#so then you have 0 social privilege within that group.

[snekdood]

i think ppl gotta get acquainted with the difference between systemic privilege and social privilege, which can overlap, but not always.

[globaljobalert-blog]

Product Marketing Manager - Remote

Company: Gnosis  WHAT YOU WILL DO Gnosis is building a Consumer Web3 wallet for Gnosis Chain and is looking for a Product Marketing Manager to join the team: - Lead the Product Team to conduct user research to identify target users for adoption - Lead Product Team to identify target user pain points and distill user stories and product requirements - Work with Designers to develop, communicate and test design concepts, wireframes and prototypes - Work with Product Team to develop product positioning, strategy, and roadmap - Handle 0-to-1 go to market activities including PR, marketing and community building WHO YOU ARE - Experience with 0-to-1 product marketing - Experience in Web3 and Ethereum, plus if prior experience with smart contract accounts - Experience with Fintech or “Neobanks” - Experience with Consumer Social - Fluent in spoken English, reading, and writing in English WHAT WE CAN OFFER YOU - Do you need resources to pursue your professional goals? → We got you covered with a personal education and conference budgets;  - Is there something that you would like to try out within our projects? → You can use your Friday afternoons on research or on a side project in our ecosystem; - Our hierarchy is flat, so there is no chance to get lost in vertical looking organizational structure; - Not really an early bird? No worries! → Flexible working schedules and remote work policies are, for a long time, part of our culture; - And do not worry about your equipment and subscriptions. We’ll equip you with the latest hardware and provide you all tools you need! But most important - grow with us! We're growing rapidly, the industry is expanding fast, and we have a lot to do. If you're someone who loves taking initiative and getting things done, there are a lot of opportunities for you at Gnosis. We’re enthusiastic about our shared mission and enjoy spending time together! Please apply with your (English) resume. We look forward to your application! At Gnosis, we strive to create an inclusive environment that empowers our employees. We believe that our products and services benefit from our diverse backgrounds and experiences and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer: all qualified applicants are considered for positions regardless of race, ethnic origin, age, religion or belief, marital status, gender identification, sexual orientation, or physical ability. Apply for this position ABOUT US The Gnosis mission has always been centered on building decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. When Gnosis was founded in 2015, it focused on building prediction markets to enable worldwide access to accurate information. While creating the prediction market platform, it became clear that Gnosis needed to build the infrastructure required to support it.As a DAO, Gnosis uses the products that it creates to transparently guide decisions on the development, support, and governance of its ecosystem. Gnosis Safe (multisig and programmable account), Cow Protocol (formerly CowSwap and Gnosis Protocol), Conditional Tokens (prediction markets), Gnosis Auction, and Zodiac (standard and tooling for composable DAOs) are all products incubated by Gnosis. Their success is demonstrated by the recent spin-out of Cow Protocol and the formation of SafeDAO. By combining needs-driven development with deep technical expertise, Gnosis has built the decentralized infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem. In November 2021, the xDai and GnosisDAO communities voted to combine their vibrant ecosystems to create the Gnosis Chain. Gnosis Chain uses the xDai token. It is the associated execution-layer EVM chain for stable transactions and includes a wide-ranging group of projects and users.Gnosis Chain is secured by a diverse set of validators. With over one hundred thousand validators and counting, we’re building a resilient and neutral network open to anyone without privilege or prejudice. Be a part of a team leading the web3 movement. APPLY ON THE COMPANY WEBSITE To get free remote job alerts, please join our telegram channel “Global Job Alerts” or follow us on Twitter for latest job updates. Disclaimer:  - This job opening is available on the respective company website as of 4thJuly 2023. The job openings may get expired by the time you check the post. - Candidates are requested to study and verify all the job details before applying and contact the respective company representative in case they have any queries. - The owner of this site has provided all the available information regarding the location of the job i.e. work from anywhere, work from home, fully remote, remote, etc. However, if you would like to have any clarification regarding the location of the job or have any further queries or doubts; please contact the respective company representative. Viewers are advised to do full requisite enquiries regarding job location before applying for each job.   - Authentic companies never ask for payments for any job-related processes. Please carry out financial transactions (if any) at your own risk. - All the information and logos are taken from the respective company website. Read the full article

[fluffynexu]

imperial life (sorta)

life within the empire is very structured. it’s a society where everyone Knows Their Place and what they’re supposed to be doing.

for ex. there is a certain “life schedule” that imperial citizens are expected to adhere to.

ages:

0-5, raised by family as infants. sent to daycare during toddler years.

5-10, primary school. begin basic education.

10-15, junior school. continue education.

15-20, senior school. start some training alongside education.

20-25/30, MANDATORY SERVICE TIME.

25/30+, marriage and having children encouraged and you can live your life.

now after an individual completes their mandatory time actively serving, they can either continue to serve or return to other jobs and functions in the empire.

so you can have someone who was a foot soldier or sniper during their service time, but then return to “civilian” life as a florist or school teacher.

the sith follow a similar “life schedule”.

ages:

0-5, raised by family and like minded peer groups.

5-10, primary academy. basic training and education.

10-15, secondary academy. continued training and education.

15-20, preparatory academy. continued training and education.

20+, sith academy (proper) and from there, it depends on the individual sith’s master and rank.

tho the purebloods have a tendency to marry their children off after at the age of 20 (or young 20s) in hopes of procuring grandchildren (and therefore, securing family legacies) before anything... unfortunate happens.

another aspect of imperial life that is deeply entrenched within the civilization but never talked about too openly is the caste system.

everyone in the empire, sith or slave, is shoved into one of these castes. it is possible to move UP and DOWN. moving upward requires marrying someone of a higher caste, but ppl usually (tho not always!) stick to and marry within their own castes. moving down tends involves committing a crime and being punished for it, or disownment from family.

there are certain advantages of being a part of upper castes. which include, but are not limited to:

wider access on the holonet

higher pay

more options for housing

priority healthcare

less restrictions on travel

etc.

the two main groups the castes fall into are sith and imperial. obvs the sith castes are above the imperial ones.

castes among the sith are categorized by “blood purity” and family lineages. the older, purer bloodlines that can trace their roots to korriban are seen above sith who might not have such a heritage.

pureblood, greater families

pureblood, lesser families

human, greater families (usually have some pureblood family members as well)

human, lesser families (usually all human)

human, common (usually an individual that comes from a non-sith background that found sensitivity in the force)

alien

imperial castes on the other hand are categorized by “occupation” rather than bloodlines.

officers. self explanatory. within this caste the officers follow the rank order. ie, moff > captain.

healers. ppl who can help and heal others. doctors, psychiatrists, therapists, etc.

scholars. those who spend their time studying, researching, or teaching. scientists, philosophers, lawyers, professors, etc.

protectors. internal security of the empire. police type, firefighters, paramedics, emergency responders, imperial intelligence, etc.

farmers. self explanatory, also includes breeders (for fancy pets and vanity animals).

crafters. for those who MAKE or design things. artists, architects, engineers, cooks, tailors, etc.

traders. folks who buy and sell things or deal with money frequently. business people, vendors, bank folk, accountants etc.

entertainers. mostly performers of some type. actors, musicians, athletes, sex workers, etc.

cleaners. those who deal with trash or bodies. janitors, butchers, housekeepers, manicurists, waste management, groomers, etc.

casteless. ironically named, but still technically a caste. includes non citizens that may be visiting or traveling through, new imperial citizens, or disowned (usually non force sensitive) sith.

slaves. self explanatory.

in the old, old sith empire (pre arrival of exiles), the sith also had a ruler and priest caste. it can be argued that the two were simply merged into the modern sith grouping and all of their castes within.

as far as any that might be lawmakers and where they’d fit in. that’d be the dark council with some occasional input from very high ranking officers like the grand moff.

so in theory(!), anyone can move up or down the caste ladder. in reality it’s very rare and ppl are often born into one caste and simply live their life within its confines and die. but ppl across the entire caste system can and do work together frequently.

an ex is the sw and crew.

akrona is not only sith, but a pureblood from a greater family. making her one of the most privileged and (potentially) influential ppl in the empire.

quinn comes from a family of officers and they’ve all been at the relative top of imperial society for generations. even after his court martial he’s considered to be very lucky to have remained in the same caste.

pierce actually comes from farmers but managed to be promoted to an officer during his time in service. but since he wasn’t born into it, quinn some officers have an obvious bias against him for his position.

vette, being a freed slave is casteless. tho thx to having a sith benefactor and friend, she can get away with a lot more than others within her same social standing.

some notes under the read more since i KNOW you ppl don’t go to the op to read my darn tags! >,< lol

so... i know. i KNOW i didn’t list literally every single conceivable job that exist or could exist. you’ll have to excuse me on that lol.

and in case it wasn’t obvious, yes, i used my sw and my own hcs for the crew. NO, i am NOT saying that quinn dislikes pierce ONLY bc of “lower caste upbringing”. just that it’s one of many factors of tension between the two.

and regardless of caste, every citizen* in the empire is guaranteed food, shelter, water, and medical care. but obvs those in the upper castes would be eating the fanciest~ of feasts in their big ass floating mansions while the lower castes live off of ration bars and street food while living in small, utilitarian apartments. *does not include slaves since they are technically not citizens.

i am once again here to remind you that the empire is NOT

a democracy

capitalist

or a utopia

(but if for some reason you wanna make your empire all those things, go for it. i ain’t stopping you lol.)

but why castes?

bc it was an aspect of the ancient sith In Canon and thought i’d tinker with the concept.

lastly! i stfg...

IF YOU THINK ME MAKING A HC/WORLDBUILDING POST REFLECTS UPON MY MORALITY OR HOW I THINK A SOCIETY SHOULD BE RUN...

YOU HAVE NEXT LVL BRAIN ROT.

also, yes, you can use any/all concepts in whatever way you see fit if you want. you can also, ignore the whole thing!

[generalchelseamayhem]

I got a whole bunch of rants I need to get out there that are critical of trans activism and other various forms of activism, but that I think it would be beneficial for the trans community and other related communities to hear and take on board in the long run

When you put them all together, they’re about language.

Put simply, the language that we use to describe marginalized people and the life circumstances of marginalized people changes too suddenly and too punishingly to take seriously as a means of impactful social change, and it does so in a way that, dare I say, shows the privilege of the people who coined whatever new terms are considered acceptable to use.

Take, as an example,

this post by phd_balance on Instagram

, ostensibly in celebration of Trans Awareness Week. In it, the creator makes the statement “Language changes over time. While certain terms may have been commonly used years ago, they are now outdated and should be replaced with the current terminology”

That’s great and all, but that’s... not entirely your decision to make. I’m not naive enough to believe that there is one singular trans community groupthink that everyone subscribes to, and since you’re the one doing the trans activism, you shouldn’t be that naive either.

It risks - who am I kidding? - it actively and rather shamelessly contributes to othering the kinds of people within the trans community who are not fashionable enough to keep up with the terminology as it changes. Should you refer to dysphoria as Gender Identity Disorder? Maybe not. But what happens when a trans people who are firmly embedded in the community, but exist on the fringes of the activist clique, have known terms such as Gender Identity Disorder and Sex Reassignment Surgery their entire lives and don’t feel the desire or the necessity for the change? Okay, so that term sounds offensive to you, but to others it may be how they’ve conceptualized their entire existence as trans people. A trans man who thinks of themselves as “FTM” should not have to confront their own perceptions of themselves as problematic and outdated before they are allowed to engage in discourse and activism for their own human rights.

It is also worth mentioning that the discourse around language is more often than not highly performative, and with each passing change it serves the actual needs of vanishingly smaller and smaller numbers of already tiny groups of people.

The other problem is that any changes in the language used by the trans community have to be picked up by the institutions that trans people interact with in their everyday lives, and look. Brigading someone on Twitter for using the wrong language is a very fast and very toxic way of getting social change to happen. It has a steep, steep cost, but it works.

But even then, most major social media websites, government services, and any other places which are in-touch enough with the cultural zeitgeist to make the changes swiftly, they have only really come around to concepts like “preferred pronouns” within the past 3 or so years, and suddenly a term that, for them, is effectively 3 years old is being denounced as old and out-of-touch, just as much as they were out-of-touch when they weren’t offering wide varieties of gender and sexuality information options at all.

