#paper products market invest

[visual-sculptors]

Integrating Multiple Consultants in Joint Presentations

The collaboration conundrum of integrating multiple consultants in joint presentations can be a complex and demanding task. It necessitates a high level of effective communication, meticulous coordination, and a precise understanding of each consultant's unique role and expertise.

Successful integration of multiple consultants in a joint presentation requires the establishment of a cohesive team dynamic and the setting of clear expectations.

By ensuring that all team members are on the same page and understand their individual responsibilities, the presentation stands a higher chance of being delivered successfully.

Furthermore, it is imperative to approach collaboration with a professional and respectful attitude, valuing each consultant's contributions regardless of any potential conflicts or differing opinions.

Each consultant brings a valuable perspective and skillset to the table, and recognizing and leveraging these strengths can lead to a more comprehensive and well-rounded presentation.

By fostering an environment of mutual respect and teamwork, consultants can work together towards a common goal, ultimately enhancing the overall success and impact of the joint presentation.

Visual Sculptors Designs – Aligned to Client Branding Guidelines.

To ensure that presentations are in line with a management consulting company's branding and messaging, we adopt various important strategies: After signing an agreement with a firm, we have calls to understand past projects and brand guidelines. We then create a detailed style sheet for approval, usually finalizing after 1-2 iterations. For the initial 10-15 deliveries, the agency prioritizes delivering high quality work with multiple quality checks. This includes ensuring brand consistency in aspects like color scheme, choosing appropriate chart types, and formatting elements. Graphic design process helps familiarize the agency team with the client's brand.

[fictionadventurer]

Hobbies need to be accessible. I believe that it’s becoming more and more important for people to have physical hobbies that create real things and develop real skills--giving people a sense of accomplishment and overcoming feelings of helplessness. But so often, it seems like even beginner-level instruction is aimed at making the entry barrier as high as possible.

I was reading this book where this guy argues that people should develop areas of “micromastery” when getting into a hobby. Find one small, achievable, but still impressive task to master, so you have a cool skill to show off (and the sense of accomplishment) without having to master an entire huge area of knowledge. Instead of learning to cook, learn to create a really good omelet. Instead of learning an entire new language, learn to count to ten. And then you have a knowledge base to help you if you want to explore further. Seems very common sense. Very accessible. Learning is for everyone, not just people who want to devote tons of time to a new hobby. But even that guy, in his instructions, keeps telling people to buy the most expensive equipment to have the best possible results. There’s even a point where he says “the more expensive, the better”!

That infuriates me. I am enraged. The guy who’s trying to make learning accessible to the masses is now saying this is the realm only of the rich! It’s telling people to buy into the marketing ploy that more expensive is automatically better! It’s absurd. It’s insane. There probably is equipment that improves the outcome of the final product, but it’s not necessarily the most expensive stuff, and you certainly don’t need the expensive stuff when you’re just starting out!

Yet, tutorials and craft books keep pushing this message. If you want to start drawing, you need an expensive sketch book and seven different pencils and different weights of pen, and the right eraser. If you want to bake, you have to have the best flours and the appropriate sourdough technique. If you want to knit, you better have the expensive yarn. That’s garbage, and it makes things more difficult than they need to be.

When you’re just starting out, you’re learning if you even like the activity. Do I like spending time drawing? Do I even like the process of knitting or woodworking or building model airplanes? It’s pointless to spend tons of money on good yarn only to find that you hate the process of knitting. Pointless to get the good pencils when the process of drawing makes you want to crawl out of your skin.

If you want to try something, just try it! As simply and cheaply as possible. Want to draw? Get a free pencil and a bit of notebook paper. Want to knit? Get a pair of knitting needles from the thrift store and some dollar store yarn. As you get deeper into the hobby, you’ll probably want to upgrade your supplies--but now that you know more about the process, you know what problems can be solved by better supplies.

I was always intimidated by bookbinding--the tutorials always talked about having the right glue and the right book press--until a guy in the comments said, “I use Elmer’s Glue and my laptop.” I could manage that! That was accessible! I got some glue and some big textbooks and made a book! Not perfect, but it wouldn’t have been perfect even if I had the fancy supplies--I was just starting out! And then I figured out that a paper cutter and some kind of tool to smooth the endpapers would be useful. So I got that--as cheaply as possible. I have made books and I have enjoyed it without a huge investment in time and money. And more tutorials need to take that approach. I refuse to believe that we have to give tons of money to the crafting industry. I refuse to believe that we have to be consumers in order to become creators.

[luxsky]

Acotar characters; "you're staring" "you're beautiful"

Summary: ACOTAR characters + Twitter trend "you're staring" "you're beautiful"

Warnings: Moderately inaccurate political economy information, I think that's it (let me know if I missed anything)

Author's Note: Okay, I had a lot of fun writing this, hope you enjoy!

Rhysand

Ruling a court comes with various responsibilities, including dealing with accounting. Deciding how much money goes into each aspect, where there will be investments or cuts, handling the demand for buying and selling prices, export profits, and import expenses – these are the matters a High Lord has to deal with.

And Rhysand hates it; he dislikes mathematics, numbers, and especially thinking about all the headaches that economics brings him. That's why, when we got married and he made me his High Lady to reign by his side, I volunteered to handle that part – the part he disliked but I enjoyed.

So, while Rhysand deals with the political aspects that don't interest me, I handle the ones that don't interest him. We often work together, despite having separate offices. We also have a shared one because, even though we sometimes prefer working alone, most of the time, we choose to work together, not only to spend time together but also to enjoy each other's company and deal with any situation requiring the other's opinion.

"I think we should invest more in the export of artistic materials," I say to him, standing on the plush rug in the office, papers scattered on the floor from where I was previously sitting. I've analyzed these two specific papers in my hands for several minutes, pacing back and forth until reaching this conclusion.

"Well, we could do that, but the demand would increase, and we'd have to invest in structures for mass production of materials," he murmurs in response, not lifting his head from his stack of papers, filled mostly with reports from spies and armies.

"Urgh, okay, let me look into that," I crouch down, sitting on my heels as I shuffle through the scattered papers on the floor, searching for specific ones.

I make a satisfied noise when I find what I need, also grabbing a pen and starting to scribble some calculations and values on a blank sheet. Information here, consequences there, trying to find the best way to expand the Night Court's export market.

Rhys's pen stops, and I glimpse a movement from the corner of my eye, but I'm too focused on what I'm writing. I search for another paper, Mother, I should start organizing myself better. I lean to reach it, using the values there to compare with the ones I noted down, another paper comes to my hand, and my head is filled with numbers, values, and variations.

At some point, my concentration begins to wane because I feel eyes piercing my side. Perhaps my partner is trying to hint that my murmurs are bothering him, or maybe he wants to say something and is waiting for the right moment.

