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hellomynameisbisexual · 3 years ago

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Andrew Ford was questioned and fetishized when he came out as bisexual. The gay community insisted he wasn’t being honest with himself; women at clubs started to excitedly fantasize about hooking up with two guys at the same time.

All the while, the soccer standout stayed true to himself. Ford came out his freshman year at Malone University, a small Christian liberal arts college in Canton, Ohio — home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His friends and teammates were accepting, which was an incredible relief. But his journey into the LGBTQ community was a little more rocky.

“I got a lot of pressure from the gay community,” Ford told me recently on the phone. “I felt like I was misunderstood, and didn’t know who I was.”

Ford is one of an increasing number of openly bisexual college-aged athletes whom we’ve profiled recently on Outsports. Despite some surveys showing more Americans identify as bisexual than either gay or lesbian, there is a dearth of bi visibility in pop culture and sports.

As bi sportswriter Jeff Rueter challenged me: “name a bisexual man, and don’t say Frank Ocean.”

These kick-ass kids are going to change that.

Biphobia is real

Let’s start here: Biphobia is real. It manifests itself in gestures as seemingly fleeting as dismissive jokes, and actions as harrowing as outright physical violence. Bisexual people typically suffer significantly higher rates of depression and anxiety, domestic violence, sexual assault, and poverty than lesbians, gay men, or straight cisgender people, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

A black-and-white society, most of us grow up with the notion people are either straight or gay. Those attitudes have historically prevailed in the LGBTQ community, too.

Alex Keuroghlian, the Director of the National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center at the Fenway Institute, says bisexual people can be looked at skeptically.

“Within LGBTQIA+ communities, there has historically been a stigma toward bisexual people, and the false notion that they’re really gay and lesbian people who haven’t accepted that about themselves,” he said.

Megan Duthart, a rower at Washington State University who identifies as both bi and queer, has experienced the stigma first-hand. She says she thinks bisexual people are often excluded in the LGBTQ community.

“I’ve struggled a little bit with being identified as an ‘other’ in the community with the term ‘bisexuality,’” she said.

Why are bi people targeted for erasure?

More people are identifying as bisexual. Over three percent of U.S. adults say they’re bi, according to the 2018 General Social Survey. That’s three times the number as 2008.

And yet, bi people are still targeted for erasure. One of the ways it happens is through language. When people see same-sex couples, for example, they may be inclined to label them as “gay” or “lesbian,” without considering that one or both of the people could identity as bi.

While Americans’ attitudes about sexuality are evolving, many still adhere to more binary definitions of sexual orientation. A recent YouGov poll found 41 percent of American adults don’t think sexuality is a spectrum (conversely, 37 percent think it is).

As Ford puts it, bisexuality is stereotypically viewed as “the stepping stone stage.” That ties into one of the more insidious aspects of bi-erasure: the belief that it’s just a phase. It’s a line Ford recalls hearing many times, from both men and women.

“(Gay men) said, ‘I came out as bisexual first. It’s just a phase, you won’t be there long,’” Ford said. “I was also scared how women would think about it. They wanted to change me. Some of them wanted to use it as a thrill they were seeking.”

When professional hockey player Zach Sullivan came out as bi, his father told him it meant he was still making up his mind.

“I remember what my dad said when I told him,” Sullivan said. “‘Well, you aren’t all the way there. You haven’t really decided.’ I was like, ‘no, I know I’m attracted to both genders. I’m not halfway towards coming out as gay.’”

The bi burden

Every LGBTQ person can relate to the fear and anxiety of coming out. But for most of us, once we do it, it’s over.

That’s not the case for bi people.

“We have to keep coming out to our significant others, whether it’s a man or a woman,” Ford said. “If you’re gay and you start dating a gay, you’re not going to be like, ‘I have to tell you something: I’m gay.’ They’re going to be like, ‘no shit.’”

And once bi people do come out, they could get charged with being greedy — the sexual equivalent of having their cake and eating it, too. The insult angers Sullivan.

“The majority of people in the LGBT+ community have struggled with their sexuality, and when they finally become comfortable enough to come out in the open with their sexuality, I don’t think the first thing to say to someone who’s come out as bisexual is they’re greedy,” Sullivan said. “I took over 10 years to get to where I am.”

Duthart finds the concept of bisexuality can be difficult to explain. She largely identifies as queer.

“I’ve had coaches question whether I’m rebelling or going through a phase,” she said. “Then when I explain the whole queer aspect, they’re like, ‘Oh, OK. That seems more justified.’ I don’t want to have to justify those things, but I sort of have to.”

Changing attitudes

Jack Storrs came out as bisexual last year as a college football captain. His teammates at Pomona-Pitzer rallied around him, and wore Pride decals on their helmets.

But even some who were supportive suggested he was on his way to identifying as gay. Storrs said he couldn’t hide his feelings for men anymore, and came out because he wanted to explore.

Maybe he was gay, maybe he wasn’t. The questions didn't bother him. He was a relieved to have the dialogue.

“It was killing me on the inside,” Storrs said. “It got to the point where I was like, ‘screw it.’ This is who I am, and this was meant to be.”

Nowadays, Storrs says he’s more towards the “gay end of the spectrum,” and expects the fluidity to continue.

He’s cool with that, and numbers show his peers are, too. Generation Z is among the most progressive and diverse in U.S. history. A 2018 study from Ipsos Mori shows only 66 percent of young people today identify exclusively as heterosexual.

Young people have a better understanding of how sexuality can evolve, says Keuroghlian.

“There’s been less of a reflex to box people in, and categorize people in ways that could be static,” he said. “A key part of all of this is not projecting behavior or projecting attraction. People tell us — they self-identify that’s who they are. And we have to honor that.”

Visibility challenges misperceptions

But to get back to Rueter’s question: can you name a famous out bisexual person besides Frank Ocean?

It’s challenging, and the lack of bi visibility may be one of the biggest contributors towards bi-erasure. But that is changing. Each person who comes out as bisexual has the ability to change perceptions within their own communities — and many young athletes are.

Bri Tollie, a bisexual college basketball player at Southern Methodist University, wrote in her coming-out story she refuses to conform.

“It is important to be visible because everyone is unique,” she wrote. “Our uniqueness means no one should not have to give up a part of themselves to conform. It is called self-respect.”

Growing up, Storrs tried to shut off his attraction to guys. He told himself it wasn’t a big deal, but the angst became all-encompassing.

Storrs is done hiding any part of himself. He did that for far too long, and is now out for all to see.

“I am bisexual, and my point is, I don’t really give a shit what anybody else thinks,” Storrs said. “This is who I am, and I don’t have to figure it out, but the reason I’m coming out is to figure it out, or at least get to a point where I’m comfortable.”

With their stories, these young bi athletes are making it more comfortable for bi people every single day.

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outlawandlychgate · 4 years ago

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Chapter 1-Gate of the Dead; Scene 1

Outlaw & Lychgate, pages 10-16

Burnt-smelling hotdogs and weak coffee.

That was the flavor of “Chloe Café”, having changed little from ten years before.

Even so, as far as Lich knew it had been fairly thriving in the past.

Perhaps it was because the place was scrupulously cleaned, because the ambient music playing in the shop was so sensible, or maybe it was just that there weren’t any other places around where you could get breakfast…Well, he didn’t know the true reason, but nonetheless Lich still had memories left in his mind of the “Chloe Café” of ten years before being filled with a lively atmosphere.

But nowadays…

The café was deserted.

It wasn’t all that surprising, and it wasn’t because there was any real issue with this shop (the taste of the food notwithstanding).

It was just that there were remarkably few people who would risk the danger of going out to eat anymore.

One of the causes for that was the low temperature due to their abnormal weather.

On top of that were the many violent crimes being carried out by the increasing number of lunatics lately—the people scientifically

dubbed as “HER”s.

Thanks to all this people had started holding back on going out whenever possible.

Despite these circumstances, the “Chloe Café” was still open for business.

He didn’t know why, and Lich wasn’t on good enough terms with the owner to ask.

Only, there was little doubt that they spent every day in the red.

“…”

Sitting in the seat across from him, his younger brother Michael wordlessly sipped his coffee.

He had hardly touched his hotdog.

When Michael set his cup down on the table, it was already empty.

“Would you like me to order another cup?” Lich asked.

But Michael shook his head. “No…that’s alright.” And then, Michael returned with a question of his own, “So, what’ll you do? Are you going? Are you not going?”

“…Going where?”

“Don’t play dumb. The ‘Climb One’—The roster of names for the crew of that big spaceship is almost all filled up. There’s just…one empty spot left.”

“…”

“So you’ve gotta decide soon.”

Without thinking, Lich averted his eyes from his brother, looking upon him with such an earnest gaze, and replied, “If that’s the case…You should be saving that spot for your fiancée.”

“Gumillia? She’s already gotten her name on the roster. As Dr. Levia’s assistant, same as me.”

“The thing is, Michael. You’re trying to fill a precious space on a crew roster for seventy-two people with someone who’s related to you,” Lich said, keeping up his usual smile, trying to sound as sardonic as he could.

It seemed to work, as Michael started to look a touch embarrassed. “…I know what you’re trying to say, brother. But—”

“A spaceship fleeing our crumbling Earth, seeking out a wide genetic diversity among the people riding in it…Sounds a bit like ‘Noah’s Ark’.”

Michael heaved a sigh at his brother not allowing him his rebuttal.

“That story in the Old Testament? I’ve never known you to be all that devout, brother.”

“I’m speaking from a scientific point of view, Michael.”

“…Then that’s all the more reason you should board the ‘Climb One’. When humanity tries to live on a new world—I’m positive that they’ll need the artificial human know-how of Lich Arklow.”

Lich and Michael were both researchers, but their areas of expertise differed.

As the elder brother came to be called the foremost expert in America on cloning and the “mask race” and “vampires” created from that—the so-called “superhuman races”—the younger brother went to Russia and went into psychological research under the tutelage of the “Millennium Prodigy”, Levia Barisol.

Had the world remained at peace, the two of them likely would have followed up their respective fields until they reached a ripe old age.

“Artificial human know-how, huh…” Lich murmured, taking a sip of his weak coffee and then setting the cup back down again. “They have Behemo for that.”

When Lich spoke the name of his own disciple, Michael’s face flushed.

And then, with a tone suffused with anger, he blurted out, “He’s Dr. Levia’s relative himself, isn’t he?”

“…It doesn’t speak well of you to badmouth your own mentor.”

Michael appeared to quickly regain his composure at Lich’s remonstration.

“You say that, but…No one knew that Dr. Levia even had a twin brother. He just appeared out of nowhere, and was selected for the crew of the ‘Climb One’ solely because he studied under you for several years…”

It was true that Behemo’s debut had been fairly abrupt, and furthermore Lich had been somewhat annoyed when he had suddenly applied to be his apprentice.

Still--

“There’s no arguing that he’s a prodigy. I can guarantee that, as his mentor. …Though, well, I wish he would do something about his dressing habits.”

There likely weren’t any researchers outside of Behemo who would go around wearing a maid uniform.

“Even if he has talent…There are a lot of people who have expressed their unease about him. Even Professor Held says that you’re more qualified than he is. So—”

“So you, someone who’s little more than one of Levia’s assistants, returned back to America for the first time in ages to try and talk me into boarding the ‘Climb One’.”

“…Yeah. This didn’t just come up out of my own personal wants. Professor Held decided on it in consideration of humanity as a whole.”

“…”

Held intensely disliked him.

It was due to knowing this fact that Lich wasn’t inclined to completely believe everything Michael was saying.

“…”

Silence reigned between them for a little while.

Seemingly unable to bear it, Michael suddenly bit into his hotdog.

“Mm…Tasty.”

“You’ve always loved the hotdogs here, ever since you were a kid.”

“I liked them a lot better than Mom’s meat pies.”

Their mother had lost her life four years back, along with their father.

They had gotten caught up in a terrorist attack committed by “HER”s, and their house had been blown up with a bomb.

“You’ve…never really liked hotdogs, have you brother?”

“Nope. Actually, I don’t care for anything on the menu here.”

“Then how come you made this our meeting spot?”

The house they had spent their childhood in was gone.

Having said that, Lich also wouldn’t have been overly fond of their earlier conversation being overheard by the people they worked with.

“—Because you liked it,” was all Lich replied.

“We might be brothers but our tastes sure are different, huh. …Come to think of it, I actually don’t know what it is you do like.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re not the sort of person that emotes much when you eat.”

“Sigh…I guess so.”

“Next time we should go to a place that you like, brother. …I’ll ask you again about your answer for my earlier question then.”

“There are hardly any other places open anymore.”

“We’ll find one. So…What is it? What’s your favorite food?”

Lich thought about that for a moment.

“That’s right…I—”

Right when he was about to answer—

He suddenly was assailed with a severe dizziness.

And—

Lich then lost consciousness.

<<prev------directory------next>>

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gretamclaughlin · 4 years ago

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The Path Forward: Preserving Biodiversity

Across the globe, humans are destroying the environment at an alarming rate, and more areas are degraded daily. Biodiversity is declining rapidly, and we may soon reach an ecological tipping point and collapse ecosystems. According to the Geo Beats video, humans have caused an over 50% loss in global wildlife, mostly due to habitat destruction and consumption. According to the textbook, the current extinction rate is 1000x the natural background extinction rate, and conditions are worsening. For these reasons, people have begun to focus on conservation, utilizing different methods that align with their environmental worldviews.

Some prefer the species approach, which focuses on saving specific species rather than entire ecosystems. People investigate the factors leading to the decline of a species and attempt to rectify the issues. This approach involves handling invasive species, which can destroy biodiversity and ecosystems. These organisms come to new habitats on cargo ships, packaging, and more, but some organisms are deliberately introduced. The wild boar was brought to the U.S. for hunting; however, it has become a threat to habitats and other organisms. According to the USDA, wild boars cause an estimated $2.5 billion in damage in the U.S. annually, and the population is increasing (ABC 7 Chicago 2020). Invasive species are difficult to control and detrimental to native species, often out-competing them. The species approach can be used to address invasive species by creating individual courses of action to remove them, which would have positive effects on the natural ecosystems.

Advocates for the species approach also focus on the poaching and illegal transport of exotic animals, some of which come into the U.S. This has led to populations of animals, like the white rhino, to decrease rapidly. This issue came to light with the Netflix docuseries Tiger King. Joe Exotic, the head of an exotic animal park in Oklahoma, held species like orangutans and tigers, and the animals lived in squalor and neglect. Unfortunately, many viewers only focused on the drama behind everything instead of the mistreatment of exotic animals. It is devastating to see how little people care about fellow organisms today, and perhaps the species approach can appeal to people’s emotions and attract them to the general environmental justice movement.

