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thestarkerisobvious · 4 years ago

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Witchesmarks, Superheroes and Tom Dylan Post

amazing art by @starker-stories snugglefic for @mrstarksbaby

Tony’s gentle examination of Peter’s body was very nice. Embarrassing, but nice. For a long time he stood naked before his friend and let Tony inspect every part of his body, his neck, his underarms, even allowing Tony to spread his asscheeks with gentle hands while he giggled and blushed. Then he turned and

allowed Tony to the same to his chest, his stomach, finally moving his awakening cock from side to side, combing fingers through his pubic hair. He kept his hands on Tony’s shoulders while Tony looked. Finally he lay down and allowed Tony to continue his search around his scrotum. He kept his eyes closed, reminding himself to breathe. Reminding himself of the dream-rules and the awake-rules, until Tony sat up, clearly disappointed.

“You have none.”

“I have no… what?” Peter said, pulling on his boxers hastily and diving under the covers.

“No witchesmark.”

“But I thought… I read a witchesmark could be anything, a mole or a freckle or a scar…”

“To an inquisitor, yes. In truth, no. The witchesmark is special. You were not born with one.”

“But you said they could be made…”

“It will hurt you, sweet Peter.”

“We’ve talked about this, Tony.”

Tony’s examination of Peter’s body was very nice. The tense argument they had for days afterward was not. Walpurgisnacht was upon them. The last day of April was a night of power for Tony. Peter had Tony search out a large stray dog and lure it to their house. Peter was feeding it on the sly, but steadfastly refused to name it, or even acknowledge to May and Ben that he had seen it. They wouldn’t miss it when it was gone. Peter had made a list of memories he was prepared to feed Tony, books and magazines, even a Star Wars movie or that thing he had gotten up at 3 in the morning to watch on the special channels, memories that Tony could take completely if it gave him enough strength.

“But it cannot do it without pain, my Master. I am an excellent dreamweaver, but I am not a skilled body-weaver. I have done it, but it is painful.”

“I’m not afraid of pain, Tony. I’ve caused pain. I’m not afraid of it.”

What Peter was afraid of, the thing that was the ultimate sacrifice, was the knowledge that the whole project would take weeks to complete, and in weeks there would be no more Tony. It was one thing to ask Tony to hurt him, it was another thing to ask Tony to commit to a task that would be his last before he left to sleep out the summer under the bed. Still, Peter was determined.

“I keep telling you Tony, every superhero in my comic books had to go through a lot of pain to get their powers. I’m willing to go through the pain to give you more powers, Tony. You will be the superhero. You could have a lot of cool superpowers, Tony. And I have to make up for the mistake I made. I have to do this.”

* * * *

When Peter awoke in Castle Dracula and found Tony standing beside him, he was certain that everything would be alright. Tony was dressed in odd clothing and old-fashioned spectacles, like a scientist in a Victorian drama. The laboratory he led Peter into certainly could have come straight from a Frankenstein movie. Still, Peter felt very brave. He was with Tony, after all.

There were two Tonys in that dream. Four, if the hunchback assistants lurching around the background were Tonys too, but Peter never looked to see. Doctor Tony didn’t look scary as he cuffed Peter’s wrists and ankles to the table. He looked very calm. But he was also very calm when Peter was screaming, and somehow that was even more unnerving.

The other Tony, Peter’s Tony, stayed very close to him, sometimes climbing right up to the other side of the table and lying down next to him, whispering in his ear, one hand firmly on his bare chest. Peter knew exactly what he was doing – he was urging Peter’s lungs to keep taking in oxygen through the excruciating pain, he was convincing Peter’s heart to continue it’s steady beat even though his body was clearly being taken apart. He kissed the side of Peter’s face and sang him songs in Portuguese.

For hours upon hours, for what seemed far longer than an actual night, Doctor Tony, who sometimes sported 3 or 4 pairs of arms, stitched into his body with long needles and white thread. Peter tried to picture himself as the Million Dollar Man on TV, suffering through the constant surgeries. He tried to remember how the newspapers said the Incredible Hulk experienced excruciating pain every time he transformed.

But mostly he just remembered what he had done to Missy Lovelace. He just reminded himself how he had ordered Tony not to make reports when he returned from the Lovelace House, although Tony clearly wanted to. The idea of adults yelling had always upset Peter, but the idea of adults yelling at each other was more than he could bear. Over and over again Peter had sent Tony out to feed on Missy’s fear without listening to a word about what Missy was afraid of. That’s why he let Doctor Tony continue with the needles. That’s why he steadfastly tried to concentrate on his Tony trying to teach him to count in Portuguese.

* * * *

For the entire weekend Peter didn’t even get out of bed. But when the weekend was over he had to haul himself up and struggle through school. Staying home from school required a doctor’s visit, and Peter didn’t want to see a doctor.

He didn’t want to have to explain to the doctor, let alone Ben and May, how he had managed to grow a third nipple on the left side of his chest.

He kept it hidden under a bandaid which he hid under a larger bandage which he hid under an undershirt that protected him from his shirt. He felt every layer. It throbbed and ached on his body, radiating throughout his whole frame. Every touch against his shirt, or anywhere near his chest at all, went through his body with a painful and embarrassing electric jolt.

His only relief came after dark when Tony came out from under the bed to hold him. He feasted on the pain, holding Peter gently, laying underneath him like a warm body pillow. Tony stroked his hair and told him endless stories and taught him a song in Portuguese about chickens. Tony knew a lot of children’s songs in Portuguese. He fed gently from the vein in Peter’s neck, but never ventured to touch the witchesmark, assuring Peter it would heal in time.

Peter hoped it would. Peter couldn’t even conceive of letting Tony touch it, let alone use it to feed.

“Is this how you gave the Post family members superpowers? By a body-weaving? Is that why only did it for one generation, and then stopped?”

“No, that magic is of spells.”

“Did someone do something bad, or see something bad, and then had to spend the rest of their lives being a hero?” He was laying with his back against Tony’s chest, looking out his window as Tony played with his finger’s idly, sometimes kissing or licking the vein in his neck, sometimes suckling at the fingertips.

“That’s what heroes do. Batman watched his parents be murdered, so he had to spend the rest of his life fighting crime. All heroes have tragic backstories. Not Superman though, although I suppose having your whole planet blow up is pretty tragic. Or was it because of the Civil War? Was that why you did it?”

“I ‘did it’ because the spells tasked me to do it.”

“But it seems like it all happened at once, like all the family members of one generation got powers, and then they just stopped. What happened?”

Tony was sucking gently at Peter’s neck. Often he would feed to avoid answering questions, but when Peter insisted, he told the story.

“It was after I killed Tom Dylan Post and consumed his body. His father, Thomas Post, sought to forbid me from harming, killing or consuming the body of any post male, ever. To this end he, and his brothers, and his sons, they brought out all the German books from the hidden rooms. Books that had not been opened in many generations. One had not been opened since the death of Nehemiah Post.

“There they found many spells that they had never seen before, had never heard of. Some were written in the old German, but others were in Latin.

