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wisdomrays · 3 years ago

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TAFAKKUR: Part 433

THE MAIN FACTORS IN THE SPREAD OF ISLAM: Part 2

A. J. Arberry has also pointed out that the reason for the spread of Islam is Islam itself and its religious values. (Aspects of Islamic Civilization, p.12)

He writes:

‘The rapidity of the spread of Islam, noticeably through extensive provinces which had long been Christian, is a crucial fact of history. The sublime rhetoric of the Qur’an, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy…and the urgency of the simple message carried, holds the key to the mystery of one of the greatest catalysms in the history of religion. When all military, political and economic factors have been exhausted, the religious impulse must still be recognized as the most vital and enduring.’

Brockelman, who is usually very unsympathetic and partial, also recognizes the religious values of Islam as the main factor for the spread of Islam (History of the Islamic Peoples, p.37). Rosenthal makes his point as follows: ‘The more important factor for the spread of Islam is the religious Law of Islam (Shari‘a, which is an inclusive, all-embracing, all-comprehensive way of thinking and living) which was designed to cover all manifestations of life.’ (Political Thought in Medieval Islam, p.21).

Besides many other reasons which are responsible for the spread of Islam, it is the exemplary life-style and unceasing efforts of individual Muslims to transmit the message of Islam throughout the world which lie at the root of the conquest of hearts by Islam. Islamic universalism is closely associated with the principle of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf (enjoining the good) for Islam is to be spread by Muslims by means of ‘amr bi’l-ma’ruf. This principle seeks to convey the message of Islam to all human beings in the world and to establish a model Islamic community on a worldwide basis. The Islamic community is introduced by the Qur’an as a model community: We have made of you an Ummah justly balanced, that you might be witnesses (models) for the peoples, and the Messenger has been a witness for you (2.143). A Muslim or the Muslim community as a whole thus has a goal to achieve. This is the spread of Islam, conveying the truth to the remotest corner of the world, the eradication of oppression and tyranny and the establishment of justice all over the world. This requires the Muslim to live an exemplary life, and thus the moral and the ethical values of Islam have usually played an important part in the spread of Islam. Here follow the impressions of the influence of Islamic ethics on black Africans of a Western writer of the nineteenth century:

‘As to the effects of Islam when first embraced by a Negro tribe, can there, when viewed as a whole, be any reasonable doubt? Polytheism disappears almost instantaneously; sorcery, with its attendant evils, gradually dies away; human sacrifice becomes a thing of the past. The general moral elevation is most marked; the natives begin for the first time in their history to dress, and that neatly. Squalid filth is replaced by some approach to personal cleanliness; hospitality becomes a religious duty; drunkenness, instead of the rule becomes a comparatively rare exception chastity is looked upon as one of the highest, and becomes, in fact, one of the commoner virtues. It is idleness that henceforward degrades, and industry that elevates, instead of the reverse. Offences are henceforward measured by a written code instead of the arbitrary caprice of a chieftain–a step, as everyone will admit, of vast importance in the progress of a tribe. The Mosque gives an idea of architecture at all events higher than any the Negro has yet had. A thirst for literature is created and that for works of science and philosophy as well as for the commentaries on the Qur’an.’ (Quoted from Waitz by B. Smith, Muhammad and Muhammadanism, pp.42-43)

The tolerance of Islam is another factor in the spread of Islam. Toynbee praises this tolerance towards the People of the Book after comparing it with the attitude of the Christians towards Muslims and Jews in their lands. (A Historian’s Approach to Religion, p.246). T. Link attributes the spread of Islam to the credibility of its principles together with its tolerance, persuasion and other kinds of attractions (A History of Religion). Makarios, Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch in the seventeenth century, compared the harsh treatment received by the Russians of the Orthodox Church at the hands of the Roman Catholic Poles with the tolerant attitude towards Orthodox Christians shown by the Ottoman Government and prayed for the Sultans (T. Link, A History of Religion).

This is not the only example of preference by the followers of the religions for Muslim rule over that of their own co-religionist. The Orthodox Christians of Byzantium openly expressed their preference for the Ottoman turban in Istanbul to the hats of the Catholic cardinals. Elisee Reclus, the French traveller of the nineteenth century, wrote that the Muslim Turk allowed all the followers of different religions to perform their religious duties and rituals, and that the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Sultan were more free to live their own lives than the Christians who lived in the lands under the rule of any rival Christian sect (Nouvelle Geographie Universelle, vol. 9). Popescu Ciocanel pays tribute to the Muslim Turks by stating that it was luck for the Romanian people that they lived under the government of the Turks rather than the domination of the Russians and Austrians. Otherwise, he points out, ‘no trace of the Romanian nation would have remained,’ (La Crise de l’Orient).

The Muslims’ attitude towards the people they conquered is quite clear in the instructions given by the rightly-guided Caliphs: ‘Always keep fear of God in your mind; remember that you cannot afford to do anything without His grace. Do not forget that Islam is a mission of peace and love. Keep the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) before you as a model of bravery and piety. Do not destroy fruit-trees nor fertile fields in your paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their edifices. Do not kill civilians. Do not outrage the chastity of women and the honour of the conquered. Do not harm old people and children. Do not accept any gifts from the civil population of any place. Do not billet your soldiers or officers in the houses of civilians. Do not forget to perform your daily prayers. Fear God. Remember that death will inevitably come to every one of you some time or other, even if you are thousands of miles away from a battlefield; therefore be always ready to face death.’ (Andrew Miller, Church History; Ali lbn Abi Talib, Nahj al-Balagha)

A historical episode which Balazouri, a famous Muslim historian, relates, tells about how pleased the native peoples were with their Muslim conquerors is of great significance

When Heraclius massed his troops against the Muslims, and the Muslims heard that they were coming to meet them, they refunded the inhabitants of Hims the tribute they had taken from them, saying: ‘We are too busy to support and protect you. Take care of yourselves.’ But the people of Hims replied: ‘We like your rule and justice far better than the state of oppression and tyranny in which we were. The army of Heraclius we shall indeed, with your help, repulse from the city.’ The Jews rose and said: ‘We swear by the Torah, no governor of Heraclius shall enter the city of Hims unless we are first vanquished and exhausted.’ Saying this, they closed the gates of the city and guarded them. The inhabitants of other cities–Christians and Jews–that had capitulated did the same. When by God’s help the unbelievers were defeated and Muslims won, they opened the gates of their cities, went out with singers and players of music, and paid the tribute (Futuh al-Buldan).

To sum up, although most Western writers, under the instigation of biased Orientalists of the Church, have alleged that Islam spread by the force of the sword, the spread of Islam was because of its religious content and values, and ‘its power of appeal and ability to meet the spiritual and material needs of people adhering to cultures totally alien to their Muslim conquerors’, together with some other factors. Some of these factors are the tolerance which Islam showed to people of other religions, the absence of ecclesiastic orders and hierarchy in Islam, mental freedom and absolute justice which Islam envisages and has exercised throughout the centuries, the ethical values it propagates, and Islamic humanitarianism, universalism and brotherhood, and its inclusiveness. Sufi activities, the moral superiority of Muslim tradesmen, the principle of ‘enjoining the good’, and Islamic dynamism and the magnificence of the Islamic civilization contributed of their own to the spread of Islam.

The main religious qualities which attracted people to Islam were:

(i) the simplicity of the theological doctrines of Islam based on the Divine Unity;

(ii) rationalism of the Islamic teachings;

(iii) the complete harmony of the Islamic ideals and values with human conscience;

(iv) the inclusiveness and comprehensives of Islam, covering all aspects of physical, mental, and spiritual life of individuals and societies, hence the harmony of religion and life which it established;

(v) the lack of formalism and mediation;

(vi) the vividness, dynamism and resilience of the Islamic theology, and its creativity and universalism, and its compatibility with established scientific facts;

(vii) the cohesion and harmony of the Islamic principles, and

(viii) the shortcomings of other theological systems.

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ginnyzero · 4 years ago

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Publishing vs. Marketing Category

Okay, so book and writing community on twitter tends to have these flare ups of convos about books being shelved wrong and authors pointing out reasons such as their gender, or race, or even the content of their books being say, fantasy for them being placed on the wrong shelves in libraries and bookstores. Now, there is a human bias element to this. There are librarians and book buyers for stores who do see a female fantasy author and assume they must be YA no matter the content. Plus, everyone and their mother tagging things incorrectly on twitter or shelving badly on Goodreads.

Let’s dive into the INDUSTRY side of this though. The industry has two different and at times clashing categorizations of books, there are the publishing categories and there are the marketing categories. And while some, specifically some age targets and genres the marketing and the publishing categories will align, there are others that the age target and marketing target may be under the same “name” technically and then their aims completely clash.

Yes, I’m mostly talking about YA. (Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance can fall in here too.)

So, the publishing category of Young Adult, is pretty much what you’d expect. Young Adult should have protagonists of the age groups of 12 to 18, and most likely dealing with “coming of age” themes and “finding their place in the world” and quite possibly “being the chosen one.” I personally find theme categorization for age groups to be really limiting. But I read Brian Jacques from third grade on... so. .. yay fighting mice. (And I was into Star Wars at grade 7, like Timothy Zahn Star Wars. I am not the typical reader.) It’s just something to be aware of if you are querying agents because agents deal with publishing categories and not marketing categories. (And agents have biases too. Like, come on, Unicorns should not be limited to MG. How dull. Agents though will look for anything to clear stuff out of their slush pile, I guess.)

Young Adult publishing category books range between 40K words on the low end and 80K words on the high end. I’d aim for 50K words depending on age group. Remember, YA readers especially read upwards in age groups. So you’re 12 year old is going to be reading about 15 year olds and your later YA readers will have aged out into the adult category of books (supposedly. This is where MARKETING categories become a thing. More in a second.)

New Adult is not a thing. Until it gets a spot in bookstores. It is officially not a thing. Querying New Adult will get you nowhere. Don’t bother.

So, you’ve written your MS and it hits what you think are all the Adult markers, from age of the protag, to theme, to having ‘adult’ content such as sex, drugs, and violence. (Violence is so weird b/c we’ve normalized violence while keeping sex taboo. So, if your book has sex, it might be considered Adult, more than if your book has violence. Even then... marketing categories.) You’ve queried it as adult. You’ve got it through an editor and it’s been pitched to a publisher and they’ve picked it up and your marketing materials come out. And they, meaning the cover, and the blurb, all read Young Adult in their style and tone.

And this may be confusing because you wrote an adult book, why are they marketing it to YA? Like A Crown of Thorns and Roses? (Fae court romance is... err, dead on arrival btw.)

It’s because YA is also a marketing category which no longer equals the age group category. And there are some very popular book series you can thank for this, Twilight, Hunger Games, Vampire Academy, and Divergent are among them. These books were not only popular among teens. They were popular among their mothers. So, publishing quickly pivoted from YA being this age group category with certain things, to a marketing strategy to try and keep the attention of the moms of the teenagers with sex, and love triangles, and I dunno, forbidden romance. By the time ACOTAR came out, publishing decided maybe they should try for this college age, New Adult category so they could market these “sexy fantasy” type books to older readers and get the sex out of YA. So, they used ACOTAR to try and make New Adult happen as a marketing category for book buyers. It didn’t work. Because no one, like with Harry Potter, wants to split a book series across 2 sections. (And lo and behold Young Adult was kind of born because they didn’t want to keep the later HP books in the children’s section.)

And because it didn’t work, YA is now a mess. Because they still don’t want to give up those sweet, sweet, mommy dollars.

There is one very large aspect of publishing the author has no control over. Their marketing. Especially, their covert marketing done by the publisher. Covert marketing is the type of marketing indies salivate over, b/c covert marketing is basically the publishing house deciding where on the bestseller list this book is going to be, how much advertising it gets, does it get a fancy book launch, what is the advance of the author, when is it going to be published and will it have competitors in its genre that same month, who among the reviewers gets to read it, the style of the book cover, and more importantly, what, where, and how much book shelf space it gets in stores. Is the cover turned out? Is it at the front of the store? Does it get it’s own display? Or is it in the “new releases display?” Which book buyer at the chains gets to see it. How do Librarians get a hold of it and which ones? Because the buyer of say, romance, is not the buyer of young adult. The Adult scifi/fantasy book buyer is going to be different than say, mysteries. Same for librarians! There are more than one librarian in your system choosing your books! It is very important who your book gets to be put in front of, what they think of it to how it is going to be received and pushed on bookshelves. There was a very infamous romance buyer of a major chain store who refused to buy POC romances because she thought they didn’t sell.

