#imagine what Dread's marketing campaign would have been like

[coldgoldlazarus]

Metroid Prime Commercial: "The cold silence of space only punctuates the feeling of death that emanates from this virtually lifeless planet. Only one thing is alive and well here... evil. And it must be destroyed, decimated, exterminated. But first it must be found."

Metroid Prime Magazine Ad: "Use everything at your disposal. Dispose of everything."

Metroid Fusion Commercial: "Exterminating evil gives you strength. But are you strong enough to face your greatest fear?"

Metroid Fusion Magazine Ad: "Sometimes, the only way to defeat a predator is to become one."

Metroid Prime 2 - Echoes Commercial: "Two separate worlds: One shadow, one light. Where the difference between life and death... is a few inches of metal."

Metroid Prime 2 - Echoes Magazine Ad: "If you're not scared of the dark... you will be."

Metroid Prime - Hunters Commercial: "More bounty hunters, more ways to die."

.

If the other games in the series had been released during this time, I wonder what sort of cheesy edgy taglines they might have gotten.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Patent troll's IP more powerful than Apple's

I was 12 years into my Locus Magazine column when I published the piece I'm most proud of, "IP," from September 2020. It came after an epiphany, one that has profoundly shaped the way I talk and think about the issues I campaign on.

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That revelation was about the meaning of the term "IP," which had been the center of this tedious linguistic cold war for decades. People who advocate for free and open technology and culture hate the term "IP" because of its ideological loading and imprecision.

Ideology first: Before "IP" came into wide parlance - when lobbyists for multinational corporations convinced the UN to turn their World Intellectual Property Organization into a specialized agency, we used other terms like "author's monopolies" and "regulatory monopolies."

"Monopoly" is a pejorative. "Property" is sacred to our society. When a corporation seeks help defending its monopoly, it is a grubby corrupter. When it asks for help defending its property, it is enlisting the public to defend the state religion.

Free culture people know allowing "monopolies" to become "property" means losing the battle before it is even joined, but it is frankly unavoidable. How do you rephrase "IP lawyer" without conceding the property point? "Trademark-copyright-patent-and-related-rights lawyer?"

Thus the other half of the objection to "IP": its imprecision. Copyright is not anything like patent. Patent is not anything like trademark. Trade secrets are an entirely different thing again. Don't let's get started on sui generis and neighboring rights.

And this is where my revelation came: as it is used in business circles, "IP" has a specific, precise meaning. "IP" means, "Any law, policy or regulation that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers."

Copyright, patent and trademark all have limitations and exceptions designed to prevent this kind of control, but if you arrange them in overlapping layers around a product, each one covers the exceptions in the others.

Creators don't like having their copyrights called "author's monopolies." Monopolists get to set prices. All the copyright in the world doesn't let an author charge publishers more for their work. The creators have a point.

But when author's monopolies are acquired by corporate monopolists, something magical and terrible happens.

Remember: market-power monopolies are still (theoretically) illegal and when companies do things to maintain or expand their monopolies, they risk legal jeopardy.

But: The corporate monopolist who uses IP to expand their monopoly has no such risk. Monopolistic conduct in defense of IP enjoys wide antitrust forbearance. What's the point of issuing patents or allowing corporations to buy copyrights if you don't let them enforce them?

The IP/market-power monopoly represents a futuristic corporate alloy, a new metal never seen, impervious to democratic control.

Software is "IP" and so any device with software in it is like beskar, a rare metal that can be turned into the ultimate corporate armor.

No company exemplifies this better than Apple, a company that used limitations on IP to secure its market power, then annihilated those limits so that no one could take away its market power.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

In the early 2000s, Apple was in trouble. The convicted monopolist Microsoft ruled the business world, and if you were the sole Mac user in your office, you were screwed.

When a Windows user sent you a Word file, you could (usually) open it in the Mac version of Word, but then if you saved that file again, it often became forever cursed, unopenable by any version of Microsoft Office ever created or ever to be created.

This became a huge liability. Designers started keeping a Windows box next to their dual processor Power Macs, just to open Office docs. Or worse (for Apple), they switched to a PC and bought Windows versions of Adobe and Quark Xpress.

Steve Jobs didn't solve this problem by begging Bill Gates to task more engineers to Office for Mac. Instead, Jobs got Apple techs to reverse-engineer all of the MS Office file formats and release a rival office suite, Iwork, which could read and write MS Office files.

That was an Apple power move, one that turned MS's walled garden into an all-you-can-eat buffet of potential new Mac users. Apple rolled out the Switch ads, whose message was, "Every MS Office file used to be a reason *not* to use a Mac. Now it's a reason to switch *to* a Mac."

More-or-less simultaneously, though, Apple was inventing the hybrid market/IP monopoly tool that would make it the most valuable company in the world, in its design for the Ipod and the accompanying Itunes store.

It had a relatively new legal instrument to use for this purpose: 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act; specifically, Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" clause, which bans breaking DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, if a product has a copyrighted work (like an operating system) and it has an "access control" (like a password or a bootloader key), then bypassing the access control is against the law, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

That last part - "even if no copyright infringement takes place" - is the crux of DMCA 1201. The law was intended to support the practices of games console makers and DVD player manufacturers, who wanted to stop competitors from making otherwise legal devices.

With DVD players, that was about "region coding," the part of the DVD file format that specified which countries a DVD could be played back in. If you bought a DVD in London, you couldn't play it in Sydney or New York.

Now, it's not a copyright violation to buy a DVD and play it wherever you happen to be. As a matter of fact, buying a DVD and playing it is the *opposite* of a copyright infringement.

But it *was* a serious challenge to the entertainment cartel's business-model, which involved charging different prices and having different release dates for the same movie depending on where you were.

The same goes for games consoles: companies like Sega and Nintendo made a lot of money charging creators for the right to sell games that ran on the hardware they sold.

If I own a Sega Dreamcast, and you make a game for it, and I buy it and run it on my Sega, that's not a copyright infringement, even if Sega doesn't like it. But if you have to bypass an "access control" to get the game to play without Sega's blessing, it violates DMCA 1201.

What's more, DMCA 1201 has major penalties for "trafficking in circumvention devices" and information that could be used to build such a device, such as reports of exploitable flaws in the programming of a DRM system: $500k in fines and a 5 year sentence for a first offense.

Deregionalizing a DVD player or jailbreaking a Dreamcast didn't violate anyone's copyrights, but it still violated copyright law (!). It was pure IP, the right to control the conduct of critics (security researchers), customers and competitors.

In the words of Jay Freeman, it's "Felony contempt of business-model."

And that's where the Ipod came in. Steve Jobs's plan was to augment the one-time revenue from an Ipod with a recurrent revenue stream from the Itunes store.

He exploited the music industry's superstitious dread of piracy and naive belief in the efficacy of DRM to convince the record companies to only sell music with his DRM wrapper on it - a wrapper they themselves could not authorize listeners to remove.

Ever $0.99 Itunes purchase added $0.99 to the switching cost of giving up your Ipod for a rival device, or leaving Itunes and buying DRM music from a rival store. It was control over competitors and customers. It was IP.

If you had any doubt that the purpose of Ipod/Itunes DRM was to fight competitors, not piracy, then just cast your mind back to 2004, when Real Media "hacked" the Ipod so that it would play music locked with Real's DRM as well as Apple's.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3387871/Apple+RealNetworks+Hacked+iPod.htm

Apple used DMCA 1201 to shut Real down, not to stop copyright infringement, but to prevent Apple customers from buying music from record labels and playing them on their Ipods without paying Apple a commission and locking themselves to Apple's ecosystem, $0.99 at a time.

Pure IP. Now, imagine if Microsoft had been able to avail itself of DMCA 1201 when Iwork was developed - if, for example, its "information rights management" encryption had caught on, creating "access controls" for all Office docs.

There's a very strong chance that would have killed Apple off before it could complete its recovery. Jobs knew the power of interoperating without consent, and he knew the power of invoking the law to block interoperability. He practically invented modern IP.

Apple has since turned IP into a trillion-dollar valuation, largely off its mobile platform, the descendant of the Ipod. This mobile platform uses DRM - and thus DMCA 1201 - to ensure that you can only use apps that come from its app store.

Apple gets a cut of penny you spend buying an app, and every penny you spend within that app: 30% (now 15% for a minority of creators after bad publicity).

IP lets one of the least taxed corporations on Earth extract a 30% tax from everyone else.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Remember, it's not copyright infringement for me to write an app and you to buy it from me and play it on your Iphone without paying the 30% Apple tax.

That's the exact opposite of copyright infringement: buying a copyrighted work and enjoying it on a device you own.

But it's still an IP violation. It bypasses Apple's ability to control competitors and customers. It's felony contempt of business-model.

It shows that under IP, copyright can't be said to exist as an incentive to creativity - rather, it's a tool for maintaining monopolies.

Which brings me to today's news that Apple was successfully sued by a patent troll over its DRM. A company called Personalized Media Communications whose sole product is patent lawsuits trounced Apple in the notorious East Texas patent-troll court.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-19/apple-told-to-pay-308-5-million-for-infringing-drm-patent

After software patents became widespread - thanks to the efforts of Apple and co - there was a bonanza of "inventors" filing garbage patents with the USPTO whose format was "Here's an incredibly obvious thing...*with a computer*." The Patent Office rubberstamped them by the million.

These patents became IP, a way to extract rent without having to make a product. "Investors" teamed up with "inventors" to buy these and impose a tax on businesses - patent licensing fees that drain money from people who make things and give it to people who buy things.

They found a court - the East Texas court in Marshall, TX - that was hospitable to patent trolls. They rented dusty PO boxes in Marshall and declared them to be their "headquarters" so that they could bring suits there.

Locals thrived - they got jobs as "administrators" (mail forwarders) for the thousands of "businesses" whose "head office" was in Marshall (when you don't make a product, your head office can be a PO box).

Productive companies facing hundreds of millions - billions! - in patent troll liability sought to curry favor with locals (who were also the jury pool) by "donating" things to Marshall, like the skating rink Samsung bought for the town.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-the-only-outdoor-skating-rink-in-texas

Patent, like copyright, is supposed to serve a public purpose. There are only two clauses in the US Constitution that come with explanations (the rest being "truths held to be self-evident"): the Second Amendment and the "Progress Clause" that creates patents and copyrights.

Famously, the Second Amendment says you can bear arms as part of a "well-regulated militia."

And the Progress Clause? It extends to Congress the power to create patents and copyrights "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

I'm with Apple in its ire over this judgment. Sending $308.5m to a "closely held" patent troll has nothing to do with the "Progress of Science and useful Arts."

But it has *everything* to do with IP.

If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me your copyrighted work, then there's no reason to hate on patent trolls.

They're just doing what trolls do: blocking the bridge between someone engaged in useful work and the customers for that work, and extracting a toll. It's not even 30%.

There is especial and delicious irony in the fact that the patent in question is a DRM patent: a patent for the very same process that Apple uses to lock down its devices and prevent creators from selling to customers without paying the 30% Apple Tax.

But even without that, it's as good an example of what an IP marketplace looks like: one in which making things becomes a liability. After all, the more you make, the more chances there are for an IP owner to demand tax from you to take it to market.

The only truly perfect IP is the naked IP of a patent troll, the bare right to sue, a weapon made from pure abstract legal energy, untethered from any object, product or service that might be vulnerable to another IP owner's weapons.

A coda: you may recall that Apple doesn't use DRM on its music anymore: you can play Itunes music on any device. That wasn't a decision Apple took voluntarily: it was forced into it by a competitor: Amazon, an unlikely champion of user rights.

In 2007, the record labels had figured out that Apple had lured them into a trap, selling millions of dollars worth of music that locked both listeners and labels into the Itunes ecosystem.

In a desperate bid for freedom, they agreed to help Amazon launch its MP3 store - all the same music, at the same prices...without DRM. Playable on an Ipod, but also on any other device.

Prior to the Amazon MP3 store, the market was all DRM: you could either buy Apple's DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or you could buy other DRM music and play it on a less successful device.

The Amazon MP3 store (whose motto was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me") changed that to "Buy Apple DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or buy Amazon music and play it anywhere." That was the end of Apple music DRM.

So why hasn't anyone done this for the apps that Apple extracts the 30% tax on? IP. If you made a phone that could play Ios apps, Apple would sue you:

https://gizmodo.com/judge-tosses-apple-lawsuit-against-iphone-emulator-in-b-1845967318

And if you made a device that let you load non-App Store apps on an Iphone, Apple would also sue you.

Apple understands IP. It learned the lesson of the Amazon MP3 store, and it is committed to building a world where every creator pays a tax to reach every Apple customer.

[doesitsparkjoytho]

"The Happy Harpy Post" - Medieval Craigslist

(**For anyone not in the U.S., Craigslist is Facebook Marketplace's janky, super sketch predecessor, basically an online site to list items for sale, jobs, "Missed Encounters," etc.**)

[For Sale / Trade]

Realm's most powerful -- and evil -- sword

Just in time for that long-awaited conquering!

The realm's most notoriously blood-thirsty sword has reappeared from the dark abyss yet again. The last band of heroes battled death to cast it into oblivion some centuries ago, but like a merciless rash, it will not stay banished.