This view of preserving biodiversity speaks to current issues like overfishing, which often plays into social and political problems. The water surrounding Senegal, once rich with fish, is now depleted (BBC 2018). The people of Senegal and surrounding countries depend on these organisms for protein; however, European and Asian trawlers working on the coast continue to exploit their resources. Their boats often violate preservation laws. Hunger and poverty are worsening, and many Senegalese are hopeless for the future. Evidently, specifically focusing on preserving fish can benefit ecosystems and reduce political conflicts.

By preventing the loss of one species, we avoid the loss of others that depend on them and valuable ecosystem services. For example, if bees are wiped out, flowers cannot be pollinated, affecting agriculture and other organisms that depend on these plants. Additionally, these services support human economies and are important to people’s health and well-being through medicine and biophilia. Ecotourism is also lucrative, which would suffer as a result of a further decline in wildlife.

However, the species approach is problematic, and followers often go about preservation in an anthropogenic manner. The approach frequently focuses on species that are visually appealing and generally useful to people. I agree with this assessment because advocates often just care for a particular species rather than preserving ecosystems. They do not truly want to preserve the earth but only organisms that they like. Additionally, many people do not consider saving keystone species, which would cause significant damage and even collapse if they were not present. They instead focus on less important, but perhaps better liked, species. Furthermore, certain species-centered methods could devolve into mere entertainment, such as zoos, instead of actually working to protect organisms. However, in my opinion, at least people are caring about some degree of the environment, and we can take advantage of this interest to spur further action supporting environmental causes. A species approach can be a gateway to caring more about the environment as a whole. When I was in elementary school, I learned about how pandas were endangered. Although larger issues were occurring at the time, this knowledge inspired greater interest in me for all animals, and I believe it affected my later concern for the environment. The species approach can be used as a means to an end, but it is definitely not the most sound method for saving the environment.

The textbook also speaks about the ecosystem approach, which advocates for preserving biodiversity by saving large-scale ecosystems and biomes. This handles the more general issues first, which will then affect the smaller issues, like individual species. With this approach in mind, the textbook speaks about forests and certain threats to them. Forests provide habitats for about ⅔ of earth’s terrestrial species, and they reduce CO2 levels, moderate earth’s climate, purify water, and more. Unfortunately, human activities, such as logging, degrade these areas and their services. Implementing tree plantations has helped curb deforestation rates. However, these commercial forests, which are viewed as a more sustainable option, lack diversity and do not provide quality habitats. Additionally, disease can quickly wipe out monocultures. Clearly, human solutions cannot easily replace natural ecosystems. We must work to preserve nature before it is too late; everyone depends on the environment’s services.

Protecting natural areas, especially biodiversity hotspots, is key in saving ecosystems. The U.S. has a system of refuges, national parks, and more aimed at preserving the earth. However, these areas often lack the legal backing to truly be safeguarded. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is home to populations of caribou, polar bears, musk oxen, and hundreds more species, and indigenous people rely on them for food (The Wilderness Society, n.d.). However, the Trump Administration sought to lease the land to oil companies for drilling, which would completely degrade the climate. Only a few leases ended up selling; however, this opens up the area to further sales, and animals, plants, and people are at risk because of this decision. Greater legal protections need to be instituted to prevent decisions like these, and grassroots organizations should continue fighting to keep natural areas natural. With enough support, we can influence how the government handles its land.

The UN Convention on Biodiversity previously passed plans to combat declining biodiversity, including the Nagoya Protocol, the Cartagena Protocol, and the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, which created the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. Unfortunately, according to the Global Biodiversity Outlook 5, little progress has occurred. Worldwide, none of the 20 targets have been fully achieved. A higher proportion of marine fish are overfished, wilderness areas continue to decline, and governments subsidize fossil fuels, fertilizers, and pesticides. The current policies in place are not enough to combat biodiversity, and international treaties have shown to be unsuccessful. We must rely more on our state governments to make changes in preserving biodiversity because we are likely to have a greater influence upon them than on the national level. Additionally, states have a history of being more responsive to environmental needs than the federal government.

Prompt solutions are necessary in order to combat declining biodiversity. Deforestation is a widespread issue requiring immediate attention, especially due to its prevalence. China’s payments for ecosystem services program rewards people who stop logging and reforest logged lands. In a heavily deforested country, this is a significant step to prevent further degradation and restore the land. Wangari Maathai’s initiative in Kenya, which developed into the Green Belt Movement, organized impoverished women to plant and protect trees. In a similar way to China’s method, people could make money while restoring the environment. Initiatives like these allow people to transfer their work from unsustainable fields into more sustainable ones while supporting themselves and their families. If more governments implement programs that incentivize sustainable solutions, the rate of deforestation will decrease. We should approach this issue from a state scale because it would likely have quicker results, and states may be more in tune with specific environmental problems. Regardless of the level of government, officials need to be shown the benefits of reforesting land instead of perpetually degrading it. Grassroots organizations are also important in this reforestation effort, and with proper funding, they can create tree-planting programs similar to those mentioned.

Deforestation is fueled by the use of wood in unsustainable manners, and a majority of the wood taken from forests ends up being wasted. Excessive packaging, improper recycling, junk mail, and more cause unnecessary numbers of trees to be chopped down. If we can implement greater regulations for packaging (such as allowing only recycled materials), waste will lessen. In addition, governments and grassroots organizations should implement more robust recycling programs. At Fordham, most people I talk to do not recycle, and they place everything together in the trash, not caring about their effect on the environment. Through the Climate Impact Initiative, we can implement free programs that explain to students proper recycling methods and their importance in decreasing our environmental impact. If we could work with certain professors to offer extra credit for attending this program, more people would be involved. In addition, dining establishments at Fordham use a copious amount of paper boxes and bags, none of which are recyclable once they have food or grease on them. I understand that COVID-19 complicates these issues, but many carry-out establishments normally use this amount of paper products. Furthermore, like many other colleges and universities, Fordham sends out a significant amount of mail to attract potential students. When I received college letters, I recycled all of them, and they were completely unnecessary and could have been sent in an email. It is on us to begin initiatives to reduce paper waste, and we need to call on our schools and governments to change the way they use and recycle paper. We also need to encourage our peers to be more aware of their impact on the earth and stop using paper plates, napkins, etc. Promoting further usage of non-tree-based paper, such as kenaf, can also help with this problem.

Implementing full-cost pricing on lumber, oil, and other resources can help reduce the environmental degradation resulting from extracting them. By adding the environmental impact to the prices of such resources, fewer people will purchase them and will instead lean on more sustainable options, such as renewable energy. As a result, the demand for these resources will decrease, so their extraction will also decrease, thus reducing degradation. To make up for this deficit of energy sources, the government should implement subsidies for renewable energy. Wind turbines, solar panels, and more provide sustainable solutions to the energy problem in the U.S. and do not interfere as much with ecosystems. Certainly, the government has been lackadaisical in the past when it comes to switching to cleaner energy, and pressure needs to come from the bottom up to achieve energy targets. If the people vote for candidates who will fight for renewable sources and consistently lobby officials to support favorable legislation, such policies will be more likely to pass. Joe Biden is working to increase renewable energy in the U.S., and although there has been pushback, I am hopeful that progress will be made.

Stricter laws on overfishing in the U.S. and abroad will prove to be integral in keeping waters stocked. These laws could limit the types and number of fish one can catch and limit the time of year to catch them. However, significant resources need to be allocated to enforce these laws through trained agents who can survey both the land and the sea. In addition, fish markets should also be monitored to ensure that illegal fish are not being sold. Imported fish, many of which come from Asia, need to also be checked to ensure they follow American guidelines. International treaties regarding fishing may be necessary in preventing the exploitation of the high seas and reducing conflicts. However, these treaties are difficult to enforce. Regardless, efforts should still be pursued in the chance that they do work.

Wildlife refuges need to expand to protect more land, both in the U.S. and worldwide. In addition, these areas need to have greater legal protection to prevent drilling and other forms of exploitation, which is what occurred with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Hopefully, the Biden administration will make moves to do so; however, grassroots organizations should still help alter public opinion and pressure those in power to implement greater protections on wilderness areas. Even in protected areas like the U.S. National Park System, humans are degrading the area with their activities. Therefore, limits on who can use paths, heavy fines for violations of rules, and limitations on camping and development within the parks can help curb these growing issues.

People need to invest in more native landscaping in their yards to improve sustainability and promote biodiversity. By growing native plants, one mimics the natural environment and creates habitats for species. These plants also require less water, fertilizers, and pesticides than lawns, and they can be integral in preventing soil erosion. If local, state, and federal governments issue tax credits to people planting native species in their yards as opposed to grass, more people would be incentivized to make the switch. It might be difficult to convince the government to do so right now, but as the condition of the environment worsens and consequences become more visible, perhaps more officials will understand this need. Grassroots organizations will also be integral in educating people about the importance of populating their land with native species and should also explain the economic benefits of doing so (less upkeep necessary). Although the typical, American Dream-style grassy lawn can be inviting, it is our responsibility to do what we can to preserve biodiversity.

At Fordham, we should petition the administration to make improvements in the vegetation on campus. Some of the trees and plants are non-native, and it seems that a lot of the landscaping is just placed randomly with no regard for ecosystems. Additionally, though appealing to some, the presence of vast grass space has a significant impact on the environment. If we can convince the Fordham administration to change how they view landscaping, more native plants (and plants in general) will be grown, and we can help renew the biodiversity that once existed in this area. In the future, the Rose Hill campus could maybe even act as a refuge for organisms who would not survive otherwise in New York City due to urbanization.

Worldwide, biodiversity is a growing issue, and despite the actions of some individuals, groups, and governments, overall, the earth’s species are continuing to decline. It is up to us to protect the resources that we currently have and restore those we have degraded. We should focus more on employing the ecosystem approach rather than the species approach to create more comprehensive solutions to the biodiversity problem. Although preserving ecosystems requires us to make changes in our own lives, we must do so in order to protect the environment for all living in it, ourselves included.

Word Count: 2544

Question: Have there been instances where the species approach preserves an entire ecosystem’s biodiversity?

Diagrams:

Backyard using native plants

Decline in the amount of fish caught in Saint Louis, Senegal

Before and after shots of the restoration of China’s Loess Plateau

Wild boars have infested almost every region of the U.S.

Works Cited:

ABC 7 Chicago. 2020. “‘Feral swine bomb’: American feral hog population is ballooning, USDA reports.” ABC, September 21, 2020. https://abc7chicago.com/feral-hogs-swine-super-pigs-damage-caused-by/6484138/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20Department,in%20the%20U.S.%20each%20year.

BBC. 2018. “‘Fish are vanishing’ - Senegal’s devastated coastline.” BBC, November 1, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46017359.

The Wilderness Society. n.d. “Oil Drilling: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” Accessed April 6, 2021. https://www.wilderness.org/wild-places/alaska/oil-drilling-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge.

#biodiversity #preservation #invasive species #ecosystem #environment #sustainability #environmentalism #fordham #nyc

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sociaworkismyradar · 4 years ago

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If only everyone could share our skills days – A blog by Natalie Senior – First Year B.A. Hons Social Work Student - University of Bradford

To realise the ambitions of our, ‘Take Me As I Am’ blog, we introduced the first year BA (Hons) social work students at the University of Bradford to the use of blogs as a vehicle for personal critical reflection. This was part of our Readiness for Practice module, linked to experiential skills days on diverse social work topics. Students were given the space to explore and practise reflective blogging, as formative pieces that will be used as the basis for their summative assessment. To achieve this we ensured there was dedicated time for thought and reflection (Giroux and Giroux, 2004); for safe and open conversations on topics such as the elimination of violence against women. Given that this academic year (2020/21) has been shaped by the Coronavirus pandemic, and as a consequence our teaching has moved online, the use of blogs and ‘coffee morning – well-being’ Zoom calls has made this an opportune time to introduce this novel form of pedagogy. This approach supports our ethos, that academic support must be tailored to the individual, yet balanced with due regard to our profession: social work. Such a pedagogic approach requires challenging the existing power relations between student and academic; it requires, ‘authenticity’, ‘responsibility’ and ‘engagement’ from both parties. The response from the students to our new approach has been overwhelming and marks a new chapter in our exploration and understanding of the student experience. We offer that the following blogs, written by students, clearly evidence the transformative learning and reflection that has taken place, and the potential that exists in this mutual pedagogy through the use of the reflective blog.

If only everyone could share our skills days – A blog by Natalie Senior – First Year B.A. Hons Social Work Student

International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women!

What a day to have the amazing skills day we had today. Speakers with so much knowledge and understanding of subject areas and a real passion for what they do. This clearly cascaded down to students in today's skills day and personally gave me a drive to find out more!!

Today’s skills day made me reflect on my past relationship and really made me see what I was living for 17 years is actually real and was not in my head coercion is real! My partner has also lived through domestic violence and has strong beliefs in stamping out violence against women. Each individual part of today gave me more knowledge and understanding of what me and my partner have both lived, it also made me revisit emotions I felt at the time and helped me to see where I have come to from learning from past experiences. For the purpose of this blog I feel I reflected on action as understood by Schon which outlines the process of reflecting after an event, exploring new information and feelings of how I felt at the time and processing these feelings and actions with new knowledge and understanding of my experiences and how I feel now (Bolton & Delderfirld, 2018). Sharing my day with him gave him a desire to look in to the White Ribbon campaign, we have boys ourselves and he models his beliefs and values in this area strongly with the boys, in this way he is a positive role model for our children aged 6,6 and 12.

The Anah Project is a project aimed at women fleeing all forms of abuse, not only localised in West Yorkshire but throughout the United kingdom (Anah Project, 2020). The Anah project isn't just a service that provides safe accommodation for fleeing women but they offer a support network around these women, they educate women on human rights and increase confidence, self-esteem and independence. They do this through a person cantered approach delivering support through individualised plans based on individual needs. It is widely researched and evident in policies and literature that person cantered approaches are the best way forward, they look at individuals as a whole identifying strengths, weaknesses, preferences, aspirations and in turn has a positive impact on the package of care and support required of each individual (Teater2014, Rutter & Brown,2015).

The project is run through a refuge, where self-referrals and referrals from other agencies can be made. As a student social worker I am already starting to gain a knowledge base of what services are available in the local area; just from today I have knowledge of three individual organisations/ campaigns/ projects where I can signpost or access for support and guidance should I ever need to in my professional role as a social worker (although this seems a million miles away right now!). Knowledge and understanding of such projects and campaigns, equips me with knowledge and understanding to promote the rights, strengths and wellbeing of individuals outlined in the social work standards (SWE,2020) using localised and national services. it also helps me to develop my skills when potentially working with individuals in these circumstances promoting rights, wellbeing and individualised plans drawing on individuals strengths and abilities to create better outcomes for them and work in partnership with wider agencies and professionals (SWE,2020).