“They found many different protections of the body, as well as other extraordinary spells. But those tasks, I told them, took great strength. More strength than I had. More strength than I could take from cattle or swine or any other meat offering. ‘Without the infernal vapors, how can it be done?’ I argued. I tried to deceive them… I thought I could convince them to abandon their plan… but then the Post sisters sought out the seals of Evorá, and the spells from the Book of The Student, and I feasted. I could not continue to feast upon that magic and also deny that the German spells were possible…”

“Wait, you deceived them?” Peter wondered, trying to turn his head enough to see Tony’s face. “You lied to them?”

“I did not lie…”

“You exaggerated. Same thing, Mr. Spock.”

Peter moved his body away enough so he could watch Tony’s face while he spoke. Watching Tony’s face while he spoke always revealed as much, of not more, than his actual words.

“I didn’t know you could tell them things that weren’t true…”

“Ezra and Nehemiah Post sealed me to always speak the truth to them and to their sons. They died. Their sons died. After that, no one thought to repeat the spell.”

“Wait… you’re saying the Posts had… they had spell books with spells in them, that they didn’t even know were there? And they always could have… but why didn’t you want to give them superpowers?”

“It was very difficult work. Tedious. To make Cecil Wayne Post impervious to the bullets we had to spend three days and nights in each other’s arms…” The look of disgust was obvious on Tony’s face. Clearly Tony did not like Cecil Wayne.

“Alright, now go back and tell me why you killed Tom Dylan Post.”

“He tasked me to do it.”

“Oh, he committed suicide. I wondered if that’s what happened.”

“Thomas summoned me to determine what befell of his son. When I told him what I had done, he sealed me to the spot where I stood. It was in the south dining hall. For days I stood there, immobile, while they prepared the spell to compel me to speak only the truth. It was a difficult spell, it required a black cat, a black sheep, and a black duck.”

He laughed ruefully, his eyes lowered. He looked like a man talking about a recent pain, not a pain from a century ago. “A waste of their time,” he muttered. “I was never bound to conceal what I had done to him. Ada and Enid and the girls came to me and I told them true. They cried and held each other. Ada clung to my feet and begged me to take her own life as well…”

“Oh my gosh, Tony... you were… you were like a loaded gun in that house. What did you say to her?”

“I vowed to obey her. I could not deny her. She sat down at my feet in the middle of the night and wrote down the spell.”

“The spell… to kill her?”

“Yes. Should she bring me a coffin made by her uncle, a shroud stitched by her sister, and lay down in a grave dug by the youngest member of the family and read a prayer written for her by Justina Post.”

“Oh. I think I get it. One of the four of them should have been able to talk her out of it. So then… when they did do that spell with the three animals, and you told them the truth and… did they punish you?”

“They had no time. They had to release me to protect the land from the angry townsfolk.”

“And from all those people who set fire to the house that was on Chimney Hill?”

“The South House. They set it alight because they thought it was the Post House itself.”

“Oh. That was genius, Tony. But I thought… I thought that was Tom Dylan’s house.”

“It was the house where I killed him.”

“So, that makes sense, after Thomas Post finds out that you could be used as a suicide weapon, it makes sense that he disarmed you that way before any of his other kids decided to... so he found a spell to make it so you could never kill another Post...”

“That no Post could be harmed, killed, or their body consumed, by demon, angel or fae or spirit. The family disagreed on the nature of my substance, and so they put a seal on all Post descendants against demon, angel, fae or spirit.”

“The Post family thought you were fae? Or at least some of them?”

“Justina Post called me “Oberon.” Lysander Post called me “Puck.”

He nuzzled his face back into Peter’s shoulder and told him the story. About the entire family working together, the men and the women, to provide Tony with enough strength and subsistence to him, which in turn allowed him to give special powers to the family members, one by one. It was a time of great cooperation and collaboration that went on for years. For generations the women and the men had kept their books separate, even hidden. It was normal for the Post women to put wards on their books so that their brothers couldn’t even touch them. For a decade the entire family worked and studied together to the same end. Until the day the message came that Cecil Wayne had died in the war.

“Because he couldn’t withstand a cannonball?” Peter asked.

“He most certainly did withstand the cannonball!” Tony exclaimed, clearly insulted.

“But he did not withstand the second.”

“Could you do these things for me?” Peter asked finally. “You could make me impervious to bullet wounds, or snakebite, or make me able to jump out of a 20-foot tree? No of course you couldn’t,” he said before Tony even spoke. “You would have to have a whole family working together… what?”

Tony had slipped out from under him, and was now at his side, caressing his face and whispering in his ear.

“Each night, from dusk to dawn, we must needs lay intwined in each others arms. You could not sleep whilst you were with me. You would need give your body over completely to me,” he said with a grin, his hand staring and caressing Peter’s stomach. “For the whole of the time you could give me no command, nor forbid me in any way. You would need give up to me your most guarded secrets…”

“I’m listening.”

Tony sat up on one elbow and, still grinning, turned Peter’s mouth to his. “Many Post men could not succeed in the ritual,” he teased. “You could wear nothing but a white linen sheet for three days. In that time you could not invoke the holy name of God, or any saint. And you would submit yourself to the five-fold kiss…”

“What is the fivefold… you know what? Never mind,” Peter said, pushing Tony away, but just a little bit. “This sounds too complicated for now,” he said, grinning himself. “I’d have to have my own place before I can start walking around in a linen sheet for three days. Not that it matters. You said the Post Daughters had to work to create enough power for you to feed on so that you could… what?

“Let me guess…” he scolded, running his fingers over Tony’s smug grin. “You exaggerated about how much power you needed.”

Tony shrugged. “To learn a new spell is always difficult. The first time. The second and third times, it becomes no great matter.”

“Is it like your dreamwork? The first time you make it takes a lot of strength, but once it’s already made…

“Wait… Tony… I forgot to ask you. Some of those books you told me about, I found one called the Book of St. Cyprian. I mean not the book, but I found the title in the book catalog. I could order it, if I could afford it. Would it be the same book the Post daughters had?

Tony was clearly surprised. “My diligent library-pilgrim,” he said, kissing Peter’s hand with a small smile. “My master scholar. Was it copied by hand?”

“Well… no. It’s published, it’s printed just like a regular book.”

Tony’s smile faded. “The only true books of St. Cyprian are copied by hand.”

“And written in Portuguese?”

“Of course.”

“So I’m going to have to learn Portuguese,” Peter said with a heavy sigh, snuggling, as best he could, back into Tony’s arms.

“AND build a huge rabbit hutch and stock it with rabbits. And build myself a house on the Chimney Hill foundation. That’s a lot of work. I think I’ll build the house first.”

He turned his head and kissed Tony’s cheek.

“I think it’s time I moved out.”

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The Master Post (not THAT Master Post, the other one)

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AS ALWAYS please direct questions, comments, and constructive crit to @witchwayisright

#The Thing That Lives Under The Bed #Demon!Tony #But not THAT Demon!Tony #Von's Moodboards #TheWitchwayWritesStuff #Starker #Peter Parker/Tony Stark

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joshuajacksonlyblog · 6 years ago

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Bitcoin Price Hits New All-Time High in Argentina

Bitcoin price just reached a new all-time high…in Argentina. Rampant inflation in recession-ravaged countries like this highlights more than ever the need for deflationary currencies like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Price Is Going Wild

You’ve noticed that the price of Bitcoin 00 has gone bananas over the last few days. Whether spiked by coordinated buying, enthusiasm over Fidelity or institutional front-running, the news keeps on coming. And the price keeps on climbing.