If your book chain buyer, refuses to buy fantasy books or scifi books by female authors b/c they think they won’t SELL. Then, the publisher feels like in order to get your book to sell, they have to put it into a marketing category where it will sell, Young Adult. Because what do most of those “Young Adult” books have in common, women writers. (Urban Fantasy was almost an exception to the rule on SFF gendered authors. Then... UF became dead on arrival as they thought the market was glutted and yeah. Good luck on getting an UF published, you’d be better off writing paranormal romance. Same type of setting, different genre rules.) It’s not about the content of your book, or the age of your protag, or the theme of your book at that point, it is “What will make this book sell.” Publishing is an industry where profit is not a dirty word. Their job is to make your book sell and if they think it will sell better as YA, they will pitch it as YA.

Even if the book is written for, uses language appropriate for, and has content really intended for adults.

Be aware that Young Adult scifi is a very, very rare buyers market. For some reason, publishers don’t think they can market it? Dystopian yes. Scifi... no. So, if your YA is scifi, like either rewrite for adult or keep your eye open for that very rare time they’re willing to TRY and publishing YA scifi. Or, publish indie. (Dystopian is also I think DOA.)

Is this confusing? Absolutely! Because there are plenty of readers out there who are in the adult category, who don’t keep up with publishing trends, and don’t realize if they want vibrant fantasy books, they may have to look in the YA section of their bookstore. They’re adults. They want vibrant fantasy adult books. And I say fantasy because you see this happening MOSTLY with fantasy. It happens with other genres too, but it is a huge problem in fantasy due to, well, the combination of publishing trends (white, older, male) and the human bias. So, many times, if you want that cool marketed as adult fantasy book not written by a white older male, you are going to have to order it through the ‘zon because you aren’t going to find it most likely on your bookstore shelves. (Science Fiction is another kettle of fish. Outside of some very established authors, it’s not really publishing. It’s a very small category outside of indie. Like, Military SF was a thing for a bit in indie! Just... yeah. Sigh.)

Conclusion: Publishing category does not always equal marketing category. Even if the publishing category and marketing category are named the same thing. And it’s probably not going to change until something major happens that the big four are FORCED to change their current publishing and marketing methods. (Yeah, big FOUR now. Scary.) It’s a complicated system with the author having the most at stake and the least amount of control (and often the least amount of pay outside of agents.) I mean, when Disney of all corporations, doesn’t want to pay Alan Dean Foster his legal royalties for a book they acquired when they got Star Wars, there is a PROBLEM in the system.

Just be aware if you are going into this publishing game. I cover this and more in my FREE PDF “I Finished a Book, Now What? A Tongue in Cheek Guide to What Happens Next.” Everything from editing types to querying to social media for authors.

It’s available for download on my website. https://ginny0.wordpress.com/books/

#writing tumblr #writing community #writrblr #publishing #traditional publishing #fantasy #science fiction #publishing categories #marketing #marketing categories #writing advice #writing tips

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mygetitdone12-blog · 4 years ago

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Three Secrets to Avoid Drowning in Debt

Do You Feel That You Are at the Edge of a Debt Precipice?

It's an uncomfortable feeling. As each month's bills come in, you feel the temptation or the necessity of choosing the minimum payment option. That means there's more to pay next month, but you may have a fixed income job that won't give you extra to cover the credit debt.

And as you see the balances going up, you wonder what can be done to solve your debt.

Why It's Urgent You Know This Credit Debt Secret

Credit card companies do very well when you pay the minimum each month. They earn a lot of money off of you. Credit card annual interest rates can be as high as 15 to 20%, so maintaining a balance with them month after month gets to be an expensive proposition!

To put this in numbers, let's say you have a debt of $18,000 to the credit companies at a rate of 18.9%. If you pay it off over five years, you will be giving them almost $10,000 in interest! $10,000! What better things could you with that money? Do you even have $10k to spare? And if you don't tackle this problem quickly, it's only going to get worse.

But if you pay it off in just one year, your total interest will be less than $2000. There's $8K just saved. How about that?

What to Do Now That You Know This Explosive Secret

The first thing to do is to not let this happen. It is not just a function of money available, it is a function of mindset. True, if you really have no job and no income, money is a problem. But society will not let you starve, and either social programs or charities will help you out.

For most people who have some modest income but are facing this challenge, the first line of defense is deciding to not increase your debt. Making that commitment creates psychological momentum that will propel you to change the way you spend money. Commitment is a potent behavior-changing force.

But it is more than just changing a habit. Once the decision has been made, and the commitment written or spoken in front of others, it is time for Step Two.

How Powerful Is a Scoreboard in Fighting Your Debt?

Amazingly so. At a college football game, the scoreboard turned off in the middle of the first half. The crowd started to become distracted, to the point of hardly cheering when a touchdown was scored! Once the board came back on, the fans reengaged with the game.

Let's say you run a mile on the track with a stopwatch. Then let's say you do it without a stopwatch, and knowing you'll never find out your time. Which one of those runs will be more motivated and faster?

You need proper accounting on a regular basis. I recommend using one of the many excellent software programs out there. You can also simply create a spreadsheet.

Your task is to carefully chart how much you spent with your credit cards each month. Make a graph if you can. Treat it like a scoreboard. That will motivate you to do better and better. If you combine that with charting how much you owe the credit companies monthly and compare it with your new charges, you'll see clearly whether you are going up or sliding down.

Knowledge is power, and in this case, psychological power to get you excited about fixing this dangerous situation and proving that you can do it.

Break Free from Debt with This Powerful Ally

These three words that I'm about to share are the critical key in the success of the world's richest people. They are the approach and mindset of the highest achievers. The shining success you wish to achieve will be impossible without internalizing and implementing these three words. What are they?

· Who, Not How!

This rule, articulated beautifully by entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan, is at the core of every great success story. Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich, tells how Andrew Carnegie made his riches in the steel industry while barely knowing how it worked.

How did he do it? He had those who were experts make it happen for him. He didn't waste time trying to figure out something that others could do easily. He focused on his specialty, business, and hired the steel experts to do the steel.

The same for you. If you are a little too close to that debt precipice, get yourself professional free debt help. My website https://get-me-out-of-debt.com provides a resource of free debt counseling for any US citizen with over $5000 of unsecured debt. There are resources to help with debt reduction, consolidation, renegotiation, and other solutions.

Make Who-Not-How Free You Up to Earn Money

Let's face it. If you were earning as much as you wanted, you probably wouldn't be reading this article. You probably wouldn't have a debt problem. The precipice wouldn't scare you, you'd have a comfortable glider at the ready.

So if you are going to spend your time figuring out how to resolve your debt, when are you going to invest your time in earning more money? The main benefit of Who-Not-How, aside from being effective in reducing debt, is that it frees you to focus on increasing your income.

And, needless to say, it's wonderful to be able to pay off all those credit cards in full in short order! Which, by the way, gives your credit score a major boost which lets you get a better job, a better mortgage, do all of the things that bad credit can really block.

Are You Ready to Stop Debt in Its Tracks?

So now I hope your mind is working. You realize that psychology and mindset are crucial elements in keeping away from the debt precipice. You've made a commitment, in writing and to your loved ones, to stay safe and lower your debt.

Then you engage the power of knowledge. You start tracking your finances on a daily basis, or at least three times a week. Using either software or a spreadsheet, you know how much you put on those credit cards every month, and automatically will think twice before using them again. This "scoreboard" approach will make it easy, even fun, to reduce your spending and your debt.

Finally, you may turn to a professional to guide you. They may help you consolidate your debt, dramatically lowering the monthly payments while boosting your credit score and turning things around for the good. They can do a lot more than just consolidation, though, as each case is unique.

Most importantly, you will be free to put your time and energy into earning more money with which to pay down your debt fast.

At the end of the process, you splurge a bit of money. But this time, it's justified. You just paid off the last credit card, and it's time for a party!

Seth Lutnick is a content creator on topics of personal planning, effectiveness, finance and debt. His website has all the resources you need to solve your debt challenge. Please visit https://get-me-out-of-debt.com

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96thdayofrage · 4 years ago

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Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead

By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does?

“The disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see.”

“Return to the Source” is a series in The Black Agenda Review that reprints previously-published interventions by Black Agenda Reportcontributors. Our title is inspired by an address delivered by Amilcar Cabral on October 15, 1972 at Lincoln University and reprinted in the collection Return to the Source: Selected Speech by Amilcar Cabral (1973). Cabral’s address was titled "Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle.” In it, he argued that a “return to the source” was critical to revolutionary transformation—a return to the ideas, culture, and demands that served as the foundational impetus for the struggle for African liberation. Guided by Cabral’s analysis, we will return to some of the “classic” interventions by Black Agenda Report contributors, revisiting their tremendous insights into the contemporary conditions of the Black World.

We are launching the series by reprinting BAR columnist and Prejudential author Margaret Kimberley’s incisive commentary “Democracy is Dead.” Originally published on April 23, 2014, Kimberley describes the domination of the US democratic process by capital, the abandoning of the working classes by the state, and the perplexing tendency of most US citizens to “suspend disbelief” while holding tight to the myth of US exceptionalism. Her analysis is as relevant now as it was when originally written.

Democracy is Dead

by Margaret Kimberley

“The notion that this country is a democracy has become openly farcical.”

Too many Americans love to boast that the United States is a democracy. That idea is accepted uncritically and celebrated as proof of this country’s superiority. Every public activity and event is an opportunity for the false narrative to be repeated and indulged. Events as disparate as elections, holiday celebrations, advertisements, school commencements and religious worship are all used to propagandize and create false belief about the degree of power the average citizen has vis a vis their government. Of course all evidence shows that this narrative is and always was a lie. Dictionaries define democracy as government representing the citizens through elected representatives, or as majority rule, or a society which provides equal rights to all. The history of this country has rarely lived up to any of those descriptions but in the recent past the notion that this country is a democracy has become openly farcical. We have nothing but meaningless trappings and any power exercised by the people is sadly in short supply.

This state of affairs has been obvious to anyone who has been paying close attention. Americans not only don’t get what they want from the political system, they actually get the opposite of what they want. The pace of the oligarchic state has quickened lately but the dynamic has been evident for quite some time.

“Americans get the opposite of what they want.”

Even elite academia is taking notice and has given official imprimatur to a conversation that had been ignored. Professors Martin Gilens of Princeton University and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University are the authors of the study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens.” While their work does not as news stories suggest use the word oligarchy, the authors are quite clear about their findings. Professor Gilens gave this brief summary of their conclusions:

“I'd say that contrary to what decades of political science research might lead you to believe, ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States [italics mine]. And economic elites and interest groups, especially those representing business, have a substantial degree of influence. Government policy-making over the last few decades reflects the preferences of those groups – of economic elites and of organized interests.”

While this study has however briefly changed public discourse, it is important to note that the disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see. If this were not true, the minimum wage would be higher, there would be no cuts to entitlement programs, and Americans would have a single payer health care system. There would be no NAFTA or TPP free trade agreements which force a race to the bottom for workers, destroy entire eco-systems and violate national and popular sovereignty. If this country were truly democratic, the city of Detroit would not have filed for bankruptcy for the simple reason that voters in Detroit and in the state of Michigan voted to repeal the emergency manager law which brought bankruptcy into being.

“Disregard of popular will is obvious for all to see.”

Americans don’t want the increasingly frequent interventions abroad forced upon by them by president after president yet that is what they get. We want to address the problems created by human made climate change. We don’t want hydraulic fracturing, or the pollution or earthquakes that come with it, but that is what we have. We don’t want rich people to control the political process but the Supreme Court has said time and again that money equals speech and those decisions prove the point of the study. Simply put, money talks and those without money have no voice.

If that were not the case, American workers would not be poorer than their counterparts in the rest of the world. The so-called middle class workers in this country had the distinction of being better off than their peers around the world. That is no longer the case with stagnating wages and job loss and a country that does not practice income distribution that would keep people out of poverty. In a democratic country, Walmart and its low wages would not be the largest employer. The manufacturing that once dominated the economic landscape would still employ the bulk of the work force with its higher wages and other benefits that provide economic security.

In a democracy, the financial services industry that created the worldwide economic meltdown would not have been bailed out. Workers would be bailed out. Corporations wouldn’t get tax breaks and other government subsidies. Workers would get them. And if the average person had any say in the matter, the big time banksters would now be behind bars.

“In a democratic country, Walmart and its low wages would not be the largest employer.”