The project works on principles of empowerment, collective action, self-help, mutual aid, inclusion and equality (Anah project, 2020). They certainly empowered me today! To empower someone is to give them choice and control at the same time relying on honesty and realism as a two way process (Maclean, 2009, Parrot, 2011). this project aims to do this on so many different levels. All these principles are key points in social work practice and hearing from such inspirational speakers today not only touched me on a personal level and gave me some realisation of my own experiences but gave me a desire to learn more and to better my skills and knowledge and personal understanding which in turn will better my practice as I progress from student to qualified social worker.

The issues discussed today sadly are a huge representation of the societies we live in, some societies more pertinent than others; and the work of social workers and organisations, projects and societies working together to drive down these inequalities of life providing social justice and better outcomes for all is indispensable in the 20th century societies we live in.

Domestic violence happens to both men and women but evidence supports that more women than men are victims of domestic violence, evidence also suggests that the prevalence in black, Asian, minority ethnic and refugee (BAMER) communities is a big percentage of figures recorded. Why is this? Is this because they live in a community where it is accepted to treat women in this way? Is it a community issue and an inequalities in beliefs and values of the community as a whole? Is it religion that leads these beliefs and values? No matter of the answer it is not acceptable against men or women. However research shows that women from BAMER communities are at higher risk of abuse than those from other ethnic groups. Honour based violence, forced marriage, arranged marriage and more recently female genital mutilation have become widely recognised within societies and a call to end these acts of crime is urgently required. Research shows that as a minimum twelve women a year have been killed as a result of "honour based violence", BAME women are impacted by specific forms of violence such as forced marriage and honour based violence, these acts of abuse are experienced in context with domestic abuse experienced by white women (Penny, 2020) The disclosure numbers of those individuals form a black, Asian and minority ethnic groups is worryingly less than that of the general population (Penny, 2020) Educated and knowledgeable professionals with the skills to intervene where required, to be able to identify when these acts are happening and know how to deal with them correctly and with the individuals best interests is vital. Professionals require knowledge of early identifying signs of potential risk or abuse that may raise cause for concern, schools and education settings need to have a rigorous set of policies and procedures for identifying where long periods of absence may be a concern, police services need to be more broadly educated on signs of honour based violence and domestic abuse and know how to intervene and respond to these signs promptly and safely.

More needs to be done to end violence against women and that is through us as professionals including police been knowledgeable enough to intervene, read signs and act promptly and make those referrals. Emphasis needs to be put on schools to educate pupils on safe and health relationships, safe and acceptable behaviours and giving them the knowledge of where to go if they are at risk or feel they may be at risk of harm and encourage them to do this with confidence and reassurance.

The White Ribbon Campaign really stood out for me, as I have said my partner has lived a period of his life with domestic abuse and he strongly believes in ending violence against women. He has strong views and beliefs on this subject which he tries to cascade down to our boys who are still young at present. Values are what us as individuals think or feel should happen and are unique to us all, some people share in the same values and beliefs as others, in life we rely on morality and the experiences of others to inform and create our own moral codes, values and beliefs, as individuals we are highly influenced by present and past experiences and understanding within a context of the society in which we live and grow (Parrot, 2011). He believes these morals and beliefs should be understood from a young age, boys eventually turn in to men and instilling the understanding that it is not acceptable to cause harm to women in any context through sharing experiences with our boys and helping them understand age appropriate situations will hopefully allow them to lead healthy adult life's, knowing right from wrong in a society where domestic abuse is widely seen and appears acceptable. The mission of the white ribbon campaign is for men to commit to never excuse or remain silent about male violence against women using men and boys to act as a catalyst for change and take action to change behaviour both individually and collectively (White Ribbon, 2020).

I had never heard of the campaign before today but me and my partner looked in to this further, the idea of using men as a catalyst to educate other men and young boys is an amazing concept. There are many men out there who share the same beliefs and this needs to be heard it needs to be recognised worldwide.

Learning that the university isn't a recognised organisation who promotes the white ribbon campaign at present gives me a platform at the social justice society meeting later this week to discuss with executive members of how we can work to get the university recognised for its promotion of the white ribbon campaign. Following today and the knowledge I gained I feel I have a better knowledge of what it is and how important it could be for the university to be recognised for this.

Finally to end a brilliant information filled day we heard from breaking the silence.

For many men speaking out about mental health and abuse is a difficult concept no matter what ethnic background they are from. Personal experiences have seen how difficult this can be for men and unfortunately my experiences also saw a failing in services which put the individual at more risk, but whom eventually left the abusive relationship. More needs to be done to encourage men to speak out, it needs to become more socially accepted that men also suffer abuse and have rights to safe and healthy relationship and life the same way as women and children do. There are a number of articles within the human rights act (1998) that states the rights of all individuals. Article le 3 highlights that everyone has a right to not be subject to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Article 8 also outlines everyone has right to live a life with respect to a private life, home and correspondence, Article 9 highlights everyone has freedom of thought, conscience and religion and Article 10 identifies everyone has a freedom to express themselves and hold opinions (Brammer, 2020) Social workers working with individuals discussed above should endeavour to promote these rights trough all areas of practice and help individuals know and understand their rights when living in societies where this is not always so.

Traditional ideologies place emphasis on the masculinity of men in society where unfortunately men are also weakened and shamed by acts of abuse. An article published by the BMJ (1998) exploring the theories and values in health research found that in social constructivist views the male gender is signified by beliefs and behaviours of been hard and strong and this is evidence through practiced social interactions, it is an assumption that these attributes are fixed and evidence shows they do vary across cultures and religions (BMJ, 1998).

Socially it is not accepted that men can be victims of abuse but research shows that this is in fact the case and more should be done to encourage men to speak out and get the help and support they need, in the same way women do. Black and Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) men appear to find speaking out much more difficult than men of other ethnic origins, why is that? Is it because of racism and discrimination stopping them accessing services and support? Is it social and economic inequalities? Is it the huge stigma around mental health? Is it the society which influences very stereotypical views?

BAME communities can experience racism and discrimination in many forms at many different points in their lives and research shows that this can have a negative impact on mental health and wellbeing (mentalhealth.org, 2020). Disadvantages within societies often associated with BAME communities such as poverty and poorer educational outcomes, higher unemployment and contact with criminal justice systems also plays a huge part in individuals speaking out and accessing support they need, they may not know how or where to access help (mentalhealth.org, 2020). As professionals it is important that we know what services are available in the local area, the support groups that run and how to access these. We have a duty to promote quality and inclusion and promote the rights of every individual we work with (SWE, 2020).

There is huge stigma around men's mental health and a lack of understanding on a community level of what this is and how to deal with it, in some communities it is not talked about and in some it is seen in a negative light. This can often discourage people from speaking out particularly men whom are seen to be strong and bold members of society. Research completed by BMI Healthcare (2020) found that one in eight men have mental health problems that they often struggle to discuss or seek help for (BMI, 2020).

Today’s skills day has been really informative and inspiring and given me more of an understanding of services available to people whom I may work with within my professional career. It has allowed me to develop some understanding of why these things take place and understand some professional jargon when it comes to legal procedures and practices. It has also given me a little closure in that self-acceptance of my own experiences were in fact real and should be spoken about and socially we still live in a world where changes need to be made and working together in communities and societies to change the view and disadvantages caused by domestic violence, and other forms of abuse is highly required for better quality of life and living.

I worried about today as it is close to home but now I feel inspired and enthused to get involved where I can and help make that change in society promoting social justice for all!!

Anah (2020) Anah Project [ONLINE] https://anahproject.org/what-we-do (Accessed 26th November 2020)

BMI (2020) Men and Mental Health: a damaging stigma [ONLINE] https://www.bmihealthcare.co.uk/health-matters/mens-health/men-and-mental-health-a-damaging-stigma#gdpr-out (Accessed 30th November 2020)

BMJ (1998) Education and Debate; Theories in Healthcare and Research: Theories of Masculinity [ONLINE] https:://doi.org/10.1136/BMJ.317.7165.1072 (Accessed 30th November 2020)

Bolton, G. and Delderfield. R. (2018) Reflective practice: writing and professional development fifth edition. London. Sage

Brammer, A. (2020) Social work law: 5th Edition. UK. Pearson Education

Maclean, S. (2020) Social Work Theory Cards: 3rd Edition. Linchfield. KirwinMaclean

Maclean, S. and Harrison R. (2009) Theory and Practice: a straightforward guide. Great Britain

Parrott, L. (2011) Values and Ethics in Social Work Practice: 2nd Edition. Exeter. Learning Matters ltd

Penny, G. (2020) Supporting B&ME victims- what the data shows. [ONLINE] safelives.org.uk/practice_blog/supporting-bme-victims-what-data-shows (Accessed 1st December 2020)

Rutter, L. Brown, K. (2015) Critical thinking and professional judgement in social work: 4th Edition. London. Sage

SWE(2020) Social Work England Standards of Proficiency. London. Health care and professional council.

Teater, B. (2014) Contemporary Social Work Practice. London. Open University Press

White Ribbon Campaign (2020)

What we do

[ONLINE]

https://whiteribbon.org.uk/what-we-do

(Accessed 1st December 2020

#bradford #bradforduniversity #bradfordcollege #socialwork #students

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browserbroking331 · 4 years ago

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When should i buy a new gaming monitor

Gaming Grabs The High Score On Twitter

Twitter is exactly where game publishers, the gaming media, popular game streamers and entertainers, esports leagues, teams, players and commentators interact with their most engaged fans and with one particular yet another. So what's with the lack of inclusion in the gaming globe? In addition to the normally hostile world of desktop and console games (see the GamerGate controversy as just a single example), there is still somewhat of an business perception that females simply never play video games. But, that is far from true - girls are essentially gaming more than ever ahead of, specifically on mobile.

The gaming WordPress themes include things like some distinctive characteristics like design and style and options. And most of the themes that are featured here offers you with a full resolution for your gaming site. The Search engine optimization solutions, social network tools, various options, and multiple colors will make you easier to get started your new internet site. All these themes are customizable exactly where you can change every single and each and every aspect of the themes without the need of touching any of the codes.

With the abundance of established gaming web sites present on the world wide web, it is greatest to do some competitor evaluation and investigation about the most well known web pages and the latest trends in gaming to keep your web page up to date. A handful of search queries on Google would enable you see what are the newest trending topics gamers are looking at. This will assistance you see what most gaming websites have to supply, and how they present their content to their audience. You would also be capable to find out how to stand out and know your audience far better.

I got into action games late but when I did it totally changed how I viewed gaming forever. The game which brought me round was Viewtiful Joe. Here was a game with a deep and open-ended combat program which seemed to be built as a implies for the player to express creativity. This technique is then pitted against opponents and obstacles which have been developed from the ground up to interact meaningfully with the core technique. The course was fixed, but the system for dealing with that course was absolutely down to the ingenuity, skill and inspiration of the player. You play like you have a substantial audience watching and the game frequently entices you to boost the concentrate is not merely on acquiring the player from A to B, the focus is on obtaining the player to play Viewtifully”.

Due to mobile game development outsourcing , the newest indie games developed by little studios or individual programmers get lots of interest and good feedback from both players and journalists. With the aid of software program outsourcing companies, every single particular person, with suitable knowledge, can create and market gaming apps without having any obstacles.

Microsoft — with our practically 40 years of gaming experience beginning with Computer, as properly as our breadth and depth of capabilities from software to hardware and deep encounter of becoming a platform corporation — is well equipped to address the complex challenge of cloud game-streaming. With datacenters in 54 Azure regions and solutions available in 140 countries, Azure has the scale to provide a terrific gaming experience for players worldwide, regardless of their location.

Why You Really Need (A) GAMING

The Atlantic Gaming Desk is a piece of steel furnishings that's specially built for today's modern gamer or even a household office owner. Its sturdy legs come totally integrated with cup holders and other attachments that are merely fantastic for organizing a variety of your computer accessories and peripherals. The Atlantic Gaming Desk also features a exceptional cable management method that organizes the diverse wires and cables that your devices possess. There is a charging station, a monitor stand, game storage rack, game controller hooks, gaming speaker trays, and a entire lot a lot more. Its padded feet will not also scratch your floor.

Today's games are larger, far better, and more immersive than ever. You can locate unbelievable games across a wide variety of genres. Most big game franchises are available on each PlayStation four and Xbox A single, even though the Nintendo Switch provides a significant choice of games suited for youngsters and households. For the most realistic visual experiences, upgrade to the PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox 1 S to take pleasure in breathtaking 4K and HDR gaming. Exclusive titles are available for every console, which further underscores the need to have to plan ahead and pick up the appropriate system for your have to-own games. Explore the huge collections of previously played games at wonderful deals and give your older consoles like the PlayStation 3 , Xbox 360 , and Nintendo Wii U continued life.

Yet another of our leading gaming influencers for 2018 is The Rad Brad We had to include things like this channel because The Rad Brad is a especially nicely known YouTube gamer. He produces an amazing amount of hugely-high-quality, enjoyable content material. It really is no wonder he's identified for creating the greatest video game walkthroughs on social media. The Rad Brad has helped to make a quantity of influencer marketing campaigns a true results.

Style patterns: To shop information in DynamoDB, gaming corporations partition game state and other player information applying player ID, and use the key-value access pattern (1:1 modeling). In instances when far more fine-grained access is named for, these corporations use a sort key (1:M modeling). This enables them to access and update distinctive properties or subsets of a player's dataset separately. This way, they never have to retrieve an whole dataset. In this approach, a number of things that store distinct properties can be updated transactionally by making use of the DynamoDB transactional API Some corporations compress user information to minimize price. PennyPop, for instance, uses gzip to compress player data and store it as a base64 string, lowering the player information to ten % of its original size.

Social media is a single of the ideal techniques to attain out to your audience, as it assists make communication extra convenient by allowing comments and messages. Gamers across the globe use Facebook as a single of their key social media platforms, and it is hugely evident when you see how numerous likes, shares, and views gaming-related content material obtain on a more info day-to-day basis.

These numbers can absolutely vary per study, but it does appear like the number of female serious gamers are on a downward trend. The last time we checked in females have been closer to 45%-48% of gamers. We can speculate as to why this is. Probably females are significantly less fond of the emergence of the eSports trend. Probably females are feeling much less included in gaming forums and on the web communities right after the harassment accusations of the final few years. Perhaps they're just far more drawn to other entertainment industries, but this is undoubtedly a trend to continue watching.