Microsoft will be launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.

EBay is gearing up to accept cryptocurrencies. Bakkt may be approved to launch within the next 10 days by the CFTC. You can even buy your sandwiches in BTC at Whole Foods.

All this institutional investment shows that this latest rally is not retail-driven. Although, with Bitcoin trending on Google searches once again, FOMO is about to kick in. BTC price is going in one direction only for the foreseeable future.

Whether it will break through its 2017 ATH is the question on everybody’s mind, and in one country, it already has.

Bitcoin New ATH in Argentina

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high in Argentine pesos. The insane pricetag in Argentina’s local currency just goes to highlight even more the need for a deflationary currency like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is at all time highs in Argentinian Pesos (ARS). That's inflation for you lol. pic.twitter.com/ZsoXm7IozI

— Matias (@MatiasTrader) May 13, 2019

Of course, Argentina isn’t the only country to have hit new BTC all-time highs. In Venezuela, it’s impossible to track its price in local currency with an inflation rate of over one million percent per year.

But this is a new one for Argentina whose inflation rate at 50 percent per year looks modest when compared to its South American counterpart.

A glance at the trading volume graphs from Local Bitcoins couldn’t be starker. When you see the amount of bitcoin changing hands (in BTC), you’ll notice a small spike this week, but smaller than a few weeks ago–and significantly less than the mania of 2017.

However, when you flip the chart to ARS, the 2017 ATH looks almost insignificant.

The Inevitable Collapse of Fiat

It feels like deja vu. Just four years ago as the now-president of Argentina was running for office, the very same words were spoken. Untamable inflation has always and will always be an issue for countries like Argentina. Reuters pointed out yesterday:

Macri’s bid to win re-election in a presidential ballot in October will likely be closely tied with his government’s ability to rein in inflation that has hammered voters’ wallets and dragged on economic growth.

Finance professor at Babson College Dr. John Edmunds focused his career on Latin American economies. He believes that inflation isn’t the main issue with the Argentine economy. The fact that its financial system only allows for the top 5-10 percent of the population to gain access to credit is more problematic. He says:

They do so many things well except finance, the financial system is exactly the same as it was in 1860. Every 15 years it collapses, you can pretty much set your watch by it… It maintains the flow of capital into the sectors that the upper-class think should have it.

Bitcoin price may be going wild against the dollar and hyperbolic against the peso, but its price isn’t the greatest news here. Bitcoin offers the people of Argentina a solution to their savings getting wiped out by inflation. It also keeps the government out while letting everyone can access it, not just the top 10 percent.

Will Bitcoin price climb even higher in Latin America? Share your thoughts below!

Images via Shutterstock

The post Bitcoin Price Hits New All-Time High in Argentina appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

from Cryptocracken Tumblr http://bit.ly/2W9k4W0 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Cryptocracken Tumblr

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peterbabytt · 5 years ago

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Nicknames: Kay/Kye

Age: I turn 17 next week boiios!!!

Favorite color: purple 💜

Unusual talent: my fingers are incredibly flexible, so I can knot them up on both hands lol

Pets: I have a pit lab mix, her name is Nilla, and a cat named Tater lol

Favorite food: idk about food, but my go to snack are dill pickle sunflower seeds lol

First Tumblr URL: uhhhh... I think it was something like secretlyaunicorn or something 😂

Country: USA

Languages: English and tiny bits and phrases of a bunch more (Latin, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, French, German, ASL, etc.)

Major: I’m not in college or university yet, but I’m going to be studying theatrical stuff, so like tech/design and acting! 😁 maybe I’ll minor in creative writing, but... who knows? 😂

First Ever Ship: Destiel tbh... 😬😂

One NOTP: Wincest 😬

Guilty Pleasure: one direction music lolol

Piercings: a single piercing on my right ear, filled with a little hoop earring. I call it my gay hoop lol

Aesthetic: basically your stereotypical lesbian who was set on fire, dumped on a theater’s stage only to have the curtain fall and land on, then slap on a school pride logo and there you have it. Oh, and safety pins and buttons!

Visited Countries: I was supposed to go on a touring singing trip to Europe for 2 weeks last summer, but uhh... yea, that didn’t work...

Thank you for tagging me, holy heck! Sorry it took so long lol

I tag @candypaintparker @darker-soft-starker @mintystarker @starkerforlife6969 @starker-owns-this-bitch

Eep! Didn’t realize I was tagged by @starkerkeyz

Nickname(s): Amar, Mia, Mar

Age: 31

Favourite Color: RED

Unusual Talent: I have common sense, that’s a talent, right?

Pets: Her name is Ember, she’s a Black Lab/Germ Shep mix. She’s super sweet and hates everyone else because I suck and I didn’t know how to socialize my dog. So, in many ways, she’s like me.

Favourite Food: Lasagna

First Tumblr URL: As far back as I can REMEMBER (I’ve been here a long time), it was Deanmadeadealwithademonand, but I changed that later to Carryonmywincestsounds.

Favourite Fandom: Uhm, probably the Star Trek fandom, tbh. They’re ancient baddass grandaddies and I love it.

Country: USA

Languages: English

Major: Pajamas, I don’t have a major, but this would probably be it

First Ever Ship: Vegeta x Goku

One NOTP: Destiel (and like 90% of the MCU ships)

Guilty Pleasure: I don’t feel guilty for any of my pleasures, but if there’s something I SHOULD feel guilty about… well, only certain people know those

Piercings: 2 in each ear at the lobe

Aesthetic: Was this meant to be clothes? If that, pajamas. If just a general aesthetic, then I’m gonna go with zombies/undead and any variation of that.

Visited Countries: Canada, and I’m lucky I even have that.

Tagging: @peterbabytt @mrspeterstark @hardermrstark @starkerintheparker

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cryptobrief · 6 years ago

Link

Bitcoin price just reached a new all-time high…in Argentina. Rampant inflation in recession-ravaged countries like this highlights more than ever the need for deflationary currencies like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Price Is Going Wild

Microsoft will be launching the first decentralized infrastructure implementation directly on the Bitcoin blockchain.

EBay is gearing up to accept cryptocurrencies. Bakkt may be approved to launch within the next 10 days by the CFTC. You can even buy your sandwiches in BTC at Whole Foods.

Whether it will break through its 2017 ATH is the question on everybody’s mind, and in one country, it already has.

Bitcoin New ATH in Argentina

Bitcoin reached a new all-time high in Argentine pesos. The insane pricetag in Argentina’s local currency just goes to highlight even more the need for a deflationary currency like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is at all time highs in Argentinian Pesos (ARS). That's inflation for you lol. pic.twitter.com/ZsoXm7IozI

— Matias (@MatiasTrader) May 13, 2019

But this is a new one for Argentina whose inflation rate at 50 percent per year looks modest when compared to its South American counterpart.

However, when you flip the chart to ARS, the 2017 ATH looks almost insignificant.