That is not sustainable. You are never going to find a perfectly inoffensive term for everything, that has 0 cultural or social implications for absolutely everybody involved, and in the quest for trying you are going to leave everyone who wasn’t college-educated and already involved in trans activism discourse in the dust.

Plus which, when you try too hard to accommodate absolutely everyone who fits a certain criterion under a term with absolutely no capacity to offend whatsoever, you get a term that offends everybody.

Harvard Medical School hosted a panel on experiences relating to pregnancy and childbirth. Discussions of womanhood and manhood are surprisingly fraught these days because trans activists have got it into their head that, say, discussing childbirth as something a woman does erases the existence of all the trans men who happen to have vaginas, and so on.

Personally I would have thought that a trans man would like to have people think of them as a man, and therefore not want to be constantly reminded of the bits of themselves that run contrary to that perception, but you know, whatever, that’s just me.

So Harvard Med School suddenly finds itself in a conundrum, because, shock horror, a number of terms have been thrown at the wall for the better part of a decade to describe people who happen to have vaginas and in the vast majority of cases are women but who in fact may or may not entirely be made up of women, and none of them have stuck. But they have to use a term that offends nobody, or else how can this conference go forward??

So what do they come up with?

Birthing person.

I know the TERFs leap all over this kind of language and scream “JUST SAY WOMEN!!”, and to be honest, I don’t entirely disagree, but they will also say that terms like this exist to erase womanhood in order to make a tiny minority of trans people feel comfortable.

To which I say,

Am I supposed to believe that the term “birthing person” is actually going to make any trans people feel comfortable and welcome in this discussion??

No. Of course not. It is a clear-cut instance of the ever-increasingly prevalent phenomenon of trying to be as inclusive as possible and accidentally reducing everyone’s personhood to their genitals and body functions in the process. In my opinion it is not a term that you should use to describe anyone for any reason ... except, apparently, as a performative concession to the existence of trans people without actually engaging them as anything more than a demographic checklist.

And maybe I would understand the temptation to Do Something Just So We Can Say We’d Made A Difference if this wasn’t all coming from the most privileged educational backgrounds on planet Earth, but language discourse threatens to derail important and provocative and frankly uncomfortable conversations that, sooner or later, people need to have without worrying whether their choice of words in every other sentence is going to cause a firestorm before anyone has even tackled the subject matter.

The best way to handle language is not to decide which terms are and are not offensive. The best way to handle language is to decide which terms best describe the thing or phenomenon that you are describing. Some of those will have connotations - and that’s good! Connotations inform meaning just as much as words do. That is how meaning is formed. That is why taking a whole meaning from a word or phrase and trying to staple it to a totally different word or phrase that nobody has heard in that context before doesn’t work. That is why Even More Inclusive new words just develop their own set of connotations year after year, and likely wind up being less all-inclusive and more acknowledging-a-subset-of-a-subset. But the important thing above all, when you are expressing ideas and saying words to convey those ideas, is just that people know what you are talking about.

Being concise, and being armed with a full list of pre-made connotations that have developed over decades and even centuries, helps people to understand you when you speak. Going out of your way to stumble over new terminology that includes people that, in many cases, weren’t terribly excluded to begin with, does not help.

As I said much, much earlier, this is not a phenomenon limited to the trans community, but I like to think I’ve been good at supporting trans people so far throughout my life and I’ve been seeing a lot of activist discourse coming out of the trans community in particular over the past month or so that has really ticked me off. End rant.

[yegarts]

Project Feature: Solidarity Film Camp

2020 Solidarity Film Camp participants. Photo by Nanc Price Photography. 

Writer, director, producer, and editor Andrea Beça is passionate about changing the world through film. With a B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta, and a M.Litt in Playwriting and Dramaturgy from the University of Glasgow, Andrea operates abeça productions and is constantly working to break down barriers and make the film industry a more inclusive space.  

In 2019, Andrea’s project, Solidarity Film Camp (SFC), received funding through a Cultural Diversity in the Arts project grant. Created and produced by Andrea, SFC is a multi-weekend film camp that aims to educate, empower, and inspire marginalized youth in Edmonton to share their stories. SFC is grounded in the belief that it is crucial to empower those who are often voiceless to speak up, to move towards a goal of equality and diverse representation in film and TV. In this context, “marginalized youth” refers to female, trans, non-binary, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA2S+ identifying youth, as well as disabled youth, between the ages of 14-24.

We caught up with Andrea to learn more about her experiences of working on this iteration of Solidarity Film Camp, and where she hopes the project and the industry will go in the future.  

Solidarity Film Camp participants. Photo by Nanc Price Photography.

Q: What motivated you to start this project and focus on working with marginalized youth?  

A: I have been in leadership roles in theatre and film for the last 15 years, and as a fat queer woman, I have always experienced major pushback. Unfortunately, these industries are most highly populated – and often gate kept – by cishet white men, and that lack of diversity and representation creates so many barriers to entry for anyone who doesn’t fit into that same demographic. As a result of years of facing blatant sexism (among other things), I decided to use the privileges I do have as a white woman to open as many doors as I can for others, and work actively to improve representation in the film industry starting right here in Edmonton. I’ve always focused the stories I tell on creating social change and on hiring as many women, IBPOC folks, queer folks, and disabled folks as I can, but I wanted to go further than just what I can do myself by empowering others with the skills and confidence to tell their own stories, too. We need under-represented voices telling stories in film and TV and all other media.

Q: What was one of your biggest learnings/takeaways from this project?  

A: I learned so much, it’s difficult to pick just one. January 2020 was the first iteration of Solidarity Film Camp. It was very much a grassroots project, created by just me. While it was amazing and I am incredibly proud of it, I am also very aware of the limitations of the camp being created and run by just me, as a cis white woman. The conversations I had throughout the camp with the participants, who represented so many different intersections, were priceless, and I learned so much about how to make future iterations of the camp even more inclusive, even more diverse, and even more accessible. That’s what I’ve been processing and working on as I start to envision and dream of future years.

Photos by Nanc Price Photography. 

Q: What was the best part of the camp for you?  

A: Watching the participants beam with excitement and confidence as their projects started to come together is a feeling I don’t know if I can even put words to. Watching them listen to actors rehearse lines they wrote and being able to feel the energy in the room was unreal. What they accomplished in two weekends was no small feat. The fact that they all showed up for one another, focused, and worked long days for one another – it still makes me tear up just writing about it! And now I get to see them on social media, staying in touch, collaborating and supporting one another. It’s just beautiful.

Q: What are changes within the film industry that you think would make it more accessible for marginalized youth?  

A: There are a lot of changes that need to happen in the film industry to make it accessible for anyone who isn’t a cishet white male. This isn’t just about youth! The fact that in Canada, only 27% of TV directors are women – with 5% of those being women of colour and a staggering 0% being Indigenous women – is just one small piece of a giant, disturbing picture of representation both on and off screen. The quickest way to start making change is simple: start funding women, IBPOC folks, LGBTQIA2S+ folks, and disabled folks to tell their own stories.

Q: Do you think you’ll do the camp again? If yes, what are your dreams and aspirations for future of Solidarity Film Camp?  

A: Yes, I sure hope so! Right now, with the pandemic changing everything, it’s hard to say when the next Solidarity Film Camp will happen, but it will happen at some point. My dreams are to make it much bigger, to have a whole team of folks from all intersections developing the camp curriculum, to have an even more diverse group of workshop leaders, and so on. I want the camp to feel like home to all intersections of people who are completely left out of the film & TV industry. It's my dream that we can all learn, feel confident, and work together to change the world.

To celebrate the Cultural Diversity in the Arts project grant recipients, Cineflair produced short videos profiling the recipients and their projects. You can watch Andrea’s video here, and watch more recipient videos on the Edmonton Arts Council’s YouTube page. 

[appliedtheatreblog]

Poetics of the Oppressed

1. What specifically stood out for you in the Boal reading? ( Give 2 examples. Be specific) What is your response to that? (Did it make you think about something - if so, what? Did it raise questions for you - if so, what are they?)

The first thing that stood out to me was in fact the very first sentence, Boal writes ‘In the beginning the theatre was the dithyrambic song….later ruling classes took possession of the theatre and built their dividing walls” (Boal, 2008:95) This resonates so heavily with our education system that inherently dismisses theatre in order to favour STEM subjects. This is metaphorically the ‘dividing wall’ between theatre and education, theatre is often seen as not relevant today and having no educational value, even when it is incorporated it is largely shakespearean content which to some extent is quite outdated for the 21st century. My point here is that because of intrusion from higher powers, theatre at its birth was inaccessible to those without wealth and nowadays is seen as an inaccessible artform, intensified by high prices to access and falling foul to Freire's Banking Model of Education. My opinion here is not only inspired by Boals depiction, but also the Ted Talk ‘Do schools kill creativity’ by Sir Ken Robinson. In this talk he highlights how restrictive the education system is, in a very similar way to Freire, he comments ‘We are now running an education system where a mistake is the worst thing you can make, and the result is that we are educating our children out of their creative capacities” (Robinson,2009) As someone who is constantly trying to express the importance of theatre, reading these people use their platforms to speak of such a vital modern problem, gives me hope that one day we will break free from the restraints put on us by those with the power to do so. 

Another thing that stood out to me was Boal’s insight on how images as symbols, such as exploitation for example, may not have the same meaning to a group of oppressed people. In this example, Boal talks about how a young boy in Lima portrayed a nail in the wall as a symbol of exploitation. The image was instantly recognisable to the rest of the group meaning it held symbolic power, however people in a more privileged position would not see the connotations of this symbol, rather would be wondering why they are not seeing exploitation as something like a bad landlord or minimum wage. This shows how depending on the cultural context of a group, interpretations will always be different. This led me to think are symbols really universal if everybody sees them differently, or are symbols subjective to us? Boals states ‘A symbol only functions as such if the meaning is shared’ (Boal,2008:101) which brings me to the conclusion that living in a world of global austerity and varying lifestyles, eliminates functioning symbols.

2. What can we learn from Boal's experience with the man's picture of home on pg 100?

Boal’s experience here firstly and formly teaches a lesson on what we can learn as empathetic humans, the story of a man recalling his image of home not only shows the bridge in human quality of life, but also shows the emotional power a  facilitator holds in being able to receive such a raw story being shared. It is also a very powerful moment of facilitation, as before the participant was able to share his interpretation, it was assumed he approached the task wrong. This is a great example of the fact that it is very important for a facilitator to accept everything that a participant has to offer, even if it is confusing at first. This is often hard if confusion is an overarching emotion, but remembering Prestons advice to ‘attempt to understand the moments that emerge for us- in their complexity, messiness and difficulty’ (Preston, 2016, 29) enables the most insightful breakthrough in the end. 

3. Please explain Boal's first two sections (1. Knowing the body, 2. Making the body expressive) briefly in your own words.

‘Knowing the body’ is Boal’s first step to transform the spectator into the actor, it entails getting to know the muscular limits and possibilities of the human body. It also encourages the actor to face its own social distortions and needs for rehabilitation. By getting the actor to address the components of its body the role it plays, it disconnects them from reverting to creating characters that mirror themselves. ‘Making the body expressive’ is a way to abandon physical limitations of expression, such as a daily role played within the societal realm, and place their body into the muscular structure of a character. A series of interactive games are played, each targeting the dismantling of habitual forms of expression and encouraging less dependence on verbal communication, opening a door to new found dramatic expression. 

Bibliography 

Freire, P., 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: The Seabury Press

Preston, S., 2016. Facilitation: pedagogies, practices, resistance. [ebook] London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama. Available at: <https://www.vlebooks.com/Vleweb/Product/Index/892216?page=0&gt; [Accessed 1 March 2021].

Robinson, K., 2006. Do Schools Kill Creativity?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY [Accessed 1 March 2021]

[diplomaticspoonie]

Commitments

This is going to be pretty free-form.  I might clean it up later.

To quote the opening to a childhood TV show: “Our world is in peril.”  But it’s not just the pollution (and sadly, definitely not just radioactive cartoon villains). Nazis are marching, dictators and wannabe dictators are taking over everywhere, and people seem to be voting based on how to piss others off.  

I always assumed all people want to make the world better and just couldn’t agree how to do that; apparently, some people really do want to watch the world burn.