I put the papers back on the floor and look at him. Contrary to what I imagined, he's leaning back in his chair, a smirk on his lips, and his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn't look away or say anything, so I make a face and go back to shuffling my papers, still feeling the burn of his gaze on me.

"Rhysand, love, you're staring," I murmur, starting to stack the papers I had spread all over the floor, attempting a fake organization. I hear the sound of his chair scraping on the floor, and I look up to see him in front of me, crouching to be at the same height as me.

The smile on his face grew. "You're beautiful, dear, especially when dealing with all this math," he murmurs, and his hands cup my cheeks, his thumb caressing my face.

"Well, someone has to do the hard work, don't they?" I reply playfully, mirroring his smile. Rhysand leans in, kissing my lips, then my nose, forehead, and finally my cheeks. He continues planting various kisses all over my face, and I'm laughing by the end when he pulls away, looking at me with a loving gaze.

My laughter slowly fades, but the smile remains on my face. "You're my clever and beautiful little thing, dear," he murmurs, planting a final, very slow kiss on my forehead.

Cassian

Waking up early is one of the things highlighted on my list of things I hate and prefer not to do. My routine has always been organized with the goal of waking up as late as possible without disrupting my responsibilities.

And this routine worked perfectly until Cassian and I started living together, and he decided that my routine was somewhat unhealthy, insisting that I should start the day with him. The problem is, my beloved partner has a bizarre predisposition to wake up very easily before the sun even thinks about rising. And he doesn't rest until he wakes me up too.

"Come on, babe, we still need to have breakfast before we start training," his voice muffled as my face is buried under two pillows and protected by a thick blanket. "If you don't get up soon, we'll be late."

"Cassian, how could we be late if the sun hasn't even woken up yet?" Irritation in my voice is palpable, but perhaps the pillows somehow contained that annoyance in their feathers because the Illyrian has the audacity to laugh, a loud laughter that comes from the depths of his chest.

Before I could curse him with every name I know, my blanket is abruptly pulled off my body. As I cling to the pillows, trying to prevent him from taking them away, I feel the mattress shifting and his weight being placed on me. Peeking under the pillow, his forearms are bracing on either side of my body, preventing his entire weight from resting on me. His wings are spread, and a few strands of his hair escape from the bun.

"Are you going to get up, or do I have to take these pillows away too?" His voice is pure amusement, and I'm sure he's wearing that typical smirk of his.

With a very dissatisfied sigh, I push the pillows up, removing them from my face. As I suspected, his smile is evident on his lips, Cassian's face hovering above mine, very close.

I make a face and poke his cheek with my finger. "You really have no fear of death, do you?" Despite my words, the irritation of being woken up so early is set aside for a moment. Cassian's face so close to mine erases any resentment I could have for him being a morning person.

"Not when it's this beautiful," his hand moves, pushing strands of hair away from my face, his features softening. His eyes travel across the expanse of my face, and he's so focused on tracing the contours of my cheeks with his finger that he doesn't realize he's been doing it for a few minutes.

"You're staring, General," I murmur, a playful smile forming on my lips as I see his eyes darken with the title used. His finger doesn't stop caressing my cheek, but his face descends a bit, his lips hovering a few inches from mine.

He whispers to me, his breath mixing with mine, "With a sight like this? You can't blame me." He doesn't wait a second after finishing the sentence to press our lips together, a warm and desire-filled kiss.

My hands grab his hair, and the bun easily unravels as I grip the strands, his mouth dancing over mine as our tongues connect and dance. When he breaks the kiss, it's only because we need to breathe, but he plants soft and quick kisses while stabilizing his breath, then descending and leaving a trail of wet kisses on my neck.

I bring his face up, looking into his eyes, the previous amusement replaced by lust. My arched eyebrow and mischievous smile draw his eyes back to my lips. Before he can kiss me again, I speak.

"I thought we were going to be late for training if I didn't get up soon." The amusement in my voice prompts an eye roll from him in response.

"Screw the training; my only commitment now is with your body." And his lips resume leaving trails of kisses, descending from my neck to my collarbone. Laughter escapes me as his wife reverberates throughout the room, Cassian focusing on kissing me everywhere.

Azriel

Azriel's lips passionately met mine, his hands gripping my waist, pulling me closer. I'm a complete mess; one of my hands supports me on his arm, while the other grabs his hair. My feet barely touch the ground, striving for height to reach his lips. His warm mouth against mine, our tongues entwining, he pulls back just enough to capture my lower lip between his teeth, causing delightful shivers.

His hand moves up to my neck; his thumb rests on my chin, tilting my face upward. His lips trail down, planting a kiss on my jaw and then on my neck. He lightly bites and kisses the spot that never fails to elicit sighs from me.

As he pulls away, I open my eyes, meeting his brown, sparkling eyes admiring my face. His hands cup my cheeks, a small smile playing on his lips. My lip throbs, feeling swollen, yet Azriel gazes at me with such devotion that all I can do is smile back, my heart racing as if it's the first time he's touched me this way. It isn't, but my body seems to forget that in the moment.

Azriel continues watching me, but my attention is momentarily diverted as a bright flash catches my peripheral vision. I turn my head, his hand moving from my cheek to hold mine as I observe stars falling from the sky. They start timidly, but as seconds pass, more appear, the sky glowing with the trails they leave behind.

I love this. I love the starfall, sharing the moment with my partner, and more than that, I love how he still hasn't taken his eyes off me, even though the brilliant sky is far more beautiful and interesting to watch.

"You're staring," I murmur, my eyes still fixed on the sky. Azriel wraps his arms around my shoulders from behind, his wings blocking the wind around us. He places a gentle kiss on the top of my head, then lowers his lips to my ear, whispering in response.

"You're so beautiful; it's hard not to look, my love." His voice in that tone is incredibly sensual, and the shadows dancing on my arms as I hold onto his bring a delightful sensation.

I don't respond with words; instead, I send all the love and warmth I can through the golden bond that connects us. My eyes remain fixed on the stars detaching from the sky above us, but I'm sure he's still trying to study any detail he hasn't memorized yet, even with our closeness.

Feyre

The sun warming my skin is a very welcome sensation, the fabric of the sheet that Feyre and I spread on the grass earlier is a bit disheveled, but I don't mind.

The comfortable silence we're in is filled with occasional sounds of pages turning in my book and the strokes Freyre makes on her canvas. I lie on my stomach, reading the new suspense novel my lovely partner gifted me a few days ago. The story is at a particularly tense point, a crucial revelation is imminent, and I can feel it.

This may have been one of the best ideas Feyre had in the last month. She was recently inspired to paint landscapes and planned an outdoor day. With all the shared love, she asked if I wanted to accompany her. We didn't go far, choosing a spot near the Sidra River. We arrived in the early afternoon and planned to stay until the sun gave way to the moon.

Despite wanting to continue reading, Feyre's gaze distracts me. Giving up on reading, I sit up, looking at her. From my angle, I can't see what she's painting very well, but the paints are still scattered around us, and she's still holding the brush, so I deduce she hasn't finished the painting.

