. We waited for a long time. My friend caught some Pokemon. I freaked out. The Valium kicked in. I met with the surgeon. We talked for a long time about what my goals were (which we had already discussed over the phone). Mine were as follows: I didn’t want my nipples to be too close together, and I wanted my chest to look normal for someone of my size. I brought a “wish pic,” but I didn’t give it to anyone and I don’t know if they used it. She drew on my body with a medical marker. She took a lot of measurements and we tried to eyeball where my nipples would go. She rubbed nitro ointment on my hand. Then she left.

We waited more. The anesthesiologist came in and asked a ton of questions and had me do paperwork. She smelled like cigarettes. We waited even more. Then, very quickly, I was ushered into the surgery room. I was swarmed by nurses and the anesthesiologist. I couldn’t tell what Reba song was playing. They put compression pumps on my legs and strapped me to the table. Then I fell asleep and woke up with a new chest. I apparently told everyone Cass was my smartest friend, but only to tell him that he was one of my five smartest friends so he wouldn’t get a big head.

My Procedure

I had a buttonhole done, which is similar to a double incision but it retains a pedicle of nipple tissue, which purportedly increases the chance you will retain nipple sensation. So far, I have some feeling in one of my nipples, which is very rare for top surgery. So I guess that is a good sign.

Early Recovery

You will need more help than you think. I had a pretty fast and smooth recovery. Even with that, I really relied on my care partner to help me dress my drains, rebind, etc. I was also really depressed and lonely after surgery, and he being there was really helpful.

Find some activity you can do that feels productive. We played SO MUCH Pokemon Go and Ingress while I recovered. This was fun for both of us!

The pain may be less than you think. You’re coming off of anesthesia when you are recovering, and your pain might feel less intense as a result. Often you don’t need to take as many pain meds as you are given. For me, the most terrible sensation is…

ITCHING

THE ITCHING (FOR ME) IS TERRIBLE. The nurse told me that opiates make the itching worse (!) and it’s also just part of the wound healing process.

When ready, try to walk and move around. It will help you feel better! But don’t overdo it. I walked a little the first and second day, then a whole lot after that.

Make time to sleep and don’t expect to get work done. It’s really hard for me to envision not working, but for once, I was able to get exactly no work done for a few days. For the first two days, I also slept >12 hours at nighttime and with naps.

I may come back to this and add or remove as I keep recovering!

[neon-mooni]

Why I boycott Autism Speaks, and you should too

Autism Speaks’ senior leadership fails to include a single autistic person. Unlike non-profits focused on intellectual disability, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and countless other disabilities, Autism Speaks systematically excludes autistic adults from its board of directors, leadership team and other positions of senior leadership. This exclusion has been the subject of numerous discussions with and eventually protests against Autism Speaks, yet the organization persists in its refusal to allow those it purports to serve into positions of meaningful authority within its ranks. The slogan of the disability rights movement has long been, “Nothing About Us, Without Us.” Almost nine years after its founding, Autism Speaks continues to refuse to abide by this basic tenet of the mainstream disability community.

Autism Speaks has a history of supporting dangerous fringe movements that threaten the lives and safety of both the autism community and the general public. The anti-vaccine sentiments of Autism Speaks’ founders have been well documented in the mainstream media. Several of Autism Speaks’ senior leaders have resigned or been fired after founders Bob and Suzanne Wright overruled Autism Speaks’ scientific leadership in order to advance the discredited idea that autism is the result of vaccinations. Furthermore, Autism Speaks haspromoted the Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts facility under Department of Justice and FDA investigation for the use of painful electric shock against its students. The Judge Rotenberg Center’s methods have been deemed torture by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (p. 84) and are currently the subject of efforts by the Massachusetts state government and disability rights advocates to shut the facility down. Despite this, Autism Speaks has allowed the Judge Rotenberg Center to recruit new admissions from families seeking resources at their fundraising walks. We believe this is not the type of action you anticipated when you agreed to provide support to Autism Speaks events.

Autism Speaks’ fundraising efforts pull money away from local communities, returning very little funds for the critical investments in services and supports needed by autistic people and our families. Only 4% of funds donated to Autism Speaks are reinvested in services and supports for autistic people and our families. Across the country, local communities have complained that at a time when state budget cutbacks are making investment in local disability services all the more critical, Autism Speaks fundraisers take money away from needed services in their community.  In addition, while the majority of Autism Speaks’ funding goes towards research dollars, few of those dollars have gone to the areas of most concern to autistic people and our families–services and supports, particularly for autistics reaching adulthood and aging out of the school system. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Inter-Agency Autism Coordinating Committee, only 1% of Autism Speaks’ research budget goes towards research on service quality and less than one-quarter of 1% goes towards research on the needs of autistic adults.