I’m not giving up. I picked my profession specifically to make the world better, and right now I’m still doing that. (I work in the Bureau of Democracy, Rights, and Labor, which really helps.) As long as I feel I’m doing good, I will continue.  

However, I know it’s easy to get caught up in work and careerism and to lose focus on what’s actually important.  Moreover, in this world, we need to start staking out what we commit to. So, that said:    

1) I support immigrants.

When I work as a visa officer, it is often my job to deny someone a visa under the law.  Often there are good reasons; more often, it’s bullshit, but it’s the law and my hands are mostly tied. (That said, after doing consular work, this man is even more of a hero to me than he was before.)

The above being said--I fully support those who get here, however they get here, and support any changes to the law to make it easier for people to come to the U.S. 

My family came to the U.S. prior to there being any restrictions. Supposedly, one of my ancestors was fleeing a murder charge (something that would now prevent him from getting a visa!)  They were all, to my understanding, poor farmers with no assets, no education, nothing to their names.  

What right do I have to stop someone else from doing the same?

Nearly every religion emphasizes the importance of hospitality, of aiding the alien and the traveler.  You find it in Greek myths, Norse Eddas, and of course the Bible is FULL of commandments to treat well those not of your country living within it.  I may have lost my faith ages ago, but I still believe in this as a cardinal virtue.  

3)  I support victims of discrimination and abuse.

I recognize that being a white cishet dude gives me advantages. Having a sweet government job with tenure on top of that makes it that much better. (Though my government job does limit my ability to engage in some kinds of advocacy.)  

It is incumbent on me to search for ways to help others.  I can’t expect people to spoon-feed me opportunities or pat me on the head and lead me by the hand through it.  (Nor, of course, should I do this to expect rewards or praise. I do this because it’s the decent thing to do and needed to move our world to where it needs to go.) I already have a few ideas on doing this.

This past year has made clear that sexual harassment/assault/rape is an ongoing issue in every. single. industry in America, and foreign affairs/national security is sure as hell not exempt.  My eyes are opened to this now, and I am keeping them open so that I can help stand up against it and be a shield for those who suffer from it. Unfortunately, I’ve also learned that our own EEO system at the State Department is widely seen as useless, so I’m hoping to work with people on how to fix this. 

On social media, I will amplify and repost things written by members of less privileged groups, rather than my own thoughts or those of other white dudes.

I will financially support organizations (like BLM) working towards dismantling the institutional discrimination.  

3) I keep my priorities straight, at work and at home.

This might seem obvious, but when neck deep in my work for the U.S. government, it can get lost.  

My old pastor (at one of the many churches I attended) talked about a prospective employer who told him that his priority should be work first, family second, God third.  He refused the job, because for him, that was exactly backwards. There are many, many things I disagreed with that pastor on, but this is something that has stuck with me.

My highest allegiance is to humanity as a whole. (I said above, I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in working to help people.)

This is followed by my allegiance to the Constitution of the United States, to which I swore an oath when I started this job. 

After that comes my family and my own needs. 

Lastly comes career concerns and my work, to the extent it’s separate from the first two. 

(And most importantly--illegal and immoral orders are to be refused as such. This hasn’t been a problem to date, but it’s something I will keep an eye out for forever.)

4) I’m no good to anyone dead, burned out, or in a hospital.

This is to remind myself that my chronic health problems are not just an excuse to keep from fighting the fight--they can (and, one day, likely will) completely remove me from being productive, and so I have to do what I can to keep them at bay.  I may always feel like I should do more for the above points (and am always open to suggestions!), but it’s imperative I take care of myself as well.  

(Of course, I also can’t let them be an excuse that keeps me from doing anything either.) 

5) I create, not just consume.

One way to push back on the psychiatric problems might be to engage in actual creation.  I’ve been working on liqueurs, and I quite enjoy that (though it can be a smidge pricey).  So, here is my one resolution--find time every week to work on creating something, whether it is writing, making liqueurs, or acting as a bartender to friends during a party.  (Cooking an involved dinner will count too; instant noodles will not.)  

I made limoncello awhile back, and shared it with friends.  The happiness from it was amazing and filled me with warmth.  (I recommend trying it!)

I’m not making these commitments to try to say “look at me, look how good I am!” It’s instead a self-conscious way to make myself try to live by them.  (In the jargon of my field--I’m tying my hands by making public commitments, imposing reputational costs on myself if I fail.) Please let me know if I fail. 

And, a reminder to anyone else:

0) Racists, sexists, xenophobes, homophobes, transphobes, anti-Semites, Islamophobes, dominionists, white supremacists, MRAs, MTGOWs, gamergaters, alt-righters, and any others that want to maintain current inequitable hierarchies can fuck right off.  

[aicelab]

DropShipping on all channels: More sales through multi-channel distribution

DropShipping is clearly one of the most innovative trading models in modern e-commerce and is associated with almost countless advantages. In addition, however, there is the possibility of giving your own web shop a huge turbo based on DropShipping, which allows sales to skyrocket. We are talking about so-called multi-channel sales. The following article describes the concrete advantages of DropShipping and how you can use sales via many different channels and platforms.

DropShipping: The trading model for bright minds

Self-employment is a great thing and online trading is an excellent way to successfully set up your own business within a short period of time. The barriers to entry are comparatively low, special professional qualifications are not required, the necessary technical infrastructure is freely available and the entire sector is still characterised by its stable growth even after years. In other words, e-commerce is the ideal field of activity if you are fed up with being bossed around and exploited as a dependent employee or if you are looking for a way out of unemployment. However, there is a small catch: the establishment of an Internet company in this area unfortunately requires start-up capital.

The money is needed to buy merchandise. After all, if you want to earn something, you have to offer products for sale to the visitors of your shop. And that’s not all: The purchased items also have to be stored. If you place an order, you will need professional packaging material. And if you don’t want to deal personally with the tiresome and strenuous packing of parcels and packages, then you will also need additional staff.

Notice anything? While we merely set up the absolute basic structure of a web shop, we spend huge sums on goods, storage space, packaging material and personnel. You will need this money even before the first euro of turnover has entered your pocket. In other words, only those who already have money can once again take advantage of the great opportunities offered by e-commerce, while the less privileged are looking down the tubes.

But before you throw in your towel and melt away in self-pity, we would rather offer you an exciting and interesting way out of the dilemma described above. Online trading actually works without seed capital. This is the case when you use the DropShipping trading model.

Here the offered products are not bought in advance by you. You simply stay with your supplier, who stores the goods for you and even sends them to the end customers. Of course, you only have to pay when an order has really been placed in your shop and you have already taken your customer’s money. You don’t need any stock, no warehouse, no packing material and no personnel. The only thing that is required is your wise head and your decision to want to succeed as an independent online retailer.

Comparison of sales concepts: versatility pays off

Apropos success: DropShipping itself is a great thing. I can do better than that. You have the possibility to give your web shop a turbo from the start that is worth seeing. The most important keyword in this context is multi-channel sales. And what this is all about, let’s have a look together.

Imagine an online retailer who reaches a certain number of potential customers through his shop. Some of these consumers decide to buy from our shop operator and thus ensure a stable monthly turnover. Let’s assume in our example that the retailer achieves a turnover of 10,000 euros each month with the sales in his own shop. So the business model is successful and over time our entrepreneur begins to think about how to increase his success. In stationary trading, that would be quite simple now. Whoever notices here that he is successful with his shop simply opens another shop at another location. If this also runs, then further branches follow until a real chain has been created at some point.

“Great,” we hear you say, literally. You can forget about the chain on the Internet. After all, there are neither different cities nor different streets or shopping centres on the net. But are you sure that’s really true? Aren’t platforms like eBay or Amazon to be regarded as a kind of shopping mall and don’t you as a merchant have the possibility to sell your goods there? Of course I am! The Internet also provides the opportunity for you to offer your goods via different platforms at the same time and thus to become a chain store in a certain way. By the way, the special advantage of this multi-channel concept is that you can open your virtual branches as drop shipping dealers without renting shops or hiring personnel. On the Internet, all this works simply with a click of the mouse.

Let’s take a look at some of the platforms that can be used to generate additional revenues on the Internet. Maybe you will discover one or the other suggestion for your own business. We wish you every success in your endeavours.

» Your own shop

Don’t be surprised if we start this listing with your own shop. After all, it is the centre of all your business activities and therefore deserves special attention. Your shop is where all the threads come together. From here you control all activities, plan new campaigns and slowly but surely conquer the markets with your offers and products. For this reason, you should never neglect your own shop and keep in mind that it is by far the most important of all sales platforms.

When you start to use other platforms and channels, your goal should always be to transfer the customers gained there to your own shop as quickly as possible. Firstly, only here is a really effective customer loyalty possible and secondly, selling in your own shop does not cost you any additional fees.

» eBay, Amazon & Co.

Especially at the beginning of your career as an independent online retailer, your customers are not exactly running into your virtual doors. After all, hardly any consumer knows you so far and it just takes some time until you are so well known that consumers come to you all by themselves. Until then, you have to help a little bit and this succeeds particularly simply by the well-known market giants like eBay or Amazon.

Millions of customers are already waiting here for attractive products, and for you as a retailer, placing offers there is child’s play. In addition to the two mentioned, there are, by the way, many other marketplaces on the Internet. Depending on the product area and target group, it may be worthwhile for you to look for alternatives to eBay and Amazon when it comes to multi-channel sales.

» The social networks

The social networks interest you so far only privately or you use them exclusively to advertise your web shop? That’s all well and good and certainly a start. But there’s much more to it than that. You have the opportunity to use social platforms such as Facebook to sell articles directly from here. In principle, there are two forms of settlement.

Either you promote an offer only in the network and direct interested customers in case of a click directly to a suitable landing page in your own shop, or you use an integrated solution, where, for example, on Facebook you directly represent the complete buying process within the social network. It does not matter which concrete path you ultimately choose. The main thing is that you actively use the social networks not only to advertise your products, but also to sell them directly.

» The powerful affiliate networks

Do you know it? You surf the Internet and come across extremely popular and well-attended sites where your target group is exactly what you are looking for. And you are annoyed that you cannot simply place your offers there. Can’t you? Of course it is. Affiliate makes it possible. Many successful site operators make their pages available within affiliate networks. For a commission, you are granted the right to market your own offers on external sites.

In contrast to classical advertising, this approach is risk-free, since you only pay something when it actually comes to a sale. This makes Affiliate a fantastic way to get your business going, especially in the start-up phase, and more or less generate stable sales from day one. The handling is very simple. Search the Internet for affiliate networks. The model is explained comprehensibly on the corresponding pages.

» Price search engines as sales boosters

“Stinginess is horny.” This is how the shopping mentality of many consumers can be described very accurately. The modern Internet customer is always concerned about his advantage and would like to buy gladly with the cheapest offerer. On the other hand, people are also comfortable and shy away from visiting countless shops on their own in order to compare prices on their own. Instead, the savers prefer to use special price search engines. All you have to do here is enter the desired product and within an instant you will receive a list of the cheapest suppliers.

If you are not represented here with your offers, then the particularly price-conscious consumers will get through your fingers. So there is much to suggest that you should also include price search engines in your multi-channel offensive. Here you have to register in order to be listed with your products. In the case of clicks or sales, certain fees then apply.

Sometimes a lot helps a lot. This is particularly true with regard to the simultaneous use of many sales channels. DropShipping is particularly successful at the first attempt when a retailer is guided by the experience of successful entrepreneurs. Therefore you should learn our Success story from practice I’ve never known.

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source https://dropit.studio/business/dropshipping-on-all-channels-more-sales-through-multi-channel-distribution/

[cladeymoore]

Responding to Firefox 0-days in the wild

On Thursday, May 30, over a dozen Coinbase employees received an email purporting to be from Gregory Harris, a Research Grants Administrator at the University of Cambridge. This email came from the legitimate Cambridge domain, contained no malicious elements, passed spam detection, and referenced the backgrounds of the recipients. Over the next couple weeks, similar emails were received. Nothing seemed amiss.

On June 17 at 6:31am, Gregory Harris sent another email, but this one was different. It contained a URL that, when opened in Firefox, would install malware capable of taking over someone’s machine.

Coinbase Security quickly discovered that these emails were anything but ordinary — they were all part of a sophisticated, highly targeted, thought out attack that used spear phishing/social engineering tactics and, most importantly, two Firefox 0-day vulnerabilities.