"Baby, you're staring," I stretch, trying to see what she's painting, curious to see her progress, but she quickly pulls the canvas away from my view. The warmth that fills her cheeks as she looks away from me gives me a hint as to why she was staring at me.

A mischievous smile forms on my lips. I lean forward, innocently running the tip of my nail on her bare leg. "You know, when you said you wanted to paint the landscape, I didn't think you were referring to me."

She chuckles at the teasing, rolling her eyes as she mumbles something. She places the canvas in one of the paints, away from my sight, and turns to me, her hand reaching to grab mine. Her finger is smeared with paint, and as she runs it over me, I get stained with the hue she was using, but I don't complain.

"You're too beautiful; it's hard to capture you in a painting," she confesses to me. Her brown eyes meet mine, her freckles reflecting the sunlight and seeming to glow. It's ironic for Feyre to say this about me; the beauty she carries is otherworldly, yet I am the one challenging to be captured in paints.

"Pfft, you can turn anything into the most beautiful art, Fey," I roll my eyes at her, her hand drawing a pattern on mine gently. "But I can be your muse whenever you want. I don't mind how long it takes for you to finish your painting."

She smiles at my response. Her other hand, which previously held the brush, holds my face tenderly, and she stares at me for a few more seconds in silence, studying and analyzing my face, imprinting the details with her eyes and fingertips. When she finishes, she goes back to grab the canvas and the brush, speaking excitedly.

"Alright then, get into a comfortable position. This will probably take some time," she starts mixing colors and dipping them into the brush as I lean back, sitting in a more comfortable way.

When she resumes painting, I'm still laughing, and as the sun sets, giving way to the moon, she remains focused, alternating her gaze between me and the canvas, until she completes her masterpiece.

Nesta

In this, Nesta and I have developed a small tradition in our relationship. At least once a month, we go to any bookstore we choose at the moment, even if we don't plan to buy any books or have only bought a few days ago. We simply go, wander around the store, and talk – sometimes we browse through books on the shelves, other times we just observe. It doesn't matter much what we do in the bookstore; we just go.

That's why the day after I return from a political trip to the Day Court, Nesta wakes me up early. We have breakfast together, then leisurely stroll to a new bookstore that opened while I was away. The place is beautiful and cozy, the smell of books is relaxing, and Nesta's hand in mine brings a sense of comfort. We are almost at the back of the bookstore, in the erotic books section, when one of the covers catches my attention.

"Oh! Helion had this book in his library; I read it while I was there." I release Nesta's hand to pick up the book. The cover is as discreet as the title; at first glance, nothing would indicate the content inside this book, except for the category it belongs to.

I flip through the book, reading some random passages and recalling the story. A laugh escapes my throat as I turn to Nesta and show her one of the excerpts. "Look at this."

Nesta's eyebrow arches as she reads the passage I showed her. A quieter laugh, compared to mine, also escapes her, and her eyes meet mine as she says, "Well, it's a... uninteresting scene."

I nod, agreeing with her, and turn back to the shelf, running my finger over the covers. "I really didn't expect that while reading, although it makes sense when compared to the rest of the story." Then I briefly start recounting the story – how the main couple faced various challenges when together but always had a significant tension between them.

I pick up another book, turning the cover and reading its summary. It seems interesting. "Look, Nes, it's from that new author you were interested in. The story sounds good; it's about..."

When I turn to show her the book I found, she still has the previous book in her hands, open to the page I handed her. Her eyes stare at me with an affectionate gaze, causing my cheeks to flush with the attention she gives me, and I release a nervous giggle.

"Darling, you're staring at me," I murmur, shyness covering my voice. This seems to snap Nesta out of the trance she was in because she blinks, very slowly, and a mischievous smile forms on her lips – a smile that sends shivers down my spine.

She closes the book in her hands, takes the one in mine, and puts both back on the shelf, pulling me close to her. "You look too beautiful when you talk about the books you like," she murmurs, her lips nearing mine.

Her eyes burn with mischief, her hand moves up to my nape, pulling me closer, our lips inches apart. "Tell me more about the book, about all the books you read while you were away," her lips meet mine in the next moment.

Morrigan

Morrigan's dissatisfied murmurs filled my ears as I watched her argue with herself through the vanity mirror about the three dresses scattered on the bed. Smiling at her indecision, I resumed applying makeup, finishing the products on my eyes and cheeks, adding color and life to my face.

Digging into Mor's vanity drawer, I searched for a lipstick to complement the outfit I chose for the night. Once I found the perfect shade, I glanced back at the mirror.

Swiftly applying the lipstick, I examined my face—it was perfect and would be even more so when I put on the golden earring that matched Mor's. With that thought, I sought her reflection and found her staring at me through the mirror with a puzzled look, still undecided on her choice. Turning to face her, still seated on the stool, I raised my eyebrows at her pout, and she scrutinized me with puppy-dog eyes.

"You're staring, babe," I stood up, approaching the bed with the intention of helping her choose her outfit but was interrupted when she pulled me close, pressing her body against mine. Her eyes descended to the lips I had just painted, now adorned with a mischievous smile.

"You're beautiful; I can't help but look," I playfully rolled my eyes, accustomed to her flattery.

She brushed a strand of my hair back, clearing it from my face, and leaned forward, sealing our lips. I got lost in the kiss, engulfed in the passion she radiated. Our mouths moved in harmony; my hand held her face, preventing her from pulling away. We only broke the kiss because we needed air. As her lips moved far enough from mine for coherent thought, I noticed the color on hers.

She furrowed her brows, confused by my exasperated sigh. When I quickly distanced myself and walked back to the vanity, she became even more perplexed. Until I looked at myself in the mirror and realized the chaos my face had become—lipstick smeared everywhere, ruining the makeup I had done.

I groaned and turned to her, attempting to hide a laugh behind her fist, "Morrigan," I whined, "now I have to clean up and redo it."

She approached again, her hands running up my arms and stopping at the base of my neck, her fingertips playing with my hair. "Well, at least I'll have more time to decide what to wear," she chuckled loudly as I huffed indignantly.

[transmutationisms]

what do you think about adhd? such as the rise in drug marketing, medicalization, and globalization

i mean in broad strokes it's basically the same analysis as any other psychiatric diagnostic label lol. people experience an impairment where there's a mismatch between them and what they're socially / academically / professionally expected to be capable of. with adhd specifically the expectations here come largely from employers wanting obedient and efficient workers, and from parents and other authority figures wanting obedient and docile children. because adhd (unlike some dxs) has a very specifically targeted class of drug treatments, a lot of this also gets perpetrated by pharma interests (see: funding conflicts in academic papers, additude mag, &c) trying to encourage more use of their product, which in the current medico-legal arrangement also means pushing for more diagnoses. this is also why there's so much investment in like, studies purporting to find immutable 'brain differences' in adhd-ers and whatnot. talking about this on this site is always instantly rancid and regrettable though because people fear that the only alternative to bio-psychiatry is getting told to suck it up and be crushed in the capitalist machine, so i understand why there's so much investment from patient groups in these types of neuropsychiatric discourses. anyway i personally love to be slightly high on amphetamines and like i always say, it's morally ok to do drugs even if they're prescribed. i like a lot of jesse meadows's writing on adhd btw—they're essentially trying to find ways to talk about and accommodate what's been dx'd as their adhd, without either dismissing the real difficulties they and others experience, or falling back on essentialist psychiatric explanations.