Autism Speaks’ advertising depends on offensive and outdated rhetoric of fear and pity, presenting the lives of autistic people as tragic burdens on our families and society. In its advertising, Autism Speaks has compared being autistic to being kidnapped, dying of a natural disaster, having a fatal disease, and countless other inappropriate analogies. In one of its most prominent fundraising videos,  an Autism Speaks executive stated that she had considered placing her child in the car and driving off the George Washington Bridge, going on to say that she did not do so only because she had a normal child as well. Autism Speaks advertisements have cited inaccurate statistics on elevated divorce rates for parents of autistic children and many other falsehoods designed to present the lives of autistic children and adults as little more than tragedies.

Autism Speaks’ only advisory board member on the autism spectrum, John Elder Robison, announced his resignation from the organization this month in protest of the organization comparing autistic people to kidnapping victims and claiming that our families are not living, but merely existing, due to the horror of having autistic people in their lives. In his resignation letter, he discusses his four years spent attempting to reform the organization from the inside without success, stating, “Autism Speaks says it’s the advocacy group for people with autism and their families. It’s not, despite having had many chances to become that voice.  Autism Speaks is the only major medical or mental health nonprofit whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a large percentage of the people affected by the condition they target.”

The disability community recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, legislation first signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The law begins with the statement that, “disability is a natural part of the human experience that does not diminish the right of individuals with developmental disabilities to live independently, to exert control and choice over their own lives, and to fully participate in and contribute to their communities through full integration and inclusion in the economic, political, social, cultural, and educational mainstream of United States society.

Also, they released a commercial called “I am Autism”.

Here is the transcript.

“I am autism. I’m visible in your children, but if I can help it, I am invisible to you until it’s too late. I know where you live. And guess what? I live there too. I hover around all of you. I know no color barrier, no religion, no morality, no currency. I speak your language fluently. And with every voice I take away, I acquire yet another language. I work very quickly. I work faster than pediatric aids, cancer, and diabetes combined And if you’re happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain. I don’t sleep, so I make sure you don’t either. I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, birthday party, or public park without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain. You have no cure for me. Your scientists don’t have the resources, and I relish their desperation. Your neighbors are happier to pretend that I don’t exist—of course, until it’s their child. I am autism. I have no interest in right or wrong. I derive great pleasure out of your loneliness. I will fight to take away your hope. I will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams. I will make sure that every day you wake up you will cry, wondering who will take care of my child after I die? And the truth is, I am still winning, and you are scared. And you should be. I am autism. You ignored me. That was a mistake. And to autism I say: I am a father, a mother, a grandparent, a brother, a sister. We will spend every waking hour trying to weaken you. We don’t need sleep because we will not rest until you do. Family can be much stronger than autism ever anticipated, and we will not be intimidated by you, nor will the love and strength of my community. I am a parent riding toward you, and you can push me off this horse time and time again, but I will get up, climb back on, and ride on with the message. Autism, you forget who we are. You forget who you are dealing with. You forget the spirit of mothers, and daughters, and fathers and sons. We are Qatar. We are the United Kingdom. We are the United States. We are China. We are Argentina. We are Russia. We are the Eurpoean Union. We are the United Nations. We are coming together in all climates. We call on all faiths. We search with technology and voodoo and prayer and herbs and genetic studies and a growing awareness you never anticipated. We have had challenges, but we are the best when overcoming them. We speak the only language that matters: love for our children. Our capacity to love is greater than your capacity to overwhelm. Autism is naïve. You are alone. We are a community of warriors. We have a voice. You think because some of our children cannot speak, we cannot hear them? That is autism’s weakness. You think that because my child lives behind a wall, I am afraid to knock it down with my bare hands? You have not properly been introduced to this community of parents and grandparents, of siblings and friends and schoolteachers and therapists and pediatricians and scientists. Autism, if you are not scared, you should be. When you came for my child, you forgot: you came for me. Autism, are you listening?”