Within a matter of hours, Coinbase Security detected and blocked the attack. Here’s how it unfolded.

The exploit

There were two separate 0-days chained together in this attack, one that allowed an attacker to escalate privileges from JavaScript on a page to the browser (CVE-2019–11707) and one that allowed the attacker to escape the browser sandbox and execute code on the host computer (CVE-2019–11708). CVE-2019–11707 was simultaneously discovered by Samuel Groß of Google’s Project Zero and the attacker. Based on significant differences in the way the attacker, a group we track as CRYPTO-3 and is also referred to as HYDSEVEN, chose to trigger the vulnerability versus the trigger used by the Project Zero PoC, we do not believe that the attacker acquired the exploit from either Mozilla or Google but independently discovered the vulnerability. Samuel Groß goes into more detail about why this is the case here.

The second exploit, CVE-2019–11708, is also very interesting. While the core vulnerability has been present in Firefox for quite a while, the way this attacker chose to trigger the vulnerability has only been possible since May 12. This indicates a very rapid discovery-to-weaponization cycle on the part of the attacker (or whoever the attacker acquired the 0-day from). When reviewing the actual exploit code, there are a number of notable features. First, while the delivery of the 0-day was highly targeted (it was only delivered to about 5 individuals out of the 200 initially targeted), there was no effort to obfuscate the JavaScript itself. When reviewing the code, we noted that it was well structured.

Functions and variables have descriptive names, and the code is broken into reasonable functional units. Overall, it feels like the work of a group that has significant experience developing exploits.

The setup

Once the attackers had this initial capability, they turned their attention to the delivery method. They compromised or created two email accounts and created a landing page at the University of Cambridge, and on May 28 registered the domain used to deliver the exploit. We don’t know when the attackers first gained access to the Cambridge accounts, or whether the accounts were taken over or created. As others have noted, the identities associated with the email accounts have almost no online presence and the LinkedIn profiles are almost certainly fake. Cambridge provides its staff with the ability to host personal files under the Cambridge domain. Once the attackers had access to the accounts in question, they prepared a series of pages by cloning and modifying existing Cambridge University pages and making them available in the personal storage directories of the attacker-controlled accounts.

The attack

The first phishing emails began on May 30. The first emails to go out contained no malicious elements (the link in the below screenshot did not contain any malicious code).

The attackers went through a qualification process and multiple rounds of emails with potential victims, making sure they were high-payoff targets before they directed victims to the page containing the exploit payload. This process commonly spanned weeks and only about 2.5% of the people who received the initial emails ended up receiving a link to the page hosting the 0-day. The attackers did a good job of creating a sense that the victims were talking to legitimate people using several techniques. Compromised academic emails allowed them to avoid any email filtering or common spam detection, and by spreading the communication out, the attackers modeled normal human behavior. The contents of the email referenced real academic events and were narrowly targeted at the backgrounds of the individuals being phished.

Once the attackers had qualified a target, they sent a separate link containing the exploit payload. Stage one of this attack first identified the operating system and browser, and displayed a convincing error to macOS users who were not currently using Firefox, instructing them to install the latest version from Mozilla. After visiting the page in Firefox, the exploit code was delivered from a separate domain, analyticsfit[.]com, which was registered on May 28. The exploit payload used CVE-2019–11707 and CVE-2019–11708 to gain arbitrary code execution as the user. The attacker’s shellcode then shelled out a curl command to download and run a stage 1 implant. The stage 1 implant (07a4e04ee8b4c8dc0f7507f56dc24db00537d4637afee43dbb9357d4d54f6ff4) pulled down by the shellcode was 32-bit, which causes macOS to pop up a warning that 32-bit execution is being deprecated. The stage 1 binary was a variant of the Netwire family. While this implant is capable of acting as a fully-featured RAT, the attackers seem to use it mostly as an initial recon and credential theft payload. We detected the attacker at this stage, based on a number of behaviors (e.g. Firefox shouldn’t spawn a shell). After exfiltration of recon data and a basic pillage of obvious credential stores (.ssh, .aws, .gpg, keychain, etc) and document formats, followed by a delay indicative of human involvement, the stage 1 payload is used to bootstrap a stage 2 payload (97200b2b005e60a1c6077eea56fc4bb3e08196f14ed692b9422c96686fbfc3ad). The stage 2 payload is a variant of the Mokes family. The attackers seem to use this implant as a full-fledged RAT. We’ve observed activity of the stage 2 implant consistent with direct human control. Our assumption is that stage 1 only advances to stage 2 where the attackers believe they have landed on a host of value. We have also observed the attackers specifically target cloud services, e.g. gmail and others, via browser session token theft via direct access to browser datastores. This activity also offers the opportunity for behavior-based detection, as relatively few processes should be directly accessing those files.

Our response

We began investigating this incident based on both a report from an employee and automated alerts. First, we examined the employee’s machine in our endpoint detection and response tooling. Looking at recent process activity, Firefox shelling out to curl stood out immediately. The response team spun up an incident and first tried to determine the scope of the attack. We collected IOCs from the host in question and started hunting broadly in our network. We did not see any of the IOCs anywhere else in our environment, and blacklisted all the IOCs that we had at that time. Simultaneously, we collected samples, including capturing the 0-day, from the phishing site while it was still live and the attackers were likely unaware of our response. We also revoked all credentials that were on the machine, and locked all the accounts belonging to the affected employee. Once we were comfortable that we had achieved containment in our environment, we reached out to the Mozilla security team and shared the exploit code used in this attack. The Mozilla security team was highly responsive and was able to have a patch out for CVE-2019–11707 by the next day and CVE-2019–11708 in the same week.

We also reached out to Cambridge University to assist in securing their infrastructure and to collect more information about the attacker’s behavior. As a result, we were able to quickly degrade the attacker’s ability to continue their campaign and learn more about the scope of the campaign. We learned that over 200 individuals were targeted by this attacker, and identified the organizations employing these individuals so that we could reach out and give their security teams the information they needed to secure their infrastructure and protect their employees.

We were able to defend ourselves from this attack due to our security-first culture at Coinbase, complete deployment of our detection and response tooling, clear and well-practiced playbooks, and the ability to rapidly revoke access. The cryptocurrency industry has to expect attacks of this sophistication to continue, and by building infrastructure with excellent defensive posture, and working with each other to share information about the attacks we’re seeing, we’ll be able to defend ourselves and our customers, support the cryptoeconomy, and build the open financial system of the future.

Coinbase will continue to face tough security challenges in the future and meet them head on. If you’re interested in being a part of the security team here at Coinbase, check out some of the available positions on our careers page.

This website contains links to third-party websites or other content for information purposes only (“Third-Party Sites”). The Third-Party Sites are not under the control of Coinbase, Inc., and its affiliates (“Coinbase”), and Coinbase is not responsible for the content of any Third-Party Site, including without limitation any link contained in a Third-Party Site, or any changes or updates to a Third-Party Site. Coinbase is not responsible for webcasting or any other form of transmission received from any Third-Party Site. Coinbase is providing these links to you only as a convenience, and the inclusion of any link does not imply endorsement, approval or recommendation by Coinbase of the site or any association with its operators.

Responding to Firefox 0-days in the wild was originally published in The Coinbase Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Money 101 https://blog.coinbase.com/responding-to-firefox-0-days-in-the-wild-d9c85a57f15b?source=rss----c114225aeaf7---4 via http://www.rssmix.com/

[artsaveslivesinternational]

Michel Montecrossa

Michel Montecrossa from Mirapuri-Coiromonte, Italy; is a visual artist who paints, draws, uses photography and creates film; as well as a philosophical and fictional writer and poet – who is also a musician. Michel has chosen the subject of Heterosexual Privilege for his submission for issue 4 of ASLI Magazine: “Discrimination, Privilege and Stigmatisation”.

  Can you tell us a little about yourself?

My aim in life is to grow in consciousness to a fulfilling completeness.

What is your artistic/creative background?

Based on this aim I chose to become an integral artist that perfects his natural artistic capacities in fine arts, music, literature, movie-making and consciousness-research. I received a good education in these fields through schools and private teachers as well as extensive travels for the study of Eurasian and U.S.A. cultures.

What motivated you to deal with your chosen submission subject?

Out of this formative process a clear and intense certitude about the human potential emerged, a certitude about the fact that a better tomorrow is created by growing and entering into a new consciousness that among many things can change the heterosexual privilege of dominance into a tolerant and creative spiritual & social power for establishing and securing freedom of choice for all sexual expressions and preferences – this would be a step of great cultural importance; liberating in all aspects of human life, hidden and suppressed creative springs.

’Erotic Enrichment Society’ (Freedom Of Choice)’, Mirapuri, 2014, acrylic and ink on canvas, 200 x 100 cm

What is your process when creating?

The process of creating is an evolving and self-creative synthesis of all possibilities with drawing, painting, music, writing and movie making; that are embedded in my state of continuous consciousness-researching.

Who are you influenced by within your artistic discipline?

The artist, musician and consciousness liberation fighter Mira Alfassa.

Who inspires you in general?

The Great Consciousness that can be felt and seen in all creation as well as in all that transcends it.

What causes and world issues are you passionate about, campaign for, volunteer for…?

I have dedicated my life, work and art to help to build Mirapuri, the City of Peace and Futureman in Europe, Italy.

What do the statements “art saves lives” and “art creates change” mean to you?

“Art saves lives” because art connects us to the very principle of life which is consciousness showing us the meaning of life and how to live this meaningful life. For the same reason “art creates change”.

Have your artistic and creative outlets saved your life in anyway and do you think your message within them could help create change in the world?

My artistic and creative outlets saved my life through steadiness and through the message of hope contained in them. It is the message of hope that the world is in the process of a big change and that every action of goodwill can and will accelerate the speed of this change into a new step of evolution giving birth to the Futureman of Joy and Love and the building of the United States of Planet Earth for securing peace and creative world unity.

What are your present and future goals for your art?

The present and future goals of my art are the completion of Mirapuri, the City of Peace and Futureman in Europe, Italy, and to strengthen the spirit of Joy and Love all over the world through freedom of consciousness-growth

’Two Time-Women In a Landscape’, Mirapuri, 27th January 2015, ink on paper, 29,7 x 42 cm

‘Child Of The Mother Of Sex’ Mirapuri, 2012, acryl & wax crayon and ink on canvas, 140 x 100 cm

‘Selfportrait As A Landscape’ Mirapuri, 2013, Acryl on canvas, 100x80cm

‘Girl & Girl’, Mirapuri, 2013, ink and acryl on canvas, 30x118cm

Have you experienced any form of discrimination; and if so what was it based on and how did you deal with this?

As a free and living soul one is always in contact with discrimination which is based on unwillingness to change in harmony with the constant changes of the universe. One can deal with this by being an example for the Joy and Love that come through every step of widening the consciousness, understanding and compassion.

What are your opinions on what causes discrimination?

The cause of discrimination is conservatism and fear. They are the testing-grounds for every new step of evolution so that the new things can prove their effective right and capacity to replace old orders through love, peace, prosperity and security.

What do you do to actively stand against discrimination and have you ever had to intervene as a witness to it?

To be an artist means to actively stand against discrimination by showing the better way of wideness, freedom and love. To follow this way is a constant intervention for the better of all.

What are your opinions on labels and stereotypes?

Labels and stereotypes are reactions of fear. Empathy, humour and joy can transform fear into a happy ‘Let’s play together and have a good time’.

What are your opinions on national identity and in your opinion does nationalism create or deter discrimination?

National identity is good and necessary, if it is an identity that has its goal within a world union, the achievement of unity in diversity where each nation plays its indispensable free and self-determined role in the concert of the United States of Planet Earth and its well-being. Nationalism for its own sake is destructive and discrimination-driven.

How does social privilege affect our world in your opinion?

The true privilege is to know always more and to be able to do always more. If this privilege is activated in a non-egoistic way, it will lead our world in a positive direction.

Have you ever denied your own privilege due to feelings of guilt or misunderstanding?

To be conscious of the soul is a constant source of happiness where there is no guilt or misunderstanding.

Have you ever experienced social stigmatisation and if so what was it based on and how did you deal with this?

Social stigmatisation may come about to learn better how to transform it into higher understanding. So, the best thing is to reach higher understanding.