[fatehbaz]

Indigenous genocide and removal from land and enslavement are prerequisites for power becoming operationalized in premodernity, a way in which subjects get (what Wynter names) “selected” or “dysselected” from geography and coded into colonial possession through dispossession. The color line of the colonized was not merely a consequence of these structures of colonial power or a marginal effect of those structures; it was/is a means to operationalize extraction (therefore race should be considered as foundational rather than as periphery to the production of those structures and of global space). Richard Eden, in the popular 1555 publication Decades of the New World, compares the people of the “New World” to a blank piece of “white paper” on which you can “paynte and wryte” whatever you wish. “The Preface to the Reader” describes the people of these lands as inanimate objects, blank slates [...]. [Basically, "Man" is white, while nonwhite people are reduced an aspect of the landscape, a resource.] Wynter suggests that we [...] consider 1452 as the beginning of the New World, as African slaves are put to work on the first plantations on the Portuguese island of Madeira, initiating the “sugar–slave” complex - a massive replantation of ecologies and forced relocation of people [...]. Wynter argues that the invention of the figure of Man in 1492 as the Portuguese travel to the Americas instigates at the same time “a refiguring of humanness” in the idea of race. This refiguring of slaves trafficked to gold mines is borne into the language of the inhuman [...].

---

The natal moment of the 1800 Industrial Revolution, [...] [apparently] locates Anthropocene origination in [...] the "new" metabolisms of technology and matter enabled by the combination of fossil fuels, new engines, and the world as market. [...] The racialization of epistemologies of life and nonlife is important to note here [...]. While [this industrialization] [...] undoubtedly transformed the atmosphere with [...] coal [in the nineteenth century], the creation of another kind of weather had already established its salient forms in the mine and on the plantation. Paying attention to the prehistory of capital and its bodily labor, both within coal cultures and on plantations that literally put “sugar in the bowl” (as Nina Simone sings) [...]. The new modes of material accumulation and production in the Industrial Revolution are relational to and dependent on their preproductive forms in slavery [...].

---

Catherine Hall’s project Legacies of British Slave-Ownership makes visible the complicity in terms of structures of slavery and industrialization that organized in advance the categories of dispossession that are already in play and historically constitute the terms of racialized encounter of the Anthropocene. In 1833, Parliament finally abolished slavery in the British Caribbean, and the taxpayer payout of £20 million in “compensation” [paid by the government to slave owners] built the material, geophysical (railways, mines, factories), and imperial infrastructures of Britain and its colonial enterprises and empire. As the project empirically demonstrates, these legacies of colonial slavery continue to shape contemporary Britain. A significant proportion of funds were invested in the railway system connecting London and Birmingham (home of cotton production and [...] manufacturing for plantations), Cambridge and Oxford, and Wales and the Midlands (for coal). Insurance companies flourished and investments were made in the Great Western Cotton Company, for example, and in cotton brokers, as well as in big colonial land companies in Canada (Canada Land Company) and Australia (Van Diemen’s Land Company) and a number of colonial brokers. Investments were made in the development of metal and mineralogical technologies [...].

The slave–sugar–coal nexus both substantially enriched Britain and made it possible for it to transition into a colonial industrialized power [...]. The slave trade [...] fashioned the economic conditions (and institutions, such as the insurance and finance industries) for industrialization. Slavery and industrialization were tied by the various afterlives of slavery in the form of indentured and carceral labor that continued to enrich new emergent industrial powers from both the Caribbean plantations and the antebellum South. Enslaved “free” African Americans predominately mined coal in the corporate use of black power or the new “industrial slavery,” [...].

---

The labor of the coffee - the carceral penance of the rock pile, “breaking rocks out here and keeping on the chain gang” (Nina Simone, Work Song, 1966), laying iron on the railroads - is the carceral future mobilized at plantation’s end (or the “nonevent” of emancipation). [...]

[T]he racial circumscription of slavery predates and prepares the material ground for Europe and the Americas in terms of both nation and empire building - and continues to sustain it.

---

All text above by: Kathryn Yusoff. "White Utopia/Black Inferno: Life on a Geologic Spike". e-flux Journal Issue #97. February 2019. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[tim-official]

people lump NFTs / the cryptocurrency craze of 2021 in with AI as "just another thing that tech grifters are excited about," and people love posting gifs of people cheering under news stories about OpenAI hemorrhaging money. this is a naive read on the situation, i think NFTs didn't work and never could. a ponzi scheme by definition cannot last. chatGPT, DALL·E, etc are things that sometimes work, and which work marginally better every month. this is infinitely more useful than NFTs, which are useless to everyone. as a result, some people actually want them - or, at least, people with capital think people will want them, which is just as good. also unlike NFTs, there is nothing about AI that means it inherently has to take huge amounts of electricity and clean water. the environmental cost of NFTs effectively gave them value; meanwhile, there are thousands of papers published and thousands of careers laser-focused on reducing the compute cost of machine learning. this is good, but keep in mind they're doing it because they want to put machine learning crap in all the fridges they crammed WiFi into five years ago, not because they care that much if the oceans boil

The people making NFTs were no-names trying to give everyone else FOMO for a quick buck. OpenAI is pouring cement mixers of Microsoft money into trying to generate a new market, and judging by the sheer number of people who have incorporated ChatGPT into their everyday routines, they are succeeding, and attracting insane amounts of investment in the process. When you have as much capital and market share as Microsoft you are freed from the obligation to ever make anything profitable. this is late capitalism: "supply" and "demand" are completely uncoupled, society is organized around production solely based on fictions and superstitions in the heads of private equity goons anyway. this is not an "AI is evil" or "AI is good" post. just don't compare the situation to NFTs or crypto and assume it's all the work of "techbros" or whatever. it's not comparable, by orders of magnitude

[where-dreams-dwell]

It’s almost like the Usher children *knew* they weren’t going to live long and so they intentially left no marks upon the world.

Camille’s speech about how none of the kids actually makes or does anything is so startling: here is a group of people given all the opportunities and access money can buy, all of whom have had this their entire adult life, and they haven’t used it to create or build anything.

You can almost sense Roderiks disappointment in them, in his speech to Perry. He has this hyper focus on what his ‘investment’ money will fund, and says that ‘Ushers change the world’. But outside of himself and Madeline, not one of them has.