If you would really like to donate to charity, then please donate to these charities instead. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network | The Association for Autistic Community | AANE | Autism Women’s Network |

[euteh]

The Biggest Problem for ICOs? In 2018, It Was Their Own Investors

Simon Seojoon Kim is CEO and partner at Hashed, a crypto-focused accelerator focused on community building and impact investing. The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review. 

At the beginning of 2018, the blockchain community reached the pinnacle of the ICO bubble. The slogan of ICOs, which promised that “anyone can invest in an initial project,” sounded wonderful and future-oriented. However, as the prices of most ICO tokens continued to tumble over the past year, it appears that the first chapter of this grand experiment has ended in failure. Why do most ICOs fail to succeed? Some would cite the greed of individuals blindly looking to make a quick fortune, incompetent project teams led by entrepreneurs that lack expertise, the technical limitations of platform blockchains that lack scalability and inadequate regulations in countries that have been unable to keep up with changing market conditions. These are all true. However, there is little to learn from this, as these are difficulties that all innovative, paradigm-shifting technologies face when forging new markets in their early stages. In this article, I aim to take stock of the current situation by examining the inherent limitations of ICOs, in particular the belief that “anyone can invest in an initial project,” and discuss some potential solutions.

The popularity of group purchasing channels

Despite the burst of the ICO bubble, the blockchain craze in Asian markets is not waning. In fact, interest in new technological trends and expanding ecosystems is growing. In particular, in markets like China and Korea where cryptocurrencies have gained greater acceptance, retail investors continue to take part in initial investments for blockchain projects through a variety of methods. In China, the secondary market has become popular because Chinese nationals are restricted from participating in ICOs by law, while in Korea, a number of ‘coin group purchase’ channels are being operated surreptitiously through KakaoTalk messenger or other communities. Setting aside government regulation, there are other important reasons behind these trends. Up until as recently as mid-2017, anyone with an interest in blockchain projects could participate in an ICO without much difficulty. However, from the second half of 2017, there has been a movement towards larger private rounds instead of public sales and lower participation from individual investors. In particular, projects that were more confident in their fundraising ability increasingly sought a greater proportion of investment from institutional investors or dedicated crypto VCs instead of through public sales. Key examples of this are Ontology or Handshake, who simply engaged in community airdrops after a private sale, without conducting an ICO. Individual investors interested in these projects attempt to get involved through influential brokers that can grant them access to the private round. At the same time, there are many complaints within the community about the expanding trend of institutional investors taking up the lion’s share of private rounds.

A reluctance to accept individual investors

There is a large gap between the role that many projects had hoped individual investors would play during the ICO, and the reality that they have been faced with afterwards. While providing the public with a fair investment opportunity, project teams also hoped to create a loyal community that would be aligned with the project’s incentives and share in its growth. Compared to the existing startup model, where the company grows based on investment received from a small number of institutional investors through closed channels, teams believed that ICOs would facilitate the creation of a more open ecosystem which would lead to a virtuous cycle of rapid growth. However, individual investors in blockchain projects ultimately failed to provide much help to the projects in many cases. The majority of ICO participants who formed the community’s persona were often “creditors” who only cared about the token price, rather than “contributors.” Many of these individuals simply jumped on the bandwagon of popular projects without a clear understanding of or trust in the project’s core technology or business. Accordingly, they contributed very little to the productive activities that promote healthy growth within communities. In addition to this, few of the individual investors who took part in ICOs for blockchain projects actually used the tokens they received for the intended purpose once the dapp or platform was released. Instead, they were essentially free riders who sold off their tokens as soon as the price hit a certain level. This led to a growing awareness among teams that they could actually threaten the long-term development of projects. From the perspective of project teams, it seems more efficient to manage a small number of professional investors rather than have to communicate and provide explanations to a community of individual investors who constantly ask about the price and listing on exchanges, especially during the launch stage when the team is naturally spending most of its energy on development. Institutional investors also tend to have their own networks and greater insight into the blockchain industry. In many cases, institutional investors have provided practical assistance to help grow the project by playing an advisory role to entrepreneurs or recruiting team members during the early stages. These investors can provide support in a number of ways, including building local communities in key locations, hosting hackathons to connect developers to the project, or acting as a liaison with major media channels. Because there is a longer lock-up period in private rounds than in public rounds, institutional investors have no choice but to believe in the mid-to-long-term growth of the project and offer assistance where they can. Of course, not all institutional investors effectively contribute to the development of a project. The behavior of some institutional investors who fail to provide promised support or lack expertise and judgment has also been a source of complaints within communities. However, the competitive nature of markets is helping to correct this problem. Because of the free and transparent flow of information in the hyper connected crypto ecosystem, information about reputable and not so reputable institutional investors spreads quickly between blockchain entrepreneurs. In time, only reputable crypto funds will be given the opportunity to invest in promising projects, similar to the growth process that venture capital markets went through.