Have you ever contributed to the stigmatisation of any individual or group, and if so were you aware you did this and how did you deal with this aftermath?

Everything and everyone has a right for existing for some time whether you like it or not. The best thing is to learn from it and thus grow in consciousness so that the wrong things are not repeated and good things become real.

What are your opinions on political powers and world leaders using stigmatisation against certain groups to further their own agendas, such as with Muslims, Black people, LGBTQ individuals, mentally ill and disabled people?

Political powers and world leaders must be there to lead to freedom and unity, to the experience of a progressive world where everything is in its right place and time without quarrel and arrogance, full of goodwill to help each other and ready for the living celebration of humanity.

Do you support or take part in any anti-stigma organisations or charities and if so which ones and why?

I support and take part in the building of Mirapuri, the City of Peace and Futureman in Europe, Italy because it is an important anti-stigma organisation and warmhearted charity project.

In your own words please tell us how you feel the arts and creativity can further help to empower, communicate and educate people with regards to discrimination, privilege and stigmatisation?

Art and creativity are straight roads out of discrimination, false privileges and stigmatisation because they empower you, communicate to you and educate you through the true, the right and the vast of your loving soul.

  ’Deep Space Woman’, Universe Triptych #2, Mirapuri, 2014, acryl on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

‘America Comeback’, Miravillage, 2013, acryl and ink on canvas, 169 cm x 86 cm

When we embrace, Mirapuri.

’The City Of Ideas’, Mirapuri, 2014, wax crayon on paper, 29,7 x 42 cm

If you would like to know more about Michel Montecrossa please follow these links:

Website 

Mirapuri, the City of Peace and Futureman

Michel Montecrossa Blog

Facebook Page

Twitter

– Michel Montecrossa on iTunes

Michel Montecrossa on Vimeo

If you have any feedback on this article please fill in the contact form below:

[contact-form] Artist Michel Montecrossa addresses heterosexual privilege in a new art piece for ASLI Magazine Michel Montecrossa from Mirapuri-Coiromonte, Italy; is a visual artist who paints, draws, uses photography and creates film; as well as a philosophical and fictional writer and poet - who is also a musician.

[treasuresoftraveling]

Ending Racism in Raleigh, North Carolina, the United States and the World!

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End Racism Now

End Racism Now

  We must end racism and be anti racist! So many people think we ended racism during the civil rights movement, but that’s not true. We still have a lot of systemic racism built into so many of society’s institutions. We have a lot of work to do to turn these injustices around. If you are white, it’s imperative you have conversations with other white people! They might be difficult conversations to have, especially if the other person has a different viewpoint, but we all have to do something. Whether it’s a face to face conversation or just on social media, dialogue must continue to occur. Everybody needs to vote for candidates that will help change laws that will help benefit everyone and not just a select few. We need politicians to help change laws so there can be true equality because Black Lives Matter! 

The mural “End Racism Now” painted in yellow, along W Martin Street in downtown Raleigh.

  I wrote the following in response to a long back and forth discussion to an individual on Facebook about their beliefs of the confederate monuments and flag and police reform in our country and how their talking points of all lives matter and black on black crime just deflect the underlying issue.

Artwork and murals in downtown Raleigh for Black Lives Matter

  By bringing up the whole concept of black on black crime, you are deflecting again from the baseline issue. It’s the same thing when you say all lives matter, as you are deflecting from the issues being raised around the Black Lives Matter protests, but when it comes to the history of the civil war and slavery, we have to agree that slavery and the reasoning of the confederates fighting against the United States is evil. The confederates stated, “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” This statement is inherently evil and nothing that should ever be celebrated. The hundreds of confederate flags, statues, monuments and memorials symbolize this hatred and have been used to keep blacks oppressed and used as a reminder of white supremacy. I understand that you want to remember the soldiers, but there are many other ways you can celebrate and remember their lives, whether through a local or national cemetery like Arlington, but we can not celebrate those men or the ideals and values they stood for, especially in a public space. It is extremely important that we truly listen to other people when they speak, especially now with the Black community. When was the last time you spoke to a black person and asked them what the flags, statues and monuments mean to them and what they feel these monuments represent? We aren’t able to speak to individuals who were slaves and hear their viewpoints today, but we can speak with black people who have lived through segregation and we can learn from their experiences. Sometimes we think segregation was forever ago, but in reality it was less than a generation ago so we have the opportunity to speak with individuals who lived through that awful experience of separate, but equal. We can all say we aren’t racist, but we live in a society that systematically suppresses other races within our own government systems. It will take us all working together to change that and it starts by understanding our white privilege. Institutional racism has been written into the backbone of this country by the existence of institutional systemic policies, practices, laws and economic and political structures which place minority racial and ethnic groups at a disadvantage. That’s why these protests will continue and we will continue having these discussions over and over again until there is change. I encourage you to watch “13th” the documentary on Netflix regarding the 13th amendment and systemic racism.

The mural “End Racism Now” painted in yellow, along W Martin Street in downtown Raleigh.

I thought posting this conversation was important and maybe it will help start other conversations. After the death of George Floyd, the City of Raleigh gave permission for local artists to paint the mural “End Racism Now” along West Martin Street in downtown Raleigh, between the Contemporary Art Museum and the Dillion Apartments. You can easily take the elevator up to the 9th floor and from an open terrace you can look down and see this large mural painted in yellow letters similar to the “Black Lives Matter” mural in Washington DC that was painted on the street leading up to the White House. 

— Luke Keeler

The Dillon Apartments

Check out the map below to see where the mural “End Racism Now” is painted in Raleigh, NC!

View of downtown Raleigh from the Dillon Apartments.

Pin me! 

Like this article? Then Pin me so other travelers can find it!

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End Racism Now

End Racism Now

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  We must end racism and be anti racist! So many people think we ended racism during the civil rights movement, but that’s not true. We still have a lot of systemic racism built into so many of society's institutions. We have a lot of work to do to turn these injustices around. Ending Racism in Raleigh, North Carolina, the United States and the World! We must end racism and be anti racist!

[gogocrazygo]

With my continues growing interest in health and well being through plant based nutrition, natural word and effects we as humans have on it, I question my own consumption choices (that is all my buying behaviours not just food) every times I think I NEED something.

On regular bases we face habitual buying scenarios such as family food shopping, being sucked into fast fashion shopping spree, or even investing in high value goods such as technology and cars. In MEDC we are so lucky and privileged to have all of these choices and alternatives. Right now, on the other side of the spectrum someone is struggling to survive and support their family life.

WE, supposedly highly intellectual species, can distinguish between what’s wrong or right. We take the initiatives in inventions to make our quality of life and health better through science and technology, we take leisure in education, exploration, adventure, love, compassion and sometimes risk. Of course our desires change with age, but what stays consistent is the ability to love and share ourselves with community around us. What we don’t always consider is that our communities involves more than just our own species.

Communities, populations and organisms

Biologically speaking a community consists of many different groups of organisms divided into populations e.g. in our neighbourhood organisms would be us the humans, populations are groups of organisms of the same species like us and neighbours, and communities are us, foxes, hedgehogs, trees, birds etc. We all have to learn how to coexist to insure a happy and striving community. When there is a fall in one population group like foxes being hunted and killed, we are facing increase in rodents and pests populations, which as a result can have a possible effect on livestock numbers, which effects businesses etc. We call this disruption in equilibrium of the community.

It is really important that we all identify our own communities, and what part the different populations and individual organisms play in it to insure there is a healthy balance. We as humans, in the end, pay a very important role in all of this since we are the the leaders of the communities, write policies, laws and regulations that structure life itself. Plants and animals have NO voice, so we have the obligation to speak for them in fair manner that is in their best interest. Sometimes it is not well received within the government, so we need more animal and environmental activists or public figures to push for the change and bring as much peace to our communities and even ecosystems as possible.

On the other hand, WE as individuals are very much in complete power of our own actions, so changes to how we live and how we treat nature effect how the community grows and thrives collectively. It is also all about education and sharing stories and ambitions with others, so that these can become other individuals ambition and stories, inspiring generations to come.

It sounds like an amazing and simple idea, but it’s very challenging to execution. Some individuals have strong opinions against specific organisms within the community, so do we dare to try and challenge their believes and opinions? No. We have to have conversations rather than strong debates. We want to open peoples’ minds, not scare them into the corner where they feel either alienated, threatened or angry. These feelings will never help bring change.

This is something I have noticed being done a bit in vegan community. I completely understand the passion these activists have towards saving as many sentient beings as they can, but the language used towards some none-vegans seems a bit strong and negative. I have heard from a few people that this kind of behaviour does not portraits veganism as a piece seeking move, but rebellion. In the end, it is our right to voice our opinions, which is complete fair for everyone to do, but it’s important we consider people we speak to first and adapt our language to get them to see out point.

Sentient Beings

Religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and some indigenous tribes portrait some if not all animals as sentient beings or even holy, respecting and sometimes worshipping them, forbidding animal consumption to some extent.

So what do we classify as sentient beings?

Till not long ago a lot of communities have believed that none human animals, just like plants, don’t experience and don’t poses the same neurological build as we do, meaning they can’t experience life, love and even pain in the same way we do, right? It has now been scientifically proven that this perception was wrong.

On July the 7th 2012, The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness was announced, explaining that none human animals posses the “neuroanatomical, neurochemical, and neurophysiological substrates of conscious states” making them capable to make intentional decision (click here to read the statement). Animals including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses possess neurological structure much like humans, which generates consciousness and awareness just like we do. This indicates that they feel emotions and physical sensations like we do, to some extent.

We have seen evidence of this many times during recent history. Animals such as elephants rush to help when the younger members of the heard are in distress (video here). They also come back to mourning sites where their friends and families have passed on, and grieve for them which is one of the most emotional things I have even came across (video here). We also see animals like some species of eagles, penguins, albatross, beavers, barn owls, sea horses, lovebirds, grey wolfs, puffins, some lizards and many more, pair for life in true love courtship, just like some humans. Whales and dolphins exhibits high levels of social behaviours such as hunting, playing together, interacting with humans and sometimes even take part in sexual interactions not only for reproduction purposes, but for pure pleasure, just like us.

What we witness more and more, even with domestic and farm animals, is their ability to understand relationship they have with humans, and how they learn to adapt and coexist with us. They are happy when we feed them or when we play with them, but they also show distress when we hurt them or take their babies straight after birth and kill them to take their milk, which is something that’s practised on may dairy farms in UK and all around the world.

I think to summarise the above point, let’s stay COMPASSIONATE 🙂 We can collectively make change by expressing our understanding of the environmental and injustice issues, continue having discussions about them, and sometimes even ask for help if the path to change is not so clear.

I always like to think, you can start with small alterations to our recurring habits made over the years, step out of your comfort zone and try new things if you believe that’s the step in the right direction. These could be:

Starting to separate recycling better. Make sure to check your local council for their specific recycling instructions.

Re-use containers to store food. You can use these to meal prep for the week and freeze, or store dry products such as pasta ad beans from zero waste shops or when you buy in bulk. 

Buy less plastic. Check your local farmers markets for fresh produce.

Cook fresh food. It’s better for your health and environment. Think long term. 

Make things you buy last longer (clothes, tech etc). You don’t need a new phone or a car every year, or sell on if you can. 

Reduce your meat and animals product consumption, or buy from organic farms. The pain these animals experience, we can’t even comprehend. This doesn’t need to happen. I would really recommend everyone to check out video of Oscar winning actor Joaquin Phoenix as the dedicates his Actor of the Year speech towards raising awareness on animal rights. You might have seen it already, and I know I found it really inspiring.

When you see litter on the ground not too far from a bin or somewhere in nature, why not pick it up if you can and bin it. This could potentially stop it from getting into a canal or a river and into the sea.

Appreciate natural world in your local community. You never know, you might notice a Robin nesting somewhere close. How cute would that be.

Leave vegetable food scraps in the garden for small animals to munch on or maybe make your own composting bin for some high quality fertiliser.

Psychologically speaking, when you make these small changes and start practising them on regular bases, you feel better every day. I think it almost feels like experiencing a new purpose in life which is making change that’s bigger than you and your immediate needs.