Features:

Authentic blood stains and nicks

Possessed by an extremely evil and demeaning spirit, rumored to be that of Lord Archbane himself

Crafted from the finest dragon's bone and titanium, ensuring years of slicing, thrusting, hacking, mutilation and general intimidation

This weapon is not for the faint of heart. If the latter is not black as pitch, I assure you that the blade will drive you mad in its attempt to corrupt your soul. I stumbled upon the sword but three weeks past, but already the power of this dark artifact threatens to consume my being. However, one with the strength of spirit to master it stands to gain an instrument of unimaginable potential.

Willing to trade for guaranteed safety during new owner's reign of terror, a residence in owner's general vicinity, and a small (negotiable) re-homing fee for myself / the sword. ***And please note: the sword has attached itself to me in ways that I dare not speak of. If you try to kill me and take the sword in place of a transaction, it will be lost for many more centuries. It has assured me of this.

If interested, please find or send for innkeeper Finbar Ruild of Heshire, Eastern Province.

Free Pulsating Crystal Thing

Are you a dark being of some authority seeking an artifact of unknown power and antiquity to enhance your castle/cave/fortress/tower/dungeon's mystical atmosphere? Are you perhaps also wishing for a handful of random occurrences to shake things up, or to rid yourself of a few pesky, traitorous, or bumbling minions too curious for their own well-being? Then look no further! This strange, eerily glowing crystal pulsates as if containing life and is sure to amuse and amaze guests. In addition, this nifty crystal can easily lull one to sleep with its deep, otherworldly and ominous croonings. I guarantee you won't stumble upon another artifact of such myriad uses and features. I'm only parting with it because the lady of the keep has suggested that I have one too many "unique" trinkets.

Serious inquiries only (No minions, peasants, slaves or other lowly beings, as I dread the repercussions of this falling into the wrong hands). Please contact Lord Vasuvian at the black tower. You can send a messenger by horseback, pigeon, falcon, hawk, bat, dragon, etc. I promise its safe return.

[Services]

Haircuts for Heroes

Are you a hero? Do you want to be? Nothing says "hero" like a unique hairstyle. I offer dying, cutting, braiding, and lime-washing. Be the first to try out my new Dark and Dangerous dye, made from a fermented leech and vinegar mixture which is entirely unique and promises the darkest, longest lasting black available.

Stop announcing your triumphs and displaying your spoils to earn the trust of the town and start standing out!

My shop, Haircuts for Heroes, is located in North Ghestfel.

Live-in Mage for hire

Have you ever wanted life to be a little easier than it is? Do you ever find yourself wishing that your floor would clean itself, that your fire would stay lit through the night, or that those pesky birds would cease pecking the thatch from your roof to build their nests?

Now you can make your wishes come true! Mage with 20+ years of experience in the Way is willing to lend his talents in exchange for room and board. His only request is that you don't treat him as a servant and allow him time for his own studies between your requests.

If interested, please send word to Octulus Drolp so that we may arrange a meeting and home viewing.

[Missed Encounters]

At the smithy - M4W

You, dearest woman, had four children in tow and were berating each of them as they touched everything in the shop. I smiled at you, but you were too busy to take full notice of me. Your voice was the sweetest music to my ears. I doubt a lovely lady such as yourself with four energetic children would be without husband, but if that is indeed the case, I beseech you to come and find me!

Make inquiry for Will at the stables.

O4H

To the ruggedly handsome human who passed through the southern Fivhren woods yesterday morn:

As I emerged from my cave, sleep still crusting my eyes like fairy dust, I was struck by a most unusual but welcome sight. Upon the knoll beyond my cave, a dark-haired man (you) knelt by his steed. My orcish heart pattered- and I am not easily moved, particularly by those of diminutive form. A dark green cloak enfolded your manly form, and you seemed intent on starting a fire, perhaps to make your breakfast.

Not wishing to startle you, I went about my morning as routine demanded, beginning with my rejuvenating spritz in the creek just beyond my cave. I began to hum to catch your attention. When you spotted me, I tried to act alluring, splashing my heaving green bosom with water from the nearby creek and rubbing my face sensually. In reality, I was merely taking my morning bath and desperately attempting to remove the morning crust from round my black orbs- but I figured 'hey, why not kill two birds with one stone?'

I locked my gaze unto yours, and your visage was overcome with- dare I hope- alarmed intrigue? You quickly gathered a few of what I assumed were your belongings, leapt onto your steed and rode away. Without me.

I am sorry if my forthcomingness frightened you away. I am willing to take things slowly, if you are lacking a mate and or have any interest in lady orcs. I enjoy, I imagine, many things you humans do: fishing; rolling in the mud and baking in the sun afterward (it's good for one's skin); eating and cooking (I prepare an astounding seared pig, and my frog-eye soup is unmatched); clubbing and stoning small, pesky animals; and, last but not least, dancing.

If you ever pass my way again, don't hesitate to peek your beautiful head into my cave and holler. But you'd better holler fairly loudly, as I'm a heavy sleeper.

Sincerely yours,

Ghrus'yula

[Community Notices]

Your Daughter Is No Treasure

Dear Lady Fitz,

Please cease advertising your daughter as the most enchanting creature in the land. I had the misfortune of crossing her path in the market this Saturday past, and she was neither lovely, endearing, soft of voice, or willow-thin. In fact, I have seen female trolls more alluring. If you were to place her in a tower for one to rescue, those stupid enough to brave the perils set before them on faith of your word alone would, upon seeing her, leap to their deaths or fall on their own swords before they carried her out of there with them. I am not trying to be rude, I am merely pointing out the truth which I think you should know. If you really wish to marry your daughter off, be honest. It also might not hurt to throw in some gold.

Sincerely,

A man saving fellow men from unhappy futures

To my neighbor to the east and south, the marauding tyrant

Dear kindred conqueror:

Being a power and land hungry tyrant myself, I acknowledge that certain consequences can be expected from claiming new provinces. For example, I realize that valuable farmland will likely be laid to waste in the process, forest burned and the animals inhabiting it slain, and villagers and townspeople dispatched from their homes.

However, it is the latter which concerns me. Far be it from me to advise you on proper warmongering, but your actions have brought the consequences of war to my borders. In the towns and villages dotting our shared borders, beings fleeing your terror-inducing campaign are piling in by the hour. However, that's not the main issue here. No, what concerns me is that these humans, orcs, elves, etc. are crossing my borders and falling dead in my towns, creating an awful sight and stench which, in the end, I am left to deal with. Not only that, but my denizens are becoming worried that I might gather my army again and attempt to take the few provinces I have allowed them to keep. I have worked hard at gaining their newfound trust in the last few years following the end of my campaign, and your actions are threatening the fragile halcyon of my new kingdom.

If you would kindly see to it that more of your soon-to-be subjects did not escape your borders, or at least died within them, I would be most grateful. If you do not comply, a few thousand of my most sickly denizens may somehow find their way into your lands just when you think you've established yourself in your new domains.

Yours to the west and north,

Lord Belus III

--------------------------------

So I used to write. A LOT. Before fanfic, I was an aspiring fantasy novelist, and I wrote pretty much all the time. I'm trying to get back into it, so I've been looking at my old pieces and taking stock of what I like/don't like. This is one of my all time favorite pieces so I thought I'd share!

[lizstaysinneverland]

FFXV Popband!AU Headcanons

I actually had started a fanfic of this started a few years ago when FFXV first came out but I know I’ll never finish it, so I thought why not make it into a headcanon post. I originally went with a boyband but I kinda didn’t think anyone of the boys would be a drummer. Also, please see the end notes for more information.

This is a bit long so I put it under “read more”.

Prompto is the lead singer of the band. He has the sweet flower boy image. Is the one with the most stage fright but once the music turns on, he just forgets about him being on stage and gets really into it. He is super shy when meeting his fans but they love him even more for that. He gets scolded by Luna and Ardyn a lot because he tends to reveal too much in interviews but he can’t help it, he just gets so excited and wants to share what they are working on and how they live and so forth.

Noctis is the backup singer and guitarist. He has the brooding pretty boy image. But he is actually just as nervous (but hides it way better than Prompto) when he meets his fans and is super sweet and kind to them. He lets the others do the talking in interviews, Luna is trying to motivate him to become more proactive but to no avail. He actually trains a lot by himself and puts a lot of effort into every performance. Sometimes clashes with Gladiolus due to Noctis sometimes rather childish attitude and laziness.

Ignis is the keyboardist and songwriter. He has the cold prince image. He also functions as the intermediator whenever Luna isn’t there to stop the fights. He always knows what to say to the fans and is super happy for the love they receive by their fans, that’s why fan meetings are one of his favourite things about this job. He is usually the one calming the others down in interviews when they get too excited and he always has a perfect answer to everything. Despite his usual stoic and sometimes rather calculating demeanor, his songs are full of emotion, he can express his feelings the best in his writings.

Gladiolus is the bassist. He has the bad boy image. His temperament gets him in trouble with paparazzi's sometimes, much to Gentiana’s annoyance. He’s very flirty with his fangirls but treats them with respect, so even if the magazine call him a “fuckboy” his fans don’t cease to fangirl over him and melt whenever he smiles at them. He is quite smart  and knows how to talk his way out of uncomfortable interview questions. He usually practices with the whole band, practicing alone makes him bored after a short time and he feels he improves faster when he hears himself out of tune with the other members.

Cindy is the drummer. She initially wasn’t part of the band when they were still a garage band, but their drummer left after a feud. They were on the verge of signing the contract with the Izunia Music Group record label, so they needed a drummer. Cindy has been a childhood friend of Prompto and Noctis so they kinda roped her into it last minute. But she actually enjoys it and it allows her to spend a lot of money on cars, so whenever she doesn’t practice with the band she is fixing old cars and pimps them up into really cool cars or helps out her grandad at his car repair shop. She has a very big fanbase despite “just” being the drummer. She’s the one who is mostly active on social media.

Iris is the stylist of the band. She is always super hyper and gushing about how great they look with her clothing choices. She also hypes the members up before the big show, to help them feel confident on stage. She always manages to find the perfect clothing for any kind of event, be it the Music Awards or some themed event. They never look bad. Iris also introduces the members to all the memes and newest inside jokes in the band fandom. As she is the sister of Gladiolus, she tags along to the events and such as well and makes sure they look good all night.

Lunafreya is the manager. Despite her quite young age she is one of the best. She helps the band members relax before any major performance and makes sure they are always hydrated and giving their best. She tries to fulfill the wishes of the members, but in turn she expects a lot from them. She might usually be gentle but if anyone of the band pisses her off because they think it’s okay to be lazy or don’t reflect on their behavior or break the rules, she will scold them quite harshly. She has an exceptional organizational talent and that shows in how she schedules everything and makes things work despite all odds.

Ardyn is the CEO of the Izunia Music Group. While the band members won’t see him often, if he does come by to check on things, absolutely everyone is on edge because you don’t piss off THE Ardyn Izunia and you certainly don’t make mistakes. He loves his little charm aka Lunafreya for her hardworking nature and finding the band and making them into popstars. He lets her do most of the management but if she can’t handle something (there can be quite some annoying and snobbish business partners) he will handle it and she can be sure everything will work. He makes the impossible possible. He is the creepy dude that you don’t expect to be rich because of his poor fashion taste but is somehow really charming and attracts a lot of people.

Ravus is the director for the music videos and he is such a perfectionist to the point that he will make them do a scene again because Noctis face should have been turned to the side a teeny tiny bit more, like by 5 degrees. Ravus often tends to bicker with Noctis and Ravus as he feels like they don’t take his commands seriously. Much to Lunafreya’s and Ignis’ annoyance. But you can bet that the music video will turn out incredible well, almost like an art masterpiece. Ravus is quite creative and that shows in all his work.

Gentiana is the head of the marketing department at Izunia Music Group and works a lot with Lunafreya to make sure she promotes the bands correctly. Sometimes she even stops by when Noctis & others are in the middle of a photoshoot or music video shoot just to see how she can implement things into their marketing campaign. She never actually tells them how she promotes the band, so they usually are surprised when they suddenly find their face plastered on a bus or see a commercial of them on TV. But they are never disappointed. She knows what she is doing and enjoys gushing to Lunafreya about all her ideas.

Aranea is the photographer. She seemed a bit harsh at first so they dreaded doing photoshoots with her but once they warmed up to her after they did a good job, they realized she’s just a hard worker and wants the models to be amazed by the photos she took. She can easily lose track of time when she is concentrated on taking pictures of her models and seems to have an endless amount of ideas. But she lets the band members run wild with their own imagination as well, so she can get authentic photos of them for special fan events.

End notes:

JFC finally finished it, this has been on my draft for a long time because I always forgot about it or had no time to sit down and write it all.

I know this isn’t as realistic as it could be, but I didn’t want it to be too realistic, to me it was more fun making them be THE music band everyone wants and so some characters might come off as “Mary Sue” like and some jobs might not be exactly the same as in real life. I apologize for that.

I took a bit of inspiration from Korean bands.

I did choose to use Ardyn Izunia instead of Lucis Caelum because I didn’t wanted them to be related in this fanfic as I didn’t plan to make him appear often.

[bbclesmis]

TV Is Unwhitewashing History One Character, Period, and Genre at a Time

From “Les Miserables” and “Harlots” to “The Spanish Princess” and “The Terror,” TV producers are restoring the historical narratives of people of color.

Black characters on a show set in Tudor England would be a “stark anachronism” one consultant told “The Spanish Princess” co-showrunner Emma Frost in no uncertain terms. “Even I knew just from basic research that that wasn’t true,” she said in an interview with IndieWire during a set visit last year.