The myth of American democracy is just one of many that are cherished out of ignorance and suspension of disbelief but that is not a reason to continue the confusion and self-delusion. The only time we get any taste of democracy is when we proclaim that we don’t have it but assert plainly and loudly that we intend to get it.

The phony narrative wears thin as the quality of life diminishes. The United States of America is not a democratic nation if the only right that citizens have is to go to a polling place every few years. It is time to stop fetishizing what clearly does not work for the majority of people and start talking about something new. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result. The only result we have to show is rule by the elites and if that is acceptable then the people have gone truly insane.

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hyperionswrath--archived · 4 years ago

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@princenza

“And they say chivalry is dead.” There is a brief eye-roll at the nickname the Owls had bestowed upon her coming off his lips, irritation absent however - too excited about what the day was going to bring. It annoyed her more several months ago, believing it was given to her because she was that man’s daughter. He was a sperm doner and nothing more. He’s just following orders, he says. She will understand some day, he says, all the while playing the role of President Deling’s attack dog, oppressing towns and cities and killing anyone who dares to defend their home from tyranny and dictatorship. Her father really thought that buying her things was enough to get her to shut up and behave and be a ‘good girl’.

So she left, taking Angelo with her and decided to be the change she wanted to see instead of waiting for the change. Someone had to stand up to Deling. Someone had to stand up to that man.

She’d made her way to Timber where she met Watts and then Zone, all going well until she was recognized as the Galbadian General’s only child. That made things complicated, at first, them not wanting to trust her especially after all the trauma done directly to them because of Galbadia’s tyranny. Your parent being publically executed for doing the right thing.. Rinoa couldn’t imagine that. That’s why she’s here, that’s why she has to try. It took time to earn their trust and she wasn’t being used as some kind of spy to leak information.

When they continued to call her princess, it was admitted they did so because whatever Rinoa wanted, she got, and the young woman always got her way. If she had to charm, flirt, or force her way - somehow, Rinoa always got results. That is how she earned her title Princess - a terrifying force of nature that took no shit packed in a tiny body. People didn’t take her seriously, and she used that as a strength.

“You did.” She confirms, smile unrelenting, relieved he’d held up his word. Sure, they’d spent a decent part of Spring talking back and fourth that lead up to this, but if there was something Rinoa had to get used to, it was dealing with disappointment when help would fall through. She herself wasn’t too sure about Seifer after learning he was part of Garden. Galbadia had a Garden too and they were linked very, very close to the Galbadian’s military - even if she could afford to hire mercenaries, there is no way in hell they’d accept. A different Garden didn’t occur to her, figuring them all the same and tied close to their respected countries. Seemed like she was wrong, and Balamb’s Garden operated differently. It was a ray of hope.

She makes no effort to hide she is sizing him up. He easily has a foot on her at least, and the brief grab of his arm spoke of whatever training a merc on the rise would have, but what really got her attention was that case. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d get to see him in action. She adored Zone and Watts, but those boys were useless in a fight, despite her attempts to push them into it. At the end of it, they were better at running, while Rinoa wanted to be on the front lines.

“But who knows, maybe another cute girl might’ve whisked you away.” She adds playfully. Hardly the reason either one of them were here, but it was better than letting something accidently slip out. Soldiers were around Timber and in sight, efforts to get them out falling flat.

So Rinoa leads him, changing route when she notices a soldier on patrol to waiting them out to look the other way before proceeding. She in particular gets watched, likely thanks to him. Their arrival does come even if a bit delayed, Rinoa opening the door of the train for him with a playful bowing gesture to welcome him in side, following right behind him.

“Aaaand, this is where all the magic happens! The Meeting Room is down the hall, engine room’s not really anything to worry about, although sometimes Zone likes to come in here to read his naughty magazines when he thinks no one’s around, so, you know - careful of that. And the last room on the left is my room. They’re probably in The Meeting Room. If you have cramps from being stuck in the train though, you can rest a bit.”

Naturally, Seifer had done his homework before coming here. Garden was quick to attach the title “troublemaker” to him, deeming him not able to do the easiest of tasks - except for, maybe, leading the Disciplinary Committee in hopes by enforcing it’s rules, he’d have to abide by them. What a joke. It had, however, helped him to learn the do’s and don’ts of Garden quickly and thus led to awhile set of loopholes he had no shame making use of. One of such being that he exactly knew when the Library Committee sealed up their working place and, what’s more, where they stored their key cards. After all, his presenting the Deling-Plan was supposed to be a surprise, so he couldn’t have anyone know what he was looking up by checking out maps and books, right? Also, above everything else, he preferred to work on his lonesome in the night, there was just something about it that made his creative energies flow. So he had brushed up on his history knowledge about the Timber area and their resistance groups, as well as the whole political shitfest that had been going on over the past decades, all within the past months since spring. While Fu and Rai knew better than to ask him about his newest obsession (he had even laid down a little on riling up Leonhart, to everybody's surprise), they had made a quiet point of shutting down every inquisitive glance in Seifer’s direction when he carried around his notes or sat down in the cafeteria, the same papers spread out before him as he went through his gathered intel. Couldn’t have showing up in Timber and knowing fuck shit about why he had been asked to come there in the first place, after all. Right now, he gave an almost good natured chuckle at the eyeroll Rinoa displayed when he called her princess, taking a mental note that she was likely to actually not respond as favorable to the moniker as he might have anticipated. Good to know. “Not in my books, it isn’t,” he cared to reply nonetheless. Still, she was all smiles and giddy to see him, which admittedly was rare enough when he showed places, people usually quick to curse their bad luck when he was assigned to them - and for a reason he was proud of. He was a born leader, after all. Someone who could see through the bullshit and cut to the chase without so much as a blink, let alone tedious discussions about cost-efficiency or talking through plans, and sitting through briefings when the course of action had long been decided on. In short, he only played by the rules if he deemed it worth his time. Something he had come to realize Rinoa appreciated when they had written back and forth about their meeting up today. Humming in amusement at the next words that fell between them, Seifer let himself be guided by his arm outside of the train station, shooting a telling grin and the ravenhaired woman beside him, privately basking in the attention her admiring glances granted him. “They might’ve tried but would’ve hardly succeeded, all things considered.” Sure, they were talking idly now to avoid any suspicion, but he was also testing the waters. Garden had a couple of cute girls, certainly, but his reputation was a double-edged sword, often making hooking up with someone more of a hassle than a challenge. His ego didn’t take well to be denied so for the most part, he’d simply resorted to focus on new recruits who didn’t yet know what kind of guy he was. Easier, less drama. At least until he dumped them.

The fact that Rinoa was now sometimes beelining and changing directions was not lost on him, as were the soldiers patrolling the small town - he had expected as much, with the tension between Timber and Deling City only increasing lately. There had also been rumors of the Dukedom of Dollet becoming restless, but since that had nothing much to do with their course of action here, he had elected to not pay much mind to it. Seifer had very much expected them to hole up in an old building, maybe even a ramshackle old industrial one, or, if the Timber Owls were bold enough, in the hotel but… when they approached an obnoxiously colored and sprayed train wagon, Seifer stopped dead in his tracks for a second. Now was one of those moments he would have likely copied Leonhart’s pinch to the nose if his hands had been free. They couldn’t be serious about this, could they? Regaining his composure quickly, he instead fell back into step and was led to the door, stepping inside once it opened with a quick and secretive glance over his shoulder before bowing his head to slip in. Just how dense was the Galbadian army not to notice this thing? “Interesting choice of Headquarters,” he commented evenly, careful to keep all judgement out of his voice - for now. The tall blond let his gaze wander, a quick endeavor as there wasn’t much to see, and he snorted mildly at the comment of one of those teens wanking away in the engine room from time to time. Hyne, maybe all of this had been a bad call after all? But then again, he was up to the challenge of whipping those noobs into shape, his plan being a good one, so he’d humour them with his attention for now. “I’m rested enough from the ride here, we should get started.” Wasting time was not something he did, thus he let his duffle bag fall to the ground, shuffling it to the side and next to a wall with his foot, keeping Hyperion’s case in his hand. “Lead the way.”

#princenza #.rp #.to be tagged #.long post #.he can't BELIEVE YOU GUYS #.a fuckin yellow train with anarchistic spray paint????#.CAN YOU BE MORE OBVIOUS #.xDD #.I think secretly he likes the design tho #.the rebel that he is

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wisdomrays · 5 years ago

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THE MAIN FACTORS IN THE SPREADING OF ISLAM: Part 2

A. J. Arberry has also pointed out that the reason for the spread of Islam is Islam itself and its religious values. (Aspects of Islamic Civilization, p.12. He writes:

A historical episode which Balazouri, a famous Muslim historian, relates, tells about how pleased the native peoples were with their Muslim conquerors is of great significance:

The main religious qualities which attracted people to Islam were:

the simplicity of the theological doctrines of Islam based on the Divine Unity;

rationalism of the Islamic teachings;

the complete harmony of the Islamic ideals and values with human conscience;

the inclusiveness and comprehensives of Islam, covering all aspects of physical, mental, and spiritual life of individuals and societies, hence the harmony of religion and life which it established;

the lack of formalism and mediation;

the vividness, dynamism and resilience of the Islamic theology, and its creativity and universalism, and its compatibility with established scientific facts;

the cohesion and harmony of the Islamic principles, and

the shortcomings of other theological systems.

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covid19worldnews · 4 years ago

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Coronavirus live news: Germany goes into 'lockdown light'; Italy accused of wasting time as infections rise

11.27pm GMT 23:27

The Culture Secretary in England has confirmed arts venues can remain open for rehearsals during the country’s lockdown.

Oliver Dowden said while audiences will not be able to attend the venues they are “places of work” and will therefore be able to remain open.

Footage of performances taking place inside venues will also be permitted to be streamed online when tougher restrictions come into force in England, he confirmed on Twitter.

“Arts venues are places of work, so people can come into them for work, if it cannot be undertaken from home,” he wrote.

“This includes rehearsals and performance. Audiences are not permitted.”

A number of productions, including Les Miserables in the West End and a panto at the London Palladium, are due to return to the stage with socially distanced audiences over the festive period.

11.05pm GMT 23:05

Argentina is expecting 10 million doses of Russia’s main experimental COVID-19 vaccine between December and January, the government said, as infections continue to climb in the South American country.

The vaccine, known as Sputnik V, is given in two doses and could begin arriving as early as next month, the government said in a news release. The price of the Russian vaccine would be “more or less average” compared with others, President Alberto Fernandez said in the release.

“We had a proposal from the Russian foreign ministry and the Russian (Direct Investment) Fund to see if Argentina was interested in having doses of the vaccine in the month of December and of course we said yes,” Fernandez said.

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is backing the development and roll-out of the Sputnik V vaccine. Fernandez said talks with RDIF had been going on “for quite some time.”

Officials including Argentina’s deputy health minister had traveled to Russia to review the vaccine’s development, the government said.

“The Sputnik V vaccine for Argentina will be produced by RDIF partners in India, Korea, China and a number of other countries that are setting up a production of the Russian vaccine,” RDIF’s CEO, Kirill Dmitriev, said in comments shared by a company spokesman.

10.46pm GMT 22:46

The Labour party in England has called for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to engage in cross-party talks to produce a six-month economic support plan to guide the country through coronavirus.

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds said the Treasury should “stop the last-minute scramble” and combine with opposition leaders, businesses and unions to draw up a long-term strategy.

Dodds has written to her Government counterpart after he announced on Saturday that, to coincide with the second national lockdown for England, the furlough scheme would continue in its current form, paying 80% of employees’ wages for hours not worked, up to a maximum of 2,500 per month.

In her letter to Sunak, she said the announcement “just hours before” the initial furlough scheme was due to end was “symptomatic” of what she said appeared to be a “lack of any strategic planning by the Government to support jobs and businesses”.

10.27pm GMT 22:27

Portugal considering state of emergency to tackle Covid-19

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he is pondering declaring a state of emergency as a preventive measure to fight the spread of the coronavirus at a time when infections are soaring.

Hours after Prime Minister Antonio Costa asked the president to declare the state of emergency, Rebelo de Sousa said in an interview with RTP Television he was considering the request, explaining it would include specific measures to combat the pandemic but not a “total or nearly total” lockdown.

The initial COVID-19 state of emergency, which under Portuguese law is limited to 15 days but can be extended indefinitely in 15-day periods if necessary, was declared in March and lasted six weeks.

It restricted the movement of people and led thousands of businesses to suspend activities, devastating the once-bailed-out economy.