Previously, N'Gai Croal wrote articles for Newsweek, Croal left Newsweek back in March simply because he wanted to stick to his passions slanted additional towards the development end of gaming. Croal describes himself as a inventive maverick that identified himself sidetracked in journalism, but this temporary exploration became one particular of the most astounding items that Croal has ever accomplished. As a journalist, Croal has enriched his personal point of view and improved his understanding via journalism for the reason that he has written about a wide variety of subjects.

Paul: Following possessing been through a wealth of experiences, the games market looked like a great chance. It was also about getting in the right spot at the suitable time. A deep understanding of information has generally been fundamental in every enterprise that I've founded and this has continued at Green Man Gaming. These days, information plays a important function in informing the company and our partners on trends that can further increase the all round gaming experience and our company as a whole.

Description: This gaming podcast is hosted by a crew of San Francisco developers, formerly of such studios as Telltale Games and Double Fine. It was began simply for fun, where random conversations among the presenters have been recorded and put on the World-wide-web. It really is evolved into a space where the presenters get to talk about a subject they are passionate about, i.e. games - and the result is extremely enjoyable.

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jerryjackson540 · 4 years ago

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What is Instagram Shadow Ban ?, How to Get Rid? | [Solution - 2020] In spite of the fact that you have not rolled out any improvements after some time, you can see that your Instagram see rates have diminished, your preferences have diminished, and your remarks have totally halted. There might be numerous explanations behind these unexpected changes in numerous web-based media channels, for example, instagram. Instagram calculation refreshes are one of these reasons. Be that as it may, shadowban may have caused this too. What is shadowban that most online media supervisors don't have the foggiest idea, and how to dispose of it, we clarify in this article. What is Instagram shadowban? Most importantly, it is important to explain what the expression "shadowban" signifies and take out the disarray of significance here. The term was initially instituted by a picture taker who saw that his photographs didn't show up in some hashtag look in mid 2017. In any case, we as a whole realize that numerous photographs may not show up on the labels utilized, or various individuals may see diverse photographs on similar labels. Openly, it was not satisfactory that there is an algorithmic positioning applied to hashtag indexed lists on Instagram. This implies various clients may see diverse substance results for explicit hunts. A similar client may even observe diverse substance when seeing similar inquiry at various occasions. So no, if your picture doesn't show up when you post on a hashtag, it doesn't imply that you have gotten a shadowban. Shadow boycott in Turkish methods something like hindering or limitation. This is a circumstance that clarifies the quantity of devotees, diminishing preferences or diminishing remarks for reasons unknown. With respect to account limitations, these possibly happen when a record or client carries on in a manner that Instagram looks like spam in nature. These are kinds of exercises that surpass a built up limit inside the "typical" client go. So what are these cutoff points? How about we separate them all the more unmistakably. Impact of follow limit on shadowban Indeed, despite the fact that it appears to be that boundless individuals can be followed on Instagram, you can follow a limit of 7500 individuals on Instagram. At the point when you arrive at this number, you have to unfollow somebody to have the option to follow a renewed individual. It will be hard for the normal client to effectively interface with this numerous individuals or with this much substance. Nonetheless, there is no restriction to the number of individuals can follow your record, whether or not you are an individual or business account. Instagram additionally has exacting limitations on the quantity of individuals you can continue in a given timeframe, yet a few elements influence that number. New records have lower limits on the quantity of records they can follow on an hourly or regular routine. The size of your record (the quantity of adherents you have) can likewise add to your arrive at limit. While Instagram has some obviously plot restricts, the cutoff points on the number of records you can follow every hour and day are not unmistakably characterized anyplace. For the most part acknowledged figures are 30 subsequent meet-ups every hour and 800 individuals for each day. Notwithstanding, by and by, accounts that continually send new subsequent solicitations may get spam labels. Now, he may have really gotten Instagram's radar without acknowledging it. This implies your exercises exist however not seen by numerous individuals. Pushing Instagram restricts more than once in a brief timeframe, performing spam-like activities regardless of whether it isn't spam can cause the circumstance we call shadowban. What about disposing of Instagram Shadowban? On the off chance that you are considering how to eliminate shadowban or how to dispose of this shadowban, you should initially look at your record's developments. Since your record developments put you according to Instagram. The more adherents you have, the more your posts get likes and remarks, the more your posts are shared, your accounts are viewed and your accounts are shared, the more credit you have on the instagram side. As such, developments that push the cutoff points you make can be more reasonable. On the off chance that you have a deterrent, this can be lifted quicker and in a shorter time than different records. • We realize we can put a limit of 30 hashtags per post. • As we referenced in our past articles, it is really the best 20. On the off chance that you would prefer not to tire your devotees yet at the same time need to hang out in the substance by one way or another, unquestionably limit the quantity of hashtags or add them to the picture later as a remark. • Also note that you can at present tag up to 20 individuals for every post. • If you need to label more individuals or records, you will fall into spam status. • The ideal response to the subject of how to get up shadowban is to dodge malicious activities. Also, as we referenced above, having mainstream Instagram accounts and having a ton of adherents keeps your record from entering the state we call shadowban. • Under ordinary conditions, when you make applications that look nasty or surpass the constraints of Instagram, your record is legitimately impeded or confined. Here and there, regardless of whether you don't arrive at those cutoff points, in the event that you are moving toward frequently, you will be somewhat hindered by Instagram as a safety measure. The most straightforward approach to maintain a strategic distance from this circumstance or to escape Shadowban is to expand the quantity of devotees. Since the quantity of supporters won't increment effectively in a brief timeframe or in a brief timeframe, you can pick Crovu now to purchase solid, natural adherents. You can reach us to take care of all issues in a split second and for all time in the event of different record impeding or different record issues. Also, You can expand the quantity of adherents and preferences on your overall record or Bussiness account, You can without much of a stretch purchase Instagram preferences and supporters at least expensive costs from various web-based media overhauling locales. Moreover, You can increase the number of followers on your general account or Bussiness account, You can easily buy Instagram followers at cheapest prices from different social media servicing sites.

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https://wholesalinghousesinfo.com/freedomsoft-review-best-wholesaling-real-estate-software/ - OK folks. So on the off chance that you're perusing this at the present time, at that point chances are you have some enthusiasm for Preston Ely's land financial specialist programming called Freedomsoft. In any case, ostentatious deals duplicate and extravagant recordings aside, there's one glaring inquiry that should be replied… At the point when you take a decent, hard look past all the features, the extravagant recordings and even Preston Ely's overwhelming character — The glaring inquiry despite everything remains: When you strip away all the advertising publicity… Does FreedomSoft Really Stand Up On It's Own? Well I've had some presentation to it by and by. Truth be told I was offered the opportunity to dabble around in the engine ahead of time of the vast majority (since I own this here extravagant land contributing web journal) and I thoughtfully acknowledged. Yet, let me state, in excess of a couple have seen that, in the midst of the advancement blast, I've been oddly quiet up to now – and truly, it was purposeful. My explanations behind this are clarified quite well in the video above, yet fundamentally I'm beginning to reevaluate the entire "everybody messages about everything at the same time" thing. So getting on board with the publicity fleeting trend and making a Freedomsoft audit wasn't exacty top on my rundown. In any case, it turns out certain people really care enough about what I think to make a special effort to inquire. I've had in excess of a couple of people asking me legitimately to share my blunt and genuine contemplations on it, great, awful as well as terrible. Which is at last what persuaded me to set aside the effort to feel free to do a real to life, legitimate Freedomsoft audit. I'll Be Honest… I kinda effectively figured it would be basically done as it so happens. All things considered, the person behind the real programming advancement (No, not Preston or Pete — another person who's waaaaay in the background) — this current person resembles a sibling to me, and known for being a thousand percent focused on extraordinary quality in each venture I've at any point seen him tackle. Freedomsoft Review Update 1: The "Mystery Guy" in the background really made a trip and uncovered his character in the remarks beneath. Wager you remember him. Continue perusing… So I had exclusive standards as of now. Also, I should concede I was very intrigued. Be that as it may, what I didn't expect was the amount they were incorporating with it – as far as the rundown of highlights. Evidently they took their "across the board land contributing arrangement" thought much more genuinely than I gave them credit at first. Freedomsoft Review Update 2: They've likewise included a gaggle of sparkly, new highlights to the "Reloaded" variant, which I've featured to sum things up underneath for you… Freedomsoft Review: A Few Strong, Personal Cautions… Indeed, in the wake of utilizing this actually, I can say Freedomsoft is an extremely incredible bit of land contributing programming. In it's arrangement chief capacities, yet in addition since I've by and by tried and utilized it to pull up practical property drives, a large number of money purchaser leads and two or three hundred private bank leads – all in my neighborhood all in around 3 ticks. In any case, before you move excessively quick, it would be ideal if you understand what FreedomSoft truly is — it's product. Presently truly, they're tossing in a lot of other stuff — and some of it beautiful darn appealing without a doubt. In any case, at it's very center, this is a business instrument — a ground-breaking one, yes — however it is anything but a genuine business. If it's not too much trouble be mindful so as not to befuddle the two. What's more, don't make the great "brilliant sparkly item condition" slip-up of letting all the showcasing and publicity encompassing this persuade you it'll run your entire 7-figure land activity while you chillax on a Hawaiian sea shore. With all that this extravagant programming can clearly do, it can and will intensely increase your REI business endeavors when and on the off chance that you really apply it… BUT… in the event that your business is as yet sitting at zero, companion… well, zero duplicated by anything is as yet zero, right? So first of all, you need a real land business for FreedomSoft to benefit you in any way, OK? Having said that, I'll state this: As a business power apparatus for genuine land financial specialists, I've actually never observed FreedomSoft's match. There is one programming item out there that could be viewed as similar in numerous regards (Open Road) but at the same time they're diverse in various manners… and even the driving force behind that product is advancing FreedomSoft at this moment. Which says something I think. A Few Unanswered Questions… Here are a couple of inquiries I don't know answers to … yet that merit notice in a genuine Freedomsoft survey… For their comps… where do they get the information? Purchaser/dealer/proprietor leads on request… once more, where are the leads sourced from? Would you be able to import your own agreements, structures and letters into the large, extravagant structures editorial manager thingy? Or on the other hand would you say you are constrained to just what they have in there? Freedomsoft Review Update 3: Andy from Freedomsoft halted by and by and responded to these inquiries (and yours) for us in the remarks underneath this post. Peruse on for straight answers you won't find on any online course. FreedomSoft Review: What's New in "Reloaded"? These things bear further clarification, yet in light of a legitimate concern for curtness, here's the short-yet amazing rundown of 8 extravagant, new things (notwithstanding all that it as of now accomplishes for you)… 1. A single Click Direct-Mail Marketing. (Records gave as well) 2. Mechanized and Tracked Direct-Mail Drip Campaigns (actually only a couple of snaps) 3. 45 New Website Design Templates (and you can have the same number of sites as you need/need) 4. New Customized Squeeze Pages for Load Mod, Landord, Motivated Seller, and Private Lenders 5. Drop-Dead-Easy Website Editor (genuinely) 6. "Make-Your-Own Contract" Builder (You can even transfer and auto-fill State-Approved agreements) 7. 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What is rich-washing?

INTRODUCTION

What is rich-washing? It is when cultural products and advertising make it seem like everyone is rich.

It's similar to whitewashing, where a problem is covered up and made to seem fine, when it is not; or Hollywood whitewashing, where white actors take roles over people of colour; or activist whitewashing, where white activists are spotlighted over people of colour; or greenwashing, where things are made to seem environmentally good, when they are not.

Much has been written about the media biases regarding sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, harmful depictions of mental illness, and other biases that stereotype or denigrate specific groups of people. However, not as much has been written about classism in North American media and entertainment.

Rich-washing is a type of classism, but it is much more than that.

Rich-washing completely flips the facts: in the real world, there’s a huge majority of financially precarious people at the bottom and a tiny minority at the top.

And for those at the very top in the U.S., their wealth is growing.

Rich-washing takes the bulk of people on the planet and makes them disappear –– they are over-looked, glossed over, cropped out of the picture, written out of the story.

Rich-washing is gas-lighting on a grand scale. It is so wide-spread that it is almost invisible. Like the dish soap ad used to say, we’re soaking in it.

Because it is such a blatant misrepresentation of the world, rich-washing has many harmful effects on people and the planet. It is important to expose this type of propaganda to reduce its harm.

However, the answer is not to change entertainment to only reflect social reality. No, this is not a call for censorship, but to point out how pop-culture is currently censored by those who hold the purse strings. Ultimately, the answer is to change our social reality to make it less harsh and more livable for everyone. More on this at the end.

Pop-culture is being censored by those who hold the purse strings

Most people are not rich but you’d never know that in today’s 21st century North American TV shows, movies, print media, social media and especially advertisements. (For whatever reason, entertainment in the UK has more social realism and much less rich-washing.)

Images of the rich and super-rich have come to dominate everything in a massive cultural mono-crop of shining hair shining teeth shining cars and shining homes filled with shining gadgets.

Yes, there are exceptions (see end). However, these exceptions are mostly “drowned in a sea of irrelevance” (as Aldous Huxley said).

Ursula Franklin called this general effect “censorship by stuffing”. Specifically with rich-washing, the ‘rich’ images are so numerous that they obliterate every other view of society.

“It is all too easy to confuse the sheer quantity of media with diversity of viewpoint. We do not notice that essentially the same messages are being repeated.” –– Mediaspeak, 1983

Get out the corporate pressure-washer, aim it at the public, turn it on max.

Or as Bertolt Brecht said: “The powerful of the earth create the poor but they cannot bear to look at them.”

Advertisers also don’t like it when the poor look at each other.

“In the 1960s... CBS dropped a number of popular prime-time shows such as ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ and ‘Andy Griffith’ because they attracted the wrong audience –– elderly, low income, and rural viewers. Advertisers had become keen on young, affluent urbanites…” ––Social Communication in Advertising, 1986

One of the worst things rich-washing does is make people think they are in a minority when in fact they are a huge majority.

Most Americans, for example, live paycheck-to-paycheck according to Forbes.

Rich-washing takes an enormous psychological toll because it creates the idea that lack of income is some kind of personal failing, rather than a systemic economic failing that affects many, many people. That’s one reason why unemployment is a huge factor in suicides.

“When the money isn’t there... feelings of deprivation, personal failure, and deep psychic pain result. In a culture where consuming means so much, not having money is a profound social disability.” ––Juliet Schor, The Overspent American,1999

Rich-washing also creates social solidarity and affinity with the rich, since proximity creates affinity.

People get used to seeing things from the point of view of the rich and may also take on the idea that their own riches are just around the corner. This has political implications (more on that below).

In addition, it’s common for negative characteristics to be attached to people who are poor.