The Inevitable Collapse of Fiat

Will Bitcoin price climb even higher in Latin America? Share your thoughts below!

Images via Shutterstock

The post Bitcoin Price Hits New All-Time High in Argentina appeared first on Bitcoinist.com.

#briefs

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outsourcininsit · 7 years ago

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American Freelancers Are Loosing More Jobs Due to Outsourcing Abroad

American workers are increasingly embracing the freelancing lifestyle at a time when increased competition around the world threatens to depress wages in the U.S.

Americans are drawn to freelancing — being an independent contractor and other types of non-full-time-with-benefits employment — and the idea of being their own boss and having more control over their work. But it is a progressively more cutthroat field where the competition lives thousands of miles away and gets paid cents on the dollar.

An estimated 57.3 million Americans freelance, according to a recent study from freelancing platform Upwork and the Freelancers Union. That figure represents more than a third of the country’s workforce — and an increase from 53 million people from just three years ago. And this number is expected to rise. By 2027, 86.5 million Americans will freelance, representing more than half of the country’s workforce.

American freelancers do better than their overseas peers

The average income for someone who worked independently full-time in the U.S. was $65,300 in 2016, according to a June report from MBO Partners, a business services company based in Virginia. Comparatively, the estimated median household income as of 2016 was roughly $59,000, according to Census data.

But this could change if global trends related to freelancing begin to affect workers in the U.S. Globally, freelancers work for $19 an hour on average, according to a recent survey of more than 21,000 freelancers from payment services provider Payoneer, down from $21 an hour just three years ago.

The average hourly wage for all American workers — $26.55 in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — far exceeds the average for freelancers around the world. And the difference is even starker across industries: Freelancers working in IT and computer programming globally charge an average hourly rate of $21, which is just over half the average hourly wage of U.S. workers in this field ($38.90).

Why some freelancers could soon see lower wages

To illustrate the challenges freelancers in the U.S. could soon face, Payoneer CEO Scott Galit told the story of a man he heard speak at a freelancing event Payoneer sponsored in Dhaka, Bangladesh a couple years ago.

“This guy who was well-regarded in the freelancer community there got up and talked about how his breakthrough year was the year he made 100,000 taka (roughly $1,200) as a freelancer — that was the first time he started to believe he was successful,” Galit said. One taka, Bangladesh’s currency, is equal to roughly 1.2 cents in the U.S.

Today, nearly three-quarters of freelancers around the world find their work through online marketplaces. This has created economic opportunity for people in South Asia and Eastern Europe who might otherwise immigrate to another country for work. Workers in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East represented just over 60% of Payoneer’s survey respondents — only 4.1% of the freelancers who participated heralded from North America.

“It opens up white-collar professions to globalized competition in a way they didn’t face before,” said Josh Wright, chief economist at HR recruiting software provider iCIMS.

The significant growth in the freelance workforce globally contributed to the decline in average wages Payoneer uncovered, Galit said. But not all freelancers have faced the same degree of competition thus far.

Highly-skilled versus low-skilled freelancers

Freelancers work in a split market, said Gene Zaino, president and CEO of MBO Partners. On one side, there are those who perform undifferentiated, commodity-type work for lower wages such as translating a document or creating a simple graphic, he said. The other half is composed of people with more advanced skills such as a senior computer programmer.

Freelancers who do lower-skilled tasks who would see more competition from people abroad and, presumably, lower wages. “In that world it’s a race to the bottom in terms of competitiveness,” said Zaino. “There’s a very large pool of talent willing to work like that.”

“Factory workers have learned they can’t just work with their hands if they want to make a comfortable living — they have to work with technology,” Wright said.

Building trust with clients could help, Galit said. If a freelancer has a proven track record, a client could be more inclined to return to them rather than take a chance on someone new, he added.

Why freelancers may not need to worry

But the growth in the number of global freelancers is not necessarily a bad thing. Some fare better than others. Jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) grew at three times the rate of other jobs between 2000 and 2010, according to the Smithsonian Science Education Center, but there weren’t enough workers to fill them all. By 2018, it is estimated that there will be 2.4 million unfilled STEM jobs.

In a recent survey from Upwork, 41% of IT managers said hiring has gotten more difficult in the past year, three times more than the number who said it got easier.

To fill the gap, employers are turning to freelance workers. Upwork reported more than half (53%) of IT managers have hired a freelancer.

Higher demand doesn’t just mean that a freelancer has a greater chance of getting hired, it also means they spend less time looking for work. A third of freelancers in the legal field spend more than 7 hours a week finding new jobs, compared with just 17% of those working in IT and programming, according to Payoneer.

Thus, a freelancer’s livelihood will remain positive so long as their skills are in need. “There’s such a scarcity of talent,” Galit said. “If anything, there will be aggressive wage inflation if you’re highly educated.”

Originally posted on https://www.marketwatch.com/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/as-more-americans-become-freelancers-they-face-growing-competition-from-abroad-2017-10-28

from Outsourcing Insight https://www.outsourcinginsight.com/american-freelancers-are-loosing-more-jobs-due-to-outsourcing-abroad/

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theginkosakata · 3 years ago

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Latin Starker Week

Dia 4: Confesiones / Starker ambientado en civil war

@starkerparadise

#Starker #IronSpider #Tony x Peter #latinstarkerweek2021 #starker week latina 2021 #highschool au #student!peter #professor!tony #underage!peter #starker!moodboard #high school!au #au #ginko posts #starker week latin

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trendingnews-love · 7 years ago

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How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food

FORTALEZA, Brazil — Children’s squeals rang through the muggy morning air as a woman pushed a gleaming white cart along pitted, trash-strewn streets. She was making deliveries to some of the poorest households in this seaside city, bringing pudding, cookies and other packaged foods to the customers on her sales route.

Celene da Silva, 29, is one of thousands of door-to-door vendors for Nestlé, helping the world’s largest packaged food conglomerate expand its reach into a quarter-million households in Brazil’s farthest-flung corners.

As she dropped off variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal, there was something striking about her customers: Many were visibly overweight, even small children.

She gestured to a home along her route and shook her head, recalling how its patriarch, a morbidly obese man, died the previous week. “He ate a piece of cake and died in his sleep,” she said.

Mrs. da Silva, who herself weighs more than 200 pounds, recently discovered that she had high blood pressure, a condition she acknowledges is probably tied to her weakness for fried chicken and the Coca-Cola she drinks with every meal, breakfast included.

Nestlé’s direct-sales army in Brazil is part of a broader transformation of the food system that is delivering Western-style processed food and sugary drinks to the most isolated pockets of Latin America, Africa and Asia. As their growth slows in the wealthiest countries, multinational food companies like Nestlé, PepsiCo and General Mills have been aggressively expanding their presence in developing nations, unleashing a marketing juggernaut that is upending traditional diets from Brazil to Ghana to India.

A New York Times examination of corporate records, epidemiological studies and government reports — as well as interviews with scores of nutritionists and health experts around the world — reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

The new reality is captured by a single, stark fact: Across the world, more people are now obese than underweight. At the same time, scientists say, the growing availability of high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods is generating a new type of malnutrition, one in which a growing number of people are both overweight and undernourished.