“The economy cannot handle a (total) confinement,” Rebelo de Sousa said during the interview at his official residence. “What is being considered is a different thing.” If Rebelo de Sousa declares an emergency, lawmakers must approve it, which is considered highly likely.

On Saturday, the government introduced measures, such as the civic duty – a recommendation rather than a rule – to stay at home except for outings for work, school or shopping, across 121 municipalities including in the key regions of Lisbon and Porto.

A state of emergency would clear the way for compulsory measures such as restrictions on movement of people but only if and when needed.

10.10pm GMT 22:10

The Premier League in England has confirmed four positive coronavirus tests have been returned from the latest round of testing.

The government has allowed Premier League football and other elite sports to continue during a four-week ‘circuit break’ lockdown, which will start in England on Thursday, due to the strict testing regimes in place.

In total, 1,446 players and club staff were tested for coronavirus between Monday, October 26 and Sunday, November 1.

Players or club staff who have tested positive will self-isolate for a period of 10 days.

9.51pm GMT 21:51

In Australia, travellers from regional NSW are now able to go to Queensland for the first time in almost four months but Sydneysiders are still not welcome in the Sunshine State.

Travel restrictions eased at 1am on Tuesday (Australia time), with the Queensland border flung open to everyone except those in greater Sydney and Victoria.

The NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian is irate that Sydney residents are banned, arguing the bar Queensland has set for resuming free travel between the states is too high.

Meanwhile, Berejiklian has indicated a reopening of the NSW border with Victoria could happen soon.

We’re talking weeks not months in terms of when the Victorian border may come down, but that again is based on health advice,” she told reporters on Monday.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we moved more quickly against Victoria than Queensland did against us.”

When asked if an announcement would be made this week, Berejiklian said “potentially, yes”.

9.41pm GMT 21:41

French writer Sylvain Tesson poses inside the Librairie des Abbesses bookstore as he signs one of his books during the launch of “Rallumez les feux de nos librairies” (Turn back our bookstores’ lights) event on November 2, 2020 in Paris, on the fourth day of the second national general lockdown aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. Small book traders are forced to shut up shops for a second time this year during what is usually a busy time for retailers in the run-up to the year-end holidays. Photograph: Stéphane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

9.28pm GMT 21:28

Some of Germany’s top orchestras, including Berlin’s prestigious Staatskapelle and the Munich Philharmonic, staged protests on Monday, warning that coronavirus lockdowns pose an existential threat to the arts and entertainment industries.

Musicians from the internationally-renowned ensembles in Berlin and Munich, as well as the orchestra of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, staged a minute’s silence at the start of their respective concerts.

And on Twitter, a wide range number of artists posted pictures of records turning without any sound.

They argue that not enough support is being made available to people in the sector as Germany shuts down its theatres, concert halls, opera houses and museums for the next four weeks as part of a wider tightening of measures to try to curb a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Freelance musicians in particular are finding it difficult to survive as they frequently do not qualify for the furlough schemes introduced for paid employees in other sectors.

Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said she was “greatly concerned” for the industry.

“Even if the new restrictions are understandable” from a health point of view, they constitute “a catastrophe” for the sector, she said.

9.00pm GMT 21:00

A summary of today’s developments

Italy’s coronavirus strategy is ‘wasting time’, says scientific advisor. Italy is working towards measures that could include a national 9pm curfew, a ban on inter-regional travel and the closure of shopping malls at weekends. But scientists have for weeks been urging the government to take tougher action, such as imposing local lockdowns, as infections escalate and hospitals come under strain.

Slovakia carries out Covid mass testing of two-thirds of population. Two-thirds of Slovakia’s population of 5.4 million people were tested for coronavirus over the weekend as part of a programme aimed at making it one of the first countries to test its entire population.

Germany begins ‘light lockdown’. Germany goes into “lockdown light” mode today, as the country’s disease control agency recorded 12,097 new confirmed Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours. Bars, cinemas, theatres, museums, fitness studios and swimming pools will remain closed from today, while cafes and restaurants are allowed to offer takeaway food only. Meetings in public are restricted to two households and no more than 10 people. Unlike during the first lockdown in the spring, schools and nurseries will stay open.

Coronavirus infections fall for third day straight in the Netherlands. The number of new coronavirus infections in the Netherlands rose by nearly 8,300 over the past 24 hours, the slowest pace in roughly two weeks.

Iran reports record high Covid death toll as travel bans go into force. Iran reported a record 440 Covid deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing the country’s death toll to 35,738 as a ban on travel in and out of major cities came into force.

Donald Trump tries to stoke fears of Covid lockdown under Joe Biden. In the final hours before election day, one of Trump’s closing messages to Americans was an exaggerated threat: that a Joe Biden presidency will result in a national Covid-19 lockdown. Speaking in Iowa on Sunday, the president said the election was a “choice between a deadly Biden lockdown … or a safe vaccine that ends the pandemic”.

The European Union (EU) has agreed to provide Mozambique with 100 million euros ($116.30 million) in coronavirus-related aid. The EU cut off direct budget support to Mozambique in 2016 after the country revealed the existence of hefty state-guaranteed loans that it had not previously disclosed.

T-cell Covid immunity ‘present in adults six months after first infection’. Cellular (T-cell) immunity against the virus that causes Covid-19 is likely to be present within most adults six months after primary infection, with levels considerably higher in patients with symptoms, a study suggests.

8.44pm GMT 20:44

Children watch a lesson next to an image of late Cuban President Fidel Castro during their first day of classes since April amid COVID-19 concerns in Havana, Cuba. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

https://www.covid19snews.com/2020/11/03/coronavirus-live-news-germany-goes-into-lockdown-light-italy-accused-of-wasting-time-as-infections-rise/

#covid19

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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How #MeToo Is Smashing the Casting Couch

A basketball court at the Park City Municipal Athletic and Recreation Center has been converted into a screening room, as have a nearby synagogue and the auditorium at the local high school. The roads of this old mining town are gagged with standstill traffic.

And the Utah attorney general’s office is staffing a 24-hour hotline in case anyone is sexually harassed or threatened while at the Sundance Film Festival.

No matter how Harvey Weinstein’s criminal trial in Manhattan turns out, the revelations about the way he used his power over women have altered Hollywood in ways big and small. There are new rules on where and how to hold meetings, legal changes that make it easier to sue for sexual harassment and different ways to report when something goes wrong — all efforts to make Hollywood a bit safer. And while the industry is still very much dominated by men, women have begun to land more directing and executive roles, the positions of power that shape its culture.

Hollywood is a business of freelancers going from one project to the next, a setup that makes predators difficult to contain and blowing the whistle especially risky. Still, activists and industry professionals say that the steps being taken represent sustained attention to the issue, some improvement in day-to-day working conditions and perhaps signs of bona fide change.

“I think most people would like to see a situation where people go to work and feel good about the environment,” said Gail Berman, a producer and co-president of the Producers Guild, which now offers sexual harassment training to independent projects. “Does that mean there is no longer any predatory behavior in this business? I’d say that would be a ridiculous assumption. But I can tell you I think there is a great deal of sincerity on the part of a lot of people to change the culture.”

A fight that began a century ago

The Manhattan sexual assault case against Mr. Weinstein focuses on two women. One was a film production assistant who said Mr. Weinstein forced her to have oral sex in his apartment. Another was an aspiring actress who said that he raped her in a Manhattan hotel room. Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers say that “loving emails” between him and his accusers show it was all consensual.

But for many of the dozens of women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, the story was the same: Actresses say he cornered them in hotel rooms and offered them roles as a form or coercion. Sleep with me and you’ll be a star. Or don’t, and I’ll ruin you.

At least two women have accused Mr. Weinstein of raping or sexually abusing them while at Sundance, the country’s premier annual exhibition for independent films. In 2018, just a few months after the accusations against Mr. Weinstein exploded, the festival announced its hotline, which is now advertised on signs around Park City and on the Sundance credentials. A spokesman for the Utah attorney general’s office said while the office did not keep a log of harassment complaints to the hotline, investigators recalled receiving one in 2018 and none last year.

While the casting process has been professionalized for years, concerns about the “casting couch” — a euphemism for demanding sex in exchange for a job — are as old as Hollywood.

Filmmakers started arriving in Los Angeles around 1910, according to Denise McKenna, a historian who has researched the early history of the film industry, and by 1915, a minister named Charles Selecman was campaigning against what he called the “moral conditions in Los Angeles.” Articles appeared in the local press that insinuated women were being forced to have sex for work, under headlines like “Girl Tells Selecman of the Vice Dangers in the Movies” and “Studio Evils to Be Fought to the End, Says Pastor.”

An arm of the Los Angeles Police Department called the City Mother’s Bureau was installed at studios, Dr. McKenna said, and was supposed to check on young actresses to be sure they had enough money and places to stay, and that they didn’t become the city’s responsibility.

One of the earliest known instances of casting couch behavior was not in the movies, but on Broadway. In his book “Boys From Syracuse: The Shuberts’ Theatrical Empire,” Foster Hirsch described an “elegantly furnished boudoir” the theater owner Lee Shubert kept near his office, where he brought leading ladies and promising up-and-comers. He kept a separate, sparsely furnished room with “a single couch” where he would bring chorus girls.

This brand of predation extended deep into the studio system. “Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer,” described Mayer’s MGM — and every other studio — as housing “a supply of what were known as ‘six-month-option girls’ to be passed around the executive offices.” The book quotes a producer once saying of the studio executive Darryl Zanuck: “You must realize one thing: Every time Darryl takes a girl to bed, a star is born.”

The abusive behavior went beyond the major studios. One of the blind spots exposed by the #MeToo movement was how the Hollywood system, in which the studios often do not have direct control over the employees of powerful independent producers like Mr. Weinstein, left workers with nowhere to turn with complaints. Among other changes in the industry, Warner Bros., for example, has created a human resources team specifically assigned to its productions. And the Hollywood Commission, led by Anita Hill, is building a system where anyone in the industry who does not already have a place to file complaints can report harassment or discrimination.

Actors are now encouraged to avoid one-on-one meetings in private settings. SAG-AFTRA, the screen actors union, has issued guidelines saying its members should not go to meetings in hotels and residences, and if they feel they must, they should bring someone along.

Sharon Bialy, a casting director in Los Angeles, always has at least one other person in the room with her during auditions. Long a practice she’s done herself, she now makes it a point that everyone on her staff does the same.

While private meetings certainly still happen, even in hotel rooms, some industry professionals mentioned that a hotel meeting might now take place in the lobby instead, or what might have been a meeting in a home office now takes place at a coffee shop.

“Everyone is aware of the optics now,” Ms. Bialy said. “And I do feel like people are more careful and cognizant about it.”

Taking the camera under the covers

What could make someone more vulnerable than taking off his or her clothes in a room full of people and pretending to have sex with a colleague?

Difficult in the best of circumstances, sex scenes can easily go horribly wrong. According to Time’s Up, the Hollywood-led group that combats sexual harassment, actors have arrived on the day of the shoot and been pressured to show more of their bodies than they agreed to, or later discovered that members of the crew had taken videos of them on their smartphones and posted them online. Some actors have been told that they should have actual sex instead of simulating it.

Time’s Up has released guides on how to handle intimate and simulated sex scenes, and what actors should do in an audition if someone tells them to “come back sexier.” New laws in California and elsewhere make it easier to sue people like producers and directors for sexual harassment and have restricted the use of nondisclosure agreements, which prevent victims from speaking out and allow abusers to continue their harmful behavior.

And in the past two years, productions have been turning more and more to intimacy coordinators, whose job, which falls somewhere between stunt coordinator and therapist, is to make the scenes as comfortable as possible for the actors while still creating a convincing shoot. They have conversations about boundaries and sexually transmitted diseases. They make sure the performers have robes to wear between takes and covers for their genitals during filming. They also have precise conversations about what will and will not be shown, and see that those limits are written into contracts in the form of “nudity riders.”

“It’s often been, especially in TV, an actor would have a rider for the series and the rider used to say, ‘Actor agrees to appear nude and perform scenes of a sexual nature during this series’ — and that was it,” said Claire Warden, an intimacy coordinator. “Now there’s a rider for each scene in each episode, and it will say, ‘actor will show top of breast and side of breast but not nipple,” she said. “Or they agree to three-quarters of buttocks shown, but not a full shot.”

There is some resistance, however, especially from directors who are concerned an intimacy coordinator will step on their toes creatively, or interfere with their relationship with the actors. Teniece Divya Johnson, an intimacy coordinator based in New York, described being told on set not to speak unless spoken to.