Frederick took the money, if he ever got any, and probably funnelled it back into his house or the company. By the looks of it he doesn’t have anything other than his family and his job, so there’s nothing for Roderick to invest in.

Tammy funnelled the money into a lifestyle brand, but one that wouldn’t have her at the front and centre. She scathingly reveals to Bill that she selected him to be her husband based upon his brand and marketability, showing she was ready to create this new empire but with her pulling strings in the shadows. From the outside it probably looks like she hasn’t created anything at all and that it’s all Bill, using his wife’s money. On top of this, the running gag of her storyline is that her brand and ideas aren’t even original, but are ripped off of Goop. So she hasn’t made anything new, and if Goldbug has any impact at all it will be no different to another more successful, more well know product. Hardly ‘changing the world’.

Victorine has some medial training but she looks to be a supporting role to her partner within their clinic, in which Al is the talented surgeon who people come to see and Victorine is a kind of silent partner. So she decided to go into medical devices or smart medical tech, but she relies upon the ideas and skills of others. As Camille said ‘the mesh is the surgeons, that’s why she’s fucking the surgeon’. And her medical knowledge seems to be limited if she thinks just her word and some money will move their experiments into human trials. So she also hasn’t ‘changed the world’ she’s just found someone else who was trying to and co-op-ed their ideas. You could even argue she poisoned those ideas, as Al mentions that the pain medication Victorine has been supplying looks like street drugs and wouldn’t stand up in any medical paper or research study.

Camille is, like she said, spinning furiously and going nowhere. She looks skilled in her field (from the analysis scenes we get, and Madeleine’s signing off on her PR analysis post Perry’s death) but she works from the shadows and hasn’t ‘created’ anything that wasn’t there before. There have been PR spin doctors before and there will be more to come; Camille offers nothing new ans hasn’t ‘changed the world’ in any measurable way. From what little we see of her work she hasn’t recreated a PR agency, hasn’t trained up other spin doctors under her, hasn’t created a brand or company which will outlast her. She leaves nothing behind to show what her skills or talents were.

Leo is shot down quickly when he claims he makes games: he doesn’t, he gives money to people who do. So he too will leave little to nothing behind when he’s gone. His references to past boyfriends show no long lasting relationships in his life and he has no other hobbies or pursuits we know of. Like Camille he hasn’t created a company to help with game design, hasn’t trained up others within this field he claims as his own. Even with the gaming ‘world’ it sounds like he changed very little. Fredrick’s throw away comments about Leo’s flat reveal that Leo hadn’t even had input in the decoration or style of his own home: he just latches onto the styles, ideas, aesthetic of his current boyfriend and goes with their ideas and plans. It’s such a small tiny thing but he truly has no original ideas in any aspect of his life.

And finally Perry, who’s desperate for that start up money but clearly has no plans or ideas on how to use it. He’s had a year and his main idea is an exclusive whisky bar. Even this idea, for all its crude intentions, shows his lack of vision: he doesn’t understand that to get the reputation he claims his bars would have will take time. You don’t just ‘create’ a consequent free bar celebrating decadence and privilege overnight. Reputations take time and as Madeline asks ‘what will be different about this one’ to draw people in to begin with? Studio 54 (which he compares his club to). only operated for 3 years before closing: not the smartest inclusion in an investment pitch.

To be fair to Perry though, looking at what the other siblings did or didn’t do with their loan money it seems a bit unfair that his ‘Blow job whiskey bar’ was shot down so decisively and cruelty. Assuredly Leo’s ‘video game studio for just myself’, Camille’s ‘PR agency just for me with my two assistants’, Victorines ‘medical training and clinic where I help out other surgeons’, Tammys ‘subscription lifestyle brand ripped off from a celebrity’ and Fredrick’s ‘I’d just like to work with you Dad’ were all clearly given the green light. But Perry apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe this was a reaction to Roderick getting the news he was dying as so he wanted Perrys investment at least to actually change something, but still. He might as well give him the money either way at that point.

And I think it’s probably intended as a commentary on the ultra wealthy. Like of course people with more money than most counties have no plans to leave anything for the next generation. They have achieved their high levels of success by being solely focused upon themselves and so are honestly incapable of considering others. They are solely interested in enjoying the life they are currently living and why strain themselves to fight and build something when they don’t have to?

But it also works so well as a supernatural legacy and ironic conclusion to Roderick’s deal: he agreed that none of his bloodline would outlive him, and so none of them built anything that would.

[centrally-unplanned]

Related to my monopoly+pricing post, Astral Codex Ten recently wrote about off-label Ozempic from compounding pharmacies that shows this little logic flaw in action:

How much does is cost? HenryMeds is $297/month, Eden is $296, Mochi is $254 - compared to the $1,300/month you’d pay for the official product. This isn’t covered by insurance, so it’s still not affordable for lots of people. But it’s more affordable than the $1,300/month version. Also, there’s not a shortage of it. Why doesn’t it cost even less? This is still a mystery to me. The compounding pharmacies are circumventing the patent, so they don’t need to pay back investment. And there’s a lot of competition between various compounders and telemedicine startups - even 23andMe is getting in on the deal now! And some Harvard doctors recently published a paper saying that the unit cost to the manufacturer is only about $5/month. Maybe the bottleneck is FDA-approved factories, or high-capacity compounding pharmacies. Or maybe Harvard doctors with no skin in the game are assuming too many things away, and $250 is the best we’ll get for now.

He is puzzled about why the price isn't cheaper, why aren't they racing to the bottom? And I am no expert in this industry, maybe there are barriers and that $250 really is the floor, I am just using this as a logic example. But really, consider instead that pharmacists - running their own business - are smart and trying to maximize their own revenue. If they can sell their supply at $250, and enough customers are willing to pay, why wouldn't they do that? Why would one of them "try to undercut" and, what, maybe steal some orders until the others notice and then match and now they all make less? Why instead wouldn't they all feel around for the "market maximizing price" for them collectively? I would bet their supply is not infinite, and while they could lower the price to sell more they can't sell *so* much more of it that it would make up for the loss. And they can all figure that our independently and experimentally raise and lower prices, watching each other, till they are at equilibrium.

And again this isn't some like radical economics take, in actual economics practice we have dozens of models for firm behavior for different contexts. The 101 model is a tool in the toolbox, but raw is just quite rare in the world.

[thehaberdasheress]

I'm excited about my progress, so here's a teaser for a product line I'm developing for release in 2024

These collars were popular in European dress history between the years 500 and 1250 CE. Ever heard of the Anglo-Saxons? Franks? Vikings? Normans?

Well, to be honest, I can't prove they always wore these, but I'll bet they'd think this looks cool as hell.