“The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds — cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”

Even critics of processed food acknowledge that there are multiple factors in the rise of obesity, including genetics, urbanization, growing incomes and more sedentary lives. Nestlé executives say their products have helped alleviate hunger, provided crucial nutrients, and that the company has squeezed salt, fat and sugar from thousands of items to make them healthier. But Sean Westcott, head of food research and development at Nestlé, conceded obesity has been an unexpected side effect of making inexpensive processed food more widely available.

“We didn’t expect what the impact would be,” he said.

Part of the problem, he added, is a natural tendency for people to overeat as they can afford more food. Nestlé, he said, strives to educate consumers about proper portion size and to make and market foods that balance “pleasure and nutrition.”

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children, according to research published recently in The New England Journal of Medicine. The prevalence of obesity has doubled in 73 countries since 1980, contributing to four million premature deaths, the study found.

Obesity’s Spread Across the World

Obesity rates in the United States, the South Pacific and the Persian Gulf are among the highest in the world — more than one in four Americans is obese. But over the last 35 years, obesity, defined as having a body mass index over 30, has grown the fastest in countries throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.

Percent of population with obesity

U.S. 10%

Brazil 7%

China 0.7%

Mali 0.7%

1980

U.S. 27%

Brazil 18%

China 5%

Mali 11%

2015

Change in obesity rates since 1980

U.S. +154%

Brazil +153%

China +674%

Mali +28%

By Audrey Carlsen | Source: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Data not available for French Guiana and Western Sahara.

The story is as much about economics as it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans — the building blocks for many industrial food products. It is this economic ecosystem that pulls in mom-and-pop stores, big box retailers, food manufacturers and distributors, and small vendors like Mrs. da Silva.

In places as distant as China, South Africa and Colombia, the rising clout of big food companies also translates into political influence, stymieing public health officials seeking soda taxes or legislation aimed at curbing the health impacts of processed food.

For a growing number of nutritionists, the obesity epidemic is inextricably linked to the sales of packaged foods, which grew 25 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 10 percent in the United States, according to Euromonitor, a market research firm. An even starker shift took place with carbonated soft drinks; sales in Latin America have doubled since 2000, overtaking sales in North America in 2013, the World Health Organization reported.

The same trends are mirrored with fast food, which grew 30 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 21 percent in the United States, according to Euromonitor. Take, for example, Domino’s Pizza, which in 2016 added 1,281 stores — one “every seven hours,” noted its annual report — all but 171 of them overseas.

“At a time when some of the growth is more subdued in established economies, I think that strong emerging-market posture is going to be a winning position,” Mark Schneider, chief executive of Nestlé, recently told investors. Developing markets now provide the company with 42 percent of its sales.

For some companies, that can mean specifically focusing on young people, as Ahmet Bozer, president of Coca-Cola International, described to investors in 2014. “Half the world’s population has not had a Coke in the last 30 days,” he said. “There’s 600 million teenagers who have not had a Coke in the last week. So the opportunity for that is huge.”

Industry defenders say that processed foods are essential to feed a growing, urbanizing world of people, many of them with rising incomes, demanding convenience.

“We’re not going to get rid of all factories and go back to growing all grain. It’s nonsense. It’s not going to work,” said Mike Gibney, a professor emeritus of food and health at University College Dublin and a consultant to Nestlé. “If I ask 100 Brazilian families to stop eating processed food, I have to ask myself: What will they eat? Who will feed them? How much will it cost?”

In many ways, Brazil is a microcosm of how growing incomes and government policies have led to longer, better lives and largely eradicated hunger. But now the country faces a stark new nutrition challenge: over the last decade, the country’s obesity rate has nearly doubled to 20 percent, and the portion of people who are overweight has nearly tripled to 58 percent. Each year, 300,000 people are diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a condition with strong links to obesity.

There are now more obese than underweight adults in the world. Sales of ultraprocessed foods have more than doubled over the last decade — even spreading into developing countries. Here’s what the junk food transition looks like in Brazil. By Neil Collier and Ora DeKornfeld

Brazil also highlights the food industry’s political prowess. In 2010, a coalition of Brazilian food and beverage companies torpedoed a raft of measures that sought to limit junk food ads aimed at children. The latest challenge has come from the country’s president, Michel Temer, a business-friendly centrist whose conservative allies in Congress are now seeking to chip away at the handful of regulations and laws intended to encourage healthy eating.

“What we have is a war between two food systems, a traditional diet of real food once produced by the farmers around you and the producers of ultra-processed food designed to be over-consumed and which in some cases are addictive,” said Carlos A. Monteiro, a professor of nutrition and public health at the University of São Paulo.

“It’s a war,” he said, “but one food system has disproportionately more power than the other.”

Mrs. da Silva reaches customers in Fortaleza’s slums, many of whom don’t have ready access to a supermarket. She champions the product she sells, exulting in the nutritional claims on the labels that boast of added vitamins and minerals.

“Everyone here knows that Nestlé products are good for you,” she said, gesturing to cans of Mucilon, the infant cereal whose label says it is “packed with calcium and niacin,” but also Nescau 2.0, a sugar-laden chocolate powder.

She became a Nestlé vendor two years ago, when her family of five was struggling to get by. Though her husband is still unemployed, things are looking up. With the $185 a month she earns selling Nestlé products, she was able to buy a new refrigerator, a television and a gas stove for the family’s three-room home at the edge of a fetid tidal marsh.

The company’s door-to-door program fulfills a concept that Nestlé articulated in its 1976 annual shareholder report, which noted that “integration with the host country is a basic aim of our company.” Started a decade ago in Brazil, the program serves 700,000 “low-income consumers each month,” according to its website. Despite the country’s continuing economic crisis, the program has been growing 10 percent a year, according to Felipe Barbosa, a company supervisor.

He said sagging incomes among poor and working-class Brazilians had actually been a boon for direct sales. That’s because unlike most food retailers, Nestlé gives customers a full month to pay for their purchases. It also helps that saleswomen — the program employs only women — know when their customers receive Bolsa Família, a monthly government subsidy for low-income households.

“The essence of our program is to reach the poor,” Mr. Barbosa said. “What makes it work is the personal connection between the vendor and the customer.”

Nestlé increasingly also portrays itself as a leader in its commitment to community and health. Two decades ago, it anointed itself a “nutrition health and wellness company.” Over the years, the company says it has reformulated nearly 9,000 products to reduce salt, sugar and fat, and it has delivered billions of servings fortified with vitamins and minerals. It emphasizes food safety and the reduction of food waste, and it works with nearly 400,000 farmers around the world to promote sustainable farming.

In an interview at Nestlé’s new $50 million campus in suburban Cleveland, Mr. Westcott, head of food research and development, said the door-to-door sales program reflected another of the company’s slogans: “Creating shared values.”

“We create shared value by creating micro-entrepreneurs — people that can build their own businesses,” he said. A company like Nestlé can bolster the well-being of entire communities “by actually sending positive messages around nutrition,” he said.

Nestlé’s portfolio of foods is vast and different from that of some snack companies, which make little effort to focus on healthy offerings. They include Nesfit, a whole-grain cereal; low-fat yogurts like Molico that contain a relatively modest amount of sugar (six grams); and a range of infant cereals, served with milk or water, that are fortified with vitamins, iron and probiotics.