But overall, coordinators say that the directors come around.

“There is an acceptance,” Ms. Warden said, “that this needs to be paid attention to.”

Putting women in power

As part of the #MeToo movement, there has been a vocal push to hire more women, and more people of color, to positions of power in Hollywood. That, activists say, is the key to changing the culture of the movie business, as well as the kinds of stories that are celebrated and told. (The Oscars were criticized this year for nominating a best acting field that was almost exclusively white and overlooking women completely in the best director category.)

Darnell Hunt, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who produces an annual Hollywood diversity report, said that while the share of women directing and starring in big movies has increased, it is still nowhere near where it should be. Women directed about 4 percent of the top 200 films in 2011, he said. By 2017, they had increased to a little less than 13 percent.

Perhaps most crucially, at some of the biggest movie studios, including Disney, Warner Bros., Netflix and Amazon, 82 percent of the chief executives today are male, and 91 percent of them are white, according to Dr. Hunt’s coming 2020 diversity report. In 2015, about the same percentage of those executives were white — but every last one of them was a man.

The problems, of course, have not gone away. Genie Harrison, a lawyer in Los Angeles who represents some of Mr. Weinstein’s accusers, says she still receives cases alleging sexual harassment in the industry, and retaliation when someone comes forward to report it.

Mara Grobins Nasatir, one of the leaders of Time’s Up’s entertainment work, said that while there were definite improvements, “it also feels that we’re moving at a glacial pace.”

“While I am very hopeful and excited because the conversation is happening in a way that wasn’t the case two years ago, I also think there is an urgent need for change because people are continue to be harmed,” she said. “Safety is at stake.”

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lucialovewriting · 5 years ago

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THE NEA VS. THE FORD FOUNDATION

CH.1 (2019) There are as many art worlds as there are modes of finance. Most of these are eclipsed by the audacious white cube - art fair - auction circuit in all of its florid elitism. As wealth disparity continues to denude communities of basic necessities globally, this art market has been largely written off as a glorified tax haven, incapable of more than inadvertent gentrification on a virtue signaling world tour. While the spectacle of abundant creativity and aesthetic innovation is maintained through season after season of record breaking contemporary sales, we’ve come to see a leveling of expression from a host of interchangeable authors. A predominantly salable veneer has been applied to their artifacts, allowing connoisseurs to remain focused on jockeying to accrue wealth through stable investments. More often than not, the meaning of these works ends up lost to speculation inside of a network of international freeports. Just as quickly as one country can ban the construction of these climate controlled limbos, another country builds their own. The market’s evasion of most localized economic regulation is notorious as the bulk of new art investors strive to bend cultural exchange to resemble a global stock trade.

Jed Perl dubbed this cultural leveling under the buying power of a disaffected collector class “laissez faire aesthetics” in 2007, and we are still waiting for the bubble to pop. In contrast to this trend, a number of philanthropic organizations have evolved to produce both vastly different products, and controversies. To understand the spirit of this alternative, it’s helpful to first consider the creation of the NEA, and the private donors that continuously work in tandem to fund cultural endeavors. In a speech at Amherst College in 1963, President Kennedy spoke to his future hopes for a flourishing post war society: “I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.”

He was inspired to believe that art production resides at “the center of a nation’s purpose” by the shared conviction of unofficial poet laureate Robert Frost, and that the figure of the artist was meant to be free from the necessity of any political agenda. This idealistic attempt to amplify the nation’s soft power initially garnered effusive bipartisan support when Johnson finally signed the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act in 1965, and would last for exactly three years before the first wave of conflicts arose. There was no issue with instating Nancy Hanks as chair (after Roger Stevens) who aside from being a distant cousin to Abraham Lincoln’s mother, was also responsible for working with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to produce The Performing Arts: Problems and Projects which expressly stated the benefits of private funding for the arts. The Rockefeller philosophy was theoretically in step with the agency’s founding belief in hands-off government support combining with a proactive business sector to fund individual creatives of note. In practice though, some more conservative representatives were beginning to rally around Frank Bow (R-OH) who believed our miring in the Vietnam War meant “We cannot have guns and butter. And this is guns with strawberry short cake covered with whipped cream and a cherry on top.” Bow did not approve of the experimental theatre being funded at the time, and it turns out neither did Nixon who had a vocal interest in classical music - and a private distaste for “novel” contemporary work, “the horrible monstrosity of Lincoln Center”, and the “little uglies” hanging in the MoMA. While credited with expanding the NEA’s budget exponentially during his term, Nixon arguably facilitated Hanks out of fear of a public that was polarized by war and the possibility that his legacy would end up dirt.

Hindsight clearly shows the issues of government spending on the arts and humanities to be baked into the NEA’s initial request for non-interference in guiding the national standards for tax payer funded art. While their entire budget comprises .004% of all federal spending, it has been perennially attacked as a safety net for the production of degenerate waste. After decades of content related scandal that saw awards rescinded, and budgets cut symbolically according to the cost of a Piss Christ, Newt Gingrich (who has a lot to say about why lions will starve if they only hunt chipmunks) called to “zero out” the NEA entirely in 1995. He didn’t succeed, but the conservative coalition which formed around the speaker of the house at that point managed to nearly halve the national budget. Since then Gingrich has kept on the culture war path to periodically fire shots at proponents of the NEA with statements like this dismissal of critic Robert Hughes: “Far too frequently, NEA grants have been utilized to express explicitly narrow political views rather than to celebrate legitimate cultural issues. As much as Hughes would like to pass off Serrano as an anomaly of the NEA process in the '80s, the fact is the beat goes on: This summer, California's Highways performance-arts center received a $15,000 NEA grant to help put on its "Ecco Lesbo/Ecco Homo" festival. With such acts as "Not for Republicans," "Dyke Night" and others with names unsuitable to be printed here, it is filled with political statement. Why should the American people be forced to pay for the political posturing of a few?”

This ironic zeroing out sentiment has been dredged up again recently by the Trump administration (who vociferously threatens to enact all kinds of policy changes) though a letter currently being circulated by Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) and one by Representative David Price (D-NC) both call to provide the NEA and NEH with $167.5 million in the FY 2020 cycle - a $12.5 million increase.

If the laissez faire aesthetic could be reduced to a core thesis, it may be “this is worth it”. Every work in circulation is lauded as a statement in itself so that a theoretical underpinning can be used to speculate on its volatile market value. In contrast, art that has been brought to public attention through support of a National Endowment at odds with congress has been lent an air of decadence, and has been sentenced with perversion of American identity. The original hope of enabling a unified vision of Americana to develop and flourish has revealed the fact that there will never be a clear understanding of what that may actually entail, though McNaughton’s paintings currently hold the throne for many.

Philanthropic organizations stem from private industry, allowing their members to bypass the pressures of national funding, but few have considered their position in the constellation of art and finance as carefully as the United States Artists. Created in 2006 by the Ford, Rockefeller, Rasmuson, and Prudential Foundations, they are among the largest providers of unrestricted support to artists. They began this collective endeavor in part as a direct response to setbacks facing the NEA after witnessing the agency’s struggle with congress over illustration of some ineffable American soul. Rockefeller continues to support the National Endowment since the days of Nancy Hanks’s program, and both Ford and Rasmuson signed a petition with 9 other titans of philanthropy in early 2018, protesting the Trump budget proposal to once again cut funding. It is the Ford Foundation however which has been in operation since 1936 that has taken initiative to write the rules of beneficial engagement with national and international communities in the name of social progress and economic justice. The initial organization was created by Edsel and Henry Ford four years after the Ford Hunger March (where Ford’s Service Men opened fire with machine guns on protesters from the Unemployed Council and United Auto Workers coalition, resulting in a massacre) and one year before The Battle of The Overpass (where UAW members were beaten for attempting a pamphlet campaign). Needless to say, the company’s public approval suffered greatly from their treatment of workers though they went into bargaining with UAW at this time as well, and aggressively jump started their philanthropic efforts. Since then they’ve been credited with creating some of the largest financial allotments in history across all fields, but they’ve experienced push back on arts funding within their timeline as well. In 1977 Henry Ford II penned a resignation letter from his own family business stating, “The foundation always has prided itself on its emphasis on funding the experimental kind of effort—the new way that might lead to a significant breakthrough. Yet we stick with some programs for years and years—Office of the Arts being a prime example. Are we an ongoing funding agency or are we courageous backers of innovation in the huge field of human problems?… In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff in the field of philanthropy.”

This rebuke of “anti-capitalist” activity did little to derail the foundation’s endeavors to support progressive expression as experienced by Susan Berresford who joined the foundation in 1970 as project assistant in the Division of National Affairs. She recounts beginning at the organization when women participated in the workforce on wildly unequal footing with men, but because the institution proved to be actively dedicated to applying the values of fairness and justice to its own business practice, and the Civil Rights movement had been struggling along for decades, they restructured in ways that eventually allowed her to become the first female president, holding the position from 1996-2007. The experience of working within a company culture that expands internal avenues for growth for all members was integral to the mindset Berresford later brought with her to the position of founding chair at United States Artists. Here she remarks on some of the thought process that formulated the origin of USA: “Why do we call ourselves US Artists? It sounds like a government agency, but we’re not! Kathy DeShaw, our first executive director understood some of us were troubled by the fact that the Americana aspects of our culture were being captured by one political party, and the flag was being used by one political party. What we set out to do was be non partisan and say that artists and donors exist across the entire political spectrum. One of the visuals we adopted early on was the Jasper Johns American flag. It was embracing that non partisan experience of America that we wanted to highlight.”

USA works through a process of peer selection, where artists from disparate communities across the country are nominated each year for the chance to receive an unrestricted sum of $50,000 gifted from donors who may themselves be art collectors, but are usually at least sympathetic to nonlinear creativity. This freedom from restriction came directly from a belief that the elite culture wars needed to be circumvented to allow art the chance to solve social issues that had no metrics in place to gauge progress. Berresford keeps track of situations where this sort of networking lead to concrete support, and shares them openly approaching potential donors. “Once we were alerted to this sculptor that received two public commissions but didn’t have the money to pay for the necessary materials. We were happy to help her, but we also just kept running into these contradictions that were really interesting to us. While this was a clear case of what the artist would do with the money, we didn’t want to get into a kind of bean counting of which kind of art shows "a result". If you’re a philanthropist you should give someone money and get out of the way."

The art world functions in such a way that an artist may accrue social capital in spades without that translating to consistent financial gain, but some of the donors that USA approached were suspicious of offering anything to people who may not require outside support, claiming something akin to an “artist as welfare queen” argument. Another school of thought that potential donors entertained was that if the artist was worth anything, they would find themselves evaluated by the visual art market. As laissez faire aesthetics state, this is not always the case, especially if the work is ephemeral or does not fit a fashion trend that is palatable to the current collector class. Indeed, some of the artists were contacted for nomination directly through associates who saw them as community leaders. It is not a prerequisite for recipients to excel in the contemporary rituals of successful small business with self promotion based web presences. Though some are digital natives, other nominees may run local theaters that address race relations, choreograph dance with the disabled, produce journalism about incarcerated populations, teach the homeless to sing in choruses, or raise awareness of issues facing queer communities. In some rare cases they have even been scouted out living traditional indigenous lifestyles deep in the forests of Maine or Alaska. (CHAPTER 2: IF PHILANTHROPISTS PAYED THEIR TAXES AND POLITICIANS PUT MONEY INTO INFRASTRUCTURE WE WOULDN’T “NEED” ARTISTS TO MAKE WORK THAT ULTIMATELY DOESN’T FIX THE PROBLEMS THEY ADDRESS. ARTISTS ARE INSTEAD HIRED TO REPLACE TRAINED SPECIALISTS IN THE FIELDS OF SOCIAL WORK AND LOCAL POLITICS - PERHAPS BECAUSE “ARTISTS” ARE WILLING TO BE FLEXIBLE AND OFFER ESTHETIC SOLUTIONS TO CONCRETE ISSUES. THIS SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART MAKES PHILANTHROPISTS FEEL LIKE THEY ARE GIVING MONEY TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE. THEY ARE PAYING TO HEAR WHAT IT IS LIKE TO STRUGGLE, INSTEAD OF WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE ALIVE.)