Remember, SMALL CHANGES MATTER AND NO ONE IS PERFECT. If you are trying and failing, don’t put yourself down. I think one of the best qualities of human species is communication and understanding one others. We are all in different life situation. One shoe does not fit all when it comes to environmental footprint. It is important to see what information and resources are out there, test what works for you and your family, and see what changes you can adapt to make a long lasting difference in your community.

STAY INSPIRED AND INSPIRE OTHERS

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Other links:

Animals being declared as Sentient Beings

The balance of Nature and Human impact

Animals, Ethics and Trade: The Challenge of Animal Sentience

Animals and World Religions 

Yes, animals think and feel

Rise of Ethical Milk

Voice for the voiceless - "Joaquin Phoenix" inspired post With my continues growing interest in health and well being through plant based nutrition, natural word and effects we as humans have on it, I question my own consumption choices (that is all my buying behaviours not just food) every times I think I NEED something.

[am-game-zone]

AM:GZ News #12: Blitzchung Suspended by Blizzard

In general, we enjoy our games because it allows us to escape from daily issues. We do our best to keep those issues out of our video games, especially politics. However, that is not always ascertainable. There are times when politics and video games intersect in ways we don't expect and can not ignore. The most recent example of this is the Hong Kong Hearthstone player vs. Blizzard. 

  Geek News

  Batwoman - Lowest Debuted Rated CW Show 

The marketing for Batwoman has been terrible from the get-go. It came off as manhating and came off as subpar to the other CW shows. Whether it is merely poor marketing or the show quality is lacking, Batwoman has officially made history as the CW's worst Debuted series. Flash, CW's highest debut viewership, launched with 6.83 million viewers and Supergirl, CW's lowest debut viewership before Batwoman, began with 3.06 million viewers. Batwoman claims the title at 1.8 million viewers. Will Batwoman numbers improve over time, or will the CW drow the show?

  Video Game News

  Reportedly Google Stadia Will Be Fater Than Consoles 

We have serious doubts here at AM: Game Zone about the technical challenges and date caps the Google Stadia will have to address. However, the marketing and engineering teams continue to confidentially boast that Stadia will be able to tackle these issues. The Stadia team recently talked about how they are going to handle the potential latency issues. Their solution, Negative Latency. 

  The concept is that cloud computing will be able to predict the player's potential moves and send the correct sequence to the player. What if you, the player, had a different move set in my mind? Well, to our knowledge, the servers will generate multiple different scenarios and send the one the player chooses. The technology sounds like an impressive feat; the Stadia team state that they are still a couple of years from having this perfected. Will Stadia be able to stand on its own till Negative Latency is perfected?

  The Google Stadia Annonces Current Game List

The Google Stadia list of games is limited to mostly big AAA games. However, the list is an excellent collection of games. The following is a shortlist of games: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Baldur's Gate 3, Borderlands 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Destroy All Humans, Doom Eternal, Orcs Must Die 3, Watch Dogs Legion, and Tom Clancy's: The Division 2. If you want to see a complete list, then go to Google Store. 

  Nintendo Switch Discounts on First-Party Games

If you've wanted to pick up a first-party Nintendo game, then this might be a perfect time. A few of the games have a fifteen dollar discount applied to them. We'll leave affiliate links for your convenience and a way for you to support the show at no cost to yourself.

  Amazon:

The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Super Smash Bros.

Mario Kart 8

Super Mario Maker 2

Yoshi's Crafted World

  Nintendo Switch Reaches 10 Million Sales in Europe

  Nintendo has done an incredible job in moving Switch units throughout the world. The most recent mile marker Nintendo hit was in Europe. Nintendo has sold 10 million units. They were able to move 30% more units in 2019 compared to 2018 and 40% more compared to 2017. 

  Showstopper

  Hearthstone Grandmaster Suspended By Blizzard

Hearthstone Grandmaster player "blitzchung" made significant waves while streaming on the official Taiwanese Hearthstone stream. After winning the match, "blitzchung" made a bold statement during the stream, "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times." Blizzard's action that not only felt harsh, but politically motivated. Their responses were in line with their policies. Blizzard utilizes the 2019 Heathstone Grandmasters Offical Competition Rules v1.4 pg.12, Section 6.1 which states the following:

  "Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard's sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player's prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard's Website Terms."

  Blizzard is within their rights to do so since it is their game and competition. Their response is because they want to keep good relations with the authoritarian government of China. As a United States company and as a company that has benefited from western civilization privileges, Blizzard made the following deplorable statement to China:

  "We express our strong indignation and condemnation of the events that occurred in the Hearthstone Asia Pacific competition last weekend and absolutely oppose the dissemination of personal political ideas during any events . The players involved will be banned, and the commentators involved will be immediately terminated from any official business. Also, we will protect our national dignity."

  Blizzard's employees were livid about the company's response. The employee's walked out on to the campus with umbrellas since umbrellas have been one of the unique items in the Hong Kong riots. The employees covered up the company's two key values that are displayed on the campus, which are "Think Globally" and "Every Voice Matters." 

  There is a growing aversion to Blizzard, and this aversion is growing vocal. The American University Hearthstone team made its statement while streaming. The held up a sign that said, "Free Hong Kong, Boycott Blizz." As soon as they raised the sign, the broadcast quickly cut away. There are growing talks about creating a protest outside BlizzCon and showing their displeasure inside BlizzCon as well. 

  Two Senators, Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon and Marco Rubio (R) of Florida, condemned Blizzard for placating kowtowing to China. 

  Ron Wyden stated: "Blizzard shows it is willing to humiliate itself to please the Chinese Communist Party. No American company should censor calls for freedom to make a quick buck."

  Marco Rubio "Recognize what's happening here. People who don't live in #China must either self-censor or face dismissal & suspensions. China using access to market as leverage to crush free speech globally. Implications of this will be felt long after everyone in U.S. politics today is gone."

    Will Blizzard be able to recover from this PR disaster? Has Blizzard crossed the line too far for your support? Let us know what you think!

  Thank You For Listening!

  If you have an idea for an episode or a person of note in the video game industry, i.e., a developer, influencer, illustrator, etc. then let us know! Email us at:

contactus.armstrongsmusings@gmail.com

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  Visit us on our website: https://armstrongsmusings.com 

We appreciate you listening and hope to hear from you. Stay Strong!

Check out this episode!

[datingadviceonreddit]

To start, I’ll begin with my background. I’m a 25 year old woman who became single for the first time since I was 18 just this last September. I have been single and on my own now for a whole year and let me tell you, I have learned a lot and have gone through a lot in that time.When I was 18 back in 2012, Tinder had just been released. Since I was that young and in a relationship, it was something that I had really no grasp on and what I knew about it always came from my single friends. After my first relationship ended, I downloaded Tinder for the very first time and met my last partner within a week and then promptly deleted Tinder. Because of that short stint on the app, I wasn’t on it long enough to actually date for real. Then that second relationship ended last year. With that being said, I didn’t know how to date. I have never actually dated. Last year, I entered into the dating scene without any actual knowledge about dating. But now that a year has passed (rather quickly I’d say), I would like to share what I have learned. Hopefully, y’all find it helpful.Dating shouldn’t be hard and it shouldn’t be unenjoyable. Dating should be something you can learn from and have fun with. You know a majority of the best memes come from dating mishaps. And memes are essentially unifying in human misery. It’s modern comedy but I digress.1. PICK THE RIGHT APP/WEBSITES AND DO YOUR RESEARCH. There is Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid, The League, Match, eHarmony, FarmersOnly, ChristianMingle, CoffeeMeetsBagel, Happn, Zoosk, Grindr, etc…There are so many places to date and meet people and you need to research which platform is going to be best for you and what sort of activity on that platform is going on in your city. Don’t just randomly pick one. Then don’t pick multiples to be on. Just pick one. If at all, have only two. The more apps/profiles you have, you will drive yourself insane and get obsessive. You don’t want to get too attached and over zealous about your profile. You need to maintain a level-head. I would have 3-4 profiles going at once and I would be on them constantly and losing my shit. Since moving to being on only 1-2 apps, I would say, it’s been a lot easier to manage my time as well when it comes to dating.2. MAKE SURE YOUR PROFILE IS 10/10 (HAVE YOUR FRIENDS HELP YOU AND GIVE YOU ADVICE). This is what makes or breaks most people and tragically, most people are not willing to do their best with this. You need to be able to represent yourself accurately and well. You want to appear confident, fun, interesting, and unique. Picking good photos is important. Do not and I repeat do NOT do mirror selfies. Most advice pieces online state this and it’s true. The only reason you should have a mirror selfie is if you don’t have a recent full body picture. The caveat for this exception is that you need to look well-dressed and be in a CLEAN bathroom…preferably at a nice restaurant, museum, or somewhere cool because then it looks like you just took that selfie on a day out while doing something fun. But honestly, stay away from the mirror. NO CAR PICTURES. For the love of god, no photos of JUST your car. Nobody cares what car you drive. And then don’t take a selfie in your car. Please don’t do this. Like attracts like. You need to be able to present yourself well to the kinds of people you want to attract. So have a photo of you with your friends or doing something you like to do. But never lead with a group photo. In this order: a candid or a headshot (NOT A SELFIE), a group photo, an activity/hobby shot, a full body picture (with a group or you by yourself), and last but not least…a selfie. A selfie is how YOU see yourself and how you want others to see you. A selfie should always be last. Aside from photos, have a good bio! Include something positive. State what you are looking for and what you like to do in your free time. Include enough details to make it seem like your care enough about your profile. Also, don’t be negative. Don’t say “I’m not here for games.”, “I’m not here for hookups.”, etc. Just be honest about what YOU want. Oh…and don’t list your Snapchat username or Instagram handle…it then looks like your giving it out to everyone which means you ain’t picky and have no standards on who you allow into your social life. It’s fucking weird and I don’t understand why people do this. Access to your social life isn’t a right, it’s a privilege. It also looks and screams trashy to me. I would think most people would agree with this. But I guess I might be wrong considering how often I see this phenomenon.3.DO NOT MESSAGE INSTANTLY AFTER MATCHING/MAKING A CONNECTION AND LET CONVERSATION COME NATURALLY (DO NOT FORCE IT). When you make a match or connection, you’re going to want to instantly message. I would strongly suggest waiting anywhere from an hour to a day depending on the urgency of the platform you’re using. Having restraint and not coming off too eager is going to suit you well. When you do send a message first, also make sure it’s a fun greeting. Say something that you don’t think that person would hear on a daily basis. A fun fact, maybe if you know another language, greet them in that language or something. Don’t say “Hey! Whats up?” You want them to have fun too. Now, either your conversation will take off and you’ll plan a date (which I suggest sooner rather than later) or the conversation will die and neither of you will meet. WHICH IS FINE. Nobody is entitled to anybody’s time. This isn’t a prisoner/warden situation. Respect your match and their time. Also, respect yours. Do not obsess over whether or not you will meet this person or not. Chances are that you won’t ever meet a majority of your matches. I had 55 matches on Tinder stint and probably only met less than 10 of them in a two month span. That’s less than 5%. And oddly enough, during that stint I dated 0 of them longterm. If you accept that you’re not going to click with everyone you match/meet/try to date, you’re going to have a better time. It should always go without saying...if you no longer want to see someone after having met them once or more...PLEASE DO NOT GHOST. Just be honest. If you haven't met and don't talk a lot? Then you can ghost. But if you have met, do that person the a favour if they think nothing is wrong. Be honest and don't be an asshole. Also, if you're going to ghost yet you have them on social media...just remove them from your social media. Stop following them on Instagram. Orbiting is worse than ghosting. It's also weirdly pathetic. They aren't you friend and your not theirs. If you choose to watch their stories and like their pictures but can't manage to be up front about your desires to not date them let alone be just friends (if that's what you want), you probably need to have some shit worked through on your own.4.DO NOT BE ACTIVE ON YOUR CHOSEN PLATFORM (LIMIT YOUR USAGE TO 15-30 MINUTES A DAY). In order to maintain your sanity, do not check the platform unless you have a notification. If you have a notification and have an ongoing conversation that looks like it is going somewhere potentially, try to give them your number or another way of communicating. You want to get off the app, so be proactive when need be in this regard. The less active you are not the app, the less likely you are to get obsessive compulsive while using it. Do not take it seriously, this is supposed to be fun. A notification should excite you. Not make you nervous or fiend out.5.BE CONFIDENT IN YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU WANT (EVERYONE IS INSECURE BUT NOBODY WANTS TO DATE INSECURE). You are a human being. We all have hard times and are insecure about things. But the whole point of dating is trying to get someone to see you for how you actually are. You’re not you’re insecurities. You are so many amazing things and you want a partner to see that the way a friend sees it. Don’t say anything bad about yourself. At least not seriously. If you’re one with a comedic streak, a self deprecating joke CAN be funny in the right context but don’t over do it. Highlight your humility. With that also being said, you need to make sure that YOU are your NUMBER ONE FOCUS. Right now, this is about YOU making sure YOU get what you want. Hopefully, you have a career or are working on it, going to school, pursuing a dream, etc…this is self-confidence. Love yourself and where you are at in life. You need to be able to convey not only to yourself but to others that you have your shit together and love your life. Another caveat, if you’re not confident, not in a place to date, or have a lot of personal issues…it should go without saying that you probably aren’t ready to date. If you don’t feel ready…it’s because you aren’t and you should allow yourself time to prepare. Relationships are work. Dating shouldn’t be. If you put dating above yourself, you are dooming yourself.6.LISTEN TO YOUR GUT, HEART, AND HEAD (AND YOUR FRIENDS). Honestly, most people these days don’t know how to listen to their gut. Our intuition and ability to understand communication and situations is grossly neglected. This combined with dating makes most single people out there dating clueless about how to handle anything in regard to prospective romantic relationships. When you meet someone you click with? You’ll know. If you think something is too good to be true? It probably is. If you didn’t see something coming? Lies! You were not following your intuition. If someone isn’t vibing with you the same way after a week, it’s because they probably aren’t feeling you anymore. AND THAT IS OKAY! It’s fine. Not everyone is going to stick around. But it needs to be accepted that if it’s not happening now, it’s not going to change. You can’t make someone want to stay. Ever. I learned this the hard way this year. When you neglect your instincts, not only are your allowing yourself to be more susceptible to pain and let down, you are losing the opportunity to actually be happy.7.THE LESS YOU CARE ABOUT DATING, THE MORE FUN DATING CAN BECOME (DATING IS ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE NOT THE OUTCOME). Don’t go into a date thinking it’s an interview, don’t go into a date thinking you’ll get married, don’t go into a date thinking it won’t be fun. Go into a dating thinking you might make a new friend or having a new experience. Remove all pressure and negative attitude. Enjoy the process and enjoy your life. Don’t be afraid of rejection, embrace it. But also, don’t let fear of rejection keep you from enjoying the process. We live in a crazy world and you never know what is going to happen next. Love life, love yourself, and be confident. When actually going on dates, keep things light and simple. Let the connection grow in time if it’s there. Good things come in time. But if nothing happens after a date or two? That’s fine. Does that change your confidence or ability to have fun? It shouldn’t and if it does, go back to step 5.I know all of this seems like it might be old hat but this has been my own guide to dating and so far, I’ve not been stressed about dating. I’m living my life and focusing on myself. If I happen to meet someone? Cool. But in the mean time, I’ve been going back to school and enjoying being young. This isn’t a time to be willingly stressed over dating. Dating isn’t something that should be a chore. It should be a fun activity.Anyways, good luck y’all and stay happy <3 via /r/dating_advice