These babies are why I spent a month and a half nursing a rescue printer back into functionality, and why I invested in a large paper cutter. I don't know about their marketability as a whole, but I love the hell out of embroidered keyhole necklines, and have always hungered for an easy way to plan out embroidery that gracefully wound around the keyhole's many twists and turns.

I've got other stuff to clear from my plate before I can really begin anything with these. I know it's already going to be a headache and a half to get the paper to feed correctly and consistently. I can't even imagine what kinds of remuneration would tempt anyone into test-stitching any of these for me.

But hey, they exist! And that's enough to make me happy.

[netherworldpost]

Hey, how do you figure out the best shipping for your items? I don’t mean like package size, but more like how do you decide what’s worth going in the package and packaging aside from The Item Itself? I know some shops just put some nice tissue/packing paper and a business card but other shops add like a ton of extra fun stuff from stickers to full-on extra goodies and wrapped with glitter paper and fancy ribbon or what-have-you with fancy print boxes and I’ve genuinely been so stressed trying to decide if I want to invest money in extra bits because I’m scared people will think my packages feel cheap (in a negative sense) without some polish and flair

Fancy, customized packaging is great in the following situations:

You are regularly sending out A LOT of orders. It is profitable to have custom-sized packaging made because it lowers weight which lowers postage. These savings outweigh the cost of premium packaging. At this scale, it's super cheap to print anyway, you might as well. Some form of "producing custom packaging is cheaper than stock packaging for a variety of reasons."

You are a luxury brand. Specifically high-end for whatever you are doing. Your retail pricing should reflect this market so you can afford the packaging cost bump anyway.

Unboxing social media is your top marketing channel. Be it influencers or hashtag-your-company-name, almost certainly both, new customers find you because someone is showing off your products. Existing customers see someone opening a box and thinks "I want that."

Pack-ins are great for the following:

We are gauging the interest in x-y-z. We produced a sample run of a few pieces. Some of it is in the store. Over a time period of X months, do people return to buy the pack in?

We have extra x-y-z and we need to make space. It's an alternate to the clearance isle. Sometimes you do both! Be careful and watch that inventory gauge.

We produced x-y-z as a test and it was a pain in the ass and it doesn't make sense to list it because we don't want to risk people asking for it when we have run out.

For a-b-c reason it will increase future sales by X%. Admittedly this is a variant of the first item. It is listed here because sometimes you can say "we sell widgets and put a whatchamacolit in here in hopes of getting people to buy a thingamabob." It's a complex and risky strategy.

"Buy $X and get a free Y-Thing!" as a way to increase average shopping cart average. Extremely common, frequently profitable, regularly works great for both shop + customer. May not count if we look at a pure definition of a pack-in, something the customer didn't know they were getting.

Ultimately, if you have concerns over it, then I would skip it.

I strive to keep products very affordable, shipping cheap-to-free, and my company profitable so we have a better-than-not chance of existing in the future.

None of this is a judgement, just "how I do business versus how others do."

Time for some brutality :-)

From your ask, it is obvious you are either running a shop or want to run a shop in a larger capacity than a hobby.

If it's a hobby, then to hell with all the above, add pack-ins and fancy packaging to the limit you can afford and how fun it is! Hobbies are great! Shops can be hobbies!

If you are running this as a business then you have to think like a business.

This doesn't mean you have to be a bastard, it does mean you have to think critically about every penny spent.

This doesn't mean you have to be cheap, it means every expense must perform above what you spent on it.

This doesn't mean you cannot experiment, you should be experimenting, it means you should be measuring results. If the data comes back inconclusive, you need to rework your experiment.

Maybe it's just me.

All of this should be taken with an extremely large grain of salt.

I am not a fancy person. I am extremely aware of my personal tastes, none of the layers are expensive.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Gaming Hot Take of the Day: I feel like companies and costumers really gotta do better with managing expectations.

Now look I’m a bit more lenient of fans cause in a lot of ways, fans enthusiasm is often what keeps a piece of media alive. You got a game like paper Mario TTYD and it’s almost 20 years old now. And for those 20 years you could only legally play it on a GameCube. Fans of that game kept it alive-they were the ones making fan art and games inspired by it (shout out to Bug Fables) hell it’s been a minute from my smash bros fanfic days but it was the first two paper Mario games I remember often being used as the world building for those fics interpretation of the mushroom kingdom.

But there’s recently been a miasma around the sales of the remake. Namely it’s not cracked two million despite all the time it’s been on the market. Now there are factors you can look at like it didn’t release in a holiday season, the switch is on its eighth year, and it’s a remaster which really tend to have a lack of enthusiasm compared to a brand new release.

But for a lot of Paper Mario fans, this game coming back was a holy grail-that if it returned that it would do incredibly well and send a message to corporate. And it did, in Nintendo’s own words, “solid.” Nothing spectacular but clearly not a failure. You can probably guess that like Metroid or DMC, the answer is this type of game does have a bit of a cap on people who are actually interested in dropping $60 for a game despite how iconic the property is.

However, we’re not just talking about luxury products were talking about art and art is often times is tied up in people’s emotions. And sometimes it can be disappointing when there are these great games that only do a fraction of something like Pokémon Scarlet/Violet. A game objectively broken and yet still makes bank. So yes, while I wish more fans were realistic about what a game “deserves,” I understand them. And I think their passion and enthusiasm keeps games alive.

But then there’s companies. Oh lord do I have some opinions on their unrealistic expectations. I know I harped on Nintendo but at the very least that’s a company that at least acknowledges anything of theirs that breaks a million is pretty decent. Meanwhile you got EA and Activision who just abandon properties people love in the name of evergreen money printing ventures.

And boy the marketing doesn’t help. There is so many game trailers these days that always feel kinda flat and I don’t know why I should invest in this. Or if it’s a story driven game where they spoil everything in the trailer.

Look I understand that these companies are businesses they can’t make 300 games at a time and expect to stay afloat. I’m not saying they need to revive every IP. But there’s gotta be some middle ground. I think a game can be a success if you manage your budget, man power, and development cycle more efficiently and pair it with decent marketing. Not everything will sell like Call of Duty and that’s okay. But no it’s always go big or go home.

There’s stuff you can do to mitigate some of this. Make games more accessible and available (Nintendo really needs this lesson) so that people have the opportunity to play these and become fans even if no new game happens. Focus on stronger marketing of what the game is about and what can be expected. Not just teasing with cinematic for an overly long hype cycle. If a game is gonna be exclusive to one system you’re probably gonna need to account for working with a limited user base (Hello Square Enix).

I think of myself as someone who is pretty good at managing my expectations, but that was something I had to do myself. Game companies sure didn’t do it for me.

[visual-sculptors]

Key Tips for Effective Communication in Presentations

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It is imperative to have a thorough understanding of the audience demographics and preferences to tailor the message appropriately. Clear and concise language must be employed to avoid any confusion, with the avoidance of technical jargon that might hinder comprehension.