Dr. Gibney, the nutritionist and Nestlé consultant, said the company deserved credit for reformulating healthier products.

But of the 800 products that Nestlé says are available through its vendors, Mrs. da Silva says her customers are mostly interested in only about two dozen of them, virtually all sugar-sweetened items like Kit-Kats; Nestlé Greek Red Berry, a 3.5-ounce cup of yogurt with 17 grams of sugar; and Chandelle Pacoca, a peanut-flavored pudding in a container the same size as the yogurt that has 20 grams of sugar — nearly the entire World Health Organization’s recommended daily limit.

Until recently, Nestlé sponsored a river barge that delivered tens of thousands of cartons of milk powder, yogurt, chocolate pudding, cookies and candy to isolated communities in the Amazon basin. Since the barge was taken out of service in July, private boat owners have stepped in to meet the demand.

“On one hand, Nestlé is a global leader in water and infant formula and a lot of dairy products,” said Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. “On the other hand, they are going into the backwoods of Brazil and selling their candy.”

Dr. Popkin finds the door-to-door marketing emblematic of an insidious new era in which companies seek to reach every doorstep in an effort to grow and become central to communities in the developing world. “They’re not leaving an inch of country left aside,” he said.

Public health advocates have criticized the company before. In the 1970s, Nestlé was the target of a boycott in the United States for aggressively marketing infant formula in developing countries, which nutritionists said undermined healthful breast-feeding. In 1978, the president of Nestlé Brazil, Oswaldo Ballarin, was called to testify at highly publicized United States Senate hearings on the infant formula issue, and he declared that criticisms were the work of church activity aimed at “undermining the free enterprise system.”

On the streets of Fortaleza, where Nestlé is admired for its Swiss pedigree and perceived high quality, negative sentiments about the company are rarely heard.

The home of Joana D’arc de Vasconcellos, 53, another vendor, is filled with Nestlé-branded stuffed animals and embossed certificates she earned at nutrition classes sponsored by Nestlé. In her living room, pride of place is given to framed photographs of her children at age 2, each posed before a pyramid of empty Nestlé infant formula cans. As her son and daughter grew up, she switched to other Nestlé products for children: Nido Kinder, a toddler milk powder; Chocapic, a chocolate-flavored cereal; and the chocolate milk powder Nescau.

“When he was a baby, my son didn’t like to eat — until I started giving him Nestlé foods,” she said proudly.

Ms. de Vasconcellos has diabetes and high blood pressure. Her 17-year-old daughter, who weighs more than 250 pounds, has hypertension and polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder strongly linked to obesity. Many other relatives have one or more ailments often associated with poor diets: her mother and two sisters (diabetes and hypertension), and her husband (hypertension.) Her father died three years ago after losing his feet to gangrene, a complication of diabetes.

“Every time I go to the public health clinic, the line for diabetics is out the door,” she said. “You’d be hard pressed to find a family here that doesn’t have it.”

Ms. de Vasconcellos previously tried selling Tupperware and Avon products door to door, but many customers failed to pay. Six years ago, after a friend told her about Nestlé’s direct sales program, Ms. Vasconcellos jumped at the chance.

She says her customers have never failed to pay her.

“People have to eat,” she said.

In May 2000, Denise Coitinho, then director of nutrition for the Ministry of Health, was at a Mother’s Day party at her children’s school when her mobile phone rang. It was Nestlé’s chief of government relations. “He was really upset,” she recalled.

The source of Nestlé’s concern was a new policy that Brazil had adopted and was pushing at the World Health Organization. If adopted, the policy would have recommended that children around the world breast-feed for six months, rather than the previous recommendation of four to six months, she said.

“Two months may not seem like a lot, but it’s a lot of revenue. It’s a lot of selling,” said Ms. Coitinho, who left her position in 2004 and is now an independent nutrition consultant to, among others, the United Nations. In the end, infant food companies succeeded in stalling the policy for a year, she said. Asked about her story, Nestlé said that it “believes breast milk is the ideal nutrition for babies” and that it supports and promotes the W.H.O. guidelines.

It is hard to overstate the economic power and political access enjoyed by food and beverage conglomerates in Brazil, which are responsible for 10 percent of the nation’s economic output and employ 1.6 million people.

In 2014, food companies donated $158 million to members of Brazil’s National Congress, a threefold increase over 2010, according to Transparência Brasil. A study the organization released last year found that more than half of Brazil’s current federal legislators had been elected with donations from the food industry – before the Supreme Court banned corporate contributions in 2015.

The single largest donor to congressional candidates was the Brazilian meat giant JBS, which gave candidates $112 million in 2014; Coca-Cola gave $6.5 million in campaign contributions that year, and McDonald’s donated $561,000.

So the stage was set for a mammoth political battle when, in 2006, the government sought to enact far-reaching food-industry regulations to curb obesity and disease. The measures, growing out of the earlier breast-feeding policy, included advertising alerts to warn consumers about foods high in sugar, salt and saturated fats, as well as marketing restrictions to dampen the lure of highly processed foods and sugary beverages, especially those aimed at children.

Taking a page from the government’s successful efforts to limit tobacco marketing, the new rules would have barred brands like Pepsi and KFC from sponsoring sports and cultural events.

“We thought that Brazil could be a model for the rest of the world, a country that puts the well-being of its citizens above all else,” said Dirceu Raposo de Mello, then director of the government’s health surveillance agency, widely known by the Portuguese acronym Anvisa. “Unfortunately, the food industry did not feel the same way.”

The food companies took a low profile, mustering behind the Brazilian Association of Food Industries, a lobbying group whose board of vice presidents included executives from Nestlé; the American meat giant Cargill; and Unilever, the European food conglomerate that owns brands like Hellmann’s, Mazola oil and Ben & Jerry’s. The association declined to comment for this article.

During the early days of public hearings, the industry seemed to be negotiating the rules in good faith but behind the scenes, health advocates say corporate lawyers and lobbyists were quietly waging a multipronged campaign to derail the process.

Industry-financed academics began appearing on TV to assail the rules as economically ruinous. Other experts wrote newspaper editorial pieces suggesting that exercise and stricter parenting might be more effective than regulations aimed at fighting childhood obesity.

The industry’s most potent rallying cry, analysts say, was its strident denunciation of the proposed advertising restrictions as censorship. The accusation had particular resonance given the nearly two decades of military dictatorship that ended in 1985.

At one meeting, a representative from the food industry accused Anvisa of trying to subvert parental authority, saying mothers had the right to decide what to feed their children, recalled Vanessa Schottz, a nutrition advocate. In another meeting, she said, a toy industry representative stood up and assailed the proposed marketing rules, saying they would deprive Brazilian children of the toys that sometimes accompany fast-food meals. “He said we were killing the dreams of children,” Ms. Schottz recalled. “We were dumbfounded.”

Chastened by the industry criticism, Anvisa in late 2010 withdrew most of the proposed restrictions. What remained was a single proposal requiring that ads include a warning about unhealthy food and beverages.

Then came the lawsuits.