All uncertainty in the efficacy of private donations to individual recipients was weeded out of the board of US Artists, leaving a base of support that finds artistic production to be an integral part of community structuring. Berresford recalls the early days of formulating bonds around this understanding, “In the beginning there were people we supported like the painter Mark Bradford. He was an early recipient and later became a board member. There was an idea that outside the government there could be an endowment, which was the only way you free yourself from understandable political pressures to take some risks. With an endowment we attract a staff that works because they know they are going to get payed. Then we can take risks on artists who can then take risks on finding esthetic solutions, and can weather the issues that come up, and move on and evolve the organization with an emphasis on creativity.”

From the top down, this organization works internally to ensure all of its members are cared for as well, utilizing Berrisford’s experience at Ford as inspiration. In contrast to most unpaid internship programs in the art world, theirs is not only payed, but also places the interns into a position to create a publication that is distributed among the entirety of fellows and donors. There are few venues who will not only allow their artists freedom of expression, but also allow their staff a creative outlet. The consideration of how to create an egalitarian operation that satisfies its own members doesn’t stop there though. A study commonly referred to by the USA performed by the Urban Institute titled “Investing in Creativity” found that of the award programs that did exist “Media artists have the most discipline-specific awards (165) followed by visual artists (157). On the other end of the spectrum, dancers have only 22 discipline-specific awards, design artists 6, and performance artists a mere 2.” As if merit based selection processes were not complicated enough to begin with, they also take into account that the form individual expression takes has fallen into a hierarchy of importance based on other markets and general accessibility, and that this must also be overcome through careful selection. Add to this a concern for scouting out the most socially engaged creatives, and we begin to see why each round of decisions becomes a full year’s worth of work.

The result of taking care to note these details is something the assembly members find to have a heartening effect. In previous years, reported 82% of fellows of the USA have spent their winnings on their own art, collaboration, and on supporting other artists in their local communities. The motto of USA is “Believe in artists” and it is arguable that the good faith approach to philanthropy has worked to turn the figure of artist into a representative of sorts. When these voices are elevated, we begin to see a shift of attention away from market aesthetic, towards the backgrounds and sociopolitical beliefs of independent actors who manage to garner audiences that verge on constituencies of varying size. This year also marked the inaugural run of The Berresford prize which their website states was “conceived of by several USA Fellows in response to the lack of acknowledgment for those who have dedicated their careers to the betterment of artists… remarkable administrators, curators, scholars, and producers who are building platforms and creating conditions for artists to thrive.” Kirsty Edmunds was the recipient, but this is only the beginning of focused support for a nationwide ecosystem of creatives and those who strive to amplify their work. A common complaint about philanthropy in the arts is that institutions who receive funding are generally not allowed to pay their own staff through those donations, because philanthropy is bound by our tax structure to refrain from funding individuals. Since United States Artists has found a way to bypass this issue with the Berrisford Prize, their effect on the creative sector has become unparalleled.

#philanthropy #too much democracy #lucia love #writing #metrics #art #commerce #art market #find me im out here waiting to meet you and help build a better world

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toomanysinks · 6 years ago

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Timing and why we’re all VCs

Timing is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced.

Capitalism is fundamentally about timing, since market competition is about finding opportunities before others. When should you start a company? What company should you start? When should a VC invest? When should you join a company? When should you switch industries? When should you back a candidate for public office?

Every single one of our professional decisions is about timing, and yet, we do so little to practice and perfect it. Most employees only make 3-4 major career decisions in their lifetimes — hardly enough feedback for this skill to mature. Anyone who has worked in a large company further knows that timing a product launch or a new marketing strategy has more to do with internal politics than reading market forces.

Most of us want to make more money and accelerate our careers, but the truth is that these opportunities are few and far between. Most jobs have limited growth potential. Most startups die. Most VCs don’t make money. Most political candidates fail to get elected. The difference between success and failure sometimes has to do with hard work and tenacity, but far more often with the strategy of timing.

It’s obvious that we can be too late to these decisions of course. We can miss the round of financing, we can start a company a year or two behind someone else and lose the first-mover advantage. But we can also be way too early, ahead of the market and losing out on alternative opportunities that might have been more valuable.

Now, some perceive that “timing” is synonymous with “luck.” There is some truth there, in the sense that life is random and sometimes — completely unintentionally — people stumble upon a treasure chest of gold.

Don’t be distracted by that, because there are also people who just seem to have timing nailed. There are engineers (I know because I have seen their recruiter profiles) who have joined three unicorns in a row in the first handful of employees. There are VCs who get a string of wins that is far from chance. There are CEOs that always seem to guide their companies to the right place at the right time and drive their stock valuations up.

We talked a lot about why we can’t build infrastructure in America yesterday. One of the challenges is simply timing: so many things have to happen at once for these projects to get off the ground, and most governors and mayors lack the timing skills required to get them over the finish line.

How can you practice timing? Start writing down predictions about people, companies, and markets. Check in with the companies you talked with a few years ago — how are they doing? Ditto people you met a while back. Start evaluating your predictions: were they correct? Were they too early or too late?

More importantly, start cultivating networks of friends who have a sense of pulse on the frontiers of the economy. That could mean someone at the edge of a new science (quantum computing or AI) or someone who gets marketing to new demographics, or someone who tracks new regulatory and legal changes. Find a peer group of people who get timing and practice it as a craft.

Between TechCrunch today and my former roles in venture capital, I’ve had the opportunity to practice timing a lot. I have a list of companies that I would have backed, and some have turned into unicorns while others have ended up on the ash heap of history. I’ve predicted some trends well, while flubbed others. I’ve been way too early (a huge bias for me), and sometimes stupidly late.

But all along, I am practicing that timing muscle. It’s the only way forward in capitalism, and it’s worth every investment you can make.

Mithril Capital, management fees, and VC strategic drift

Peter Kim via Getty Images

Theodore Schleifer at Recode reported a rare deep dive into the internal intrigue at a prominent VC firm, in this case Mithril Capital. From the article:

Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund.

All appears well. But behind the scenes, a far different story has been unfolding.

The late-stage investment firm has been a slow-burning mess for the past several months, angering current and former employees, limited partners, and, crucially, [Peter] Thiel himself, sources say.

Among the issues is the firm’s huge management fee … and I guess lack of expenses?

The firm is likely collecting as much as $20 million a year in management fees, sources familiar with the figures say.

We don’t know exactly how much the firm spends, but people close to Mithril say they can’t imagine that the firm, given its staff size, is spending more than half of that on operational expenses. [Mithril Capital founder Ajay] Royan’s salary, like that of other venture capitalists, is not publicly disclosed.

One limited partner called the fees, given the size of Mithril’s staff, “outrageous.”

What? I don’t understand this line of reasoning at all. The firm negotiates a fairly standard agreement with its limited partners, and then the LPs are pissed because the firm isn’t spending the money on massive staff and large, expensive offices? The whole point of delegating investment decisions to a GP is to empower them to organize their firm to win deals and get stuff done. If — and it’s a big if of course — they can do that on the cheap, then why should an LP care at all? Burn the management fee in a fireplace if it makes the deals happen.

Ajay Royan told Bloomberg in 2017 that Mithril does not “charge excessive fees.” But he was not exactly known for being thrifty with management money. Former employees describe Friday catered lunches where costs could run over $100 per person, and Royan was known internally for a “book ordering problem” — a former employee said that “unbelievable amounts of books” would be delivered each week to the office by Amazon to maintain the firm’s extensive library.

Pro tip: take on the mantle of book editor for a major tech publication, and the publishers will mail you books for free. We get at least a dozen at the TC offices every week, which is why we write about books so often around here these days. Alas, no $100 catered lunches.

The wider story here though appears to be one of a firm completely strategically adrift. Mithril is struggling to compete against ferocious competition in the growth-stage equity market. The best deals are obvious to dozens of firms, and the ones that are less obvious have huge risks attached to them that make it hard to write the big checks required.

“[Royan] literally did not want to compete. If there was a process or bidding war or something resembling a competition, he would just walk,” the employee said. “And he would just say, ‘I don’t want to outbid.’”

Mithril is hardly the only VC firm that is strategically adrift. Every time I go back to SF, this seems to be the norm these days among venture capitalists. There is a huge amount of money sloshing around, and very few deals that are in that sweet spot between obvious and highly risky. Startups either get three dozen term sheets or none at all, since every firm is walking around with the same frameworks and metrics in their head.

It’s so rare to actually hear a VC strategy that isn’t generic capital, that has some differentiation on sourcing, and picking, and growing businesses beyond the “we invest in great companies.” VCs don’t like strategy because it means making choices, and making choices means saying no to certain things, and those things might be the next Facebook. So they do everything, all the time, which really means they do nothing. And so we get book ordering problems and expensive lunches and weirdly angry LPs. What a boring mess.

Quality tech news from around the web

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Carl Larson Photography via Getty Images

South California is also seeing declining seed investment

Today, the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC) published its updated economic forecast for LA and the Southern California region. One interesting note in the report is an observed slow down in early-stage venture investing. The report highlighted that while growth-stage investments in CA were hitting record highs, total deal count and seed investing — both in terms of total seed dollars and seed deal count — were at their lowest points since 2012.

The data points in LA, Southern CA, and the rest of the state seem to follow the trend of declining seed rounds seen in the rest of the country. While the topic is one we’ve previously discussed and one which has heated up in recent weeks with commentary from Marc Suster, Fred Wilson, and others, it’s interesting to see the trend occurring even in more nascent startup markets.

Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding

The federal government announced that it would be pulling back $1 billion in funding that was slated for the California high-speed rail project through 2022, while also pursuing legal action to help recoup the $2.5 billion it has already coughed up. The Federal Railroad Administration is arguing that the state’s updated plan — completing only a route from Bakersfield to Merced — is starkly different from the plan for which the funds were originally allocated. Ouch.

As stock exchanges compete to attract IPOs, unicorns and investors win?

It might be getting easier for companies to go public around the world. With ample late-stage capital keeping more companies staying private for longer, looser rules from the SEC and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange may be on the way to help entice more IPOs.

In the US, the SEC proposed allowing all companies to market themselves to investors before announcing IPOs versus just those that fall under the agency’s “emerging growth” definition. Across the Pacific, Bloomberg reported that Chinese tech companies have been lobbying the HK Exchange for a number of more favorable rules, including allowing companies to maintain extra voting rights and letting major shareholders buy extra stock in the process. With a serious number of Chinese companies opting to list on foreign exchanges last year, the HK Exchange might be feeling pressure to cough up concessions that could help them win local listings — especially if the US moves forward with friendlier rules.

How Japan lost half its citizens with poor data

The Japanese government failed to pay out billions of yen in government benefits for years due to faulty data. If that wasn’t bad enough, Nikkei Asian Review reported yesterday that the government is struggling to even locate roughly half of those who are owed since they don’t have their current addresses on file.

As simple as it may seem, tracking the indebted is actually a tall task since citizens have changed residences, changed names, and since the Japanese government has historically destroyed benefit applications (containing address info) after the period required to maintain them. At this point, it’s unclear whether everyone who is owed will even end up getting paid, with the Japanese government now offering a prime example of how poor data maintenance and not just poor data collection can make a situation go from bad to a whole lot worse.

Can the race to build roads in Southeast Asia avoid development gridlock?

As we harp on our “Why can’t we build anything?” obsession, infrastructure development in Southeast Asia is continuing to heat up and everyone seems to want a piece of the pie. Japan announced plans to further accelerate investment into infrastructure and urban development in the region — where China is also actively engaged — with initial expansion talks focused on Cambodia and the Philippines. At the same time, a newly unveiled government budget in Singapore and the ongoing election in Indonesia have brought infrastructure development strategies into the spotlight, with open debate on how these projects have been and should be funded.

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

To every member of Extra Crunch: thank you. You allow us to get off the ad-laden media churn conveyor belt and spend quality time on amazing ideas, people, and companies. If I can ever be of assistance, hit reply, or send an email to [email protected].

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/20/timing-and-why-were-all-vcs/

0 notes

fmservers · 6 years ago

Text

Timing and why we’re all VCs

Timing is the single most valuable skill of the modern economy, but I would argue its’s the least understood and also the least practiced.

But all along, I am practicing that timing muscle. It’s the only way forward in capitalism, and it’s worth every investment you can make.

Mithril Capital, management fees, and VC strategic drift

Peter Kim via Getty Images

Theodore Schleifer at Recode reported a rare deep dive into the internal intrigue at a prominent VC firm, in this case Mithril Capital. From the article:

Mithril had its best moment yet last week when a portfolio company, Auris Health, sold to Johnson & Johnson for more than $3 billion — returning at least $500 million to the fund.

All appears well. But behind the scenes, a far different story has been unfolding.