Visual aids, such as slides and videos, can be utilized to enhance understanding and maintain the audience's interest throughout the presentation. Moreover, the importance of practicing the presentation beforehand cannot be overstated. This not only aids in refining the content and structure but also in building confidence and ensuring a seamless delivery.

The incorporation of appropriate body language and maintaining eye contact with the audience can further enhance the speaker's credibility and engagement. Encouraging audience participation through questions and feedback fosters a two-way communication, thereby ensuring that the audience's comprehension and engagement levels are maximized.

By adhering to these essential guidelines and strategies, one can effectively deliver impactful presentations that leave a lasting impression on the audience.

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[clouds-of-wings]

Okay holy shit, so the way Varoufakis explains it the reason why the 2008 crash sent inequality in the West into hyperdrive wasn't just the bailouts. It was that the combination of "bailouts for the rich" and "austerity for everyone else" meant that the super-rich now had tons of money (borrowed from banks at extremely low, even negative interest rates) that they had no reason to invest back into the economy because their potential customers wouldn't have money to buy their new products anyway.

So they took the constant flow of money from Western governments and either invested in real estate (from houses to entire islands) and expensive art - objects to park wealth in for the moment - or they used it to buy back shares of their own companies, in the process increasing the value of these shares. The value of basically all stocks and bonds rose in the 2010s simply because so much newly printed money was pumped into them instead of being invested into the economy. So the rich got richer in their sleep, regardless of whether they made any profit or not, while the rest of the economy was starved of investments, wages stagnated, employment became more precarious (but, conveniently, immigrants got the blame for that.)

And then in 2020 the same thing happened again in order to stop the lockdowns from tanking the economy and basically that's why the Netherlands may now get its turn to be ruled by a man with incredibly dumb hair. It's because after 2008 the stock market became completely divorced from reality (even more so than before). It's also a large part of how Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk got the means for their current projects "without needing to do any of the three things that capitalists traditionally had to do to expand: borrow money from some bank, sell large portions of their business to others, or generate large profits to pay for new capital stock. Why suffer any of this when central bank money was flowing freely? And so between 2010 and 2021, the paper wealth of these two men – meaning the total price of their shares – rose from less than $10,000 million to around $200,000 billion apiece."

[eaglesnick]

“We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - Peter Mandelson

The other day I made the assertion that when the people of Britain voted for Keir Starmer, what they were really getting was Tony Blaire. To be fair this was partly tongue-in-cheek but having read the Kings Speech setting out the Labour Party's plans to change Britain it is closer to the truth than is comfortable.

The Tony Blaire Institute for Global Change has a paper entitled: The Economic Case for Reimagining the State that was published July 9th, 2024, just five days after the UK elections. Some of the wording in this report is almost identical to some of the wording in the Kings Speech.

Tony Blaire Institute:  “reforming the UK’s antiquated planning system is a high priority that could unlock much needed infrastructure investment and help un-gum the UK’s housing market.”

Kings Speech: “My Ministers will get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing."

Tony Blaire: "Normalization of relations with the EU: A full reversal of these losses may be politically unattainable during this Parliament, but there is a path to a better post-Brexit relationship in the coming years"

Kings Speech: My Government will seek to reset the relationship with European partners and work to improve the United Kingdom's trade and investment relationship with the European Union

Tony Blaire: "The new government will need to lean in to support the diffusion of AI-era tech across the economy by adopting a pro-innovation, pro-technology stance, as advocated by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.”

Kings Speech: "It will seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models.”

The Kings Speech is, by necessity, very brief and gives virtually no detail how the government’s aims are to be achieved. We will have to wait and see how much more of Keir Starmer’s vision for the future of Britain mirrors that of Tony Blaire. If Starmer is as closely aligned to Blaire as these comparisons suggest then public sector workers beware.

Blaire places great reliance on the introduction of artificial intelligence to ALL sectors of the economy, but  especially within the public sector. Once introduced Blaire predicts a productivity gain of “one-fifth workforce time”

 Public sector workers, having adopted the new AI and having increased productivity by 20% can then expect the sack.

“If the government chooses to bank these time savings and reduce the size of the workforce, this could result in annual net savings of £10 billion per year by the end of this Parliament and £34 billion per year by the end of the next – enough to pay for the entire defence budget.”

This is the true Blairite mindset. Nothing about sharing the productivity gains made by workers in the form of higher wages, nothing about the redistribution of wealth or tackling income inequality. In Blaire’s Case for Reimagining the State poverty is not mentioned once. Inequality gets one mention but only as a statistic relating to workers forced to use food banks. 

What Blaire and Starmer – like the Conservative Party - appear to have forgotten is that  public services are exactly that –  services.  Yes they need to be efficient and cost effective but NOT to the extent that the service element is lost. The rich can afford to buy service, ordinary working people have to rely upon government for basic services and over the last few years they have been badly let down.  Poor pay, increasing workloads, job insecurity and private sector creep have all contributed to bringing Britain’s public services to the verge of collapse. Let us all hope Starmer and Blaire don’t push them completely over the edge.

[avaantares]

I wrote a long response to a blue-checkmark drama post, but between the time I clicked "reblog" and the time I finished typing, OP apparently turned off reblogs for that post. So GUESS WHAT, y'all get my diatribe anyway. (Sorry; I know most of you aren't the problem. But I did actual math, so I don't want it to go to waste.)

---

The old axiom still applies:

If social media is free to use, it's because YOU are the product.

What that means, for the adage-averse, is this: Sites and services that appear to be fully free to users (Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Google, et al.) are collecting your personal data and selling it to advertisers to pay for the (in some cases) hundreds of millions of dollars it costs to run such sites.

Tumblr doesn't do this. Tumblr hasn't done it, despite a monthly deficit of literally millions of dollars, which is why it's repeatedly been sold at a massive loss to new owners.

To give you actual numbers: Yahoo! acquired Tumblr in 2010 at a cost of $1.1 billion. After taking enormous losses, they later sold it to Verizon for an undisclosed amount. After trying (and failing) for two years to make the site pay for itself, Verizon sold it to Automattic (its current owners) for just $3 million. [Source]

For those who don't math, that means Tumblr's market value dropped by $1,097,000,000 in just nine years, or (averaged out) devalued by approximately $10 million per month. In short, nobody is looking at this as a worthwhile investment to hang onto long-term.

So why didn't it make money for its various owners, despite promising user statistics and a then-unheard-of initial sale price to Yahoo? Precisely because it wasn't leveraging your data to offset its running costs. The algorithm-free advertising format simply isn't viable for a site this big, which requires massive amounts of data storage and bandwidth (all those multimedia options you love cost a fortune on the back end). While there is a modicum of value for companies to hold a loss-generating property for tax purposes (which is pretty much what Verizon did with the site during its ownership), there is a finite period to reap those tax benefits. More relevant to us, if the site's only purpose is to show a loss on paper, there's little incentive for the owner to improve the service or keep its user base happy. We, the users, get thrown under the bus.