Laziness, criminality, stupidity, and lack of morals, are often characteristics attributed to fictional poor people. This has real world consequences.

Film critic Roger Ebert famously said that movies create empathy.

“...the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us."

While many movies have indeed had a positive effect on society because of this empathy effect, entertainment products can also empower negative stereotypes. And when it comes to the war on the poor, Hollywood most definitely is not on the side of the poor.

“In a lot of films, especially coming out of Hollywood, less fortunate families are portrayed as imbeciles.” ––Chris Stuckmann, movie review of Parasite, Nov. 6, 2019

“It’s a central assumption of our pop-culture that people who have nice shit are good, and people in poverty are bad.” ––Cracked Podcast, “Why pop-culture hates poor people” 2015-03-02

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” ––Warren Buffet, quoted in Plutocrats by Chrystia Freeland, 2012

With all the vilification and humiliation of poor people in pop-culture, who would want to identify with the poor and not the rich? Who would want to identify with the economic losers and not the economic winners?

“…it is the general policy of advertisers to glamorize their products, the people who buy them, and the whole American and economic scene.” ––Elmer Rice, quoted in Mediaspeak, 1983

Advertisements are highly polished rich-washing because companies need their products associated with winners not losers.

But rich-washing sells more than just consumer products.

Rich-washing sells political ideas.

Rich-washing reinforces policies and laws that benefit those at the top of the income pyramid. So it is not surprising when we learn that income inequality and wealth concentration have been getting worse.

Income inequality and wealth concentration in the U.S. increasing since 1980s.

“Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of the world’s biggest hedge fund, says income inequality in the U.S. has become so dire that if he were in the White House, he would declare it a national emergency.” Barron’s, 2019

Instead of looking at the big picture and wondering why is it that so many people are poor, people assume or are told that it is their own fault if they are poor. People point fingers at themselves, at other poor people (lateral violence), but almost never up at the top.

“If there was ever a system which enchanted its subjects with dreams (of freedom, of how your success depends on yourself, of the run of luck which is just around the corner, of unconstrained pleasures…), then it is capitalism.” ––Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, 2009

This type of deflection ––away from the rich and scapegoating the poor–– was also behind the witch-burning craze of centuries ago.

Anthropologist Marvin Harris in his book on “the Riddles of Culture” noted:

“the principal result of the witch-hunt system (aside from charred bodies) was that the poor came to believe that they were being victimized by witches and devils instead of princes and popes.” ––Mavin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, 1975

It turns out that if you get people fearful of imaginary things and suspicious of their neighbours, they are less likely to join together in a peasant revolt and storm the castle, pitchforks in hand.

“It is from us and our labour that everything comes, with which They maintain Their pomp [!]” John Ball of the violent Peasant Revolt of 1381

When it comes to numbers, it should be obvious that the one percenters at the top have a precarious hold on power.

“Why has the response to rising inequality been a drive to reduce taxes on the rich? ... It’s not a simple matter of rich people voting themselves a better deal: there just aren’t enough of them.” ––Paul Krugman, The Great Unraveling, 2003

Rich-washing protects the status-quo by reinforcing the idea that most people are rich, and if you are not, it is your own fault. Rich-washing thus deepens poverty and enlarges the holdings of the super-wealthy.

Rich-washing can also push people into unhealthy behaviours –– everything from compulsive shopping and debt, to self-medicating, and even crime.

As it turns out, when people started watching TV in America in the 1950s, a particular type of crime suddenly rose: larceny (theft of private property). Researchers attributed the increase in larceny to feelings of “relative deprivation and frustration” and that upper- and middle class lifestyles were “overwhelmingly portrayed” on TV. (Impact of the introduction of television on crime in the United States, 1982, noted in Mediaspeak, 1983)

Another troubling by-product of rich-washing is how people become very vulnerable to scams and schemes.

“We are no longer ‘family’ we are ‘warm prospects.’ ––anonymous reviewer of False Profits, 2015

People want to believe the promises of all kinds of scammers offering them the American Dream. (Check out Season 1 of The Dream podcast). Because of the shame and pain of being poor, because of being an outcast from the perceived norm of upper-middle class consumption, people are desperate to get some dignity and hope back. Many women get into recruitment marketing for “the sense of community, friendship, and purpose that comes with being a vendor.”

However, less than one percent of Multi-Level Marketing participants make a profit.

“Failure and loss rates for MLMs are not comparable with legitimate small businesses, which have been found to be profitable for 39% over the lifetime of the business; whereas less than 1% of MLM participants profit. MLM makes even gambling look like a safe bet in comparison.” (PDF) John M. Taylor, 2011 Consumer Awareness Institute paper at FTC.gov.

Ironically, the stories of big-time con artists and scammers have become popular entertainment themselves and are the subject of many documentaries, movies and podcasts.

Finally, the biggest harm from rich-washing is to the environment ––our biosphere upon which all life depends.

“Modern economies expand, but the ecosystems that provide for them do not.” ––Steven Stoll, The Great Delusion, 2008

Mass consumption is a requirement of the current economic growth model and rich-washing helps keep it all going. So we end up with things like ‘fast fashion’, disposable everything, and planned obsolescence.

“Left unconstrained by other forces, the free-market system is one of the most restless, destructive arrangements ever contrived ––tearing down and building up, obsoleting last year’s fashions and praising this year’s, ... and scheming always to reduce the arts and sciences to sycophancy. None of which is a secret...” ––Thomas Frank, The Wrecking Crew, 2008

Rich-washing irony ––who is ruining the environment: rich or poor?

“World's richest 10% produce half of global carbon emissions, says Oxfam” ––Guardian, 2015

Rich-washing has another sadistic effect on low income people’s mental health. The world, it seems, is waking up to the potentially catastrophic harm being inflicted on the environment. And yet poor people are still made to feel like pieces of shit, even though they consume the least and do the least harm to the planet. So really... f*ck off with your spectacle of sparkling gold-plated glorification of the wealthy, please.

Three reasons for rich-washing

As previously mentioned, one reason for rich-washing is that corporations want their advertisements to reach higher income viewers. Another reason for rich-washing is for political propaganda: it protects the status quo by pushing the idea that everyone is mostly rich, and if you are poor, it is your own fault.

A third reason for rich-washing is that media creators, like everyone else, need to survive financially. Creators need to attract viewers. In most cases, this has led to an overwhelming focus on the rich and famous.

“Sponsors prefer beautiful people in mouth-watering decor, to convey what it means to climb the socio-economic ladder...” ––Mediaspeak, 1983

Today, due to an increasingly crowded arena and variety of cultural products, this is a bigger challenge than ever before. What’s going to get people’s attention? What’s going to be popular escapism? Very often this will be flashy settings, fancy costumes, a focus on the wealthy or the royal. Just how many shows about royalty do we need? Never too many apparently.

And when a story goes for gritty settings and characters, this usually means crime, jolting action and high conflict.

As Jerry Mander wrote in his now ancient 1977 book about television, things like violence, death, jealously, lust, materialism, conflict, the loud, the bizarre, the shocking and the superficial are easier to depict on television than their quiet, cooperative, and nuanced opposites. He laments that this is the type of world that TV “inevitably transmits”. No wonder he argued for the elimination of television.

(However, it should be noted that people used to worry about bad effects from “penny dreadfuls” and pocket-books, although Mander points out that watching TV puts people in a passive state, but reading does not.)

David Simon, creator of The Wire, one of the most critically acclaimed TV series ever made, had this to say about the impact of advertising on media:

“And how exactly do we put Visa-wielding consumers in a buying mood when they are being reminded of how many of their countrymen - black, white and brown - have been shrugged aside by the march of unrestrained bottom-line capitalism?” ––David Simon, The Wire, Truth Be Told (book), 2009, HBO

(Read more about The Wire below, under “Exceptions”)

Another irony about media rich-washing…

Low income people often consume a lot of escapist media because it is a cheap and easy way to get a break from the health-ruining, cortisol-producing daily grind of life on poverty incomes. Fictional and fantastical worlds are often the only affordable escape for those of meagre means. Thus, it is not surprising when people get an intense attachment to their favourite entertainment if it provides them with stress release, comfort and meaning.

“… a 21-year-old in Michigan, finds it easier to get excited about playing games than his part-time job making sandwiches…” ––Andrew Yang, The War on Normal People, 2018

The opening scene of the movie Ready Player One envisions an extreme dystopian version of this. Rickety trailers in squalid surroundings are stacked sky high. Those living inside wear virtual reality goggles to escape from their over-crowded lives into limitless virtual worlds.

It’s important to note that escapism as a form of coping with stress and trauma has its place. The answer is not to take away people’s beloved forms of escapism. (E.g. the excellent book by Raziel Reid “When Everything Feels Like the Movies”.) The answer is for humanity to strive to create a healthier and less stressful world where people don’t feel such a tremendous need to escape from reality.

But you don’t need to watch dystopian movies to see that public spaces are shrinking and becoming more unlivable. Even city benches are designed to be a miserable experience. (You know. To solve homelessness of course.) It is no wonder people stare into their screens like never before. We are ruining the public sphere and forcing people into private spaces where the goodness or badness of those places is determined by how much money you have.

The bright glare of rich-washing might be dimming

“Am I alone in being disgusted by excessive wealth? It seems like a moral failing rather than something to celebrate or aspire to.” ––Nigel Warburton Philosophybites (twitter), January 19, 2020

In 2019 there were three movies that ripped the shiny bandaid of rich-washing propaganda off the reality of mass income inequality: Jordan Peele’s US, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, and the controversial Joker... a character study only remotely related to the comic book story.

There’s been much written and spoken about these movies already. Suffice to say that poverty and the underclasses jump out of the screen in unexpected ways and the wealthy are not shown with shining virtuous haloes.

Even the super-rich (in real life) are starting to notice the current economic system is a disaster:

“At least a dozen billionaires have made public statements that call for the super-rich to pay more in taxes.” Forbes, Oct. 15, 2019

Meanwhile, support for a universal income benefit is spreading rapidly. (Thanks in no small part to Andrew Yang.) People are calling bullshit on the idea that there can ever be a living wage job for everyone who needs one. People are also calling bullshit on the idea that only paid work is real work. There’s a huge constituency of people who provide unpaid care for their loved ones. These unpaid carers have been diminished and ignored for far too long by both the political right (who are full of cheap platitudes about ‘the family’) and the political left (who are full of out-dated platitudes about ‘the workers’).

People are also calling bullshit on poverty itself since it’s obvious that there is more than enough for everyone on the planet to live with dignity and health. There is no reason for poverty to exist at all ––other than out-of-control greed and massive economic lies. Both of which are propped up by rich-washing.

Because of the increasingly obvious and growing gap between the haves and have-nots, cultural products might finally be moving away from rich-washing to something similar to what Brecht brought to the theatre 100 years ago:

“...the higher world of upper class sentiments is presented from the ruthless viewpoint of the common people.” ––Martin Esslin on Brecht, 1959

Rich-washing erases the vast swath of humanity from seeing any dignified reflection of themselves. It’s time to identify this assault on regular people.

To quote the Vancouver poet Bud Osborn*:

“north america tellin lies in our head make you feel like shit better off dead so most days now I say shout shout for joy shout for love shout for you shout for us shout down this system puts our souls in prison say shout for life shout with our last breath shout fuck this north american culture of death shout here we are amazingly alive against long odds left for dead shoutin this death culture dancin this death culture out of our heads”

*Bud Osborne 1947-2014, from Amazingly Alive and Other Poems, Vancouver, BC, 1997, Independent release, Lonesome Monsters

TO SUMMARIZE...

Here’s the thing. Public spaces are becoming increasingly harsh. Jobs and incomes are ever more unsteady, unpredictable and unlivable. People’s anxiety is on the rise. Healthy ways to relieve stress are few if you are broke. So people turn to entertainment as a form of escape. But this subjects them to rich-washing which is harmful to individuals, to society, and the environment.

Entertainment and advertising media have been teaching people that it is ok to hate, denigrate, or laugh at people in poverty. In addition, it has been teaching people who experience poverty to blame themselves, or even hate themselves.

“Propaganda offers him an object of hatred, for all propaganda is aimed at an enemy. And the hatred it offers him is not shameful, even hatred that he must hide, but a legitimate hatred, which he can justly feel.” ––Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, 1962

It is important to expose this type of propaganda to reduce its harm.

However, the answer is not to change entertainment to only reflect social reality. The answer is to change our reality so it is not so harsh for so many people.

Art can’t be censored. But it can be bent by those who hold the purse strings for their own purposes.

There is no reason for poverty to exist. Letting poverty exist is the costliest, stupidest and most tragic thing society can do. As described in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people first need to eat, we need shelter, we need health care, we need a material foundation before we can hope to have healthy, happy life. When people struggle to meet physical needs, they can’t pursue happiness needs. Or to put it another way:

“Even honest folk may act like sinners, unless they've had their customary dinners” (“How to Survive” from Threepenny Opera)

Ending poverty with a universal income benefit (aka Freedom Dividend, Guaranteed Livable income, Universal Basic Income ) is the most affordable and doable solution for people and the planet. It is our best bet to create a livable economy, a livable natural environment, and a livable social and cultural environment for humans.

In a world with income security for all, we might find our entertainment would drastically change for the better. Advertisers would no longer dominate entertainment. Creators would have more freedom to create. People would no longer seek so much escapism.

Of course, we will not have utopia ––nor should we try to create a utopia. But at least we would not be flinging ourselves into a certain dystopian future because we think there’s no other choice.

A livable income for everyone gives us a choice. #Livable4all - now- for people and the planet.

***

But wait! There’s more....

***

EXTRA SECTION 1: FAKE POVERTY TROPES

Fake poverty tropes in popular culture are different than exceptions to rich-washing (see examples next section). They are not. They are just story-telling short-cuts. They can be fun escapist entertainment, but they are ultimately rich-washing wolves in sheep’s (cheap) clothing.

i) Rags-to-riches: When someone starts poor and ends up rich. In the past, these tales were called Horatio Alger stories, where hard work and honesty bring success to the hero. A sub-genre of this trope is the criminal rags-to-riches story. Riches are won through criminality, violence, hustles, or scams. This usually ends badly for the anti-heroe(s). However, usually not before a display of luxurious settings and wardrobes. Or in some shows, just piles and piles of cash, gold, jewels, etc.

ii) How can they afford that?: This is when people with very marginal jobs and incomes somehow have homes and/or lifestyles that would be impossible with a similar income in real life. These are the kind of TV shows that leaves the audience wondering: “What? how can they afford that?”

iii) Rich Relations: This is when financially poor characters live on the periphery of rich people. These characters might be broke and in debt, but they have close family or friends who are very well-off. Again, even though the main character might be ‘skins’, the audience is shown some fancy settings and aspirational fashion.

iv) Magic Money Wand: This is when the poverty problems of the hero are magically solved when the hero gets a sudden windfall of money from a wealthy family member, friend, mysterious benefactor, or by winning something.