[terabitweb]

Original Post from Microsoft Secure Author: Todd VanderArk

In part 1 of this series, we introduced you to Microsoft Flow, a powerful automation service already being used by many organizations across the world. Flow is designed to empower citizen developers while featuring capabilities sought for by professional developers. Flow is also a foundational element of the Microsoft Power Platform announced earlier this year.

More organizations are seeking automation solutions and there will be many options. As security professionals, you’ll have to recommend the service offering all the benefits of automation, while ensuring the organization remains secure and compliant. Flow is natively integrated with best-in-class authentication services, offers powerful data loss prevention and an enhanced IT experience ranging from broad visibility and control to automating IT functions, and is built on rigorous privacy and compliance standards. We’re confident that Flow will be the right choice for your organization, so let’s get started on showing you why.

Prioritized security for your users and data

Flow is seamlessly integrated with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD), one of the world’s most sophisticated, comprehensive, and secure identity and access management services. Azure AD helps secure the citizen developer by protecting against identity compromise, gives the IT admin/pro visibility and control, and offers additional security capabilities for the pro developer. Azure AD helps support the least privilege strategy, which we recommend for Flow users. Azure AD also follows a federated model, so organizations not directly using the service are still secure. Since authentication to Flow is via Azure AD, admins using its premium features can create conditional access policies which restrict user access to only the apps and data relevant for their role. Flow’s integration with Azure AD also enhances security for more experienced developers who can register applications with the service and leverage multiple authentication protocols, including the OAuth2 authorization framework to enable their code to access platform APIs (Figure 1). This access protection can also be extended to external users.

Figure 1. Choosing authentication framework for custom Flow connector.

To experience the full benefits of automation and unlock the potential of an organization’s data, Flow offers 270+ connectors to services, including third-party services. Some connectors are even built for social media sites, such as Twitter (Figure 2). With so many integrations, there’s always the threat of data leakage or compromise. Imagine the scenario where a user mistakenly tweets sensitive data. To prevent these types of scenarios, Flow is supported by the Microsoft Data Loss Prevention (DLP) service.

Figure 2. Pre-built Flow templates offering automation between Twitter and several other applications.

Microsoft DLP protects data from being exposed and DLP polices can be easily created by administrators. DLP policies can be customized at the user, environment, or tenant level to ensure security is maintained without impact to productivity. These policies enforce rules of what connectors can be used together by classifying connectors as either “Business Data Only” or “No Business Data Allowed” (Figure 3). A connector can only be used with other connectors within its group. For example, a connector in the Business Data Only group can only be used with other connectors from that group. The default setting for all connectors is No Business Data Allowed.

Importantly, all data used by Flow is also encrypted during transit using HTTPS. As a security leader, you can feel reassured that Flow is designed to ensure your data is secured both at rest and in transit with strict enforcement. To learn more about strategies to create DLP polices for Flow connectors, check out our white paper.

Figure 3. Flow Admin center where you can create DLP policies to protect your sensitive while benefiting from the powerful automation capabilities offered with Flow.

Enhancing management of the IT environment

Flow includes the Flow management connector, which enables admins to automate several IT tasks. The management connecter offers 19 possible actions that can be automated—from creating and deleting Flows to more complex actions, such as modifying the owner of a Flow. The Flow management connector is versatile and can be combined with other connectors to automate several admin tasks, enhancing the efficiency of IT teams. For example, security admins can create a Flow combining the management connector with Azure AD, Microsoft Cloud App Security, Outlook, and Teams to quickly send automatic notifications via email or Teams anytime Cloud App Security generates an alert on suspicious activity (Figure 4). Other use cases could include a notification when a new app is created, automatically updating user permissions based on role changes, or tracking when custom connectors are created in your environment.

Figure 4. Flow template using the management connecter, Azure AD, Cloud App Security, Outlook, and Teams.

Visibility of activity logs

Many of Flow’s current users are also Office 365 users. As such, Flow event logs are available in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center. By surfacing activity logs in the Security & Compliance Center, admins gain visibility into which users are creating Flows, if Flows are being shared, as well as which connectors are being used (Figure 5). The activity data is retained for 90 days and can be easily exported in CSV format for further analysis. The event logs surface in the Security & Compliance Center within 90 minutes of the event taking place. Admins also gain insight on which users are using paid versus trial licenses in the Security & Compliance Center.

Figure 5. Microsoft Flow activities accessed through the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center.

Strict on data privacy and regulatory requirements

Flow adheres to Microsoft’s strict standards of privacy and protection of customer data. These policies prohibit customer data from being mined for marketing or advertising. Microsoft personnel and subcontractors are also restricted from accessing customer data and we carefully define requirements for responding to government requests for customer data. Microsoft also complies with international data protection laws regarding transfers of customer data across borders.

Microsoft Flow is also certified for many global, government, industrial, and regional compliance regulations. You can see the full list of Microsoft certifications, while Table 1 summarizes the certifications specifically covered by Flow.

Global Government Industry Regional CSA-STAR-Attestation UK G-Cloud HIPAA/HITECH EU-Model-Clauses CSA-Star-Certification HITRUST ISO 27001 PCI DSS ISO 27018 ISO 9001

Table 1. Flow’s existing certifications.

Let Flow enhance your digital transformation

Let your organization start benefiting from one of the most powerful and secure automation services available on the market. Watch the video and follow the instructions to get started with Flow. Be sure to join the growing Flow community and participate in discussions, provide insights, and even influence product roadmap. Also follow the Flow blog to get news on the latest Flow updates and read our white paper on best practices for deploying Flow in your organization. Be sure to check out part 1, where we provide a quick intro into Flow and dive into its best-in-class, secure infrastructure.

Additional resources

Sign up for Microsoft Flow—just click or tap Sign up free in the upper-right corner.

Visit the Flow community to connect with peers, share ideas, and learn from experts.

Read the Flow blog to get the latest news.

Read Administering a PowerApps Enterprise Deployment Technical white paper.

Watch the Microsoft Flow: Getting Started video.

Read Foundations of Microsoft Flow—secure and compliant automation, part 1.

The post Foundations of Flow—secure and compliant automation, part 2 appeared first on Microsoft Security.

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Go to Source Author: Todd VanderArk Foundations of Flow—secure and compliant automation, part 2 Original Post from Microsoft Secure Author: Todd VanderArk In part 1 of this series, we introduced you to…

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Pinterest Update April 2019 (Latest Pinterest Changes for Bloggers and Business)

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Pinterest Update April 2019 (Latest Pinterest Changes for Bloggers and Business)

  I think I know why you are on this page… A new Pinterest update 2019 just happened, some algorithm or interface changes seem to be occurring as we speak, and your traffic is either going down or up (lucky you if it’s the latter!).  I created this page because I got tired of replying over and over to similar questions I receive from my students about the latest Pinterest update (s).

I plan to update this page fairly frequently – as soon as something significant happens on Pinterest, you’ll be the first one to know about it from this post. So SAVE THIS PIN to your Pinterest Marketing board for later.

If you use Pinterest for marketing your products or you are a blogger and drive traffic from this platform, you probably know by now that algorithm updates and major interface changes happen on Pinterest so often that people are getting confused by what is the most recent or new update, what happened just a month ago.

I want to make your life easy! Here, on this page, Pinterest updates are presented in chronological order and also are explained as per what is an actual change, what is a rumor, and how you should react to these changes.

I’m going to also mention here some news related to the Pinterest-approved scheduler Tailwind and their new features as this might be directly related to your activity on Pinterest.

Pinterest October – November 2018 New Features Carousel Pins

All business accounts on Pinterest can now create Carousel Pins – this is a new type of pins which allows up to 5 different images published as a slider under the same pin URL.

These images can be linked to different page URLs on your website, they can also have different titles and descriptions!

Pinterest initially introduced Carousel pins as an additional tool for businesses to make their ads more attractive. However, right now you can create Carousel pins without starting an ad campaign.

Just go to your Pinterest account on a desktop and click on the “plus” button next to your profile name. From the drop-down, select Create Carousel.

There is a chance that as early adopters of the new pin format, we could gain some additional benefits. First, at the beginning, not many users will create these Carousel pins (they obviously take more time than the regular pins). Plus, Pinterest should probably give an additional initial boost to the new pins so that more content creators get interested in saving these Carousel pins.

Pinterest Update July 2018 (And Some Other Changes) Pinterest Glitch Blocked Many Legit Bloggers Domains on 7/24/2018

This day many bloggers and Pinterest marketers woke up to see their domains marked as spam on Pinterest. This very blog you are reading now was also blocked and you can’t imagine how I was worried about it – all my Pinterest traffic was gone for nearly 24 hours.

Want to know how I drive over 300,000 pageviews/mo to my blog from Pinterest? And how organic (free) Pinterest traffic allowed me to make $6000/mo with my blogs? Learn how I do it with a Free Pinterest Masterclass >>

Each and every pin on affected accounts was not leading users to the websites anymore – they were sending users to a broken page with a ruthless message:

As far as I was able to follow up the situation in multiple blogging communities on Facebook, the majority of the affected accounts were working fine within 24 hours since the issue was known about. Pinterest didn’t make any official statements, didn’t reply to anyone’s emails, just fixed the issue and pretended that nothing happened.