So how did Tumblr, under Automattic, try to run as a free site that didn't harvest user data? Tumblr served ads to try to generate revenue. But users complained about the ads. So Tumblr offered ad-free subscriptions at a very reasonable introductory rate of $3.33/month. But users complained about the subscriptions ("It's always been free! Other sites are free! Capitalism is evil!") and refused to pay. So Tumblr offered post-Blazing and tipping and physical merchandise and a variety of other optional features, most recently dashboard horse games and parody blue checkmarks, and instead of seeing these as a desperate attempt to stop the site from hemorrhaging money opportunity to support their online community, users just keep screaming about the moral failings of corporations that charge money for literally anything and insist that "we must keep this site unprofitable at all costs!"

Guys. Sites like this cost millions of dollars -- sometimes tens of millions -- to maintain each month. With the influx of new users from Twitter and elsewhere, that number is only going to increase as server load and bandwidth increase. And because of its history of losing value on a jaw-dropping scale, there will not be another company waiting to take ownership if Automattic decides to stop throwing money into the blue fires of this hellsite. If Tumblr is unprofitable for long enough, it will shut down. Period.

So either chill the $%#@*& out about the blue checkmarks or whatever, or pony up the monthly subscription fee yourself to help support the site. At the very least, stop attacking those who choose to give something back in exchange for the service they receive. Because they're the only reason this site has lasted as long as it has.

[mariacallous]

Three years after seizing power in Afghanistan, the cash-strapped Taliban are desperate to finally unlock the country’s bounty of copper, a crucial input in electric vehicle batteries and semiconductors. And they’re aiming to do so with the help of a key partner: China.

In the global scramble for raw materials to power clean energy technologies and advanced weapons systems, Afghanistan’s mineral wealth should position it for success—at least on paper. The country may hold as much as $1 trillion worth of valuable minerals, according to U.S. estimates from 2010, and is home to what could be the world’s second-biggest copper deposit. But decades of war, political instability, and uncertainty have long thwarted any efforts to extract those treasures, leaving the country’s resource riches untapped. 

The Taliban are eager to change that. At the center of their ambitions is finally transforming Mes Aynak, a massive copper deposit that lies southeast of Kabul at a historic archaeological site and is estimated to hold some 4.4 billion metric tons of copper ore. China—which commands many of the world’s critical mineral supply chains—is pivotal to seeing that vision through. 

The Taliban are “all in” on this project, said Michael Kugelman, the director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center and the author of FP’s South Asia Brief newsletter. “The Taliban would see this project as very much a part of this broader vision that the Taliban have for making Afghanistan a bigger part of connectivity projects spanning South and Central Asia.” 

The Taliban’s interest in copper is nothing new; Afghanistan’s rulers have long sought to exploit the country’s mineral riches. The effort to transform Mes Aynak dates back to at least 2008, when the Chinese state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp. secured a $3 billion, 30-year mining concession for the project. After 16 years of delays, the Taliban and Beijing appeared to turn back to the project this summer with a July ribbon-cutting ceremony for the construction of a road to the mine, which Chinese officials said marked a “significant step” forward.

Yet even with this apparent momentum, analysts warn that a raft of security, regulatory, legal, financial, and infrastructure challenges stand in the way of the project’s success, alongside concerns of how mining could damage historic ruins. Advancing a mining project in any country is a risky endeavor that requires years, if not decades, of investment and commitment.

“This is not easy, and investing in a mine like this requires not just a lot of money but a lot of stability,” said Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, the founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. “China is not stupid. They do not want to waste a lot of money and scarce resources on an investment that will yield very little if [Afghanistan] blows up in civil conflict again.” 

China’s involvement in the project reflects Beijing’s broader desire to ensure regional security and minimize instability that could spill over its own shared border with Afghanistan. “Their primary interest in Afghanistan is not in the mines,” Murtazashvili said. “Their primary interest is in stability [and] security, and the Taliban understand that darn well.” 

Since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, experts said, China’s engagement with the Taliban has been largely driven by Beijing’s practical interest in maintaining productive ties with its neighbor and advancing its own security and political goals. “They’ve been very active in Afghan diplomacy, and they have been very pragmatic,” said Eric Olander, the editor in chief of the China-Global South Project. Beijing sees opportunity in the fact that “the United States has left and will not come back,” he added. 

China was the first country to name an ambassador to the country under Taliban rule, while Chinese firms have inked oil extraction deals with the Taliban and eyed the country’s reserves of lithium, another critical mineral. Beijing has given Afghanistan more than 350 million yuan (about $49 million) worth of humanitarian assistance since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, according to China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

“The Chinese always have this mindset that development leads to stability and peace,” Olander said. “My guess is that part of the political thinking is that economic engagement from Chinese entities will pave the way for more stability and contribute to a country’s development, which then contributes to peace.” 

Beyond politics, Beijing also has major commercial interests in the success of Mes Aynak specifically. “I think the Chinese are in a quite eager position to see some action about the resolution of this project,” said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, adding that the project has just been “sitting there.” “The Chinese have invested, they have spent their money, but nothing is really coming through—so of course they want to resume it.”

That is good news for the Taliban, who have been searching for new revenue streams and sources of foreign investment. After they seized power, foreign aid to the country plummeted as a result of international sanctions—a change that decimated the country’s economy and pitched millions of Afghans deeper into a humanitarian crisis.

“Ever since the Taliban took over, it’s faced a severe economic crunch because for so many years, Afghanistan’s economy had been so heavily reliant on international assistance,” said Kugelman, who noted that the group has struggled to secure foreign investment, particularly from capital-rich countries. 

Hungry for more cash and international legitimacy, the Taliban have actively sought out deeper economic ties with Beijing. Just last year, the group announced plans to officially join Chinese President Xi Jinping’s flagship foreign-policy program, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as well as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which emerged under the BRI.

“The Taliban is trying to prove to the world that it is not isolated,” Kugelman said. “I think that the symbolic implications of China—a very consequential global player—working with the Taliban on economic projects, that’s a pretty powerful message that I think that the Taliban would want to send out to the world.”

Still, many challenges loom. No matter how much Beijing and the Taliban expand their economic ties, any efforts to advance the Mes Aynak copper project will still come up against the threat of Islamic State-Khorasan attacks and other security concerns, along with enormous financial risks and legal and regulatory uncertainty—all of which could prove to be too difficult to overcome. Copper prices have also whipsawed in recent months, offering yet another indicator of how difficult the project will be to get off the ground. 

“There’s virtually no infrastructure in Afghanistan: power, water, trains,” said Olander of the China-Global South Project. “So there may be vast reserves of lithium and copper in Afghanistan, but extracting it and getting it out and getting it to port, every step along that supply chain is risk and is cost when you have lots of other alternatives that are far less risky, more developed, and arguably way more cost-efficient.”