Over the course of several months, a disparate collection of industry groups filed 11 lawsuits against Anvisa. The plaintiffs included the national association of biscuit manufacturers, the corn growers lobby and an alliance of chocolate, cocoa and candy companies. Some of the lawsuits claimed that the regulations violated constitutional protections on free speech, while others said the agency did not have the standing to regulate the food and advertising industries.

Although health advocates say the litigation was not entirely unexpected, they were blindsided by the response of the federal government’s top lawyer, Attorney General Luís Inácio Adams, a presidential appointee. Shortly after the proposed rules were officially published in June 2010, Mr. Adams sided with the industry. A few weeks later, a federal court suspended the regulations, citing his written opinion, which suggested that Anvisa did not have the authority to regulate the food and advertising industries. Mr. Adams declined to comment for this article.

Mr. Raposo de Mello, the former Anvisa president, says he was stunned by Mr. Adam’s change of heart, given the attorney general office’s longstanding support for Anvisa. Seven years later, with most of the 11 lawsuits still unresolved, the regulations remain frozen.

“The industry,” Mr. Raposo de Mello said, “did an end run around the system.”

In the meantime, the food and beverage industry became more aggressive as it sought to neutralize Anvisa, which it viewed as its greatest adversary.

In 2010, in the midst of the battle against the agency’s proposed regulations, a group of 156 business executives took its grievances to the campaign of Dilma Rousseff, who was running for president.

Marcello Fragano Baird, a political scientist in São Paulo who has studied the food lobby’s campaign against the nutrition regulations, said Ms. Rousseff assured the executives she would shake up Anvisa. “She promised them she would ‘clean house’ once elected,” he said, adding that he learned about the encounter through interviews with participants.

Ms. Rouseff won, and soon after her inauguration, she replaced Mr. Raposo de Mello with Jaime César de Moura Oliveira, a longtime political ally and a former lawyer for the Brazilian subsidiary of the food giant Unilever.

A spokesman for Ms. Rouseff declined to make her available for an interview.

In 2012, Anvisa hosted a traveling anti-obesity exhibit at its offices. Titled “Lose Weight Brazil,” the exhibit extolled exercise and moderation as the keys to tackling obesity, but largely ignored mainstream scientific evidence about the dangers of consuming too much sugar, soda and processed food.

The exhibition’s sponsor? Coca-Cola.

More than 1,000 miles south of Fortaleza, the effects of changing eating habits are evident at a brightly painted day care center in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. Each day, more than a hundred children pack classrooms, singing the alphabet, playing and taking group naps.

When it was started in the early 1990s, the program, run by a Brazilian nonprofit group, had a straightforward mission: to alleviate undernutrition among children who were not getting enough to eat in the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods.

These days many of those who attend are noticeably pudgy and, the staff nutritionists note, some are worryingly short for their age, the result of diets heavy in salt, fat and sugar but lacking in the nourishment needed for healthy development.

The program, run by the Center for Nutritional Recovery and Education, includes prediabetic 10-year-olds with dangerously fatty livers, adolescents with hypertension and toddlers so poorly nourished they have trouble walking.

“We are even getting babies, which is something we never saw before,” said Giuliano Giovanetti, who does outreach and communications for the center. “It’s a crisis for our society because we are producing a generation of children with impaired cognitive abilities who will not reach their full potential.”

Nearly 9 percent of Brazilian children were obese in 2015, more than a 270 percent increase since 1980, according to a recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington. That puts it in striking distance of the United States, where 12.7 percent of children were obese in 2015.

The figures are even more alarming in the communities served by the center: In some neighborhoods, 30 percent of the children are obese and another 30 percent malnourished, according to the organization’s own data, which found that 6 percent of obese children were also malnourished.

The rising obesity rates are largely associated with improved economics, as families with increasing incomes embrace the convenience, status and flavors offered by packaged foods.

Busy parents ply their toddlers with instant noodles and frozen chicken nuggets, meals that are often accompanied by soda. Rice, beans, salad and grilled meats — building blocks of the traditional Brazilian diet — are falling by the wayside, studies have found.

Compounding the problem is the rampant street violence that keeps young children cooped up indoors.

“It’s just too dangerous to let my kids play outside, so they spend all their free time sitting on the couch playing video games and watching TV,” said Elaine Pereira dos Santos, 35, the mother of two children, 9 and 4 years old, both overweight.

Isaac, the 9-year-old, weighs 138 pounds and can wear only clothing intended for adolescents. Ms. dos Santos, who works at a hospital pharmacy, shortens the pants legs for him.

Like many Brazilian mothers, she was pleased when Isaac began to gain weight as a toddler, not long after he tasted his first McDonald’s French fry. “I always thought fatter is better when it comes to babies,” she said. She happily indulged his eating habits, which included frequent trips to fast-food outlets and almost no fruits and vegetables.

But when he began having trouble running and complained about achy knees, Ms. dos Santos knew something was wrong. “The hardest part is the ridicule he gets from other children,” she said. “When we go out shopping, even adults point and stare” or call him gordinho, roughly translated to “little fatty.”

At the São Paulo nursery, health care workers keep tabs on the children’s physical and cognitive development, while nutritionists teach parents how to prepare inexpensive, healthy meals. For some children, the center’s test kitchen provides their first introduction to cabbage, plums and mangos.

One of the fundamental challenges is persuading parents that their children are sick. “Unlike cancer or other illnesses, this is a disability you can’t see,” said Juliana Dellare Calia, 42, a nutritionist with the organization.

Although staff members say the program has made significant strides in changing the way families eat, many children will nonetheless face a lifelong battle with obesity. That’s because a growing body of research suggests that childhood malnutrition can lead to permanent metabolic changes, reprogramming the body so that it more readily turns excess calories into body fat.

“It’s the body’s response to what’s perceived as starvation,” Ms. Dellare Calia said.

Even as nutrition experts bemoan the growing obesity crisis — and the potential long-term medical costs — one aspect of Brazil’s processed food revolution is undeniable: The industry’s expansion provides economic benefits to people up and down the ladder. Nestlé, which says it employs 21,000 people in Brazil, two years ago started an apprenticeship program that has trained 7,000 people under 30.

Near the bottom of the food chain is Mrs. da Silva, the vendor in Fortaleza, who feels optimistic about the future despite her mounting health woes. Life has been a struggle since she dropped out of school at 14 when she became pregnant with her first child. Now she talks about fixing the missing teeth that mar her tentative smile and buying a proper home, one that does not leak during heavy rains.

She has Nestlé to thank.

“For the first time in my life, I feel a sense of hope and independence,” she said.

She is aware of the connection between her diet and her persistent health problems, but insists that her children are well nourished, gesturing to the Nestlé products in her living room. Being a Nestlé vendor has another advantage: the cookies, chocolate and puddings that often sustain her family are bought wholesale.

With an expanding roster of customers, Mrs. da Silva has set her sights on a new goal, one she says will increase business even more.

“I want to buy a bigger refrigerator.”

The post How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food appeared first on ZONAKNIG.

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sthefystarker · 2 years ago

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And here goes my fic cover for the Latin Starker Week 2022!

Since I didn't see any post related to the Starker Week, I talked with some friends of mine so we can start this week according with 14 prompts people wanted in my Starker Facebook fanpage.