Is investment the only way to contribute to a project?

Thus far I have looked at the growing trend of smaller public rounds in 2018. I am not trying to raise the dichotomous question of whether individual or institutional investors are more suitable for investment in initial projects. The more fundamental question is, “How do we create an ecosystem in which those who contribute to projects can become initial shareholders?” and I believe the mechanism to enable this is Proof of Contribution. Think back to the advent of the world’s first cryptocurrency, bitcoin, which represented the beginning of the decentralization paradigm, and the process through which tokens were issued. Bitcoin issued tokens to the community purely through mining, without any token sale targeting investors. When miners provided hash power, their contribution would be verified in a way that enhanced the security of the network, and they were rewarded with bitcoins in return. Although the protocol-defined method of contribution to the network was simple, it was fundamentally a proof-of-work (PoW) concept, which could also be viewed as a form of ‘Proof of Contribution’ that reflected the philosophy of compensating those who contribute to a project. During the long period where no one paid attention to the price of Bitcoin, the majority of early shareholders in the network were people who carried a strong belief in decentralized currencies rather than those looking to make a short-term profit. In the IT industry, there is a clear distinction between the role of 1) investors, 2) the company and 3) employees during the early stages of a startup. Investors receive equity in the company in return for providing initial capital. It is then the company’s job to use these funds effectively to grow the company. Employees receive stock options upon joining the company, and are incentivized to work hard because of the clear upside potential of a higher share price. I believe that this stock options system was the biggest driving force behind innovation in the Silicon Valley startups of today. Accordingly, it is unfortunate that most blockchain projects have reduced the role of external stakeholders who join the project in its initial stages to that of ‘investors’ in traditional IT startups. This is demonstrated by the fact that the token allocation section in the white papers of most blockchain projects resembles a business development plan and marketing budget that was determined entirely by the project team, instead of a system of autonomous token distribution through the protocol. In most cases, the token model is only described briefly, with a focus on the main activities that will take place once the network is sufficiently established. In other words, the model for network growth is selling tokens to investors through marketing, sales or partnership activities, with the use of such funds arbitrarily determined by the project team. This suggests that blockchain projects to date have not taken full advantage of the benefits of decentralization. Instead of treating individuals who make early contributions as merely financial investors, projects that are truly pursuing decentralization should recognize them as more akin to employees who receive stock options (and can actively contribute to the network from outside the organization) and adopt a philosophy of ‘compensation through the protocol’ to leverage them. Blockchain projects have the potential to design detailed and effective reward systems catered to the nature of their token model that can verify the contributions of members and compensate them accordingly. For example, even if initial investors are given bonuses as a reward for financial contributions, the calculation and payment of the bonus could take place at a later date once it has been proved that the individual has reached a certain level of use on the project’s sapp or made a contribution to PR activities though a method defined by the protocol. This would incentivize investors to participate in a more substantive way. In addition to this, a variety of protocols could be designed that encourage non-investors to contribute through participation in permissionless networks, and distribute tokens for such involvement. In the future, we will see blockchain projects with more complex value chains that have greater crossover with the real world. The ultimate goal of decentralized projects should be decentralizing the project’s entire value chain. To achieve this, all of the key sections of the value chain of ordinary companies, from R&D to marketing and sales, should be turned into protocols that are as detailed as possible, and companies should also consider mechanisms to incentivize top experts from outside the organization to contribute to the project’s growth in efficient ways by offering rewards. Tokens can be used as effective tools in this scenario, but it is critical that the method for calculating incentives for contributions is based on a transparent and defined protocol that is made public, unlike in centralized startups where it is based on the fleeting, arbitrary decisions of the management team. This can give protocol-based organizations the competitive edge over centralized companies.