As TV shows seek out more inclusive storytelling, many producers are looking to the past to find new ways to freshen old stories. And while historical records and artwork have shown plenty of black, brown, and Asian faces through centuries of Western history, that same diversity has been largely absent in history class and on the screen unless it takes place after the 1950s. This dearth has affected the types of roles offered and even considered by actors of color.

Mandip Gill, who plays a British police officer of South Asian descent on “Doctor Who,” has only performed in contemporary projects. “I have always said I won’t be in a period drama. I just don’t see it happening,” she said. “I can’t even imagine it. When I’ve written down what types I like to play or where I would like to push the boundaries, it’s not with period dramas. I don’t watch them because I can’t relate to them.”

Danny Sapiani has had a better track record for landing period roles — such as Will North in “Harlots” and Sambene in “Penny Dreadful” — but that wasn’t always the case. “Period drama on screen was not a consideration when I began my professional career. Most film and tv roles were confined to the modern era, post-1950s, ghetto-ized in nature or victims of oppression,” he said.

David Oyelowo, who stars as Inspector Javert in the upcoming PBS-BBC adaptation of “Les Miserables,” agrees. “That was the case for me. And having grown up in the UK, and more specifically, on period drama, I had just resigned myself to the fact that, ‘Okay, those amazing shows are going to be shows I love, but they’re never going to have folks like me in it.’”

Sites like The Public Medievalist and historians like Onyeka have worked to challenge the narrative of the pure-white Western history that’s been widely accepted, even by people of color. Now actors and producers are following their example to restore the place of marginalized people on screen and into the public consciousness.

“The excuse has been used that it’s not historically accurate, and that’s just not true,” said Oyelowo. “If you are an actual genuine student of history — and not just coming from an ignorant kind of purely white lens in relation to European history — you’d know that people of color have been in France, in the UK, all over Europe, for centuries, and not just as slaves.”

Sapiani points to the discoveries and documentation available for anyone to research about the existence of people of color in Europe for centuries.

“As evidenced by the discovery of Cheddar Man, the first complete skeleton found in a gorge in Somerset, the first modern Britons who arrived on the island 10,000 years ago had black to brown skin, blue eyes and dark wavy hair. It is from these earliest arrivals that the inhabitants of Britain derive their origins,” he said.

“In fact, there are very few periods in history where people of color do not feature, not only in Britain — the setting of most costume dramas — but across the entire European continent. The census notes 20,000 blacks living in Britain in 1780, the century we focus on in ‘Harlots,’ more than half that number living in London, which is where ‘Harlots’ is set. Even though this was during the height of the slave trade, not all those people were slaves or victims of white racism. Fascinating characters like Will North, spanned social and class boundaries, often, though not always, against incredible odds.”

Hulu’s “Harlots,” about the war between two brothels in Georgian London, not only features the free man Will North, but also several black harlots, one of whom ran her own brothel.

“There were tens of thousands of people of color living in London in the 1760s. We have found stories of musicians, estate managers, fencing masters, actresses, grocers, prize fighters, haberdashers, soldiers, poets, activists, librarians and clerks,” said “Harlots” co-creator Moira Buffini.

“Some were clearly people of means, like the ‘black lady covered in finery,’ spotted by Hester Thrale at the opera. ‘Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies’ has entries for several women of color who were making their living in the sex trade and The Nocturnal Revels tells us of ‘Black Harriot,’ a very successful courtesan who ran a popular ‘house of exotics.’ All our stories are about people trying to find agency when society gives them none — and this seems in especially sharp relief for our characters of color. Violet is a street whore and pickpocket but from her perspective, society is the thief. Her mother was stolen. Violet, in her own eyes, is neither victim nor criminal. She has a raw integrity and a personal truth that others find both intimidating and irresistible.”

For “The Spanish Princess,” an adaptation of two Philippa Gregory historical novels set in Tudor England about Catherine of Aragon, Frost and co-showrunner Matthew Graham turned to books by Onyeka to develop characters of color who would have fit in during that time. In particular, they discovered the story of the real-life Lina de Cardonnes (played by Stephanie Levi-John in the series), a high-ranking noble woman who acted as Catherine’s lady-in-waiting and companion.

“There was a character that was referenced in Phillipa’s books who was what they call a dueñas or a lady-in-waiting to Catherine. Her name was Catalina de Cardonnes and she was just this larger than life character who was depicted as white Spanish,” said Graham. “Then we just did a bit of cursory research and discovered that it was based on Lina de Cardonnes and that she was African Iberian. She was a black lady. So, we were certainly like, ‘Wow, this is a bigger story and a more interesting story than we can possibly imagine.’”

This discovery of the larger part that people of color have played throughout history has been increasing the more people look into telling marginalized stories. The author of “The Miniaturist” Jessie Burton and Netflix’s “Anne With an E” creator Moira Walley-Beckett had similar epiphanies and added black characters in significant roles to their stories set in the Dutch Golden Age and Edwardian Canada, respectively.

In many of these cases, ignorance or acceptance of the dominant narrative could explain the lack of representation in these TV shows. The absence of photographic or film evidence made it easier to whitewash the presence of people of color.

But there’s really no excuse with period dramas set in the 20th century and beyond, when plenty of visual records show the diversity present. As with the #OscarsSoWhite campaign started by activist April Reign, the biggest problems facing more inclusive TV lay in challenging the mindset at the studio level and changing who’s behind the camera.

As seen with many of the shows that are including people of color in historical narratives, the show’s creators are often women, people of color themselves, or part of the LGBTQ community. When marginalized groups help each other, this can address intersectionality.

For example, Carol Hay and Michelle Ricci co-created the Jazz Age mystery adventure show “Frankie Drake Mysteries” coming to Ovation on June 15. Not only did they make a show about Toronto’s first female private detective, but they also cast Chantel Riley as Trudy, Frankie’s partner who happens to also be a black woman.

“When Shaftesbury [Films] came up with this idea and decided to have a black female lead, it was mind-blowing to me because you never really hear about black folk or Asian folk, in that time,” Riley said. “We touch on the Asian community, the black community, even the Indian community as well. That’s why I was really attracted to this particular show, because no one’s really doing that in this particular era.”

In some cases, actors have had to step behind the cameras themselves to increase the opportunities for people of color. Daniel Dae Kim left “Hawaii Five-0,” and the first series that he produced afterward is ABC’s “The Good Doctor,” which has provided numerous on-screen opportunities for actors from marginalized groups.

Similarly, Oyelowo became an executive producer on “Les Miserables” to take control of how his role of Javert and the other people of color were portrayed. Oyelowo also co-produced and starred in the period film “A United Kingdom.”

“I wanted to make sure that me being in [‘Les Miserables’] wasn’t going to be a token thing. I wanted to make sure that people of color were integrated through the story in an organic way that didn’t feel imposed,” he said.

“But also, something very important to me was the American distribution. I wanted it to be on a channel that was worthy of the work that everyone was putting into it. And so, I had a hand in it going to PBS Masterpiece. Anything that takes me away from my kids for any period of time better be worth it. And so, some of the times I produce in order to develop. Some of the times I produce in order to be able to have a say in how things are cast, how they are marketed, how they are distributed. And that’s basically been the case with this.”

Currently, there aren’t many period shows by people of color about people of color on TV. John Singleton’s “Snowfall” on FX is set in Los Angeles during the 1980s crack epidemic and was renewed for a third season.

Over on broadcast, the late 1990s-set comedy “Fresh Off the Boat,” based on the memoir of Eddie Huang and created by Nahnatchka Khan, a queer woman of Iranian descent, is currently in its fifth season. It’s the first TV show with an Asian cast in over 20 years — since Margaret Cho’s short-lived “All American Girl” — and stars Randall Park and Constance Wu as the Huangs, who had relocated to the Florida suburbs with their family. Khan had to make a case for why the show had to remain in the ‘90s to replicate the real-life Huangs’ feelings of alienation.

“I remember having a creative discussion with 20th [Century Fox] at the very beginning about them asking me, ‘Why does it have to be set in the ‘90s?’” she said. “For me it was creating a sense of isolation with the family. They moved to Orlando in the middle of the white suburbs and they don’t know anybody. But in the present day, you can get online and talk to your friends and you can text people. You have a connection outside of your everyday life, even if it’s virtual.”

Other than those, “Underground” was the last period show about people of color by a creator of color, Misha Green. WGN’s critically acclaimed slavery-era period drama lasted two seasons and was canceled shortly after Sinclair Media Group announced it would purchase Tribune Media, which owns WGN.

Fortunately, this scarcity won’t last for long. Many period shows that feature significant narratives for people of color are on the horizon. Green has teamed up with Jordan Peele for the HBO drama horror “Lovecraft Country,” which takes place on a road trip during 1950s Jim Crow America. Barry Jenkins executive produces and directs the upcoming Amazon series “The Underground Railroad,” an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s book. Justin Lin and Jonathan Tropper’s “Warrior” premieres April 5 on Cinemax and is based on Bruce Lee’s original concept about a Chinese immigrant who becomes a hatchet man for the most powerful tong in late 1800s Chinatown in San Francisco.

One other upcoming series explores a new genre for the period TV show that adds a provocative take on a historical event. In its second season, AMC’s anthology series “The Terror” explores the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II through the lens of Japanese horror. Actor George Takei, who experienced internment, acts as a consultant and series regular.

“We’re telling the story of a very underserved piece of American history using the vocabulary of Japanese-style horror as an analog for the terror of the actual historical event,” said co-creator and showrunner Alexander Woo.

“I don’t want the audience to feel removed from the events that are happening on screen. What a horror movie or horror series does is it makes you feel viscerally in the shoes of the person who’s trapped in the house or the person who’s running away from the monster or whatever it is. So we’re using that style, that language, to make you really feel how terrifying the experience of the Japanese Americans who lived through this terrible experience.”

While the Japanese ghost story trappings fits the tone of the narrative in “The Terror: Infamy,” Woo acknowledges that the genre twist might have helped pitching the show.

“We’re in an era of so much content and a period of such creative power, we have more sophisticated viewers that will hopefully appreciate a period drama told in a specific style,” he said. “Those two things used to not mix. That was not something that you would want to try because it might seem complicated or it might seem challenging, which I think now, in this time, that sounds very appealing… It’s also a terrific lens for us to understand things that are happening in the present. The story of internment is obviously relevant in a host of ways to the present day, so I think it’s a valuable story and has to be told now.”

While these more inclusive narratives continue to be discovered and told, inevitably people used to the status quo will resist and deny those stories. It’s the very reason that these stories haven’t been told in the first place.

“The more recent phenomenon of whitewashing, a political tool of the imperialists, dates back only a few hundred years,” said Sapiani. “I am so proud to see, and be a part of this change towards a more accurate and frankly more interesting dramatized interpretation of our world history. Needless to say, there is so much further to go.”

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/03/tv-unwhitewashing-history-period-dramas-hbo-hulu-pbs-abc-1202049639/

[burksbowers4-blog]

Penis Enlargments And the Way To Last Longer Inbed

L Power Male Enhancement Review Foreplay. Foreplay is as necessary as sex on its own. This is especially true whenever you mature perfect relationship. At the start of your relationship, you probably won't really want for foreplay, but whenever move further, the role of foreplay increases quite a bit. It will help both folks to prepare for sex. Foreplay will also help increase the pleasure itself.

Have you ever wondered if there is a good penis enlargement system that truly works additional medications your penis longer? Of course, length alone will not satisfy this girl. She wants a person to find investing to acquire a much thicker penis, to! Sadly, the most frequently employed enlargement method will not provide any permanent growth at every one of. male enhancement pills have been sold typically the billions, nevertheless no permanent size gains have have you ever been clinically recorded as an outcome of anyone using these pills. It merely shows you what a superior advertising campaign can do, even once the product is virtually not worth it. 100% phony. The truth is, while many PE products and programs may be by folks who are more marketers than real sexuality educators, range of the best possible techniques for improving stamina work on strengthening the pc muscle inside of the pelvic navicular bone. Kegel exercises, for example. are well-liked for their sexual stamina benefits, that's why it is said by many that Dr. Kegel taught them many years ago for particular purpose. Some sex tips and advice on communication; Always speak openly, directly and honestly to her. Wind up being specific and detailed along with her. Show her how much pressure, exactly how much speed and timing you will need. Tell your woman where, when and the way to touch individuals. Discuss what scenarios, sex techniques and positions you like. Let her know what you prefer to hear any time and how she should say of which. Talk about anything and a lot of oral sex techniques to penis length from safer sex into the g spot orgasm. Share your fantasies, desires and sexual fetishes. Let her know when something isn't working additionally let her know should it be working thoroughly. You must also make sure she does the comparable better sex tips in get back to you. Estrogen can be a female sexual hormone and its presence generally means folks have 'abnormal' amounts of androgenic hormone or testosterone. High estrogen that face men can deliver soft fat accumulating all around gut, the back, the neck, face and bum. Some men also develop the dreaded man boobs, also know as male breasts. Do something for sexual betterment: You should do something so concerning make your sexual life better than earlier. With exercise blood will reach to vessels and definitely will enjoy better erection than earlier. Exercises are advised by many people doctors too. There are many exercises that are intended for sex mainly. You can imagine wide acceptance of sex based exercise movements. You would be aware that there should be proper approach at all instances for sex. testosterone boost Regular exercises can do a whole lot of good each your overall and reproductive health. Increased blood circulation is one of the several most significant benefits of exercise. Reduced blood flow to your penis is exactly what the main cause of erectile problems in troops. Another oral sex tip for men is to use your fingers during oral too. All of these clitoral stimulations makes her g-spot swell up and she could want to be able to touched on the bottom. Having the sensation of one's fingers inside her essential stimulating the clitoris having your lips and tongue sets her off. This double stimulation makes her feel substantially pleasure than before but it will surely truly drive her mad.