The late-stage investment firm has been a slow-burning mess for the past several months, angering current and former employees, limited partners, and, crucially, [Peter] Thiel himself, sources say.

Among the issues is the firm’s huge management fee … and I guess lack of expenses?

The firm is likely collecting as much as $20 million a year in management fees, sources familiar with the figures say.

One limited partner called the fees, given the size of Mithril’s staff, “outrageous.”

Quality tech news from around the web

Written by Arman Tabatabai

Carl Larson Photography via Getty Images

South California is also seeing declining seed investment

Will “Diet CA-HSR” even get done as feds look to pull back California funding

As stock exchanges compete to attract IPOs, unicorns and investors win?

How Japan lost half its citizens with poor data

Can the race to build roads in Southeast Asia avoid development gridlock?

Obsessions

More discussion of megaprojects, infrastructure, and “why can’t we build things”

We are going to be talking India here, focused around the book “Billonnaire Raj” by James Crabtree

We have a lot to catch up on in the China world when the EC launch craziness dies down. Plus, we are covering The Next Factory of the World by Irene Yuan Sun.

Societal resilience and geoengineering are still top-of-mind

Some more on metrics design and quantification

Thanks

This newsletter is written with the assistance of Arman Tabatabai from New York

Via Arman Tabatabai https://techcrunch.com

#TechCrunch

0 notes

sempiternalsandpitturtle · 6 years ago

Text

What did Google’s ‘Medic’ algorithm update really do?

What is Google Medic, and how should you respond? That’s a good question – and here’s the short answer: Google Medic was a core algorithm update rolled out on August 1, 2018. It dramatically reduced organic traffic to certain websites by pushing them down the search rankings. Worst hit were sites in what Google calls the Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) category that didn’t do a good enough job of showcasing Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (EAT), especially sites offering health advice (hence the ‘Medic’ handle). The update showed that knowing how to write and cite high EAT content is now a vital skill for all content creators.

Okay, so now that you know Google Medic is something you need to understand and respond to, let’s unpack the subject. By the time you finish this article, you’ll know what Google Medic is, how it works, and – mostly importantly – how it should change the content you make in future, plus how you can recover if it blitzed your traffic.

Google Medic – how it happened

Firstly, we should acknowledge that this article will need to lean heavily on secondary sources. Google is very tight-lipped about the changes it makes to its core search algorithm, which has lead to an entire industry of SEO experts springing up. These people spend most of their lives with a metaphorical ear to the wall of Google HQ, trying to divine the details of how the algorithm promotes this kind of content and devalues that, so that they can pass it on to the rest of us content creators.

They do this partly with clever tools that measure things like volatility in search results – and on August 1, 2018 the dashboards on those tools started going berserk. Dramatic fluctuations in search position had caused traffic to a host of sites to plummet, which suggested that Google had rolled out a major change. The SEO experts scrambled to work out what was different, and this is what they found.

Who Google Medic affected

In an analysis on Moz.com in the week following the Google Medic rollout, marketing scientist Dr. Peter J. Meyers ranked the internet’s 30 biggest losers in terms of their drop in Serp positions. He found that Prevention.com had experienced the greatest drop in net position, with a 67 per cent decrease, followed by sites like LiveStrong.com, VeryWellFamily.com and OrganicFacts.com.

A note here on what these numbers mean: Dropping your ranking position by 67 per cent isn’t the same as losing 67 per cent of your traffic. After all, it’s only going to affect the proportion of traffic that you get from organic search. But as this chart from Advanced Web Ranking shows, a drop from position 1 to position 6 in search could mean that, where one week you were capturing 30 per cent of all clicks on a search, the next week your click-through rate might be less than 5 per cent. For huge sites like Prevention.com, which claims 5.3 million monthly users in its media kit, that kind of loss would represent a devastating blow to advertising revenue.

Image credit: Advanced Web Ranking

Anyway, looking again at that ‘biggest losers’ list, if you’re thinking that the common theme is a sort of lightweight health advice focus, you’re not wrong. However that’s not the entire picture. In this chart of affected sites created by Barry Schwartz of the Search Engine Roundtable, you can see that, while Medic predominantly affected sites that offer medical advice, sites in the e-commerce, finance, business and technology categories all took a hit.

Image credit: Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable.

So what was the common theme?

The answer lies in a concept that Google calls Your Money, Your Life.

Understanding ‘Your Money, Your Life’

For a company with a big reputation for artificial intelligence and machine learning, Google sure does use a lot of old-fashioned human feedback. Did you know that the firm maintains an army of 10,000 quality raters; independent contractors who manually evaluate the results turned up by Google searches?

These people are effectively sense-checking what the machines produce, and they are guided in this task by a 164-page document which – quelle surprise! – was quietly updated in the week before Medic rolled out. Here’s a quote from that document explaining how Google defines YMYL:

“Some types of pages could potentially impact the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users. We call such pages “Your Money or Your Life” pages, or YMYL”

It goes on to explain that YMYL sites can include shopping pages, financial information pages, sites offering medical information or legal advice – as well as news pages and official sites covering things like disaster response that are “important for having an informed citizenry”.

Google says in this document that it has extra-strict standards for the quality of YMYL pages, in short because bad information on them could mess up people’s lives. Think about it:

Bad health advice could lead to serious health issues (think the ‘eat butter’ fad).

Bad building or home renovation advice could cost you thousands and even risk lives (think of New Zealand’s leaky homes crisis, or the Grenfell tower inferno).

Bad investment writing could cost people millions – even if it were legally sound.

Bad science writing could lead to a wave of climate change denial and the imminent destruction of the planet (oh wait, that already happened).

How does Google define quality? aka, understanding EAT

So now that we know what kind of information Google was targeting, let’s look at the how: How does Google define quality? How does it sort the wheat out from the chaff?

Actually, let’s pause at that phrase to consider for a moment what’s at stake. Google is – as ever – defining what information can easily be found on the internet, and what can’t. Such sheer power concentrated in one entity might outrage you, yet you definitely don’t want to be deemed chaff. Chaff gets consigned to the dustbin of history. So if you want a seat at the table (maybe a table where the wheat is being eaten? Sorry for mixing metaphors) then you need to follow Google’s rules.

And here those rules are, laid out conveniently in the aforementioned Quality Rater Guidelines, under the heading “Page Quality Rating: Most Important Factors”:

“Websites or pages without some sort of beneficial purpose … should receive the lowest rating. For all other pages that have a beneficial purpose, the amount of expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) is very important.” [my emphasis]

It’s as simple as that. The definition of quality comes down to expertise, authority and trust; basically, what you know, how you back that up, and how reliable you are.

Let’s hone in on how Google defines EAT in the health advice field:

“High E-A-T medical advice should be written or produced by people or organizations with appropriate medical expertise or accreditation. High E-A-T medical advice or information should be written or produced in a professional style and should be edited, reviewed, and updated on a regular basis.”

So reading between the lines here, if you want Google to take your content seriously in a post-Medic world, it must:

Come from or cite experts.

Explain their credentials.

Be free from spelling mistakes or other errors.

Cite sources that are up to date.

Case Study: How to recover from a Google Medic shock

For a before-and-after snapshot of a website hit hard by Google Medic, you need look no further than Prevention.com – the site that was reportedly most affected. You can see that one of the major ways they’ve dealt with the update was through a rapid lift in their editorial values. Here’s a screenshot from their carefree pre-Medic days, taken from a story titled “The Amazing Health Benefits of Walking Outside Every Day”

Just wow, right? They seriously told us that walking prevents lung cancer – even for smokers – without offering a single shred of evidence. God knows which starry-eyed intern actually penned the piece – the byline is completely vague. And the whole article continues in that vein, using phrases like “scientists say” for another half-dozen points. Filled with confidence we are not.

Compare that with the kind of article Prevention.com is now publishing in the post-Medic era.

Notice the difference? Within the first 75 words we have a citation for a study, the name of the science journal in which it was published, the name of the university where it was conducted, and a link out to the original paper. Note too that the author’s byline clearly states who has written the piece, and links to a short bio explaining her particular field of expertise. By jumping on The Wayback Machine, which archives old internet pages, you can also see that Prevention.com appears to have added an About Us page in October 2018 which explains in great detail how they consult experts for all their articles, and lists them all by name.

To my eyes this represents a major pivot in how Prevention.com creates their content, and it all aligns with Google’s stated values around EAT. As a classic YMYL site – one where bad advice would almost certainly affect its readers’ health – Prevention.com has been forced to radically up their game in how they display their EAT credentials, which in turn has provided us with a convenient how-to guide on recovering from a Medic-emergency,

A Medic defibrillator: Getting healthy the Castleford way

At Castleford we create content for hundreds of clients, so we were pleased to see that Google Medic had had little effect on their organic results. That’s largely because the algorithm only reinforced what we already knew, and enforced through our existing Editorial Department policies: Google will always champion quality content that enhances the user’s experience.

Nevertheless, it was a timely reminder that quality requires constant improvement, so we took the opportunity to run a Google Medic training session with our writers. It was informed by many of the sources we’ve cited here; by conversations with content creators in Australia and New Zealand; and by examining Prevention.com’s rapid pivot.

Here are some outtakes from that presentation that you may find helpful in your own content creation work – whether you’re interested in insulating yourself from Google Medic in future, or recovering from a shock:

Google Medic advice for content creators

Always consider the Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness of your source material.

Don’t be shy about citing and linking out to high EAT sources.

Beware of citing flaky single-study science. The best high EAT sources are at the top of the science lifecycle – transnational and national bodies like the UN, WHO, government ministries, etc.

With reputable sources that aren’t quite at that level, give context about what the information means and where it comes from. E.g. “A new study by XYZ university adds further weight to the theory that…” NOT “A new study proves…”.

Be cautious about any advice that could affect ‘your money or your life’ – Google gives high scrutiny to this kind of content. Ensure the highest EAT sources are used.

The recency of sources should be considered a ranking factor.

Spelling and grammar should be considered a ranking factor.

Conclusions

Looking back, it seems amazing that Google Medic rolled out as late as it did. It was long overdue and will do much to clean up the old wild west of shonky health-lite, science-lite, advice-lite sites. Though of course it presents a fresh challenge to content creators. To stay relevant we must serve our audience with quality content, and go the extra mile in signaling to them (and Google) what makes that content authoritative and trustworthy. And that’s a good thing.

from http://bit.ly/2Tb0aFc

#content marketing

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a-breton · 6 years ago

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A Primer to Boost Your Content’s Readability

Our content was too academic and didn’t resonate with our audience. When we focused on making it more readable for our audience, business grew. What about you? Is your brand deliberately centered on readability?

At its purest, readability is about keeping things simple. It’s about explaining things in as straightforward terms as possible. Content marketers deliver a wealth of ideas and information, but it’s not always presented in the best way. Among the potential problem areas:

Length of words and sentences

Grammar

Structure of content

Use of language

Poor readability is a signal that you’re not looking after your audience. It can mean you:

Spend a lot of time, money, and other resources producing material that doesn’t fit its purpose

Don’t have an engaged audience

Lose audience trust, which diminishes customers’ relationship with your business

Find your customers taking their business elsewhere

Lose revenue

Poor readability signals you’re not looking after your audience, says @stevelinney. #writingtips Click To Tweet

When the Dutch government used readability tools, it found its content’s readability level (C1 – see scale below) was too high for the majority of readers in the Netherlands, who are at a B1 readability level.

Given that most readers could not fully understand the content distributed by the government, it was not only a waste of taxpayer money but it could have hurt people’s well-being if they couldn’t understand the content related to topics such as social security.

When my toddler fell down the stairs, my wife and I were scared. We went into full-on protective mode and searched on Google to see what danger signs to watch for and whether we should take him to the hospital. (He was fine, as it wasn’t a bad fall.) I’d hate to have been reading advice that was too difficult to understand quickly. Especially when panic, stress, and a crying toddler is added to the mix.

Yet, though the average American reads at an eighth-grade level, consumer-focused medical content frequently is too complex for the average reader, as shown in a comparative analysis of patient education materials from 16 medical specialties.

In our business, we collect data on readability and have discovered common issues include:

Overuse of long sentences

Words with too many syllables

Reliance on industry buzzwords and jargon

The good news is these mistakes can be avoided by adopting readability measures as part of your content assessment process.

Long sentences, words w/ too many syllables, buzzwords & jargon make #content harder to read. @stevelinney Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

How to Make Your Content More Readable

Get Your Readers to Stay Longer With These 4 Formats

How to adopt readability, a step-by-step guide

I will take you through nine steps to ensure that your audience is more likely to consume and engage with your content.