In case you ever get caught by a similar issue in the future, here are a few tips on how you can try to help your domain get unmarked as soon as possible. When you write an email to them, no matter how pissed you are by the situation, make sure you use respectful language because after all, the person reading your message, is just a person. You don’t know how that person who is not personally responsible for the algorithms on Pinterest, might feel about your message, and how this could influence his or her decision about your account.

Email creators-support @ pinterest.com – this address was shared by Pinterest on their conference for content creators. Visit the page https://help.pinterest.com/en/contact, select “Business Account” and then choose the option appropriate to your request. One more tip that might not be applicable to every situation, but I thought it’s worth mentioning this insider tip. You see, some companies have a privilege of talking to Pinterest reps directly and when a large-scale glitch is causing some trouble for bloggers or content creators, they do their best to help us. During the latest instances of mass accounts blocking, Tailwind (officially approved Pinterest scheduler), Mediavine and Adthrive (advertising network for bloggers) created lists of affected accounts in their FB communities and then sent lists to Pinterest to manually look into each blog.

Pinterest Analytics Glitches in July 2018

If you noticed that your Pinterest Analytics show nearly 0 views on some days in July 2018, that’s just a glitch and you can verify in your Google Analytics that you were getting traffic from Pinterest on those days normally.

Tailwind releasing SmartLoop tool 

Tailwind made an announcement about their long-awaited SmartLoop tool. They promised to roll it out on all accounts within 8-12 weeks.

If you are following Pinterest updates and changes closely, you probably noticed that 2018 is the year when Pinterest started really opening up a little more info to marketers, bloggers, content creators. Yes, Pinterest even organized the first-ever conference for content creators.

Out of all the information that was presented to the blogging community lately, not all “news” truly new or part of a Pinterest update. They just never spoke so openly about the ways you should promote your content on their platform.

However, a lot of stuff that was discussed during the conferences worked on Pinterest for years this way, and Pinterest just never spoke about it so openly.

On this page, I do my best to separate what Pinterest reps claim, what Pinterest Best practices dictate, from what actually works to drive traffic to your website. I’m also going to put away all the rumors based on some popular interpretations of Pinterest’s statements. 

I spend a lot of time (more than I wish I had to!) monitoring blogging communities on Facebook where people share their experience on Pinterest. I spend this much time doing it because among the numerous Facebook threads and comments sometimes I can see a pattern and it helps to figure out how Pinterest works for people in different niches, following different strategies. 

Also, I do it to save time for my students and to be able to provide the most recent and comprehensive information in my Pinterest SEO Traffic Secrets Course.

Pinterest disapproved BoardBooster scheduler

If you don’t know what BoardBooster was, then probably you can just skip this paragraph. Before you do it, just take one thing with you: from June 2018, Pinterest is not a place to mess around using any schedulers or tools which are not shown on their official Pinterest’s partners page.

Now, getting back to BoardBooster. It was one of the two most popular Pinterest schedulers for about 4 years and offered automation tools at an affordable price. Pinterest didn’t like that BoardBooster was operating without using Pinterest API. This was ok for a few years, but at some point, all big social media platforms crash upon unapproved apps or tools. Unfortunately, there was no way Pinterest would allow BoardBooster become an approved partner and the tool was closed for good.  

Several tools are shown on the Partner’s page but the leader is Tailwind. If you want to start using it efficiently and save yourself the time from learning it by trial and error, you could make a jump start with my very affordable video course dedicated to Tailwind.

Ongoing Pinterest Update – Algorithm 2018

Group Boards will be losing distribution power

This one is quite a fundamental statement made by two Pinterest reps in an interview for Pinterest scheduler Buffer (check the video below).

It’s so important because building powerful Pinterest account by reaching audiences of multiple group boards was the main strategy that has been working great for the last 2-3 years.

However, it seems like from now on, Pinterest will be working on reducing the distribution of pins saved to group boards.

Why Pinterest decided to do that? They said group boards became over time something different from what they were created for. Have you seen group boards with thousands of contributors? I bet you have because they are usually the ones that are too easy to be accepted to.

Now, 1000-4000 contributors (the max I’ve seen, but I’m sure there are even bigger group boards) and no pinning limits can’t end up in a good way. Spam eventually takes over these boards and the board is losing the focus on one topic.

As a consequence, even legit pinners on those boards get low engagement scores for their pins and a confusing keyword context based on all the spam saved to the board previously.

Pinterest reps explained that group boards should be only used for collaborations on “projects”.  For me, it means that group boards have to be as focused on one topic or keyword, as standard boards are. And shouldn’t involve large numbers of contributors.

What should you do now?

If you are still relatively new and don’t have many big group boards on your profile, you have two options. First, forget about group boards and work on your own boards. Second, if you still want to try to reach additional audiences with group boards, you might want to create or join only small group boards, very specifically targeted to a keyword or topic. If you already joined many large group boards, especially generic boards which allow people from all niches to pin, it’s time to evaluate how efficient these boards are for your account. Learn how I do it from this post.

2.     Build strong boards on your own account

Since Pinterest takes distribution away from the big group boards, I can tell that you naturally will redirect the majority of your efforts to building your own boards.

You might not even realize that, but a lot of established bloggers see their Pinterest traffic tanking for a while. Their accounts are packed with group boards they joined while their own boards are the minority.

If this is your case, time for a change has come. Did you notice that in their Best practices, Pinterest recommends creating at least 5 boards for each topic we cover in the blog or website? By doing this, you can target several keyword variations on each board.

3.   The “Most Relevant Boards First” Rule for a New Pin

To help your new pin succeed on Pinterest, you have to pin it to a relevant board first. Or several relevant boards. And they should be boards on your account. By saving the pin to a relevant board, you give this new image the right keyword context. By saving first to your own board, you help Pinterest boost your pin, because they claim to give priority to the pins saved by content creators.

4.     Tall pins pessimization

If you’ve been on Pinterest long enough, you probably have an idea that long pins get more engagement and space in the feeds, and in general are more successful. That’s why about 2 years ago Pinterest search results were jam-packed with infographics. Some marketing sites received a great traffic influx from Pinterest in those times.

I’m not too sad about it because I hated seeing those long pins using Pinterest on my phone. They used to occupy space or 3-7 normal sized pins and I didn’t find this fair.

Currently, Pinterest is cutting off the long pins at 2:4.2 ratio and in general, they recommend sticking to the 2:3 ratio in the future as longer pins will not only be cut but also pessimized by the Pinterest algorithm.

5.     Be a true Content Creator and save “Fresh” pins regularly

Several Pinterest reps talked a lot about the freshness of pins. Why would they touch on this subject?

Apparently, too many bloggers were repinning their own exactly the same pins too many times to multiple boards.

If you even upload the same exact image from the same exact post URL, Pinterest will recognize the image as an existent pin and in the majority of cases will immediately show you the summed up stats for that pin.

The conclusion is – you need to create a lot more new pins – new image, new text overlay, new colors – anything at all has been different on the image to be considered a new pin. They started saying content creators should save new pins weekly, but I lately hear voices saying we should do it daily. Who promised Pinterest marketing is going to get easier?

All platforms get more complicated algorithms over time as the competition between content creators promoting on these platforms grows. So if you are still on the fence about Pinterest traffic and think you can start later, I can’t recommend you highly enough to start working on your Pinterest account strategically NOW. The longer you wait, the harder it gets for a beginner.

I recently found an additional way to make your pins more “fresh” for Pinterest while saving new pin versions for your old posts.

When you just save new images directly from your web pages, Pinterest Rich Pins automatically attach to them your SEO titles and SEO descriptions (if you use Article Rich Pins). This mean, all your new pins from the same page are targeting exactly the same keywords.

Pinterest recommends you to create new pins and change keywords to give another perspective on your image and attract an additional audience. Changing pin description when you save a new pin does its positive job in this sense, but your SEO title and keywords in it remain the same.

So what’s the new solution?

When you save a new pin for an old post, don’t save the pin from your page. Instead, go to Pinterest Homepage and click on Create Pin in the right top corner:

Then you can upload the new image or if you saved it on the page, you can also retrieve the image from your site (insert the link to your page under the image upload). The most important part here is changing your Rich Pin’s title and description. Try to think of some new keywords you haven’t used in your SEO title for this post or page.

This way, you will overwrite the Rich Pins’s title that comes from your web page. The SEO description remains the same, but you can and should also use new keywords in the pin description (see the screenshot below):

6.     It’s Ok to have Multiple pins per page URL

Pinterest reps confirmed what was added to their Best Practices page – you can and you should create multiple pins per post to target different keywords or audiences in each pin version.

7.     Pinterest Analytics Work Faster

Pinterest used to have a 36-hour delay in stats shown for each specific pin. Lately, they show analytics on a pin basis almost in real time. Pinterest claims they have a 2-hour delay in reporting the data.

A side note here. The stats you are seeing on a pin basis are summed up counts for all repins, impressions and saves of all versions of this pin. Imagine a user B repinned your original pin to a bigger board and that repin got a lot more impressions and clicks. This means, your own pin will be showing a summed up stats from your pin and the repin of user B Stats.

Another note. When you look at the pin stats in a window like on a screenshot below don’t forget these are stats only for the last 30 days. It’s not all the repins/saves/impressions from the day the pin was initially saved.

8. Followers Quality over Quantity

Pinterest reps mentioned on a few events that the algorithm is showing your new pins first to your follower base. The algorithm evaluates the early engagement to see if your pin should be shown to bigger audiences.

This means that practices which involve mass following or purchasing followers are not helping you get traffic from your pin. In fact, they are doing the opposite. You get followers which are not going to engage with your pins. This gives negative signals to Pinterest about your content. This will limit your pins distribution.

They used the term “early engagement”, which is also well-known in regards to the Instagram algorithm. If your content gets good engagement soon after publication, chances are this content might get an additional boost from the platform’s algorithm.

To quote Sarah from Pinterest (the interview video above): “When you save a new Pin to Pinterest, it will be distributed it to your followers first. That’s the testing ground and it gets your content out much faster than Pinterest could ever do before. This is your most loyal audience – they love your content.”

Pinterest Changes 2018 – New Features and New Interface Easy Saving to Suggested Boards (for the Web, June 2018)

Like most Pinterest changes, this new feature is rolled to the user base step by step. So if you don’t see the same when you try to save a pin on your desktop, probably you will see it pretty soon.

The change makes saving pins it much easier. You don’t need to click on the Save button before choosing a board. Now Pinterest suggests a relevant board on your account and you can save the pin right on the same page.

Public Stats of Monthly Reach

Not everyone was happy with this one. Because a lot of established bloggers who started on Pinterest years ago were pretty happy with their high following numbers. Since they didn’t invest as much time and efforts in Pinterest anymore, the reach often decreased a lot over time. Now their low reach became public, and it doesn’t look so great when you have a sponsored post opportunity.

The reach number in your profile shows how many Pinterest users interacted with your Pins in the last 30 days. This number is rounded.

New Pinterest Profile Cover

You might have noticed on lots of Pinterest profiles a collection of the latest pins as a profile cover. You can customize which pins will appear there and choose one of the options to show:

All Recent Pins Recent Pins from a specific board, Recent Pins made from your site (includes pins saved by other users from your domain).

New Activity Tab

Activity tab is pretty cool – it shows you all the pins which were saved from your site. Not only saved by you (using Tailwind scheduler for example), but also by any other users. You can look at the most popular pins that get lots of saves from your site. Then make your conclusions about which pins or content works the best.

You have an option to keep this tab private if you wish.

Following Feed on Pinterest (March 2018)

I believe that by the time you are reading this post, this feature works on all Pinterest accounts. It’s the second mode of using Pinterest after the Smart Home feed – your “Following” feed.

It’s a feed of pins only from the people follow and these pins are shown in chronological order.

I also wrote a post earlier from which you can find out everything about Pinterest changes that happened in 2017 and earlier.

If you found this post useful, you might want to save THIS PIN below to your Pinterest Marketing board to check the post later when new updates are announced.

  The post Pinterest Update April 2019 (Latest Pinterest Changes for Bloggers and Business) appeared first on Anastasia Blogger: How to Start a Blog, Blogging Tips, Make Money Online, Work from Home.

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