[theliterateape]

Why Bird Box Is A Great Horror Flick

By Don Hall

Great art asks questions and lets the audience come up with the answers.

I loved Hereditary. Donnie Smith, my brilliant friend in L.A., hated it. The film has that love it/hate it vibe pretty much across the board. I believe that it’s the ending. People were way into the dread and the scares and the general direction things were going. They loved the performances. They hated the ending because it explained the sacrificial lamb from the perspective of the lamb concept with a defined monster — a demon. Like Stephen King’s IT, where Pennywise turns out to be a big fucking spider, which sucks balls, the build up followed with disappointment because it was more fun to theorize what what causing all the mayhem rather than have it told to them poorly.

I loved Get Out. I think everyone on the planet loved Get Out. Rather than have the cause for the scares be obfuscated, however, the monsters of Get Out are obvious. It’s white people. Not too much of a strain on the imagination and no big surprises once you’ve figured it out, which is almost the very moment they introduce the parents.

I’d argue that neither film fits in the genre as one of the best because the best horror films are allegories that can be spun in several directions. No answer to the question “Who are the Monsters?” is given. 

✶

I remember clearly when I first saw The Blair Witch Project. 

A friend of mine had just been on a trip to Los Angeles. He was living in an old porn studio in Edgewater, in a back room, and invited my wife and I to come over and watch this VHS copy of a documentary he had been given while there. I didn’t know anything about the film because the tape was part of the viral marketing campaign and it hadn’t been released yet.

Jen and I headed over. His apartment was in the back on the second floor. We walked up the inlet stairs into what was a cobweb infused dark room filled with old film equipment. In the light, I imagine it would be fine — just clutter — but in the dark, it was ominous and a little weird. 

We sat down, cracked some beers and he put the VHS copy in the machine. The television was small, maybe 20-inches, and we watched this bizarre thing, and we freaked out just a little. The movie provided no explanation for what happened and it felt real. Walking through that dark chaos to get to our car on the street after midnight was fucking skin-crawling. While the zeitgeist of the movie is the gimmick of the fake documentary style, what sticks with me is that I still don’t know what happened to the protagonists. The film refuses to answer the questions it poses.

Night of the Living Dead is the first zombie movie, but I’ve read a billion think pieces that suppose the zombies are a stand-in for the Vietnam War, racism, consumerism, conformism — the list is long and fun and forces a repeated viewing if you are really into getting in the intellectual weeds of these sorts of films. I enjoy The Walking Dead but not because of the zombies. The Walking Dead uses zombies as an apocalyptic  endgame to explore the real monsters: us. How societies are organized, what motivates democracy or totalitarianism is all in the journey of Rick and his band of survivors.

Godzilla is about WWII or our fascination with the atom bomb or the environment. Dracula is about sex or disease or the buttoned up morality of the Victorians. Videodrome is about the fears of the (at the time) new world of videotape, the pernicious dark corners of technology, or just a generalized anxiety of Debra Harry. The Mist isn’t about the monsters flying through the fog but about the monsters we become when faced with an unexplained horror (which could be spun into an argument that the mist is the internet, yeah?).

The list can go on forever but the essential point is that the best of the horror genre refuse to define exactly what the monster terrorizing the flawed humans is and allows the viewer to play the game. M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs is not a bad movie until it is discovered that you defeat the aliens with water and then the whole feels like a waste of the energy enjoying the scares. He answers the question and we hate it.

Bird Box is completely open to debate. 

I watched it at my folks’ house over the holidays. There had been so much Faceborg squawk about it, I kind of had to sit down and subject myself to it. I loved it. I loved the question of what the monsters were, I loved Sandra Bullock playing a wholly unlikeable but understandable character, I loved Malkovich playing a wholly unlikeable but understandable character. I loved the immediacy, the ideas that what people were seeing that caused them to either kill themselves or become cultish believers forcing it on others were very personal. Christ, I even loved the concept behind the title.

What I loved the most was this:

Netflix's Bird Box Is Really About How White People Don't Want to See Racism

“If you haven’t seen or read the viral social media discussions of the Netflix thriller Bird Box, you’re missing one of the greatest race allegory movies that has ever been released in the last part of December 2018. It’s about how white people suddenly realize racism is spreading across the world and they can only escape its wrath if they refuse to acknowledge it because...”

And this:

Bird Box is the First Great Monster Movie About this Poisonous Invention

“The monsters of Bird Box are social media. Seriously.

Think of Bird Box as a new entry into the old-fashioned 1950s monster movie genre, but instead of the midcentury fears about the Cold War, nuclear weapons, and communism we’re exploring the New Cold War and fears of what social media is doing to our brains. By putting on the blindfolds, the characters of Bird Box are protected from the monsters, which are actually the influences of social media.”

And this:

Bird Box's Ending & Monsters Explained

“Based on the fact that the entities seem to have supernatural knowledge of people's weaknesses (they know to call out to Malorie in her sister's voice, and in Tom's), and Gary's drawings of them, Charlie's theory that the monsters are demonic in nature seems pretty sound. This is also reinforced by the fact that birds are able to sense their presence, since in many mythologies, cultures and religions birds are associated with psychopomps — spirits that guide people from the land of the living to the land of the dead.”

Are the monsters an allegory for racism? Maybe. Maybe not. But watching the film with that lens gives the argument merit. It isn’t what I saw but I completely dig the perspective, and it makes me re-see the whole experience in a different way. Are the monsters a metaphor for social media? Could be. Whether or not I am compelled to believe that argument, it’s awesome that there are enough clues in the film that can be interpreted that way to make it credible and fun.

I understand our current need for answers and I understand our almost mania for those answers to conform to our political angst. We want movies like Get Out to justify our outrage further. The best films of the horror genre don’t give us answers. That’s why we keep mining the zombie trope, and the giant atomic monster trope, and the fear of technology that was started by Mary Shelley endures in films like every fucking Jurassic Park.

Great Art asks questions and lets the audience come up with the answers.

[orbemnews]

Blue-Collar Increase: How China Bounced Again From the Virus CHANGMINGZHEN, China — The scent, salty and pungent, wafts via the freshly paved streets close to the gleaming new manufacturing unit. The manufacturing unit is owned by an organization referred to as Laoganma, which makes a piquant chili-and-soybean sauce well-known throughout China for its energy to set mouths watering. In a time of world pandemic, when the roles of working folks all over the world dangle within the steadiness, the manufacturing unit’s scents sign alternative. Because it opened in March, when China was nonetheless within the grip of Covid-19, the manufacturing unit has struggled to seek out sufficient equipment operators or high quality management technicians. Now employees are flocking to Changmingzhen, a once-quiet farming city ringed with inexperienced mountains and rice paddies, from which younger folks as soon as fled for higher jobs elsewhere. Changmingzhen stands as a testomony to China’s gorgeous post-coronavirus revival — one powered by the calloused arms of the nation’s manufacturing unit and development employees. With few exceptions, the remainder of the world stays in a pandemic-driven malaise. However when China reviews financial figures for 2020 on Monday, they’re anticipated to indicate its financial system grew regardless of dropping early weeks to the lockdown. On a current night, employees flush with cash left the manufacturing unit at shift’s finish and flooded close by market stalls in search of hand-cut noodles, bananas and mandarin oranges. The family-owned firm pays its manufacturing employees as much as $1,200 a month. “Not dangerous for employees our age,” stated Wang Mingyan, an worker leaving her shift. The slight 50-year-old stated she obtained a rent-free condominium, free cafeteria meals and different advantages, as Laoganma competes with different corporations for employees. The menu isn’t all the time to her liking, however that’s a small worth to pay. “Once you’re away from residence,” stated Ms. Wang, who moved from her hometown greater than two hours away, “you simply fill your abdomen.” China froze a $15 trillion financial system final February. It used brute pressure to isolate cities and provinces and drag folks into quarantine. Beijing turned to the identical set of blunt instruments to get the financial system going once more. It ordered factories to reopen and state-run banks to lend. It informed state-run corporations to restart. Now the financial system is charging forward. Authorities subsidies are fueling new rail strains and factories. One state-owned firm, a would-be competitor to Boeing and Airbus, says it would make investments $3 billion in 22 huge development initiatives. The federal government’s function makes China’s revival distinctly blue collar. The state’s levers are handiest in relation to restarting huge factories or huge development initiatives. It has lengthy centered on maintaining the working class completely happy for worry of the kinds of upheavals which have upended politics in the USA and Europe. Beijing has a tougher time fixing different issues. Consumers stay skittish, and should develop into extra in order the virus has resurfaced in a number of cities currently. Its financial system nonetheless depends much less on innovation and companies than on making stuff. Legions of faculty graduates nonetheless discover satisfying jobs in brief provide. About 50 miles up the freeway from Changmingzhen, within the provincial capital, Guiyang, Laoganma marketed positions with three-foot-high indicators at an area job truthful. However the work holds little attraction for younger folks in search of jobs. “Yow will discover one should you look, however it would simply not be the type you imagined,” stated Grace Cai, a senior majoring in tourism administration at a Guiyang college, “and never the type that meets the demand in your coronary heart, or reaches your objective.” Ms. Cai had an internship final autumn working as a waitress in a resort restaurant. She dreads discovering a full-time job. Up to date  Jan. 15, 2021, 8:08 a.m. ET “There are too many college students now,” she stated, “and due to the epidemic, it’s truly not straightforward to discover a job.” The villagers in Changmingzhen might not agree. It’s in southwestern China’s Guizhou Province, in a county that was so poor 5 years in the past that it grew to become a goal for China’s antipoverty marketing campaign. Even earlier than the coronavirus, officers strove to place idle arms to work. The nationwide authorities simply constructed a contemporary expressway and a bullet practice connecting Guizhou to a neighboring province. Laoganma and different corporations quickly adopted. The city buzzes with development laborers throwing up residences for brand spanking new employees. “Each manufacturing unit is wanting employees — the native ones have all been recruited,” stated Zhou Xin, a former farmer who gave up his rice paddies in order that Laoganma might construct its manufacturing unit. “It’s too toilsome and native individuals are not prepared to do it.” His personal daughter studied in Shanghai and stayed to work for an industrial design firm. He now runs a small eatery throughout the road from the manufacturing unit and nonetheless fishes in an adjoining river. He resents only one factor: the manufacturing unit’s fixed low rumble and hiss. “It doesn’t matter should you get used to that sound,” he stated. “There are billions of renminbi invested right here.” The manufacturing unit was purported to have opened in February. Then the pandemic struck. Streets emptied. Residents arrange barricades at city entrances, checking everybody’s temperature. A mixture of worry and camaraderie saved virtually everybody at residence for six weeks, residing on corn, potatoes and greens from yard gardens. Yang Xiaozhen runs a Changmingzhen diner along with her dad and mom, charging $1.50 for a plate of dumplings. They closed. Her dad and mom stayed indoors. Ms. Yang scarcely ventured out both. “We tried to be conscious,” she stated, “as a result of we Chinese language are definitely very united and really conscious.” However the virus by no means struck Changmingzhen. By late February, with the financial system nonetheless halted, native officers and Laoganma’s managers sprang into motion. (Laoganma didn’t reply to requests for remark.) Neighborhood officers everywhere in the county had been ordered to seek out unemployed employees for the manufacturing unit. Municipal employees put in lengthy hours to finish close by roads. Even the gardeners rushed to plant rows of saplings contained in the manufacturing unit fence. Wen Wei was one of many first employees. She carries spices to the manufacturing line and earns $620 a month. Her husband, who fries scorching peppers, earns $1,200 a month. Laoganma’s bundle deal lured them to Changmingzhen. It supplied a free condominium for them and their two kids and free meals on the firm cafeteria. They pay just for water and electrical energy. “You may’t discover such a excessive wage in different places,” she stated. A couple of blocks to the south of the Laoganma manufacturing unit, Zhu Haihua drives vehicles for a metal manufacturing unit that makes towers for wind generators. His month-to-month paycheck of $2,300 doesn’t embody meals or housing. That’s barely half of what the common American truck driver earns. However the cash goes a lot farther in a Chinese language mountain village. Frenetic development over the previous few years and permissive zoning laws have produced a glut of not too long ago constructed residences. That enables Mr. Zhu to lease a three-bedroom condominium for simply $175 a month. “Renting right here could be very low cost,” he stated. For now, the sounds of equipment and development typically drown out the sounds of the birds within the Chinese language maples surrounding the city. However indicators of weak point aren’t distant. Enterprise at Ms. Yang’s diner has by no means fully recovered. Whereas the Laoganma manufacturing unit continues to pump its spices into the air, the government-aided development initiatives might not final. The high-speed rail development crews are shifting past the village. They arrive again much less typically to spend cash. Cai Liuzhong, the proprietor of a drilling provides retailer subsequent door to Ms. Yang’s diner, is making ready to observe the work to the subsequent increase city. “We simply observe the place it goes,” he stated. Yang Faxue, a diner common, feels a quiet confidence that he’ll all the time have work. The 36-year-old development employee has been on the street many of the previous 20 years, leaving his residence about two hours’ drive from Changmingzhen to work initially within the huge metropolis of Nanjing. His spouse — and, ultimately, three kids — stayed residence. Mr. Yang was happy to discover a job opening in Changmingzhen, nearer to residence. And work barely stopped in the course of the pandemic. “The homes nonetheless must be constructed,” he stated. “Work is figure.” Claire Fu contributed analysis. Supply hyperlink #BlueCollar #boom #bounced #China #Virus

[sudha1322]

How is the Digital Transformation Weaving Way for the Medical Industry?