Of course, we always accept works from non Spanish Speakers, so any person is more than welcome to share their thoughts and work 🙌🏽

We start the event hopefully next week, on the 27th❤️

#starker #starker fandom #Starker event #Latín Starker Week #Starker Week #Marvel #tonyxpeter #mcu #tony stark #peter parker #ironspider #tony stark x peter parker

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consbastony · 4 years ago

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Latin Starker Week day 2

Bakery AU / Amnesia

What the f*ck happened last night?!

#starker #latinstarkerweek #latinstarkerweek2020 #starkerweeklatina #starkerweeklatina2020 #tony stark #peter parker #my art

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food

By Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel, NY Times, Sept. 16, 2017

FORTALEZA, Brazil--Children’s squeals rang through the muggy morning air as a woman pushed a gleaming white cart along pitted, trash-strewn streets. She was making deliveries to some of the poorest households in this seaside city, bringing pudding, cookies and other packaged foods to the customers on her sales route.

As she dropped off variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal, there was something striking about her customers: Many were visibly overweight, even small children.

She gestured to a home along her route and shook her head, recalling how its patriarch, a morbidly obese man, died the previous week. “He ate a piece of cake and died in his sleep,” she said.

Mrs. da Silva and other vendors like her make regular deliveries for Nestlé to a quarter of a million households in Brazil.

A New York Times examination of corporate records, epidemiological studies and government reports--as well as interviews with scores of nutritionists and health experts around the world--reveals a sea change in the way food is produced, distributed and advertised across much of the globe. The shift, many public health experts say, is contributing to a new epidemic of diabetes and heart disease, chronic illnesses that are fed by soaring rates of obesity in places that struggled with hunger and malnutrition just a generation ago.

“The prevailing story is that this is the best of all possible worlds--cheap food, widely available. If you don’t think about it too hard, it makes sense,” said Anthony Winson, who studies the political economics of nutrition at the University of Guelph in Ontario. A closer look, however, reveals a much different story, he said. “To put it in stark terms: The diet is killing us.”

“We didn’t expect what the impact would be,” he said.

The story is as much about economics as it is nutrition. As multinational companies push deeper into the developing world, they are transforming local agriculture, spurring farmers to abandon subsistence crops in favor of cash commodities like sugar cane, corn and soybeans--the building blocks for many industrial food products. It is this economic ecosystem that pulls in mom-and-pop stores, big box retailers, food manufacturers and distributors, and small vendors like Mrs. da Silva.

The same trends are mirrored with fast food, which grew 30 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016, compared with 21 percent in the United States, according to Euromonitor. Take, for example, Domino’s Pizza, which in 2016 added 1,281 stores--one “every seven hours,” noted its annual report--all but 171 of them overseas.

Industry defenders say that processed foods are essential to feed a growing, urbanizing world of people, many of them with rising incomes, demanding convenience.

“It’s a war,” he said, “but one food system has disproportionately more power than the other.”

He said sagging incomes among poor and working-class Brazilians had actually been a boon for direct sales. That’s because unlike most food retailers, Nestlé gives customers a full month to pay for their purchases. It also helps that saleswomen--the program employs only women--know when their customers receive Bolsa Família, a monthly government subsidy for low-income households.

“The essence of our program is to reach the poor,” Mr. Barbosa said. “What makes it work is the personal connection between the vendor and the customer.”

Dr. Gibney, the nutritionist and Nestlé consultant, said the company deserved credit for reformulating healthier products.

But of the 800 products that Nestlé says are available through its vendors, Mrs. da Silva says her customers are mostly interested in only about two dozen of them, virtually all sugar-sweetened items like Kit-Kats; Nestlé Greek Red Berry, a 3.5-ounce cup of yogurt with 17 grams of sugar; and Chandelle Pacoca, a peanut-flavored pudding in a container the same size as the yogurt that has 20 grams of sugar--nearly the entire World Health Organization’s recommended daily limit.

In 2014, food companies donated $158 million to members of Brazil’s National Congress, a threefold increase over 2010, according to Transparency International Brazil. A study the organization released last year found that more than half of Brazil’s current federal legislators had been elected with donations from the food industry--before the Supreme Court banned corporate contributions in 2015.

Taking a page from the government’s successful efforts to limit tobacco marketing, the new rules would have barred brands like Pepsi and KFC from sponsoring sports and cultural events.

Then came the lawsuits. Over the course of several months, a disparate collection of industry groups filed 11 lawsuits against Anvisa. The plaintiffs included the national association of biscuit manufacturers, the corn growers lobby and an alliance of chocolate, cocoa and candy companies. Some of the lawsuits claimed that the regulations violated constitutional protections on free speech, while others said the agency did not have the standing to regulate the food and advertising industries.

“The industry,” Mr. Raposo de Mello said, “did an end run around the system.”

Even as nutrition experts bemoan the growing obesity crisis--and the potential long-term medical costs--one aspect of Brazil’s processed food revolution is undeniable: The industry’s expansion provides economic benefits to people up and down the ladder. Nestlé, which says it employs 21,000 people in Brazil, two years ago started an apprenticeship program that has trained 7,000 people under 30.

She has Nestlé to thank.

“For the first time in my life, I feel a sense of hope and independence,” she said.

With an expanding roster of customers, Mrs. da Silva has set her sights on a new goal, one she says will increase business even more.

“I want to buy a bigger refrigerator.”

#Brazil #junk food in Brazil #Nestle #door-to-door vendors for Nestlé #obesity in Brazil

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deniscollins · 7 years ago

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How Big Business Got Brazil Hooked on Junk Food

There are now more than 700 million obese people worldwide, 108 million of them children. In Brazil, over the last decade, the country’s obesity rate has nearly doubled to 20 percent, and the portion of people who are overweight has nearly tripled to 58 percent. Each year, 300,000 people are diagnosed with Type II diabetes, a condition with strong links to obesity; and high blood pressure is soaring. If you were a Brazilian food and beverage company, how would you react to political measures seeking to limit junk food ads aimed at children: (1) defeat efforts to regulate junk food in Brazil, (2) nothing, (3) something else (if so, what?)? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision.

Children’s squeals rang through the muggy morning air as a woman pushed a gleaming white cart along pitted, trash-strewn streets. She was making deliveries to some of the poorest households in this seaside city, bringing pudding, cookies and other packaged foods to the customers on her sales route.

As she dropped off variety packs of Chandelle pudding, Kit-Kats and Mucilon infant cereal, there was something striking about her customers: Many were visibly overweight, even small children.

She gestured to a home along her route and shook her head, recalling how its patriarch, a morbidly obese man, died the previous week. “He ate a piece of cake and died in his sleep,” she said.

“We didn’t expect what the impact would be,” he said.

Industry defenders say that processed foods are essential to feed a growing, urbanizing world of people, many of them with rising incomes, demanding convenience.

“It’s a war,” he said, “but one food system has disproportionately more power than the other.”

Door-to-Door Delivery

“The essence of our program is to reach the poor,” Mr. Barbosa said. “What makes it work is the personal connection between the vendor and the customer.”

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#Obesity #Brazil

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