Distributing tokens only to real contributors

Investment is merely one of many ways to contribute to the growth of a project. I believe that the underlying reason behind the failure of so many ICOs these days is that the communities are filled with initial shareholders who only care about the token price because they joined as investors. The identity of any organization is determined by the nature of its initial shareholders. This leads to a chain reaction which influences those who join the community later on, and also has a critical influence on the direction and speed of the network’s growth. In order to succeed, blockchain projects from 2019 onwards will have to demonstrate more advanced methods than their predecessors when it comes to determining the composition of their initial shareholder pools. They should look to move away from the current methods of giving tokens to anyone who invests, random airdrops and relying on partnerships based on the decisions of centralized entities when forming initial shareholder communities. Despite the failure of so many ICOs, many still believe in the strong underlying value of blockchain technology which has the potential to completely change the foundations of our economic systems. Moving forward, I hope that more blockchain projects will take up the challenge of using token distribution models where ‘not just anyone can become an initial shareholder,’ and consider a “proof of contribution” model which distributes tokens only to those who have made a substantive contribution. Have an opinionated take on 2018? CoinDesk is seeking submissions for our 2018 in Review. Email news  coindesk.com to learn how to get involved.  Piggy bank image via Shutterstock !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=;t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e);s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '239547076708948'); fbq('track', "PageView"); Source link Read the full article

[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

The Top Foreign Policy Gurus in the 2020 Democratic Race

U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of forces from northern Syria in October united the Democratic candidates hoping to take on the Republican president in the November 2020 election, who roundly denounced the move as damaging to U.S. credibility.

But it also sparked discussion over what they would do in Trump’s position, putting a rare spotlight on how the leading White House hopefuls see America’s role in the world.

On the most recent Democratic debate stage in Ohio this month, former Vice President Joe Biden argued for a continued presence in Syria to defend Washington’ Kurdish allies. His main progressive rival, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, indicated she would want combat troops out of the Middle East.

To understand better how the candidates would change foreign policy, we take a look at the experts advising the front-runners on these issues, and what this little-known group of advisers might mean for a future Democratic administration.

THE VETERAN

Biden’s pick for his senior foreign policy role, Tony Blinken, reflects the claim that former President Barack Obama’s No. 2 is the only Democratic candidate with the experience to undo the impacts of Trump’s presidency.

Blinken, a national security aide in Democratic President Bill Clinton’s White House, has been alongside Biden for years. He advised Biden’s aborted 2008 presidential campaign before joining the vice president on trips to war zones as his national security adviser.

Blinken, who also served as deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration, is seen in the background of the May 2011 photo of Obama’s national security team, which also includes Biden, watching the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan compound.

Adding to the focus on foreign policy experience, Biden has brought in Nicholas Burns, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Trump this month withdrew U.S. forces from northern Syria, drawing bipartisan rebuke. The president defended the move as part of an effort to “end endless wars.”

In an interview with Reuters, Blinken said that claim was a “con,” since Trump has really put more troops in the Middle East this year. He sent about 3,000 troops to Saudi Arabia in recent months as tensions with Iran escalated.

The Obama administration had worked to limit most U.S. combat deployments to small numbers of troops working with local fighters, Blinken said, but a complete withdrawal from places like Syria could lead to a power vacuum that is “filled by chaos.”

“As much of a burden as it sometimes seems to play this leadership role, the alternatives in terms of our interests and the lives of Americans are much worse,” Blinken said.

Biden says his foreign policy priority would be to recommit to U.S. allies, especially North Atlantic Treaty Organization members. He plans to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord on day one of his presidency.

THE WONKS

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren came to prominence as a Harvard academic studying bankruptcy, and has brought a professorial focus on domestic policy to the 2020 race.

But before she ran for president, Warren sought to bolster her foreign policy knowledge in 2017 by bringing in former Department of Defense official Sasha Baker, who served as deputy chief of staff to Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Warren took a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2017 and traveled widely, including trips to Iraq, Afghanistan and China over the subsequent two years.

Warren formed a “cohesive vision” on foreign policy during this time, said campaign spokeswoman Alexis Krieg, which “is reflected in many of her plans ranging from how to revitalize the State Department to how to reorient America’s trade policies.”

Warren also leans on a cadre of academics for foreign policy advice, including Ganesh Sitaraman, a law professor at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who worked on her 2012 campaign for the Senate.

Sitaraman has written about a movement toward a progressive foreign policy that promotes diplomacy over military might, but understands the risks of partnering with “nationalist oligarchies” like Russia and China.