The Covid illness 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought about phenomenal interruption to human culture with more than 2 million cases being accounted for all around the world. Pioneers from around the globe have raised the issue from a condition of hesitant acknowledgment to a highly sensitive situation. Not at all like the recorded pandemics like the 1918 H1N1, COVID-19 is spreading in a profoundly associated world where individuals are connected to one another through the cell phone in their pockets, where there is more correspondence among the network and crisis messages can be shared across at a press of the catch.

As there is no prompt fix accessible to the illness, the main conceivable answer for stop the spread of the sickness is through social removing. Everyone is depending on computerized age media, for example, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram  to encourage human connection and data sharing about the infection.

As one of the Best Digital Marketing Company in Toronto, we might want to talk about a portion of the ways that clinical work force, for example, specialists are utilizing to help forestall the spread of Covid. Come, we should discover.

As specialists are going through hours treating patients and the remainder of the world invests their energy away from public scrutiny, it is difficult to draw in with each other as the idea of social removing has gotten significant. In this way, specialists have ventured up to connect with the clients and convey significant data and preventive measures as they understand what the genuine circumstance may be.

They are utilizing online media stages, for example, Instagram to draw in with the overall population through intuitive recordings and short video instructional exercises.

Via web-based media stages, specialists and attendants are sharing recordings that show us how to wash hands appropriately while singing a mainstream melody.

Some brand influencers, big names and popular individuals are additionally taking it to web-based media stages, that can forestall the spread of illnesses by doing imaginative exercises at home.

There has been a committed page made for the Coronavirus refreshes, which advises how to forestall the spread, day by day refreshing the quantity of cases around the world.

A portion of the primary issues while taking care of these web-based media stages is to handle the phony data spread by the individuals. These online media stages have found a way to control the spread of falsehood by creating different strategies.

Since the pandemic has risen around the world, a critical ascent in quantities of recordings shared can be seen. One of the incredible advantages of sharing recordings via online media stages is that it earns a great many perspectives and results in enormous media inclusion. Truth be told, recent college grads, youngsters and Gen Z have likewise begun believing doctors sharing the data via online media.

These are a portion of the ways that specialists, medical caretakers, web-based media monsters are assisting with handling the spread of Covid by sharing significant data. Recruit the best web-based media advertising organization in Toronto for top-quality SMO benefits in Toronto to keep you associated through masses with innovative and supportive substance.

Presently, we will examine a portion of the advertising methodologies that can help improve medical care showcasing during COVID-19:

Assess your Ad Campaigns: If you are running promoting efforts presently, make a point to discover that your informing meets the real tasks of your association during the COVID-19 episode. You can counsel the best-paid showcasing organizations for excellent google paid promotions administrations.

Update your Google My Business Listings: If your available time or strategies have changed because of the lockdown executed by the Government, Google My Business is the best stages to keep patients refreshed.

Google My Business is additionally now offering the capacity to add two connects to any of your nearby postings. This incorporates an uncommon connection to COVID-19 data and another connection to Telehealth data on your site. Exploit these assets as this builds up validity and to guarantee that searchers can undoubtedly discover data about how your training is adjusting for COVID-19.

Keep Your Email Marketing Strategy Intact: It is prudent to keep your email promoting efforts dynamic, as it will cause the clients to feel that you are there for them during the flare-up. Contact the Digital Marketing Companies in Toronto.

Influence Social Media to Convince People to Practice Social Distancing: Social media has gotten probably the quickest apparatus to contact the majority. It very well may be utilized for educating residents, both more youthful and more established to pay attention to the flare-up, hold fast to safeguards, and practice social removing truly. Indeed, a notable big name post will help impact the majority in a superior manner. Contact the best influencer promoting office in Toronto on the off chance that you need to persuade the more youthful age by concocting the best influencer showcasing procedure.

Utilize Social Media Platforms to Educate People: Due to a great deal of deception spreading around, individuals are confounded about what to do in the event that they think they have COVID-19. This goes route past the overall counsel since it is accessible anyplace. Here are a portion of the inquiries individuals need answers to:

a) "What are COVID-19 indications, and would it be advisable for me to get tried?"

b) "Where in our locale would i be able to get tried?"

c) "Would it be a good idea for me to see my essential consideration specialist, a Urgent Care, or the nearby clinic?"

d) "Is telemedicine a fitting initial step?"

e) "Would it be advisable for me to remain at home if my manifestations are minor?"

f) "In what manner will I know when the time has come to look for help at a medical clinic?"

g) "How would I try not to contaminate others?"

h) "Which medical clinics in my general vicinity are capable and prepared to take new COVID-19 patients?"

I) "What are the dangers of the transmission of Covid irresistible infection at home?"

j) "Is there something else would it be advisable for me to think about Covid sickness analysis and transmission?"

A medical clinic or any bigger medical care association consistently has every one of these answers. You can share answers to a portion of these inquiries via web-based media stages to drive individuals in your locale and to your suitable site pages or posts. Connect with a portion of the Digital Marketing Agency in Toronto for formulating best online media system for your medical services brand.

Utilize Social Media Platforms to Inform your Patient Base: Beyond instructing the network, you should control and educate your patients. all through the COVID-19 emergency. Past the way that it is the correct activity, your significant data will develop your power and your relationship with your patients when they need you the most. You can likewise share extra tips to direct patients to forestall the spread of Covid. You can likewise contact the absolute best web-based media advertising offices in Toronto for arranging out how to discuss delicately with your patients.

Be Sensitive: COVID-19 appears to have assumed control over the world, it is wild and there have been numerous passings universally. Individuals are stressed over their wellbeing, but on the other hand they're stressed over work, their kids' schooling, accounts and that's just the beginning. In all that you do, utilize delicate language, and when it bodes well, straightforwardly address those feelings of dread. This will help fabricate trust during a difficult time. Organizing moral and straightforward correspondence, just as coordinating your showcasing informing with your operational reality, will pay off not far off when patients acknowledge they have a reliable accomplice in consideration.

While these are staggeringly testing times for everybody, keen web-based media and advanced advertising procedures can in any case impact patients in a positive and significant manner. As individuals keep on remaining at home and invest more energy online than any time in recent memory, it is the best an ideal opportunity to associate with them.

[hongyahe-blog]

What I Have Done for Networking

It has been such a rich semester hearing from marketing professionals from all kinds of industries. There was Julie VanderKloet from market research, Kareem Perez from SEO, Cindy Tran from marketing campaign, Brian Walsh from customer experience, and many, many more. It is one thing to learn the knowledge and skills from textbook, but hearing from industry experts totally took the study experience to another level.

The most insightful speech I heard over the semester was from Julie. She works in my dream industry – market research and she is a very good communicator. In her talk she talked about the structure of a research project, which is similar to what I learned from the class. But it was interesting to notice, in real business world, research projects are sometimes like a swirl, where the team has to reiterate the same or similar project to update the findings. This is especially true in the current situation of COVID-19, when policies and attitudes change every day.

Julie’s talk really made me wonder what other things in real market research world are different from what I hear in school, so I started connecting with her on LinkedIn and learned more about the industry since then. For example, I had trouble getting flour for a long time. Then I learned from a report she shared, that flour sales increased over 470% during COVID-19 cause lot more people are baking more often. Everything made more sense after I read that report, and now I think about little things in a bigger picture.

From there I did some more research on the community of market researchers, and found a great one called WIRe (Women in Research). I browsed their website and found there is a great section called Office Hours, where anyone could ask questions and get them answers by mentors. I asked about how to stand out to employers during COVID-19 and got some great ideas about building a portfolio.

WIRe has a LinkedIn page too. I follow them and get great insights and trends about market research industry. They sometimes offer webinars about how to do research in current situation, I find those very helpful.

Joining relevant LinkedIn communities turns out very helpful for job hunting for me. I have joined 4 market research related professional LinkedIn groups. Most of them have many (100,000+) professionals from all over the world. Last week I braved up and introduced myself in two of the groups. I was not expecting to get too many engagements, as I noticed engagement in LinkedIn groups are generally very low.

To my surprise, it brought my more than I could have imagined. In 2 days, my profile views increased over 1000%. More than 40 people sent me connection request. Two people followed me. And many like and comments under my introduction. Mostly surprisingly, one of the new connections wanted to talk about a job opportunity with me! I was very much flattered, however, that professional’s new business is based in India, I could not relocate or work remotely full time for him. It was so nice to see that my effort and courage brought me positive impacts.

Another thing I tried for job search was, just getting into the industry, either by networking or volunteering. I volunteered with LatAm Startups, a non-profit in Toronto helping international companies. It was a great experience and it helped me build my skills for future career in market research. Some of the analysis skills and thinking process were something I would not have learned in class. Through volunteering I also met some brilliant people in the business and got a great reference from my supervisor. Some professionals on the teams had different skillset and experience, for example, Luiza was from digital marketing and she shared the tools like Facebook Ads with the team.

I have also done cold emails and cold messages to professionals in the industry of market research. I started by making a list of companies I want to work with, and researching each on Google and LinkedIn. I sent out hundreds of LinkedIn connection requests, mostly customized, to people. The hardest thing in this was actually not finding them/messaging them, but rather my personal feelings. Before I started, I was dreading it so much, because I was afraid nobody would reply. Then I overcame that by telling myself, it is okay if they do not reply. The point is letting them know my existence and interest. Fortunately, some of professionals replied and kindly offered informational interviews with me. I always researched about them again before our chat and made sure I followed up.

I am in no position to “teach” anyone how I network or anything. But if it helps, I would like to share what worked for me. It sounds obvious, but the most important thing in networking is, simply start it. I found people generous and understanding when approached by others who are eager to learn. It is true not everyone will respond, but all it matters is some of them would do and bring great conversations. Another thing that helped was a tracking file for networking. I started tracking my networking progress, it helped me keep an idea of how I am doing and provide insights for follow-ups.

[theseaeaglelives]

Round 2

THE SEA EAGLE

MAKING RUGBY LEAGUE GREAT AGAIN!!!

Round 2

Manly Sea Eagles            9

Defeated

Sydney Roosters              8

Played at the Roosters traditional home ground (i.e. Leichhardt Oval) the fact that this game was played with no crowd in attendance did not seem to impact on either of the respective playing groups who dished up a high standard rugby league offering. Let’s face it, both the Roosters and Manly are not big crowd pullers at the best of times and the with no crowd in attendance it was pretty much business as usual.

After a tight opening to the game, Manly opened the scoring via Tommy Turbo who was set up deftly by an inside Cherry-Baby offload. What a player Turbo is! Generally renowned for his attacking prowess it was his defence that came to the fore in this fixture. Three try saving tackles, including an absolute miracle on Rooster, Luke Keary when he looked certain to score, only serves to highlight what a talent young Tommy is. 

Perhaps summed up best by Fox Sports expert Braith Anasta “He’s just so important to the Manly Sea Eagles, if he’s on the field, they can win the comp, if he’s off the field they can’t. There’s not many players who have that effect on a side”.

But…. correction Bwaith. Bob Fulton, Wally Lewis, Cliff Lyons, Bret Kenny, Andrew Johns, Jonathan Thurston, Arthur Beetson, John O’Neill , to name a few, were also similar type players.

Despite heroic Manly defence, the Roosters hit back just prior to half time and the score was locked up 6-6 at the break.

The second half was even more dour then the first and with five minutes remaining scores were still locked at 8 all. The Roosters had the first chance to break the dead-lock when a Keary field goal attempt hit the posts. Then it was Manly’s turn and thankfully the ever-reliable Cherry Baby was up to the task, icing his attempt and ensuring Manly a well-deserved win. Again showing why he deserves the big bucks he is on.

Next week, if there is still an NRL comp (which is becoming less likely by the day) Manly are scheduled to take on the Gold Coast based Warriors. Full marks to the Warriors for relocating and allowing the NRL to continue, however unless the entire competition is relocated to some remote North QLD outpost with urgency, season 2020 looks a shot duck.

No NRL – It’s a Catastrophe

Not surprisingly after years of poor management and an inflated salary cap, the NRL is broke and if games are suspended or the season cancelled it will not end well. This has prompted new NRL Chairman Peter V’landys’ to plea for government funding to save the code.

Again, and not surprising this has sent the twitter world into a feeding frenzy in some instances praising V’landys for his forthright actions but in the main suggesting that he should be nailed on a cross next to poor old Izzy Folau.

On one hand, yes it could be argued that in these desperate times government funding would be better suited elsewhere an example being saving lives by propping up the ailing and over-burdened health system. However, on the other hand, imagine a world with out rugby league. Forget the game itself and let’s focus on the socio-economic impact. Without the NRL, upwards of 500 testosterone fuelled young men, many already delinquents, would be free to roam the streets inflicting all sorts of carnage. No one would be off limits to their pillage and no co-ed, spouse, uber driver or even small poodle cross would be safe.