EXTRA SECTON 2: RECENT EXCEPTIONS TO RICH-WASHING

There are a few notable exceptions to rich-washing described here. Note: UK productions (except for one) are not included because, for whatever reason, the UK has an abundance of TV shows and films from a working class perspective. (See also the films of Ken Loach and Tony Garnett.)

The Wire began in 2002, was only 5 seasons, and is now considered a masterpiece of television. One reviewer describes it as being about “post-industrial collapse” and “institutional dysfunction” in an American city (Baltimore). Sounds bleak, but it was rare social realism with unconventional heroes and story-telling. It had low ratings at first. Apparently, showing that the “American Dream was dead” did not catch on right away. However, HBO, which relies on subscriptions, not advertising, was willing to “simply let it be” said creator, David Simon. He also describes just how much the mass media has failed America’s disenfranchised

The Wire (TV series)

“The Wire avoided victories, preferring to show corruption, failure and decay. ... The Wire was as much journalism as entertainment – a form of protest television.” ––Dorian Lynskey, The Guardian, 2018

The Wire began in 2002, was only 5 seasons, and is now considered a masterpiece of television. One reviewer describes it as being about “post-industrial collapse” and “institutional dysfunction” in an American city (Baltimore). Sounds bleak, but it was rare social realism with unconventional heroes and story-telling. It had low ratings at first. Apparently, revealing the “American Dream was dead” did not catch on right away. However, HBO, funded by subscriptions, not advertising, was willing to “simply let it be”. according to its creator, David Simon.

“…how can a television network serve the needs of advertisers while ruminating on the empty spaces in American society and informing viewers that they are a disenfranchised people, that the processes of redress have been rusted shut, and that no one - certainly not our mass media - is going to sound any alarm?” ––David Simon, The Wire, Truth Be Told (book) 2005

Atlanta (TV series)

“...the show’s brilliance [is] at combining absurdist comedy with heartbreaking reality to create something entirely unique.” ––Yohana Desta, Vanity Fair, 2017

Atlanta is a mix of sharp social realism, sudden comic moments, gut-wrenching scenes and hard-hitting parody that includes a searing fake commercial for children’s cereal. It is like the Eduardo Galeano of TV, but with some Salvador Dali, Brecht, and comedy thrown in. Series creator Donald Glover needed to disguise his vision in order to get it made.

“I was Trojan-horsing FX. If I told them what I really wanted to do, it wouldn't have gotten made." ... My struggle is to use my humanity to create a classic work—but I don’t know if humanity is worth it, or if we’re going to make it. I don’t know if there’s much time left.”––Donald Glover interview, New Yorker, 2018

Black Mirror - Fifteen Million Merits (series)

“What archetype dystopian future does Black Mirror’s “Fifteen Million Merits” choose to model itself after? Orwell’s or Huxley’s? The answer ends up being: a little bit of both.” ––Den of Geek, 2018

Fifteen Million Merits stars Daniel Kaluuya (also the star of Get Out). The episode begins with a dystopian-lite near-future story. However, it quickly compresses the characters ––and viewers–– into a painful claustrophobic nightmare vision of a capitalist hostage-taking entertainment monopoly.

Breaking Bad (TV series)

This was massively popular show that ran from 2008 to 2013. The main character is a chemistry teacher named Walt who was first motivated to be Bad due to a cancer diagnosis and fear for the financial future of his family. However, once he started down the bad path, he quickly accelerated to the far reaches of very bad badness. Partly this was because of his ‘almost-got-rich’ backstory. In one episode he goes to the house party of his former business partner who is now very wealthy. Walt’s feelings of poverty, failure, and humiliation are stark. In real life this pain is usually turned inward, but in the show it becomes grist for the monster that the character becomes. Millions of people related to this character who lived under the fear of poverty in the land of plenty.

However, Breaking Bad is mostly a rags-to-riches fake poverty trope even though it was a lower-middle class character’s fear of rags that sparked his need and greed for riches. With its very individualistic focus, the story continues the myth of independence carried over from the fictional old wild west of heroes and outlaws. But in this case the outlaw is the hero.

But perhaps its lasting legacy will be an oft seen meme showing how Breaking Bad would have had no story at all had it been set in a country with universal healthcare. It’s accurate to say the real monster in Breaking Bad is a modern wealthy country without healthcare.

Shameless (TV series)

“Few shows have attempted to situate themselves in the living nightmare of poverty—the country’s quiet shame, the marginalized that the middle and upper classes don’t want to see next to the numbing comfort of Modern Family. Television ignores the poor just as Americans do.” ––Flood Magazine, 2016

In a lot of ways Shameless is a big brash bold exception to rich-washing. The creator of the semi-autobiographical British version said “It’s not blue collar; it’s no collar.” However, after 9 seasons, the US version succumbs to several fake poverty tropes. Nonetheless, it is unique, and its many fans find the characters in the chaotic, desperate, scrounging, scamming, and poverty-stricken Gallager family relatable.

“I love how it addresses sex, drugs, poverty, absent parents, and other topics like those.” ––commenter, TV Criticism blog, 2014

Critics have questioned the series for its condescending stereotypes, for turning poverty into entertainment, for relying on too many nude scenes, and for their treatment of black characters.

But the overarching message and source of comedy for this show is in the title, which tells us that if you are poor, you should feel shame. This family doesn’t feel shame about their poverty. They are ‘shameless’, some more than others, and comedy ensues from their rude, crude, shocking behaviour and occasional truth-telling observations about society.

EXTRA SECTION 3: WAY BACK EXCEPTIONS

In the 1970s there were many more TV shows featuring regular people: Sanford & Sons (set in a salvage yard); Laverne & Shirley (factory workers); and, in Canada, The Beachcombers (salvage).

There were even some down-market detectives including the very popular Columbo who wore rumpled clothes and drove an old jalopy. Fans loved how rich villains would be caught because of their arrogance and snobbery: they assumed Columbo was a bumbling idiot because of his humble presentation.

The Rockford Files detective (1974-1980) also had a shabby vibe. The main character (Rockford) had done time, lived with his father in an old trailer, and had no office or secretary ––just an answering machine on his cluttered desk. He did, however, have a fast car and was played by James Garner, former star of the popular TV western Maverick.

Rural set TV series were also fairly common.

“Over one-third of shows in 1950 were set in small towns or rural areas, mostly Westerns and comedies.” ––Brookings Institute

The Beverly Hillbillies was popular comedy in the 1960s. It was a rags-to-riches and fish-out-of-water story. However, the show regularly made rich people look ridiculous even though the suddenly oil-rich hillbillies were also comic characters. But they were the heroes of their story. This show got cancelled despite its popularity as advertisers wanted younger urban viewers and not the rural and older viewers that show attracted. (Social Communication in Advertising, 1986)

Other rural set shows were Green Acres (inept rich people try to homestead with comic results), Petticoat Junction (another comedy), The Waltons, and Little House on the Prairie (dramas). There was also 17 seasons (1954-1973) of Lassie (a dog) with farming and wilderness settings.Going waaay back... growing up Canadian in the 1960s and 70s meant watching The Forest Rangers and Adventures in Rainbow Country, both shows featuring child characters who showed off skills such as fishing, wood craft, horseback riding, and wilderness survival.

EXTRA SECTION 4: THE WORLD’S LONGEST RUNNING SOAP

“So I'm a British guy who had an overnight stay in Toronto to connect a flight, and I noticed Corrie is shown in primetime on CBC... I’m just astonished anyone outside of Northern England would give a toss about it.” Reddit comment, 2018

You can’t talk about exceptions to rich-washing without talking about Coronation Street, the world’s longest running soap. Set ‘on the cobbles’ of a small fictional corner of working class Greater Manchester in Northwest England, it began in the 1960s and is still going strong. (Update May 2020- the pandemic has in fact interrupted Corrie.)

Coronation Street has grit, unlike US soaps, which would never have characters working in an underwear factory and organizing actions against management, or working in a fast food shops, barber shops, driving taxi, or grease pits fixing cars. With a few exceptions, most homes on the street look over-stuffed and very lived-in. The real living room of the street is the local pub, a cosy nostalgic setting, and nostalgia is a big part of the show’s popularity.

The street has changed and expanded over the years, but it has changed slowly. Characters who come and go with frequency except for the core characters. This includes several very popular and very elder actors who get substantial storylines. In addition, “Corrie”, as the fans refer to it, is also known for having snarky battle-axe women characters. One of the oldest was Ena Sharples, and one of the newest, Evelyn Plummer. And unlike U.S. entertainment, younger characters don’t all look and sound like glossy over-polished models-slash-actors.

In recent years Corrie has tackled numerous serious social issues such as suicide, homelessness, mental health, addiction, male rape, human trafficking, teen pregnancy, life after jail, and spousal abuse (to name just a few). These storylines are done carefully with advice from experts and advocate groups. They also frequently address classism. However, the show is not all doom and gloom. Coronation Street blends silly comedy, murderous villains, crimes big and small, and many ridiculous eye-rolling storylines. Fans heap an equal amount of complaints as praise. But big picture, Corrie is notable for the fact that it almost never got onto the airwaves at all.

Contrast between a working class UK soap and a US soap

Other Resources:

Books:

Deer-hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant, who writes about populism in southern rural poor communities in the U.S. (and his hometown) and why they might vote against their own self-interest.

Somebodies and Nobodies by Robert W. Fuller who writes about abuse of power by those who have higher status or rank against those of lower status.

From Movie Lot to Beachhead by Look Magazine (1945) Written at the end of WWII, the publishers wanted to show how Hollywood was not shallow but could rally for a cause and be on the right side of history. A big contrast to today, when it comes to the war on the poor, entertainment is very much on the wrong side of history.

Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano “a crushing satirical expose of the glaring inequalities and injustices of a world turned upside down that many has come to be desensitized as ‘normal.’” (Goodreads review)

The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang (free audiobook on youtube).

The Rebel Sell - Why the culture can’t be jammed by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. “But these gains [civil rights, social safety net] have not been achieved by ‘unplugging’ people from the web of illusions that governs their lives. They have been achieved through the laborious process of democratic political action.” (All forms of counterculture end up being just another marketing opportunity).

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman “As Huxley marked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny ‘failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.’ Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Websites Classism in Children’s Movies (a study) - Classism.org A Guide to Basic Income FAQs - scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq

Podcasts

Why Pop-Culture Hates Poor People - Cracked.com 2015-03-02 “Movies don’t seem to understand what it’s like to make less than 200K a year…. If you look and live like a poor person, you might be a serial killer.”

5 ways Hollywood tricked you into hating poor people - Cracked.com 2015-02-23

***

The author was raised on books & nature and almost no TV and movies but became a telly addict & movie fan late in life.

#popculture classism TVshows shameless atlantaTV thewire

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naturatrimketofastlove · 5 years ago

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ptw30 · 6 years ago

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Regarding that post of "my friend told me dw is mad about the large female audience" whether that's true or not, what option do you think would be best for DW to take in this position? making another reboot where the messages and writing this audience hated so much can finally be fixed? so they can relaunch their merch and target it more towards women? Or maybe making this reboot more appealing to men and succed with their "boy toys" and "boy property"? (1/4)

Though i just see this last one failing miserably, they already tried it once and it didn’t work. I might be young (and correct me if i’m wrong) but fandom culture seems pretty female dominated to me? Like even people outside of the binary gender (a minority group in the current society) seem to overtake the few men who engaged in the fandoms I’ve been before. (2/4)

It might be cause I only get into cartoon fandoms and that doesn’t appeal to adult men as much as it does to adult women, it might be cause of the misogynistic “ew! a crazy fangirl” view, probably fandoms are safe places for oppressed groups or they simply have different interests than mine. (¾)

I’m sure there’re more factors at play but whatever it is, DW is just wasting their time trying to appeal to a small part of their audience when they already had this large group (which is pretty diverse in gender and orientation) and they could win us back if they try. This shouldn’t be looked as a disappointment but more like an opportunity (um wtf DW??) But how do you think they should take that step? (srry for the rant, got some strong feelings about this)

First, can I interest you in a cookie? Maybe get your mind off me writing an entire marketing plan for DreamWorks?

Before we go into “boys property” - we need to note that brands don’t focus one target market.

When I headed four brands, each brand had primary, secondary, and even tertiary markets. For our main brand, we had six target segments, three primary. Did we care about the others? Yeah, but we didn’t highlight them half as much in marketing campaigns or collateral.

That means that most likely, Voltron wasn’t a “boys” franchise, so much as one of the target markets DreamWorks wanted to hit were boys, ages 7 to 15. Their secondary market was probably older males who had seen the original series, and either a secondary or tertiary market was older female viewers who also watched DotU.

I need to note - I used to wear Voltron shirts all the time. When I wore VLD shirts, I heard from girls, generally 18-30. Almost all had a favorite character and knew the next season drop date.

When I wore DotU shirts, I heard from guys. When I asked the men, “Hey, do you like the new show?” every single one told me they’d never heard of it.

Now, fandom, as a whole, DreamWorks probably doesn’t care about. No, really. Fandom can make their fanart, celebrate the story, whatever floats their boat; DreamWorks doesn’t care.

What DreamWorks cares about is sales. (They don’t even care about viewership if they’re distributing through Netflix because Netflix releases no numbers. All DW cares about is that Netflix orders more episodes.)

So are the toys selling? No. Then that’s not working. Are the shirts selling? Yeah? Oh, maybe we need to focus there. Who is buying the shirts?

But it’s actually hard to say for sure what’s working when all we know for sure is what’s not working. We can assume by the sudden increase in T-shirt stock on Hot Topic, especially those in women sizes, that these shirts are selling. We can also assume from Amazon having every single shirt in every single style - men, women, and children - that those shirts are selling.

I can also tell you from my sister and mom’s holiday shopping experience that Hot Topic says they cannot keep VLD merchandise on the shelf. I’m not sure if that’s factual or just the ramblings of an overzealous seller.

My point is - from the data we can see, we can assume that women are the majority viewership and it’s women with disposal income, 18-40, or so.

(I also want to note, I actually like the cut of a men’s shirts better.)

However, we don’t know that Voltron isn’t engaging with young male viewers, just that young male viewers seemingly aren’t buying merchandise. And as someone with at least seven different toys from VLD - I can tell you women are.

So what does that mean for DreamWorks?