Warren distilled her foreign policy views in a November 2018 speech at American University in Washington, lashing out at “reckless, endless wars in the Middle East” and “trade deals rammed through with callous disregard for our working people”.

Warren’s positions can seem to echo Trump’s “America First” approach, but her campaign has said she would take a multinational approach in places like Syria, a contrast with Trump’s go-it-alone style.

“Senator Warren believes that by pursuing international economic policies that benefit American workers instead of an elite few and using diplomacy to amplify strong yet pragmatic security policies, we can achieve a foreign policy for all,” said Krieg.

THE INSURGENT

Bernie Sanders’ key foreign policy adviser is Matt Duss, a staffer in his Senate office since early 2017 who has a reputation for taking on the Washington foreign policy establishment.

Duss, a Middle East specialist with a background at liberal think-tanks including the Center for American Progress, played a leading role in a resolution that Sanders co-sponsored with libertarian Republicans to end U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

The resolution passed in April, a rare bipartisan effort in Congress, but Trump declined to sign it into law.

“That shows that there is strong popular support for rethinking our approach to military intervention,” said Duss, who sees the bipartisan bill as a model for Congress reining in presidents’ power to use military force.

“This is not to say that Americans want to withdraw from the world. They certainly don’t, but they want to have a serious debate about how we actually engage in the world,” Duss told Reuters.

Duss and other researchers Sanders has sought out for advice are skeptical of unconditional U.S. support for countries accused of human rights violations, including Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Sanders, who is Jewish, said on Monday the $3.8 billion of U.S. military aid the United States gives Israel each year should be tied to the Israeli government’s “respect for human rights and democracy,” calling the security blockade on Palestinians in Gaza imposed by Israel and Egypt “absolutely inhumane”

“It is unacceptable. It is unsustainable,” Sanders said in a speech to a conference hosted by liberal advocacy group J Street in Washington on Monday.

“So I would use the leverage. $3.8 billion is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government, or for that matter to any government at all.”

THE BRAIN TRUST

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has put foreign policy at the forefront of his campaign, speaking in debates of his deployment in Afghanistan as a naval intelligence officer.

Doug Wilson, a former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs during the Obama administration, leads Buttigieg’s foreign policy team.

Wilson, who like Buttigieg is gay, worked on the 2010 repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for LGBT personnel.

As well as Wilson, Buttigieg has a brain trust of more than 100 foreign policy experts that the campaign turns to for pro-bono advice on policy in different parts of the world, according to Politico.

His campaign has also named a group of five Obama-era U.S. ambassadors, such as Tod Sedgwick, former ambassador to Slovakia, who have helped fundraise by bundling contributions.

At 37, Buttigieg is the youngest candidate running for president. In June, he delivered a foreign policy speech in his home state of Indiana in which he set out a vision for “America in the world in 2054”, the year he would hope to retire.

Buttigieg’s central argument is that the United States must “be its best” on issues like immigration, LGBT rights and tackling hate crimes in order to project its values around the world, Tarek Ghani, an academic and another adviser to Buttigieg, said in Washington in June.

“If we don’t do those things at home, there’s nothing for us to champion abroad,” said Ghani.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis; additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Jarrett Renshaw, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Jonathan Oatis)

from IJR https://ift.tt/2BV88eJ via IFTTT

[click2watch]

The Biggest Problem for ICOs? In 2018, It Was Their Own Investors

Simon Seojoon Kim is CEO and partner at Hashed, a crypto-focused accelerator focused on community building and impact investing.

The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review. 

At the beginning of 2018, the blockchain community reached the pinnacle of the ICO bubble.

The slogan of ICOs, which promised that “anyone can invest in an initial project,��� sounded wonderful and future-oriented. However, as the prices of most ICO tokens continued to tumble over the past year, it appears that the first chapter of this grand experiment has ended in failure.

Why do most ICOs fail to succeed? Some would cite the greed of individuals blindly looking to make a quick fortune, incompetent project teams led by entrepreneurs that lack expertise, the technical limitations of platform blockchains that lack scalability and inadequate regulations in countries that have been unable to keep up with changing market conditions.

These are all true. However, there is little to learn from this, as these are difficulties that all innovative, paradigm-shifting technologies face when forging new markets in their early stages.

In this article, I aim to take stock of the current situation by examining the inherent limitations of ICOs, in particular the belief that “anyone can invest in an initial project,” and discuss some potential solutions.