In addition, from an economic standpoint the state government would in all likelihood be forced to immediately suspend work on all new stadiums and redirect said funds towards the construction of a new max-security correctional facility to house the expected flood of potential inmates.

It has been reported that that the most recent gaol to be constructed in the state, that being the Clarence Correction Centre cost approx. $800m (or about the same as a new stadium) to build. Whilst the Grafton facility has a capacity of 1,700 and on face value would exceed the current crop of NRL players in circulation, let’s not forget the lower grades and those coming up through the junior ranks. 

A quick reckoning of the exponential nature of the pool of potential inmates would mean that a 1,700-prisoner capacity would quickly fill up and in all likelihood would still not be enough to cater for the full extent of likely incarceration. Its also worth noting that the proposed $800m does not take into account the extra policing required and the collateral damage which is in all would to be inflicted on both property and the community.

On this basis alone, the plea by the NRL chairman should be strongly considered, and that the $200m to keep the code afloat is but a small price to avoid a rugby league inspired humanitarian crisis, ensure crime rates remain low and that public (and dog) safety is upheld.

In all seriousness though (and this is generally not within the current charter of the Sea Eagle), the suggestion by the NRL that suspending or cancelling the season will, without government funding cause its financial ruin is a bit of a stretch. In fact, the solution as far as the Sea Eagle is concerned is quite simple.

If the NRL is unable to go ahead Clubs simply renegotiate player payments as per the CBA currently in place. If the players aren’t willing to cop this the Clubs simply go into Voluntary Administration and then renegotiate player payments regardless. The reality is that it’s a buyers’ market and there aren’t many other options for the NRL players, no Super League, French Rugby, Japanese Rugby, Boxing etc to lever off, and it’s not as though many of them have professions to fall back on either.

Thus, if every player was paid the minimum (still a comfortable earn at circa $120K pa for doing nothing) player payments under the salary cap would be reduced to about $3.5m per Club (as opposed to current $10m). On this basis alone the NRL would have sufficient reserves to see out the year, even before cuts were made to clubs Coaching/Admin salaries and no doubt NRL Head Office. They could then reset next year, when hopefully the situation improves.

Finally, it’s amazing how quickly things change. It was only a matter of weeks ago that the NRL launched its new Tina Turner promo campaign championing the social and moral stances so important to the NRL. Fast forward two weeks and has become much clearer what the NRL really stands for, that being $$$$$. Not that there is anything wrong with that but as far as the Sea Eagle is concerned the only advice for the NRL (and other like-minded organisations) is to park the virtue signalling and just play footy!!

Corona Virus

In due deference to what is a fine beer beverage (Corona) and formerly not a bad Toyota motor car, and in light of the fact that it appears that Mexico (where Corona beer is from) has decided to take on the threat of the dreaded Covid-19 rugby League style , that is no self isolation, no action , and simply letting the herd be infected and the strongest survive, the Sea Eagle recommends that this virus be referred to as El presidente Donald J trump referred to it, simply as the “China Virus”.

Let's face it , if it be true that this thing started in China, then surely that is where the blame should lay. Why is there so little commentary from anyone about this? If any private enterprise had created such an outcome through bad hygiene and food handling practices , where would they and the individuals behind it be standing today ?

Like the dreaded dark force influenza (DFI), this particular affliction, takes out successful and unsuccessful with impunity.

It was therefore with some hilarity that Tigers and ex Raiders centre Joey Leilua decided this week to launch into the attack by commenting about his supposed refusal to take a pay cut.

Joey Leilua calls out NRL money management declaring ‘I better not be taking a cut’ -March 19, 2020 9:57am Source: FOX SPORTS

The Fox Sports outlet reported that Joey Leilua was adamant he wouldn’t be sacrificing any money as the NRL considers pay cuts as a possible way of ensuring its financial survival through the “China Virus” (as described by President Trump) pandemic.

Fronting the media on Wednesday, Mr Leilua instead placed the blame on the NRL who he said should have been better prepared financially to deal with the situation. “I better not be taking a cut,” he said. 'My missus won't be happy”. “We’ve got mortgages to pay and bills to pay.” Leilua believes the NRL should foot the bill and if they can’t, he says it is a lesson for not being well-prepared. “I’m not all for that if we have to get a pay cut … I’m sure there is some money in there, in the revenue we’ve got,” he said. “They (the NRL) should be saving money for if something like this happens.

“I thought they were handling their money better, but if they say we’re going to last three months, we’re in trouble.”

Sea Eagle Comment:  Firstly Mr Leilua is yet again engaging in misguided and ill-informed commentary. He is not employed by the NRL . He's employed by the West Tigers . It is they and only they that have to pay him .

Secondly, as said above, it is China that he should be looking too  for compensation. The NRL has been guilty of many things over the years but this is not one of them.

Thirdly, based on his defensive effort in the absolute towelling that the Knights gave the West Tigers over round two, most of which was down the Leilua defensive corridor, it is clear that Mr Leilua believes defence is the thing that runs around the Oval. In any event, on that performance he should have to pay to enter the ground, which is fortunate because at the present time, as no fans allowed in, entry for a player who is so obviously hopeless, is therefore free.

Fourthly, see Sea Eagle comments above generally about how dire the NRL position presently is vis a vis the filthy lucre (or lack of it). He is at real risk of having a force majeure rammed up the proverbial with no lube or accompanying prophylactic, for nada, nothing, nil in terms of player payment.

Mr Leilua should be thankful that the NRL is doing everything it can to keep the game running and should be equally thankful that there is someone with some actual true ability as a manager (i.e. Mr Peter V’Landys) in control. It is notable that both rugby union and AFL have each capitulated to the onslaught and it is doubtful for how much longer the NRL can continue , but at least the NRL is trying.

Imagine the debacle if the previous clown who was NRL Chairman - Peter Beattie (personal opinion ) had his hands on the tiller.

Meanwhile Mr Leilua needs to take a deep hard look at himself in the room of mirrors . The fans may like rugby League but they can live without it. And if this China Virus  (as described by President Trump) pandemic goes down as bad as it appears to be going, they will quite easily get over the fact that they won't be able to watch NRL week in week out. In short, they couldn't give a flying F83*7ck whether Joey Leilua got paid or not.

He would be best reading carefully (and duly considering) the words of Peter V’Landys NRL Chairman "I came out here as a four-year-old migrant on a boat, stayed in school in Wollongong and I was very isolated. I didn’t know anyone. The only way I was able to be part of the community and be part of Australia was to play rugby league. That is the sole reason I am on this commission. I want to repay the debt. Without rugby league I could be …..."

THE SEA EAGLE

[harrisjv]

EMProTools Review Discount And Huge Bonus

EMProTools Evaluation-- Are you searching for even more understanding about EMProTools? Please review my sincere testimonial about it prior to choosing, to review the weaknesses as well as staminas of it. Can it be worth your time and effort and cash?

10 Easy Ways to Enhance Your Email Open Rate (Part 1)

Do you wish to increase your email open rate? Your email advertising projects can only work as long as they are really getting opened to begin with. If your open prices are reduced then you would certainly such as, below are 10 simple EMProTools means to enhance them ...

1. Keep Your List Fresh

Do your customers still wish to speak with you?

You've probably listened to the recommendations that it's important to email your clients on a regular basis so your listing doesn't go stale.

However nevertheless, in time, e-mail subscribers can still stagnate. Some people might have altered e-mail accounts, or perhaps they just aren't curious about your brand anymore. So to keep your listing fresh as well as loaded with involved clients, it's an excellent suggestion to regularly eliminate inactive subscribers.

An inactive customer might be any person that has not engaged with any kind of e-mail in the previous 6 months or more.

However prior to you remove them, attempt sending out a last-ditch-effort e-mail to try to re-engage your inactive clients.

As an example, Carol Tice sends a last-ditch-effort e-mail to her non-active EMProTools customers that states, "Do I birthed you?" and also asks if they still want to remain subscribed. Some people respond, however all others obtain purged.

Here's an example of a last-ditch-effort e-mail from HubSpot:

You can also make use of the subject line, "Is the love gone?", "It Isn't You, It's Me.", or if you are feeling really gutsy you can write, "Do you hate me?".

Another way to keep your listing fresh is by checking in with your subscribers from time to time to ask if they would like to upgrade their details and also their choices. By doing this, they are reminded that they can take control of just how they wish to engage with you.

If you are attempting to revitalize a cool checklist, try performing a survey. For answering your inquiries, they get a free gift (like a $5 gift card, for example).

This kills two birds with one rock: it incentivizes them to involve with you, while likewise providing you with the information you need to continue to involve them with web content they will certainly like.

2. Sector Your List

When individuals make a decision whether or not to open an email, one of the most crucial variables is whether or not they believe the email relates to them.

The most effective method to boost the relevancy of your e-mails? By segmenting your e-mail list. Lyris found that 39% of marketing experts who segmented their e-mail checklists experienced higher open prices, 28% experienced lower unsubscribe rates, and also 24% experienced far better deliverability and also higher revenue:

You can begin by including tags to your clients based upon behavior, such as purchase behavior. So when a person comes to be a paying consumer, you send them various types of e-mails than you would send to a person that has not purchased anything yet.

You can even send out various e-mails based upon the specific items they bought.

You can additionally segment your listings based upon demographics (such as location), or rate of interests.

Just how did they jump on your EMProTools e-mail checklist in the first place?

If they downloaded and install among your opt-in bribes on a certain topic, create a segment of those people so you can send them more emails on that particular specific subject.

Once you have these sections, it is so much less complicated to recognize what subject lines and messages to create that will tempt them to open up and also engage with your email marketing projects.

( On a related note, make certain you get your e-mail customers organically-- never rely upon paid lists, or the significance of your projects will certainly plummet.).

3. Stay Clear Of Spam Filters

Spam filters have gotten a lot more innovative in the previous a number of years, yet they're still not perfect. Your emails-- even your best e-mails-- can still get caught in the dreaded spam folder, never to see the light of day.

If you want to take full advantage of the reach of your e-mail advertising and marketing campaigns, you'll need to do everything feasible in order to avoid being flagged as spam.

Right here are some best practices to keep your emails from falling into spam folders:.

Ensure all EMProTools recipients have in fact opted-in to receiving your emails.

Send your campaign from an excellent IP address; that is, an IP address that hasn't been utilized by another person who has actually sent spam in the past.

Send via confirmed domain names.

Keep any kind of code clean.

Usage merge tags to individualize the "To:" area of your campaign.

Show subscribers how to whitelist your emails, and ask to add you to their personal digital assistant.

Stay clear of the excessive use "salesy" language (these are spam trigger words like "purchase", "clearance", "discount", or "money").

Do not "bait-and-switch" by utilizing deceitful subject lines.

Include your place.

Consist of a simple method for subscribers to opt-out of your e-mails.

4. Perfect Your Timing

Timing can have a significant effect on whether or not your customers open your emails, so think very carefully regarding what time and day you send your e-mails out.

You will not be able to figure out the perfect time quickly, yet perform some A/B examinations to determine which timeframes seem to perform best, and discover those in future campaigns. Yet you may be questioning, has anybody else already done some examinations that you can take advantage of?

Well, MailChimp's information claims that, as a whole, the very best time of week to send emails is on weekdays versus weekend breaks. No single day won hand's down.

They additionally found that, as a whole, the optimum time of day to send out e-mails goes to 10 AM in the receivers' very own time zone.

Nonetheless, when they looked much deeper, they discovered that the EMProTools type of material being sent had a substantial result on the peak time, in addition to the location, age, as well as occupation of the recipient.

And logically, this makes good sense: every one of these factors will have a result on what time they will certainly be probably to examine their email, in addition to the sort of e-mails they are looking to inspect at any offered time. (For example, hobby-related content may be inspected earlier, prior to job, whereas job-related material is most likely to be inspected during work hrs.).

But let's check out some more data. According to Experian's information, the best time of week for opens up is during the weekdays (they agree with MailChimp):.

( Graph via Customer.io).

The most effective time of day, according to their reports, is in the mid-day:.

If we combine these 2 reports from MailChimp as well as Experian, it certainly shows up that the very best days to send e-mails are weekdays, and also the very best times are not prematurely in the day.

But the lower line on e-mail send time is this: imagine a day in the life of your particular target market. What are they performing in the early morning, mid-day, as well as evening? What does their day resemble? How late do they keep up at night? Exactly how early do they increase in the morning?

All of these EMProTools concerns will certainly aid you decide on the best time to send your e-mails.

EMProTools Review & Overview

Creator: Tom Yevsikov

Item: EMProTools

Launch Day: 2019-Jan-30

Introduce Time: 10:00 EST

Front-End Price: $47-$67

Particular niche: Software program

What Is EMProTools?

EMProTools Is The 1st Of It's Kind Software Application To Assist You Obtain The Most Effective Results From Your Email Advertising Campaigns! Rise Your Email Open Fees, Click Fees As Well As Sales With Few Clicks!

Just How Does EMProTools Work?

Step 1 - Attach Your Email Autoresponder

Login and also add your e-mail autoresponder. Takes a minutes. Functions flawlessly with one of the most prominent autoresponders Aweber, Getresponse & Mailchimp.