There are a few factors that will determine what DreamWorks will do or has decided to do going forward. Most likely, they are going to want a variety of series, each one with a focused set of primary markets. So whether any new Voltron series will want to hit the “boys market” depends on if any other show in DreamWorks’ hopper is set to hit the boys’ market. I’m sure currently 3Below and potentially Fast & Furious are the supposed to hit those markets, so if they’re looking to making money on toy sales - well, F&F probably has the most potential.

However, as @nomadicism can tell you in more detail, the toy market is effectively broken, and Voltron did suffer from distribution issues. (The videos from last year’s Toy Fair confirm this.) So I would need to see DreamWorks’ toy sales to know for sure if that’s even something worth pursuing.

Ignoring that for just a moment - recent thought leadership in marketing is looking at agile delivery methods and strategies. Therefore, if DreamWorks stumbled upon a lucrative target market with disposal income, then yes - they should want to milk that and they should have the infrastructure to switch target markets and merchandise - not on a dime but in an acceptable time frame. And they have.

However, as @sol1056 wrote earlier this week - it really depend on the person - or demographic - making the decisions, which will say whether marketing and merchandising will want to focus on women as a target market, despite or because of their monetary value.

After all, Young Justice had a large female fanbase. That was the reason Cartoon Network cancelled the show, and from what I’ve seen from the Season 3 thus far, the EPs focused hard on trying to gain that male market they originally didn’t lure the first two seasons. In doing so, they lost me, at least, as a viewer.

Going forward - what should DreamWorks do?

Young Justice just started streaming this month, so it’s hard to say if this darker turn will affect the story going forward. It’s hard to say if the darker start can’t be changed by a fulfilling ending to the season. What I can say is - Greg Weisman said earlier this week that the show hasn’t been greenlit for a fourth season. (It’s also on DCU, which no doubt has a smaller viewership than Netflix.)

While women dominate the fandom, the question remains - are they buying? If women really are shilling out dough for VLD merchandise (*looks at her Shiro shirts*), then DreamWorks execs should take notice and decide, “This is where we should throw our lot with any sequel.”

I can’t go much into details without getting too personal, but CEOs are beginning to create strategy from social media, thanks to Millennials. (That’s not to say that letters or calls to DreamWorks aren’t weighed more heavily because they are.) Millennials want a personalized online experience. They want to engage with media on their own terms, an experience crafted toward their preferences, and they live with a mini-computer in their hands. They live on social media, though that, too, is dominated by women.

But CEOs see social media posts as not having a filter, and though I have serious misgivings about taking social medias as the only source of research, I’m sure DreamWorks is doing or has done professional market research. They know what products are selling, whose buying them, and what these people want to see, in order to encourage them buy more.

It’s telling that the only shirts ever produced for VLD, especially their newest ones -

- all have the paladins and their symbols, after supposedly the lore was discarded after Season 2.

Ignoring that the lore might be coming back - Marketing has created only a handful of new shirts post-Season 2 with a different paladin line-up - the majority of which were Monster & Mana designs and one shirt with Allura in the split screen.

NOTHING AGAINST ALLURA. I just mean that seemingly, either merchandising doesn’t think post-Season 2 formations won’t sell or they tested in some way and know they won’t sell. Or they aren’t even willing to try, seeing the fandom backlash from later seasons.

But if shirts are selling - and they appear to be, by the number of styles - are those numbers or projected numbers enough to forgo a “boys’ market” and focus all efforts on a primary target market of women?

Considering DreamWorks already made the decision to make Hyperphase Voltron a con exclusive and go from selling less than twenty shirts on HT to more than 100 items, to go from selling few shirts on Amazon to uploading new ones in April and October 2018, and January 2019 - I think the question isn’t if DW should focus on women.

That’s why I question the anon who said that DreamWorks is contemplating what to do with their series - since DreamWorks seems to have completed market research, selected a new primary target market, and made drastic changes to merchandising in order to reach that target market - women.

Now, DreamWorks just need to focus on expanding that market, and how do they do that?

With new content that speaks to that market, or y’know, a fix-it sequel.

#voltron #voltron critical #answered #it's a marketing thing #othxrstar #dreamworks #vld season 8 #merchandising

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dayshasource · 5 years ago

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Shaping the World and Young Women.

Born atheist, but converted to Islam, G. Willow Wilson the author of Ms. Marvel spoke to students, and faculty about her comic book last Wednesday at Moraine Valley community college in which she spoke about her conversion, and why she chose to write about a Pakistani Muslim girl named Kamala Khan that has polymorphism.

Wilson is an atheist born but converted to Islam who was asked by Marvel writers to create a comic about a Muslim girl with polymorphism. Polymorphism is the power to transform and reshape the form of one's body. Being that Khan is Pakistani, shown as a hero is different because she is the only Muslim superhero in the marvel cinematic universe, so she is a different kind of superhero who shows different groups of people that they can to be heroes.

On Apr 10. at noon inside the theater of the F building, which moraine doesn’t host their book events there often, “At the fine and performing arts center, we seldom offer these types of book or author events. Those are most often curated by the library. This specific event, however, was a collaboration with the library and because Wilson is so well-known, we felt that the theater was a better venue to accommodate larger audiences,” says Tommy Hensel who is the managing director of the one and performing arts center.

I asked him what are these events called and why they host them, “every year, the library picks one text and creates a year-long series of events called ‘One Book/One college.’ For this academic year, they picked the “ms. marvel” graphic novels by Willson. That choice was part of a collaboration with the fine and performing arts center and a program we have been running called ‘Mosaics: Muslim Voices in America.’ That program was funded by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals for the Building Bridges: Arts, Culture and Identity program. Moraine Valley, along with one consortium and three other individual organizations, received funding to build knowledge, and appreciation for arts and culture with roots in Muslim-majority societies. This grant program is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art, and helps support mission-critical projects that demonstrate the power of the arts to strengthen communities and increase intercultural understanding across America. Moraine Valley’s specific project is titled Mosaics: Muslim Voices in America and our focus is to highlight the artistic and cultural diversity of Muslim artists living and working in the United States.” Hensel says which is amazing because there were so many young Muslim students at the event that day, mostly women, who are most likely inspired by her writing and the storyline.

One woman was a fan of the marvel comics, which was obvious because she wore her captain marvel shirt which is a new movie that just been released in March which finally got one billion in the box office. She is the first woman in the Marvel cinematic universe to have her own movie and to reach one billion ticket sales.

The event was located in the Dorothy Menker Theater. I and my friend Ana decided to sit in the front. Behind us was a class from Argo High School. There were at least 20 students apart from that class and about 40 people overall in the theater. To my right was an interpreter signing for a few deaf students, and to my left was a group of professors and equational the cameraman would jump on stage and snap photos. After waiting for ten minutes Wilson took the stage. I couldn’t fully tell what she had on, because she was behind the podium but I caught the sight of her hijab which was white and Hensel announced his thanks to everyone for being there and did an intro before he walked off stage to give Wilson the room. The screen above us had the book cover which I’ve noticed. Wilson’s family were atheists so she wasn’t raised in a religious household. She thought about converting to Islam because as a teen she was so invested in religion and reading a lot about it and when she was in college she was exposed to it as well, but since 9/11, it set her back from doing so. “Is this is? Are they right and I’m wrong?” She says. After graduating she moved to Egypt to teach English and she finally converted. Since then the audience seemed very interested in what she had to say. A group of young Muslim girls that go to moraine came to get a closer to listen. Everyone was now focused on her as she spoke lively about her new life. “It was very much a matter of kind of living a double life for a time and not reviewing bits of me to the people I love the most and I’m feeling really guilty about it and guilty about feeling like some kind of betrayal by taking this radical departure from the life that is expected of me and I wrestled with it for a long time but coming to a place where I can talk about it with the people I love is something that helped,” Wilson says as I looked around, and see people’s elbows were on their legs, they were pushed forward trying to listen closely to the story on how she went from atheist to Muslim. A few years after Marvel came to her to start the idea to write a comic about a Muslim superhero.

At the time she didn’t know what the Khan background is going to be what costume she was going to wear and what her powers she is going to have.

“Your story is about belonging,” Sanaa Omna says her to help her get a sense of how Khan's storyline will go. “I was interested in making her power something more kinetic, something more visually interesting something that wasn’t necessarily pretty and sparkly but with more visceral that was kind of weird.” So that’s when she settled on polymorphism. She can become really big, really small and she can bend the laws of physics.

She brings up how she relates to Khan and the other characters in her own way since she never grew up with being Muslim and also that she’s white and not brown.

“I think all of us in our teenage years are trying to figure out who we are in relation to the people around us. Trying to cycle all your life and keep a major development away from your parents and people you grew up with and I think that almost feels like more and the way handled her superpowers from anything else not that I view as converting religion as getting superpowers if so that would be awesome. But that feeling was very well known to me I have the secret I don’t have to tell I don't know if it’s a bad thing, something I should share this with people, I don’t know how to feel about it. So that way she deals with her superpowers and who do she tells and who she not tell is me trying to be right in vitally context by Omni stories and by the things she felt were important to include and that was the matter of making myself quiet and not bring myself into the stories except as a sidekick you know there is a lot of me in Bruno, there is a lot of me in Zoey I felt like it was important to have those characters there.”

At the time when Marvel asked her write the comic Wilson got very shocked and it came out of nowhere. “I got a call from Omna who at that point was an editor from X men, authors, at marvel comics and I met with her briefly we had lunch with a mutual friend and kinda empathized with each other because at that point we were the only two Muslim women working The entire mainstream American superhero industry just us and we haven’t spoken since then so I was not expecting that call much less was I expecting her to say so we had this idea we want to create a new American Muslim superhero on her own ongoing book and we would like you to help develop his character,” Wilson says as one of the professors pulled out her phone and started recording, “that’s utter madness, I had at that point my relatively short career in comics accrued already a certain number of threats from some serious, some not for writing that hadn't nothing to with religion with politics with anything that can be considered remotely controversial and write two entirely unremarkable fill-in issues on superman and get threats,” she finishes. Wilson went on to speak about her challenges writing the story.

“We almost romanticize the idea that if you are under a threat you must have said something really important and out there and it kinda makes you a more important figure than you were otherwise when in actual fact I said nothing very remarkable and it did not feel excited or dangerous in a fun way or all American to have to deal with this threat and it felt like I had done something wrong because I was the one who has a police escort which is not the most fun and I was the one who couldn't use the bathroom like a normal person or go into the building the normal way,” she spoke confidently.

It was very interesting seeing her writing a character who is Muslim/Pakistani when she’s not. Someone can only know so much about someone’s culture. She decided to step away from ms. marvel this year to give young Muslim authors a chance to give Khan more of a story since she isn’t born into the culture or religion because being born into that and growing up with it is a whole different experience. She thought so as well. It’s amazing of her to do that since she has been with Khan for so long but her thinking about young Muslim readers and wanting more for those readers is a thoughtful thing to do.

“We never thought this landscape would have changed so much artistically politically with this character to be embraced by so many people and that there will be this amazing dynamic and crap of young Muslim writers who will rise together and love this character and take her on as their own.”

#Journalsim Writing MsMarvel Marvel Profile Event

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wcva · 5 years ago

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Volunteering - implications for the health and social care workforce strategy

Am ddarllen hwn yn Gymraeg?

A long-term workforce strategy for health and social care in Wales has been published by Social Care Wales and Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) for consultation. Fiona Liddell looks at the potential for volunteering and the extent to which the draft strategy supports this.

The draft strategy is a readable 22 pages which you can find in full here .

The main themes

The broad intentions of the strategy are made clear: enabling health and social care systems to work together, helping people to live well in their communities and providing care closer to or at home.

These are based on the quadruple aim, as expressed in A Healthier Wales, of preventing ill health, improving experience of patients and service users, increasing value through innovation, improvement and best practice and enriching the capability and engagement of the workforce.

Seven key themes emerged from preliminary consultations and are presented in this draft strategy: valuing and retaining our workforce, seamless working, digital, attraction and recruitment, education and learning leadership and workforce shape.

Where is volunteering mentioned?

The introduction asserts the need for us to work together and to recognise the range of people who have a role to play in health and social care, including those employed by statutory, private and third sector organisations and including also volunteers and carers.

The big ambition is stated like this (page 5) ‘By 2030 we will have the right number of engaged, motivated and valued people including volunteers and carers, able to deliver flexible and agile health and social care that meets the needs of the people of Wales.’

Volunteers are expressly mentioned subsequently, in relation to three of the seven key themes:

Seamless working: the vision includes ‘Supporting regional partnership working to develop and deliver new models of care and support the workforce changes required to deliver these new models’ and ‘Supporting education and development of skills across the whole workforce, and invest in development of everyone, including carers and volunteers’.

So, volunteers may have a role in ‘new models of care’, although this is not spelt out. The second point links to education and learning, below.

Education and learning: the vision is ‘To provide excellent learning and education opportunities throughout all stages of the workforce’s career, including undergraduate students, apprentices, volunteers and carers’. Potential actions are suggested to widen access, develop common competence requirements and to recognise the experience and skills acquired through non-traditional routes.

So, volunteers are seen in the strategy as potential members of a future workforce and a target for education and learning, with that in mind.

Finally, in relation to workforce shape, the need to recognise the contribution and expertise of volunteers and carers is highlighted. A potential action is suggested to ‘Commission a programme of work to quantify the shape and contribution of volunteers and carers in health and social care’.

So, the strategy acknowledges the need for better evidence about the impact of volunteers. We can build upon existing published evidence, such as Can volunteering help to create better health and care (May 2017).

Influencing the agenda

Responses to the consultation document are invited by Social Care Wales and HEIW by mid-September. WCVA is co-ordinating a response of behalf of the third sector. Here’s are my initial thoughts, as a starter for ten. I would love to hear your views.

Volunteers and carers are mentioned together each time, recognising that they are both an important adjunct to the workforce. But there is a fundamental difference in the ways in which carers and volunteers contribute to strategic outcomes (and this might be a topic for another blog!).

As regards volunteering, there is certainly scope to plan, manage and develop this proactively, in accordance with the needs and ethos of an organisation. People volunteer for a variety of different reasons; amongst them is the desire to contribute something useful and to make a positive difference. A clear vision for where and how volunteering contributes to the achievement of an organisation’s aims is likely to lead to more rewarding experiences of volunteering. This has implications for workforce development - which are in danger, in the draft strategy, of being overlooked.

There is an understandable ambivalence about the place of volunteering within a workforce strategy. Volunteers are not the mainstream workforce and core service delivery should not be dependant on the involvement of volunteers, as our newly revised Draft Charter for clarifying and strengthening relations between paid workers and volunteers makes clear. Volunteering can provide additional capacity, however, that helps to improve patient and service user experience, and the delivery of more holistic, integrated and citizen centred services.