The popularity of group purchasing channels

Despite the burst of the ICO bubble, the blockchain craze in Asian markets is not waning.

In fact, interest in new technological trends and expanding ecosystems is growing. In particular, in markets like China and Korea where cryptocurrencies have gained greater acceptance, retail investors continue to take part in initial investments for blockchain projects through a variety of methods.

In China, the secondary market has become popular because Chinese nationals are restricted from participating in ICOs by law, while in Korea, a number of ‘coin group purchase’ channels are being operated surreptitiously through KakaoTalk messenger or other communities.

Setting aside government regulation, there are other important reasons behind these trends.

Up until as recently as mid-2017, anyone with an interest in blockchain projects could participate in an ICO without much difficulty. However, from the second half of 2017, there has been a movement towards larger private rounds instead of public sales and lower participation from individual investors.

In particular, projects that were more confident in their fundraising ability increasingly sought a greater proportion of investment from institutional investors or dedicated crypto VCs instead of through public sales. Key examples of this are Ontology or Handshake, who simply engaged in community airdrops after a private sale, without conducting an ICO.

Individual investors interested in these projects attempt to get involved through influential brokers that can grant them access to the private round. At the same time, there are many complaints within the community about the expanding trend of institutional investors taking up the lion’s share of private rounds.

A reluctance to accept individual investors

There is a large gap between the role that many projects had hoped individual investors would play during the ICO, and the reality that they have been faced with afterwards.

While providing the public with a fair investment opportunity, project teams also hoped to create a loyal community that would be aligned with the project’s incentives and share in its growth.

Compared to the existing startup model, where the company grows based on investment received from a small number of institutional investors through closed channels, teams believed that ICOs would facilitate the creation of a more open ecosystem which would lead to a virtuous cycle of rapid growth.

However, individual investors in blockchain projects ultimately failed to provide much help to the projects in many cases.

The majority of ICO participants who formed the community’s persona were often “creditors” who only cared about the token price, rather than “contributors.” Many of these individuals simply jumped on the bandwagon of popular projects without a clear understanding of or trust in the project’s core technology or business.

Accordingly, they contributed very little to the productive activities that promote healthy growth within communities. In addition to this, few of the individual investors who took part in ICOs for blockchain projects actually used the tokens they received for the intended purpose once the dapp or platform was released. Instead, they were essentially free riders who sold off their tokens as soon as the price hit a certain level.

This led to a growing awareness among teams that they could actually threaten the long-term development of projects. From the perspective of project teams, it seems more efficient to manage a small number of professional investors rather than have to communicate and provide explanations to a community of individual investors who constantly ask about the price and listing on exchanges, especially during the launch stage when the team is naturally spending most of its energy on development.

Institutional investors also tend to have their own networks and greater insight into the blockchain industry. In many cases, institutional investors have provided practical assistance to help grow the project by playing an advisory role to entrepreneurs or recruiting team members during the early stages. These investors can provide support in a number of ways, including building local communities in key locations, hosting hackathons to connect developers to the project, or acting as a liaison with major media channels.

Because there is a longer lock-up period in private rounds than in public rounds, institutional investors have no choice but to believe in the mid-to-long-term growth of the project and offer assistance where they can. Of course, not all institutional investors effectively contribute to the development of a project. The behavior of some institutional investors who fail to provide promised support or lack expertise and judgment has also been a source of complaints within communities.

However, the competitive nature of markets is helping to correct this problem.

Because of the free and transparent flow of information in the hyper connected crypto ecosystem, information about reputable and not so reputable institutional investors spreads quickly between blockchain entrepreneurs. In time, only reputable crypto funds will be given the opportunity to invest in promising projects, similar to the growth process that venture capital markets went through.

Is investment the only way to contribute to a project?

Thus far I have looked at the growing trend of smaller public rounds in 2018.

I am not trying to raise the dichotomous question of whether individual or institutional investors are more suitable for investment in initial projects. The more fundamental question is, “How do we create an ecosystem in which those who contribute to projects can become initial shareholders?” and I believe the mechanism to enable this is Proof of Contribution.

Think back to the advent of the world’s first cryptocurrency, bitcoin, which represented the beginning of the decentralization paradigm, and the process through which tokens were issued. Bitcoin issued tokens to the community purely through mining, without any token sale targeting investors. When miners provided hash power, their contribution would be verified in a way that enhanced the security of the network, and they were rewarded with bitcoins in return.