Step 2 - Set up EMProTools With Couple Of Clicks

Apply wise as well as sophisticated segmentation and also Automation algorithms to your projects and also checklist in just few clicks. Or else takes hours and hrs of time day-to-day to establish it up by hand.

Tip 3 - Matter The Profits

Mail your listing and see much better outcomes than ever before. Make much more benefit from exact same amount of efforts.

Why Do You Need EMProTools And Also Exactly How Does It Actually Work? (Technique Explained)

Email Marketing Pro Devices Utilising Segmentation Approach Explained

Mailing Un-openers Method Explained

Rate & Evaluation

FE - EMProTools Key

Convert your checklist right into very involved buyers and dedicated followers with our strategy. Segment your checklist into remote controls, openers and non-openers in a click. Arrange your e-mail to unopeners in few clicks as well as more ...

Features

Assistance of 3 significant platform Aweber, GetResponse Mailchimp

Automatic Notes Division

Campaigns labeling

Automatic Sending broadcasts to unopenners

Sending out followup broadcasts based on customer actions

Sending emails with appropriate e-mail addresses for numerous checklists

Gooogle Chrome internet browser expansion

Advantages

Rises your open prices.

Boosts your click-throughs.

Increases your lead conversions.

Increases your sales conversions.

Construct listing of extremely engaged, hyper-responsive clients

Update 1 - EMProTools Ultimate Edition

More advanced features to obtain the best out of your e-mail checklists. Lower your autoresponder monthly charges and preserve the high quality.

Attributes

Automatic remove duplicate clients from multiple checklists

Automatic removal not energetic customers

Automatic action not active customers to different checklists

Automatic removal unsubscribed

Download and install listing of deleted subscribers

Advantages

Listings will certainly be cleaned, organised as well as optimized at its optimum feasible efficiency

Lower your Autoresponder bill by removing unsubscribes automatically

Reuse erased customers to create targeting pixels

Update 2 - EMProTools Diamond

Smart Hyperlinks, this is just one of the coolest function. It enables you to move/copy to different lists/camp and tag clients when they click a link inside their e-mails.

Attributes

Automatic Tagging based on client opens up and clicks

Automatic action/ duplicate customers based upon the web link click

Automatic set following Tradition Comply with Up message based upon the web link click

Postponed Apply Tags, Set Next Legacy Follow Up, Move client, Copy Client

Section customers based on their interests

Advantages

Control which Legacy Follow Up Collection is supplied to customer

Control which Followup message will certainly be supplied to customer next

Mail customers based upon their interests

Update 3 - EMProTools Reseller

Reseller Legal Rights Permit so you can sell it to other online as well as offline marketing experts as well as make a bank.

Verdict

"It's A Large amount. Should I Spend Today?"

Not just are you obtaining accessibility to EMProTools for the best cost ever provided, but also You're investing totally without threat. EMProTools include a 30-day Refund Assurance Plan. When you select EMProTools, your satisfaction is assured. If you are not completely pleased with it for any reason within the initial 1 month, you're entitled to a full refund-- no question asked. You've got absolutely nothing to lose! What Are You Awaiting? Try It today and also obtain The Complying with Bonus offer Now!

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain

Popular Culture (DVS Press): If you needed more proof that the obsession with fictional corporate franchises has a religious overtone to it, here is a major filmmaker advertising just that. When my viewers were upset about the corporate destruction of Star Wars, calling the franchise a cultural institution, I thought it a bit hyperbolic – after all, these are just stories, and you can’t uncreate what George Lucas did. I see things better now. Star Wars is part of the religious reverence for popular franchises.

RPG (Matthew J. Constantine): Way back in the 80s when I was a wee lad and just getting into tabletop RPGs, I used to see Space 1889 on the shelf at a local game store and I thought it looked pretty cool. Somewhere around there, my father picked up a copy, and I used to thumb through it a bunch.  There was something in the setting that really hit a lot of my buttons. I was an Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, and Jules Verne fan, so that was probably enough. But the setting had something that drew me in.

Comic Books (ICV2): Marvel Comics announced Conan the Barbarian: Coming of Conan, the first volume of collected Conan books restored for The Original Marvel Years Epic Collection, for release into trade in June 2020. Conan’s adventures would become legend, but before he became king, he was Conan the Barbarian. In this new trade paperback, Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith bring Robert E. Howard’s barbarian to four-color life, and have restored the art to match the epic majesty of their original editions.

Cinema (Amatopia): So this Birds of Prey movie didn’t do so hot. The usual suspects are blaming misogyny among the movie-going public. The other usual suspects are blaming a marketing campaign that specifically told men that this movie was not for them. Now, both are apocryphal, as I have not found men telling other men not to see this movie because it features women, and I have also not found people involved with the making of the movie telling men “This movie is not for you.”

Tolkien (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): we now know that Tolkien was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least three times: in 1961, when he was nominated by C. S. Lewis. in 1967, when his name appeared on the (alphabetical) long list as #58 of 70 nominees. In 1969, when he was #90 on the long list of 103 names. So far as I know he did not make the short list any of these times.

Weird Fiction & Appendix N (Goodman Games): Without August Derleth (1909-1971), you probably wouldn’t have that Cthulhu bumper sticker on your car, that Cthulhu for President poster, and certainly not that Plushie Cthulhu you have staring down at you from your geek-memorabilia shelf.  Not that Cthulhu would not exist, but he (it?) would be just one more forgotten character in a series of stories by an author unknown except to the most ardent of horror literati. Howard Philip Lovecraft’s greatest creation and most if not all of his fiction would have passed into obscurity if not for August Derleth’s founding of Arkham House publishing.

Fiction (DMR Books): These are stories of Jean Ray, who was known as “The Belgian Poe.” Other writers he was similar to are H. P. Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, and Guy de Maussapant. I first read Ray’s fiction in the doorstopper anthology The Weird by Jeff and Anne VanderMeer which reprinted his stories “The Mainz Psalter” and “The Shadowy Street.” Reading these stories, I felt like I did when I first read Lovecraft. They were tales of cosmic horror of immense power and imagination. I decided I would seek out more of his fiction.

RPG (Black Gate): For twenty years, the folks at Privateer Press have been creating games, primarily set in their Iron Kingdoms steampunk fantasy setting. They began with a series of RPG volumes, including an award-winning trilogy of adventures from 2001. These adventures, later collected into The Witchfire Trilogy, was built on the D20 System from Dungeons and Dragons 3E. Then Privateer Press really came into their own with the introduction of the Warmachine miniature wargame, focusing on armies that control massive metallic warjacks, one of the iconic creatures from their Iron Kingdoms setting.

T.V. (Dark Worlds Quarterly): When I was in graduate school, one of my

favorite television shows was Highlander.  I’d seen the first and second movies, and while I’d enjoyed them, it was the TV show that really captured my imagination and made me think about immortals and immortality. A movie is limited to approximately two hours. By contrast, a weekly show has a lot more time to develop characters, backstory, plots and subplots, and story-arcs that can last for months or even years.

Fiction (Epoch Times): In 1907, the man who composed these verses won the Noble Prize for Literature at the remarkably young age of 41. He also wrote hundreds of short stories and several novels. Many of these were made into films in the 20th century, among which were “The Jungle Book,” “Kim,” “Gunga Din,” “Wee Willie Winkie,” “Captains Courageous,” “Soldiers Three,” and “The Man Who Would Be King.” (Reader, if you haven’t seen this last film, starring Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer, treat yourself to a great movie this winter.)

Fiction (Wasteland & Sky): A couple of years ago, Superversive Press announced a series of 12 volumes each containing short stories based on the classic planetary system. 9 were based on the planets, and two were based on the sides of the moon. Each volume would contain stories science fiction, fantasy, horror, and weird fiction, with everything in between. No genre style was off limits. All that mattered was matching tone and theme. As a themed series of short story anthologies, it was quite ambitious.

Retro-Science Fiction (25 Years Later): There are two closely-knit, though not necessarily always interchangeable, subgenres of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Raypunk, or in architectural design circles referred to as Raygun Gothic, is the retrofuture with an eye for a bright future. Atompunk generates dystopian vibes and warns of a dreaded future in which the atomic bomb desecrated all humankind. Atompunk is bleak and afraid. Raypunk is quite excited for what tomorrow has in store.

Cinema (Jon Mollison): Bollywood often gets bandied about as an alternative to Hollywood fare by those cut back on consumption of it’s anti-American resentment.  Taken in by the flashy colors, the obvious national pride of the productions, and for some strange reason the song and dance numbers that break out on the regular, they seek solace in alien spectacle.  Personally, I find the sheer foreign-ness of Bollywood off-putting in much the same way I find anime incomprehensible. . . Enter Furious, the Russian made story of 17 brave warriors who stood up to a full Mongol horde.

Art (Down the Tubes): The Windsor-Smith Studio announced the completion of Monsters, the long awaited graphic novel by Barry, last December, and that the project is on track for a mid-2020 release, but a publisher was not revealed. Assuming it will be launched through traditional distribution routes and not solely through the Windsor-Smith Studio official web site, you’d expect a solicitation through Diamond Previews might soon be in the offing.

Fantasy Fiction (Superversive SF): To both spend time with my children and give them literary food to build their minds, I recently read to them THE CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN. For them, it was the second reading, but they were too young to remember the first. This time, they were begging for me to read more each night. The stories of Taran and the companions, Fflewddur Fflam, Gurgi, and Eilonwy not only filled their imaginations with adventure but taught them how dragons can be slain (paraphrasing of G.K. Chesterton).

Tolkien (Tentaculii): In August 1955 L. Sprague de Camp reviewed new Conan books and The Fellowship of the Ring, in Science Fiction Quarterly, August 1955. Worth reading right across the spread, as it’s ‘all of a piece’. For those who have somehow not yet enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, note that his review has plot spoilers for the first volume. At that time the second volume was not yet published. Camp must surely have here been the first to draw the comparison between the modus operandi of the ring in the Conan novelette “The Phoenix on the Sword” (1932) and The Lord of the Rings.

Sensor Sweep: Space 1889, Barry Windsor Smith, Tokien, Prydain published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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Neoliberalism at Gunpoint: Finance Minister invokes AI-5 in Washington, prepares for backlash on the streets

As Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro launches his new overtly Neofascist bash ‘Alliance for Brazil’, inspired by ARENA (Alliance for Nationwide Renewal) of the Dictatorship interval, his ministers and worldwide supporters are normalising a return to the repression of the 1960s and 1970s to protect their monetary passions.

Paulo Guedes, Bolsonaro’s Chicago Schooled Finance Minister, says he has no qualms a few dictatorship mannequin crackdown on political and push freedoms to protect his reforms.

The specter of AI-5, or Institutional Act 5, the “coup in simply the coup” of 1968 which ushered within the worst atrocities of the Dicatorship interval, has been within the data provided that Jair Bolsonaro’s son Eduardo raised it on the flooring of Congress and in an job interview, in response to Appropriate-Wing fears that Brazil would have its have Chilean design and elegance anti-Neoliberal mass protest movement.

Historian Fernando Horta defined AI-5 as buying been constructed to “assault the long run”.

Subsequent Eduardo Bolsonaro’s remarks, Bolsonaro’s head of institutional stability, and disgraced earlier commander of Brazil’s UN mission in Haiti, Primary Augusto Heleno, remarked that precisely how a modern “AI-5” may very well be executed would will have to be researched.

“Don’t be fearful if an individual orders AI-5” Guedes instructed assembled journalists and enterprise leaders at a press conference in Washington D.C. on Monday 25 November 2019. The occasion highlighted ten executives nearly each from the USA and Brazil, and US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross.

Guedes additionally criticised the not way back unveiled earlier President Lula, who he accused of stoking this type of protests along with his calls to defeat fascism and restore democracy in Brazil.

“Calling the women and men to the avenue is irresponsible.” Guedes insisted,  “I contemplate it’s loopy.”

Guedes was requested by simply one of many journalists regardless of whether or not this apparent slowdown in reform was not a dread of former President Lula, who has been fiercely very important of the Bolsonaro authorities’s financial agenda.

Guedes reassurred his viewers in Washington D.C. that Bolsonaro was not terrified of Lula.

In the meantime the Far-Proper President is urgent for impunity for regulation enforcement and armed forces – efficiently license to do away with – ahead of those sorts of demonstrations reaching the premier State and Monetary system in Latin America. Bolsonaro has admitted that new Assure of Regulation and Buy proposals are a consider to suppress these sorts of protests. He’s banking on worry of repression noticed elsewhere and in Brazil’s particular person historic previous will retain the streets vacant.

Journalist Gabriel Deslandes remarked: “Paulo Guedes is appropriate to raise the speculation of a brand new AI-5: it’s only in a context of pure repression that an armed theft from the Brazilian individuals, this kind of as is proposed in Administrative Reform PEC, might be carried out. A sometimes Pinochetist proposal, geared toward untying strategies from constitutional assets that pay unemployment protection and wage allowance, and minimize as much as 25% of the wage of civil servants of all concentrations. Paulo Guedes’s put together is to pickpocket Brazilian staff and to go away the nation lengthy lasting hostage to fiscal terrorism. In the long run, he’s excellent: to politically keep an “financial AI-5″ like this, might solely be executed with a real new AI-5, with bullets, beatings, and bombs, Chile-design and elegance – a spot he loves so loads.”