My main point, in response to the consultation, is that a workforce strategy needs to plan for the leadership of volunteering and the development of staff, in order to establish an environment where volunteering can flourish and its impact on services be maximised.

Why? Firstly, volunteering needs to be strategically planned and resourced. It involves regular discussions with senior and operational staff, with trade unions and with volunteers to determine and develop appropriate volunteer roles. It involves influencing the culture of an organisation to ensure that everyone understands the role of volunteers, has realistic expectations and can support them appropriately. It involves developing and maintaining relationships with external volunteer involving organisations, entering into appropriate joint working agreements to ensure quality and continuity of care, using to the full the community resources that are available. Without volunteering leadership ‘from the top’, volunteering will not impact on the planning, design and development of health and care.

Secondly, leadership is needed to develop quality assurance processes and procedures for volunteer involvement (see Investing in Volunteers); to maximise their contribution and engagement, to ensure patient and volunteers’ safety and to make volunteering accessible to a diverse range of people. Dedicated volunteering systems are essential for ensuring a professional service whilst at the same time respecting the needs and motivations of volunteers. There are untold benefits from getting this right, including harnessing fresh ideas and energies and the cultivation of interest in careers in health and care.

Thirdly, we need volunteering leadership to develop habits and methods of evaluation that will give credible evidence, not only of the difference made by volunteers, but also a better understanding of

the activities and interventions that make the most significant difference to patients, service users and staff. Getting this right will support the creative development of new and more patient -centred models of working, including partnership working.

The development of volunteering needs to be strategically planned separate from, although related to, the development of the paid workforce. Then we will be on the right path to realising the potential of volunteering in delivering health and social care.

If you would like to respond to this article or contribute your views on the consultation document to be included in WCVA’s response, please contact Fiona by email [email protected] by 6 September.

Fiona Liddell is Helpforce Cymru Manager.

Helpforce, is working with Third Sector Support Wales (WCVA and 19 CVCs), Welsh Government and other partners to develop the potential of volunteering to support health and social services.

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syscommltd · 5 years ago

Text

Smart Buildings – Smarter Governance

Benefits of Smart Buildings

The digital transformation of buildings is growing as the era of Internet of Things (IoT) ushers in an increasing number of smart buildings. Smart building technology is necessary for economic and environmental change. And for the Public Sector, this leads directly to the rise of smart government. For those operating in the cash-strapped Public Sector, who are under pressure to cut costs and improve services, the benefits of investing in smart buildings include:

Reduced operating costs

Increased responsiveness

Improved sustainability

Higher efficiency

Steady ‘feedback’ from big data and AI

Greater employee and citizen satisfaction

Smart buildings create a connected environment. Bringing together people, data, and infrastructure in a truly unique way. Indeed, this new overlaying of traditional bricks and mortar with modern digital technologies will fundamentally change how we inhabit buildings.

At its heart, a smart building is simply one where people and information are brought together – harnessing smart technology such as IoT and AI to automatically control internal operations such as heating, lighting, ventilation, security, etc. What makes a building truly smart, however, is how it uses the hundreds to sensors embedded in multiple different systems throughout the building to collect, analyse, and act in such a way that essentially creates a conversation between itself and its inhabitants.

A smart building, can, for example, detect the presence of people in a room, manage the temperature and air conditioning let others know that the room is in use, monitor the light from outside to adjust the blinds, etc.

This shift to smart buildings could save around 15%-25% on energy costs according to Smart Start for Smart Buildings. And because commercial buildings account for between 10%-15% of carbon emissions, reducing energy consumption through the use of smart building technologies would make a significant positive impact on the health of our cities.

The consolidation of monitoring, management, security, IT and communication infrastructure is also a key cost-saving when investing in a smart building. A more uniform infrastructure is one that is easier to scale, has significantly less equipment and lower inter-connect costs. Moreover, the integration of these systems also allows for a more efficient use of energy, leading to lower energy bills and an improved carbon footprint. Indeed, consolidation and integration of the buildings network infrastructure is the first step toward capitalising on a smart building’s potential. With the ability to analyse vast amounts of data, a clear picture can be built up over time to create a better view of how a building is actually being used. In some building, it has been reported that space utilisation can be as low as 48%. Through the advent of smart building technology utilisation rates of more than 80% can be achieved, liberating significant amounts of floor space that can either be repurposed for internal use or rented or sold on.

But understanding the benefits of smart buildings is one thing – finding an affordable way to build or convert existing buildings in these times of tight finances is another thing. Smart building technologies might pay for themselves in future cost-savings and efficiencies but building the case to begin the process isn’t always straightforward for developers.

Government Support for Smart Buildings

However, the UK Government is being supportive to the construction industry in their efforts to embrace today’s new building technologies and the move toward digital transformation. For example, they have pledged £15m for the development of the Centre for Digital Built Britain, a partnership between the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and the University of Cambridge to understand how the construction and infrastructure sectors could use a digital approach to better design, build, operate, and integrate the built environment.

For Mark Brew, Chairman of PCSG and a strategic consultant for the centre, “It’s about digitising the entire lifecycle of built assets to boost capacity, reduce costs, improve whole-life performance and cut carbon emissions.”

In addition, IoTUK, a national programme designed to promote the UK’s IoT capabilities, has been launched as part of the government’s £40m investment into IoT. The government is also urging local authorities to bid for their share of a £95m full-fibre broadband fund to enable key public buildings and businesses to improve their digital infrastructure.

Margot James, UK Minister for Digital, said: “We recently set out our ambition for a nationwide full-fibre broadband network by 2033, and initiatives like this will be instrumental in achieving that. We want to hear from any local authority interested in taking part, so we can work closely with them on their plans to help them secure funding.”

Despite the huge promises and upside of investing in smart buildings, there are also some key challenges that need to be taken under consideration.

Key Challenges Facing Smart Building Development

Pressures on public sector buildings means that Finance Managers are struggling to prioritise capital investment for any building conversions. The costs of upgrading and consolidating an existing network, coupled with the need to install new smart technologies can run into the millions of pounds, depending upon the age and condition of a building.

The proliferation of sensors and cameras throughout the buildings means that a highly reliable network infrastructure is needed to ensure that all the smart building technologies work flawlessly together. This also means that that governments must invest in highly reliable network devices along with sufficient broadband to support the increase in data traffic. To operate smoothly, there can be no bottlenecks from either the wired or wireless network. No gaps in service can exist from WiFi access points through the wired switches and all the way to the broadband internet connection and the data centre. These connections must be highly available, fault tolerant, and secure to insure an uninterrupted service. This is the digital overlay on traditional bricks and mortar that will truly deliver the digital transformation that governments today are looking to implement.

Moreover, in the midst of the diversity of devices now supporting smart buildings, data security and protection of privacy must be fully maintained. Smart buildings will contain sensitive data, for example, medical and patient information held within strictly controlled environments. Authorised devices to the network must be seamlessly and effortlessly ‘on-boarded’ while unauthorised devices must be prevented from gaining access to the smart building network. Security is paramount.

And it’s not about 1 single building – government buildings and their networks need to be open and connected to many others in order to fully integrate and communicate to others. Only then will we move toward a truly smart city environment.

Smart buildings are on the rise with the proliferation of low-cost internet connected devices and the convergence of formally disparate network infrastructures, consolidating data, voice, and video traffic down a single fibre cable. Insightful and actionable data from any number of government buildings and agencies can now be delivered in real time, optimising both work space and energy consumption.

Smart Buildings – Efficiency, Comfort and Security

Intelligent buildings integrate many advanced technologies and, combined coherently, these technologies greatly improve the efficiency, comfort and security of a building. The foundation of this system is a solid data network infrastructure, providing the highest possible reliability, bandwidth and security.

Connectivity through smart building technology enables and ensures a healthy and comfortable living and working environment for the occupants; smart buildings are better aligned with occupants’ preferences, this can be through connected, interactive and self-learning control systems. Additionally, they are more suited to ensure higher indoor comfort, through monitoring and verification which can be done at a lower cost for the occupant and by optimising energy usages.

Smart building technology should encompass additional functions in terms of flexibility, automation, renewable energy production and user-friendly control. Leading on from this, using technology within the infrastructure of a building can benefit the environment through lower energy consumption and a greater capacity for more renewable energy usage. It can benefit the greater society, with better health, comfort and well-being whilst encouraging a thriving economy.

Learn More About Smart Building Network Infrastructure from Syscomm—>

Darren Bindert, Head of Marketing for Syscomm

The post Smart Buildings – Smarter Governance appeared first on Syscomm.

from Syscomm http://www.syscomm.co.uk/uncategorized/smart-buildings-smarter-governance/

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yvynyl · 6 years ago

Audio

// Letters to YVYNYL //

Guma - Floor Models

/ I’ll be honest. My YVYNYL email account is a mess. Swamped to the brim. I was stoked to find this letter, though! TJ’s story made me happy and his tunes even more so. Mellow, driven, beautiful. Listen to the two tracks he’s released so far before the whole record comes out in a week or so and you’ll share in the majesty of rebuilding his motorbike and crafting songs as strong as these. Let’s support his vision!

Hi Mark,

My wife and I got to Austin, TX a couple years ago with one car between the two of us, and as she was the first to get a job and start using the car every day to commute, I needed a way to get around. For six years in New York City I had been a cyclist, and I was proud of both my physical fitness and my willingness to bike year-round. Austin made short work of that, as it is basically a city of two giant hills that converge at the river that runs through downtown. Coming or going, the hills will get you. As the temperatures crept toward 110F and I showed up to freelance gigs exhausted and smelling bad, I knew that I needed a better way to travel.

We couldn’t afford a second car, so I bought a used motorcycle on Craigslist. It didn’t run. It was nearly fifty years old, had probably sat outside for a good amount of that time, and it was covered with rust and grime. But that was part of my plan: I had no mechanical experience, and the way that I justified the transition from a bicycle to a significantly faster and more dangerous mode of transportation was that I was going to learn how it worked by taking it apart and putting it back together. This would demystify the machine, I thought, and give me the knowledge needed to maintain what is essentially an outdated snapshot of internal combustion technology. In other words, a fifty-year-old gasoline motor is a finicky thing, and if I was going to use it every day to get around while my wife had the car, I needed to be able to understand it. It took me a week to take the entire thing apart and lay it out in the garage, and I spent the next three months cleaning, painting, greasing, and reassembling.

A strange thing happened during that time: I stopped playing my instrument and writing songs. Instead, I started to dream about the bike. When my wife got up early to go to work, I would get up with her and bound outside with a cup of coffee and a wrench. I’d get lost polishing a piece of aluminum and look up only to find her pulling back into the driveway at the end of the day. I hovered over eBay auctions for used parts and posted questions to small forums of older, mostly male Honda enthusiasts, the kind of online communities where emojis are used haphazardly and— all other options for troubleshooting exhausted— where people would simply post their actual phone number and say “just call me and we can figure this thing out.”

New terminology started to populate my vocabulary. I began to think of objects around me in terms of three-dimensional, exploded-view diagrams. I would space out at work and instead of jotting down lyric ideas, I would scribble color combinations. As the bike came together, I marveled at the increasing amount of three-dimensional space it took up in the garage and the diminishing number of parts in labeled bags on the floor. And this process I would recommend to anyone who has a love of projects and puzzles. With a shop manual printed from the internet and YouTube videos aplenty, building a bike is like following instructions for the biggest and most well-designed LEGO set you will ever see. In the process of reassembly you begin to discern logic and intention; human qualities. Every piece has a function in one of a handful of systems that comprise the whole; many components serve two or more purposes by using forces of rotation and chain linkages to disperse physical energy to different parts of the bike over the course of an eternally recursive 360-degree path. I could go on, but Robert Pirsig has already written quite effectively to these points and others.

I was also aware that I was inhabiting a new way of being. Last time I wrote to you about my experiences with depression and the transformative power of traveling alone. I knew that I could never have done this project in New York City. I now lived in a house instead of an apartment, I had a yard instead of a sidewalk, a garage, a long driveway. As the seasons turned and we spruced up our house and adopted some cats, I was aware of a new kind of domesticity that I had not otherwise known.

Domesticity is a big theme in my most recent work. I have always felt most comfortable writing songs from my actual, first-person perspective as opposed to creating characters or inhabiting situations with which I’m unfamiliar. This process takes time and like any other process of self-reflection is a habit that needs to be continually nurtured. I finished the bike in the spring; it looks brand new and runs better, I suspect, than it ever has. When I meandered back toward songwriting, I realized that I had not had any particularly grand adventures to plumb for inspiration and that the most pressing question on any given day was usually, “what do you want for dinner?” But this is a sacred place in which to exist! The truth of your inner experience can be more readily found in this stillness. There are messages in the calmness, a lazy cat on your lap while the sun breaks through the window.

When I felt that I had enough material, it was time to put some money up. There is no greater motivator for me than a deadline and cash at stake. I reached out to Chris Schlarb in Long Beach, CA. His music had found me earlier in the year, and I was struck by what I thought I recognized as another person digging at the same rock that I’ve always dug at. It was a completely unsolicited e-mail and the first line that I cast once I had decided to commit to the project. He wrote back the same weekend, and that was all I needed to kick off.

The album we made at his BIG EGO Studios over the course of three days in May 2018 eventually came to involve more than fifteen collaborators, a far leap from the last record that I made more or less alone in 2016. It was tracked live in a room with two drumkits, two basses, keys, and myself on guitar. The double rhythm section is equal parts men and women. I am proud that it features contributions from people of different genders, sexualities, colors, religions, and nationalities. Not just because inclusivity is attainable even on a shoestring budget and to a largely unknown songwriter (it is), or because attention to social justice should be the foremost mandate for collaboration (it isn’t), but because diversity of people leads to diversity of ideas, and our world is stronger when we create together. This record most certainly is.

I have always loved the so-called “pastoral” albums by the Kinks. Peppered as they are with Ray Davies’ angst about the music publishing industry, they nevertheless ooze this kind of unglamorous daily life. For this and other reasons, Ray gets a name check in one of the tunes. The song posted here references my time building the motorcycle. Other songs are about eating, traveling, sex, the cats; regular things for regular people. It might be a little while before I write another record— when I got back from Long Beach I bought another motorcycle and it’s currently laid out in labeled bags on the floor of the garage.

-T.J. Masters

Guma (2019) is released on March 15, 2019 and is available now on 12” vinyl through a BIG EGO Records 2019 subscription or directly through Bandcamp.

(Photo credit above: Bridgette Miller)

Got a story to tell? Submit them via Letters to YVYNYL.

(Band photo credit: Devin O’Brien)

#Guma #Letters to YVYNYL #Austin #Texas #indie rock #T.J. Masters #music #new music #essay #motorcycles #projects #BIG EGO Records #read me

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