Although the protocol-defined method of contribution to the network was simple, it was fundamentally a proof-of-work (PoW) concept, which could also be viewed as a form of ‘Proof of Contribution’ that reflected the philosophy of compensating those who contribute to a project. During the long period where no one paid attention to the price of Bitcoin, the majority of early shareholders in the network were people who carried a strong belief in decentralized currencies rather than those looking to make a short-term profit.

In the IT industry, there is a clear distinction between the role of 1) investors, 2) the company and 3) employees during the early stages of a startup. Investors receive equity in the company in return for providing initial capital. It is then the company’s job to use these funds effectively to grow the company. Employees receive stock options upon joining the company, and are incentivized to work hard because of the clear upside potential of a higher share price.

I believe that this stock options system was the biggest driving force behind innovation in the Silicon Valley startups of today.

Accordingly, it is unfortunate that most blockchain projects have reduced the role of external stakeholders who join the project in its initial stages to that of ‘investors’ in traditional IT startups. This is demonstrated by the fact that the token allocation section in the white papers of most blockchain projects resembles a business development plan and marketing budget that was determined entirely by the project team, instead of a system of autonomous token distribution through the protocol. In most cases, the token model is only described briefly, with a focus on the main activities that will take place once the network is sufficiently established.

In other words, the model for network growth is selling tokens to investors through marketing, sales or partnership activities, with the use of such funds arbitrarily determined by the project team. This suggests that blockchain projects to date have not taken full advantage of the benefits of decentralization. Instead of treating individuals who make early contributions as merely financial investors, projects that are truly pursuing decentralization should recognize them as more akin to employees who receive stock options (and can actively contribute to the network from outside the organization) and adopt a philosophy of ‘compensation through the protocol’ to leverage them.

Blockchain projects have the potential to design detailed and effective reward systems catered to the nature of their token model that can verify the contributions of members and compensate them accordingly. For example, even if initial investors are given bonuses as a reward for financial contributions, the calculation and payment of the bonus could take place at a later date once it has been proved that the individual has reached a certain level of use on the project’s sapp or made a contribution to PR activities though a method defined by the protocol.

This would incentivize investors to participate in a more substantive way. In addition to this, a variety of protocols could be designed that encourage non-investors to contribute through participation in permissionless networks, and distribute tokens for such involvement.

In the future, we will see blockchain projects with more complex value chains that have greater crossover with the real world. The ultimate goal of decentralized projects should be decentralizing the project’s entire value chain. To achieve this, all of the key sections of the value chain of ordinary companies, from R&D to marketing and sales, should be turned into protocols that are as detailed as possible, and companies should also consider mechanisms to incentivize top experts from outside the organization to contribute to the project’s growth in efficient ways by offering rewards.

Tokens can be used as effective tools in this scenario, but it is critical that the method for calculating incentives for contributions is based on a transparent and defined protocol that is made public, unlike in centralized startups where it is based on the fleeting, arbitrary decisions of the management team.

This can give protocol-based organizations the competitive edge over centralized companies.

Distributing tokens only to real contributors

Investment is merely one of many ways to contribute to the growth of a project.

I believe that the underlying reason behind the failure of so many ICOs these days is that the communities are filled with initial shareholders who only care about the token price because they joined as investors.

The identity of any organization is determined by the nature of its initial shareholders. This leads to a chain reaction which influences those who join the community later on, and also has a critical influence on the direction and speed of the network’s growth. In order to succeed, blockchain projects from 2019 onwards will have to demonstrate more advanced methods than their predecessors when it comes to determining the composition of their initial shareholder pools.

They should look to move away from the current methods of giving tokens to anyone who invests, random airdrops and relying on partnerships based on the decisions of centralized entities when forming initial shareholder communities.

Despite the failure of so many ICOs, many still believe in the strong underlying value of blockchain technology which has the potential to completely change the foundations of our economic systems.

Moving forward, I hope that more blockchain projects will take up the challenge of using token distribution models where ‘not just anyone can become an initial shareholder,’ and consider a “proof of contribution” model which distributes tokens only to those who have made a substantive contribution.

Have an opinionated take on 2018? CoinDesk is seeking submissions for our 2018 in Review. Email news [at] coindesk.com to learn how to get involved. 

Piggy bank image via Shutterstock

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