Within the meantime, historian Jones Manuel lamented media response to Guedes invocation of AI-5: “I verified what I suspected. Jovem Pan, and different media retailers, are normalizing and defending Paulo Guedes’ liberal-fascism and his protection of AI-5. Do you need to know the way a reactionary dictatorship is created? Look throughout. Virtually all the pieces is going on on this article and now!”

A spread of steps, dubbed the “Digital AI-5” are already in growth. PL2418/2019 which legalises the monitoring of immediate messaging purposes, PL1595/2019 which establishes Anti-Terrorist forces, PL443/2019 which defines public demonstrations and occupations as acts of terrorism, PL2289/2019 calls for finish customers of social networks handy round their social safety quantity, ending anonymity on the web, and DL10.046/2019 which can allow the crossing of databases that accommodates personalised, biometric and genetic info.

Bolsonaro’s an increasing number of authoritarian regime got here to electrical energy by the use of disputed signifies, with the assist of the navy companies, connivance of Judiciary and involvement of the USA Governing administration Part of Justice.

Americas Quarterly is the in-property journal of Council of the Americas (AS/COA), the de-facto company arm of US electrical energy in Latin The us, which was customary within the early 1960s specifically to counter the unfold of left-wing governance within the location. It had a speedy place in fomenting Brazil’s 1964 and Chile’s 1973 Coups, and has normalised or supported each US-backed routine enhance exertion within the hemisphere contemplating that.

AQ, which has breathlessly championed Guedes within the earlier, are additionally anxious that the wave of protests all through the continent might presumably sluggish his extremely-liberal reforms which have been of great profit to COA’s firm prospects these kind of as Cargill, Chevron and Boeing. Guedes even proposes a merger of Banco do Brasil with COA elite member Lender of America.

As security forces and fascist paramilitaries bloodbath civilians in Bolivia, AS/COA and its personnel have doubled down on help for the coup govt and denial {that a} coup has occurred. Its editor in major Brian Winter took to social media to criticise Lula pursuing his remarks on confronting Bolsonaro and the serious-suitable, and the way Venezuela had, in contrast with Bolivia, managed to withstand US Federal authorities intervention.

Winter season is skeptical that the wave of protests in Latin The usa will obtain Brazil. Wishful pondering probably. It’s the previous element he or his firms would need, because the place quo in Brazil serves them accurately. Previously AS/COA and Americas Quarterly skilled championed discredited anti-corruption operation Lava Jato and its fallen hero Sergio Moro, now Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister. Moro was the Inquisitor-Determine driving Lula’s 580 working day jailing, imagined to avert his Presidential Candidacy in an election he was heading in the right direction to accumulate. Lava Jato was additionally central to the marketing campaign to question Dilma Rousseff, and made use of strategically to that finish, as uncovered by leaked conversations revealed by the Intercept.

Two totally different U.S. congressional inquiries into the U.S. Workplace of Justice’s perform in Lava Jato and Lula’s prosecution are pending.

No matter human rights and environmental fears, Jair Bolsonaro’s Significantly-Correct Administration has the open help of the USA and United Kingdom Governments.

Subsequent Guedes feedback, the Brazilian Severe fell to a brand new file lowered versus the US Buck.

In the event you value the do the job Brasil Wire does, please help retain us working with a donation. Our editorial independence is determined by our viewers assist.

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[friend-clarity]

From sex slaves to social outcasts: What happens when ‘Boko Haram wives’ are freed

Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination

For seven months, Hamsatu, now 25, and Halima, 15, were among Boko Haram’s sex slaves, raped almost every day by the same unit of fighters in the remote Sambisa Forest. Now, they live in a narrow, white tent in a displacement camp, with empty cement bags sewn together to create a curtain. The women spoke on the condition that their full names were not used in order to freely describe their experiences.

Kevin Sieff, The Washington Post, Monday 4 April 2016

For months, they were kept in tiny thatched huts in the middle of the forest, waiting with dread each evening for their rapists to return. During the almost intolerable violence, the young women’s minds drifted to escape or death. The victims were as young as 8.

At the heart of Boko Haram’s self-proclaimed caliphate in northeastern Nigeria was a savage campaign of rape and sexual slavery that has only recently been uncovered. Thousands of girls and women were held against their will, subject to forced marriages and relentless indoctrination. Those who resisted were often shot.

Now, many of the women are suddenly free — rescued in a series of Nigerian military operations over the past year that dislodged the extremist Islamist group from most of the territory it controlled. But there have been few joyous family reunions for the victims.

Most of the surviving women no longer have homes. Their cities were burned to the ground. The military has quietly deposited them in displacement camps or abandoned buildings, where they are monitored by armed men suspicious of their loyalties. They are still labeled “Boko Haram wives.”

Few could have imagined such an outcome two years ago, when 276 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and the world responded with the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. While most of those schoolgirls from Chibok are still missing, many people assumed the other kidnapped women would be warmly welcomed back.

Instead, they are shunned.

The Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, northeast Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped 276 teenagers in the dead of night nearly two years ago (Getty)

image

For seven months, Hamsatu, now 25, and Halima, 15, were among Boko Haram’s sex slaves, raped almost every day by the same unit of fighters in the remote Sambisa Forest. Now, they live in a narrow, white tent in a displacement camp, with empty cement bags sewn together to create a curtain. The women spoke on the condition that their full names were not used in order to freely describe their experiences.

When Halima leaves the tent to get food for the two of them, the other people living in the camp scowl at her or cautiously move away.

“You’re the one who was married to Boko Haram,” one older woman spat at her recently.

Authorities say there are good reasons for their wariness. Last year, 39 of 89 Boko Haram suicide bombings were carried out by women, according to UNICEF. Twenty-one of those female attackers were under the age of 18, many of them girls apparently abducted from villages and cities and converted into assassins. Since January, female attackers have killed hundreds of people across northeastern Nigeria, in mosques, markets and even displacement camps.

No one knows exactly why some women who were captured and abused became killers. Maybe it was the indoctrination. Maybe it was the militants’ threats.

Either way, the job of reintegrating the displaced has become vastly more complicated for Ni­ger­ian authorities.

And for survivors trying to move on from a horrific chapter of their lives, there is now a new agony.

“There is no trust here,” said Hamsatu, crouching in her tent and wearing the same pink, flowery dress she had on when she was kidnapped 18 months ago. In her arms, she held the baby of her captor.

‘I don’t know if he’s alive’

It was September 2014 when Boko Haram fighters took over Hamsatu’s and Halima’s home city of Bama, near the Cameroonian border. Many of the 350,000 residents managed to flee. But the fighters immediately started killing the male civilians who couldn’t escape. Some were shot in their homes. Others were beheaded and thrown in mass graves.

With a group of about 25 other women, Hamsatu and Halima say, they were moved by the militants from home to home and then forced to travel on foot and on the backs of motorcycles to the Sambisa Forest, where Boko Haram had set up camps for its sex slaves.

The women were each assigned to a sliver of a hut, barely big enough to lie down. Hamsatu said that days later, one fighter, whose name she never learned, entered the hut and said a prayer in what sounded to her like Arabic.

Now they were married, he told her. She thought of her real husband, who had been missing since the day Boko Haram stormed Bama.

“I don’t know if he’s alive,” she said.

From then on, the days were uniformly violent. Different men would come into her hut each evening, in addition to the one who called himself her “husband,” Hamsatu said. Sometimes they screamed at her for not praying enough. “Even the Chibok girls are better Muslims than you,” a man yelled at her once.

Sometimes the men said nothing at all, tearing off her headscarf and raping her on the floor of the hut, she recalled. After about two months, she became pregnant.

Publicly, Boko Haram members decry the tyranny of Nigeria’s federal government, which is mostly Christian in a nation where Muslims, nearly half of the population, have long complained about being marginalized. The militants rail against secular education and demand strict Islamic observance. The group has declared allegiance to the Islamic State.

But to their prisoners, the fighters’ campaign didn’t seem driven by ideology so much as a wild appetite for sex and violence. It would take the rest of the world some time to learn about Boko Haram’s institutionalized sexual abuse. Rape wasn’t just a byproduct of the chaos of war in Nigeria, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would say in 2015. It was a calculated “tactic of terror.”

“These people have a certain spiritual conviction that any child they father will grow to inherit their ideology,” Kashim Shettima, the governor of Borno state — where Bama is located — told reporters last year.

At night, Hamsatu heard helicopters and gunshots. Several times, she attempted to escape, but she was caught and returned by guards. After a while, the pregnancy slowed her and she stopped trying.

When the Nigerian military came, it hardly felt to the women like a rescue operation. Soldiers burned the huts while women were still inside and shot wildly at everyone, they said. Several women were killed or disappeared during the operation, according to accounts from several former captives. Halima is now raising a 3-year-old orphan whose mother vanished during the rescue operation.

The women were loaded in pickup trucks and dumped on a desert road about 50 miles away, they said. Military interrogators arrived.

The women were searched for weapons. After months of being held by one of the world’s deadliest terror groups, the women realized: They were now suspects.

“Sambisa woman” — that’s what they called Hamsatu and Halima when the women arrived at the Dalori displacement camp on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri in April of last year. It was the name of the forest where they had been enslaved.

Hamsatu and Halima were taken to a tent they shared with two other women and the 3-year-old orphan — all of whom had been “liberated” from Boko Haram, as the military said. The women who had been forcibly married to fighters were kept apart from other people displaced by the war.

Unlike most of the world’s refugee or displacement camps, which are run by the United Nations and international aid groups, the camps where Boko Haram’s victims live are administered by the Nigerian military. Outside Dalori, an army captain stands by the front gate. Visitors are patted down. A poster of high-level Boko Haram suspects hangs on the perimeter wall of the camp. Aid workers need military permission to enter the camps.

Some women who lived under Boko Haram are occasionally hauled off to a military base for questioning, and then returned.

“The fear is that they’ve been converted to Boko Haram’s ideology,” said Mohammed Ali Guja, the chairman of the city of Bama. “They are now a different person.”

The country’s displaced population has ballooned. As of March, there were 2.6 million internally displaced people, or IDPs, in northeastern Nigeria, according to the International Organization for Migration. Even local relief workers worry that the women they have been sent to help might be concealing loyalties to their Boko Haram abductors.

“The simple truth is they pose a serious threat to the general public,” said Ann Darman, of the Gender Equality, Peace and Development Center, a Nigerian aid group that often works with the United Nations.

Last year, just as the liberated women were pouring into displacement camps and local communities, there was a surge in female suicide bombers. In June, one killed 20 people at a bus station in Maiduguri. A day later, two bombers killed 30 at a market in the city. In July, two more killed 13 people near a military checkpoint. In October, four girls and a boy targeted a mosque, killing 15. Witnesses said some of the attackers appeared to be no older than 9.

“We think they have more or less brainwashed these children,” said Maj. Gen. Lucky Irabor, the top Ni­ger­ian military official in the northeast. “They have become useful tools” for Boko Haram.

Amid the attacks, Hamsatu gave birth last June to the child of her rapist in the camp’s rundown clinic.

Her daughter made her an even greater target of scorn. In many Nigerian communities, people believe that the father’s blood courses through the veins of his child, “so that at some point in the future they will be likely to turn against their own community,” said Rachel Harvey, UNICEF’s head of child protection in Nigeria.

A subtle shunning

One morning in mid-March, the women in the narrow white tent woke up on thin mats, each with one pair of clothes to wear. At 10, Halima walked across the scorching-hot sand to get breakfast: rice and beans donated by Nigeria’s government aid agency.

At the food-collection point, sometimes people inch away from her, she said, as if it would be dangerous to get too close.

It didn’t seem to matter that she had been vetted by the Nigerian military. Or that she actually never wanted children and was now struggling to raise a 3-year-old and blamed Boko Haram each time the girl cried or soiled herself or asked where her real mom was.

Just a few weeks before, three female suicide bombers had blown themselves up in the nearby village of Dalori, part of an attack that killed 86 people, including children. The suspicion of Boko Haram’s victims only grew. In late March, a Nigerian girl was apprehended with explosives strapped to her body in Cameroon, near the Ni­ger­ian border. She set off a brief scandal when she said she was one of the Chibok girls, but Nigerian officials denied her claim.

Some worry that in a part of Nigeria that was once torn apart by a homegrown insurgency, another cleavage is forming, this one in the wake of war.

“Subjecting [the victims] to further discrimination and ill treatment due to their status as victims of Boko Haram violence is certain to undermine the entire response to the situation in the northeast,” said Martin Ejidike, a prominent human rights adviser to the United Nations in Nigeria.

There are few signs the situation will improve. Many international aid organizations won’t work in the north because of the continued insecurity.

The government had opened a deradicalization center to help re-integrate the former victims, but it closed late last year, after admitting only 311 people. Officials at the national security adviser’s office did not return phone calls seeking an explanation for the closure.

In the camps, some of the women victimized by Boko Haram down bottles of homemade cough syrup to get deliriously high alone.

Once a week, Halima and Hamsatu attend group therapy sessions in a tent that says “Safe Place for Women and Girls.”

There they are known as “the sisters” because of how close they’ve become. They gather in a circle on the floor with about a dozen other women. The counselor repeats a few lines during each meeting. Hamsatu and Halima wait quietly for them, wishing they were true.

“What has gone has gone.”

“You are safe now.”

“You are secure now.”

Copyright: The Washington Post