1. Have a customer focus

This is content marketing 101, but it’s the most important aspect. Create content that:

Is genuinely useful to the reader

Is relatable

Answers a question or solves a problem

Informs, entertains, or educates (preferably all three)

The relatable point is an essential one. Too much content, particularly on websites, is me-me-me – the brand only talks about itself. Avoid doing that at all costs. For example, turn the focus of how you do something to how your readers can benefit by adopting the same practice.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

2. Get a baseline score

Once you have your first draft ready, it’s time to determine its readability score. You can use one of several free and paid tools. (Disclosure: My company, readable.io, is on one of the lists.) With these tests, you can learn the Flesch-Kincaid U.S. grade level along with other standard readability assessments, such as the Flesch Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Index, CEFR, and SMOG Index. Some highlight word by word (or sentence by sentence), the potential readability challenges.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Ultimate Science-Backed Method for Creating Content That Readers Love

3. Revise to achieve correct reading level

As a general rule of thumb, we aim for a reading level of grade eight for our blog posts – which is the level of a 14- or 15-year-old – to ensure that a wide audience can understand our content. We focus on grade 10 for e-books and grade 12 for white papers and books.

Your personas or audience description will help you pick the right grade level for your content.

Your personas will help you pick the right grade level for your #content, says @stevelinney. #writingtips Click To Tweet

4 . Shorten your sentences

The No. 1 element that readability algorithms agree on is that long sentences are bad. Thankfully, it’s an easy fix – shorten your sentences.

The No. 1 element that readability algorithms agree on is that long sentences are bad. @stevelinney… Click To Tweet

Full stops and bullet points are your friend. Use them, and use them often. You’ll soon have content that:

Can be easily read online

Doesn’t drag and drain your reader

Is structured in a reader-friendly way

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Words That Convert: Test, Learn, Repeat

5. Reduce the number of long words

Long words are another red flag for readability. Where possible, look for shorter alternatives (e.g., you might replace the word “alternatives” with “options”).

Now, this isn’t always possible, as your organization likely has some words that must be used. Edit to minimize the number of long words but don’t make everything as readable as possible to the detriment of your brand message.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 7 Fixes for Common Writing Mistakes [Examples]

6. Scrub your copy of buzzwords, geekspeak, jargon, and acronyms

Resist the temptation to fill your content with buzzwords, geekspeak, jargon, or acronyms. They limit the content to those who are already in the know. If you must use challenging terms, explain them.

When working in my first job in London, I had the delight of editing blog posts written by structural engineers. They loved to fill their content with as much jargon and as many acronyms as they could to try to look smarter than their peers. They didn’t care about readability and their audience.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

15+ Worthless Words to Cut to Improve Your Readers’ Experience

27 Reasons Why Your Content Sucks

7. Don’t overuse adverbs

People frequently tend to liberally overuse adverbs, eventually causing sentences to be really cluttered.

If you take all of the adverbs out of that previous sentence, how much better does it sound?

Like anything in life, moderation is key.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Ann Handley on How to Make Your Writing ‘Ludicrously Spectacular’

8. Set a balance between formal and conversational

My preferred style of writing edges toward conversational with a formal tone, but you have to match what your audience is expecting. The two styles of writing can be split easily:

In conversational content, I aim to make it feel like I’m talking directly with you. It makes the reading experience more personal. It also feels more natural to me to write this way, even after years of writing for a B2B audience.

Just because you’re writing for business doesn’t mean you have to write with no personality. Make sure the flow of copy is natural and not forced.

Make sure your copy flow is natural to ensure that it’s readable, says @stevelinney. #writingtips Click To Tweet

In some cases, conversational or informal tones are not appropriate (e.g., a privacy policy). But formal doesn’t mean you should abandon readability. Clear language always wins, formal or conversational.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Conversational Content: How to Market Through Text Messaging and Chatbots

9. Seek feedback and proofread

Common-sense time, again. As many pairs of eyes as possible should read a document before it goes live. As a writer, you can be too close to the text. Another person can give you the perspective of a reader and point out areas of improvement.

(There have been some great additions to this blog post since my first draft, suggested by those who proofread it. My vanity as a writer won’t let me tell you what they are, just that they exist.)

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Proofing and Editing: How to Make Your Content Less Frightening

Conclusion

Readability and content marketing are about the same three principles:

Keep your audience at the center of everything you do.

Inform, educate, or entertain your audience.

Keep it simple.

Keeping things simple isn’t easy, but practice makes better content. The more you stick to readability principles, the more readily your audience will consume and engage with your content.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Secrets of High-Performing Online Content

Please note: All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team. No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

Check out the readability of CMI’s free weekday newsletter. Subscribe today.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2pV3yqK

#Online Marketing

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claraoswald81 · 6 years ago

Text

Five Common Myths About SEO 2019

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Learn how to create articles, learn how to create some simple HTML, and the particular learn the very basic concepts of SEO, and you may make money online using SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and article marketing to obtain your website (you only require one from each website) detailed on Page #1 of Search engines (forget Yahoo as well since the rest) and you will certainly get loads of visitors that will web page. If your website will be made up of lower-quality threshold type pages using old SEO-techniques (which more and more branded as spam in 2018) after that Google will not index most of the pages as nicely as your website ‘quality score' is probably likely to end up being negatively impacted. This particular is beyond website content, but great user experience has become a lot more and more important in solid SEO rankings. 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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years ago

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How to Write a Badass Professional Bio for Every Platform

Maybe you just got a snazzy new job or a big promotion.

Or maybe you’re about boost your brand with a speaking gig or a blog contribution and your professional bio has gone the way of those tortilla chips in the back of the cabinet (a bit stale).

Either way, it’s time to chain yourself to your keyboard and write something we all dread -- a professional bio.

Writing about yourself isn’t easy. It’s a fine line between cocky and confident and you’re never quite sure when you’ve locked down the totality of your career and passions.

Full transparency: When I started at IMPACT in February, I had to write one of these monsters myself -- and to be honest, I don’t like how it came out:

“Jason is a journalist-turned-marketer passionate about how storytelling and targeted messaging create business-changing content.

As an Account Executive, he is responsible for implementing inbound marketing strategies that help his clients increase brand awareness, generate leads, and acquire new customers.

When he isn’t working, you’ll find Jason reading on the beach, hunting down mono vinyl, and playing guitar.”

I’m going to hit two birds with this post and provide actionable tips and advice that will help put your mind (and mine) at ease so we can write better professional bios.

After all, this is some of the most important public-facing copy we will ever write. When done right, your bio can help expand your personal brand, build awareness for yourself and your business, or even win you new business.

Upon these words rest the fate of our entire careers.

Okay, I’m being hyperbolic but you get it; Our bios are an important first impression and we often neglect them because it is uncomfortable to write about ourselves.

Without further adieu, this is my guide to writing badass bios for every major platform.

General Tips

Let’s start with some quick things you should, and shouldn’t, do no matter where the bio is going to be posted.

Things you should do:

Pick the Right Point of View

When deciding whether to write your bio in the first (I) or third (Jason Rose) person, the general rule of thumb is to consider who is introducing you.

Meaning, when your bio appears on a company page, you are being introduced by your company so it makes sense to use the third person.

Ditto for conferences or most publications. I know it makes you feel like Kanye West, but unless it’s explicitly requested, get those “I”s out of your bio.

On the other hand, when you are writing a bio for your social media profile, it is better to the use the first person. Here you’re perceived as the “publisher,” so you’re introducing yourself.

Establish why you’re qualified (but be human)

It’s a tall order, but a good bio establishes your experience and qualifications, but also that you’re a human being complete with a pulse and a personality.

If an AI application could machine-learn how to write your bio by crawling job descriptions — you’re doing something wrong.

Have a human voice and tone that is professional enough to represent you from 9 to 5, but doesn’t completely betray who you are from 7 to 10.

Even if you’re in a field that is very conservative, use human language and avoid jargon specific to your industry.

Things you shouldn’t do:

Play Buzzword Bingo

It’s easier to learn from the don'ts than the do’s — so I will fall back on my sword.

I think my least favorite thing about my bio is the sour note I played with this first sentence.

“Jason is a journalist-turned-marketer passionate about how storytelling and targeted messaging create business-changing content.”

Journalist-turned-marketer is interesting enough and conveys my career path but everything after passionate is a buzzword or a conjunction setting up another buzzword.

That’s not to say buzzwords don’t have their place. After all, they communicate to an audience that you’re in their tribe and have a shared language, but, when we take industry jargon too far, we are just hiding behind it and safely filling space.

It’s better to speak in universal terms that resonate with your community, but could be understood by anyone.

When possible, break away from buzzwords and you’ll stand out from the sea of sameness.

Be all tell, no show

Someone as apparently “passionate about storytelling” as I am should know to follow the most golden of all story rules.

Show, don’t tell.

According to wikipedia, this idiom is credited to Russian playwright Anton Chekhov who said "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

You may be working with fewer characters than Chekhov, but whenever possible don’t tell someone who you are, show them.

Fellow IMPACTer Liz Murphy’s bio is a great example of this.

“As IMPACT's content strategist, Liz does more than wrangle commas. With more than 10 years of editorial and inbound marketing experience, she's obsessed with innovating new ways of creating amazing content that's absurdly useful and effective. (She also works with in-house contributors and clients as an editor, strategist, interviewer, coach, and sometimes therapist.)”

What a great first note.

I started my bio with a screeching violin and this is Jimmy Page’s first bend in the Stairway to Heaven guitar solo (the moment that song no longer sucks).

Instead of telling you “I’m skilled editorially but can wear many marketing hats” with her first sentence, Liz showed you: “As IMPACT's content strategist, Liz does more than wrangle commas.

Bravo, Liz.

Make it all about you

How dare you make your bio all about yourself.

Like any great copy, if your bio doesn’t explicitly its intended audience value, it’s dead on arrival.

Using Liz’s bio once again as an example, “No matter which hat she's wearing, her goal is simple -- to empower organizations and thought leaders to differentiate themselves and drive measurable results through game-changing content.

Throughout her career, Liz has worked with organizations across a wide range of industries -- from cyber security and health care, to government sales and insurance.”

If I’m a business stakeholder reading this bio, I know what’s in it for me.

Different Copy for Different Platforms

While the tips above are best practices no matter what, bios aren’t one size fits all and each platform has specific constraints and considerations.

Let’s discuss some of the most common and important:

1. The Company/Team Page

The most important thing to keep in mind when writing a professional bio for your company’s collateral is that you want to differentiate yourself, but within the value proposition of your company and in their voice and tone.

To put it simply, you want to stand out but not too much.

I think we all agree that consistent messaging is a must for any brand or business, but I still sometimes come across impeccably written websites with a singular voice and tone, until I get to the author bios.

Then, suddenly the organization feels like a collection of individuals, and no matter how interesting they all personally appear to be, they don’t communicate that this business is a united entity focused on providing me the product, solution, or service I sorely need.

2. Blogs and third-party publications

The best advice I have to offer with blog bios is to ensure that it speaks directly to the subject you are writing about.

Think Aristotle’s ethical appeals. There is no ethos in using the limited inline space of a blog about quantum physics to share that you love to snowboard.

For third-party publications, you’ll usually have to defer to the style prescribed by the editor.

My suggestion: use the bio to sneak in a link back to one of your owned web properties.

Aside from that sweet link juice, this sends users who like your article to somewhere you have complete control of messaging and how they can engage with you.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn caps your bio (called a summary here) at 2,000 characters.

This gives you plenty of real estate to stretch out and write more, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Keep it tight and only share as much is necessary to tell your story.

Also, be cognizant of what is visible before the visitor expands the module and clicks <see more>.

If you’re buying the good stuff, chances are no one is going to click show more.

Chris, our COO at IMPACT, does a great job in his LinkedIn summary of differentiating himself with his core principles and military background before the user has to click.

4. Facebook

Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook only gives you 101 characters to share your story.

It does, however, give you the unique option to set your bio as permanent or temporary in 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, or custom increments. These temporary bios keep the information fresh and allow you to describe not just who you are, but what is most exciting in your career right now.

For many of us, Facebook is largely a platform for our personal relationships, while professional networking activities live on LinkedIn, but if you’re building a personal brand, your Facebook page is an integral asset.

For tips and tricks about how to build a personal brand with Facebook, I defer to the always informative Neil Patel.

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5. Twitter

While I’ve made my feelings about my company bio clear, I actually like my Twitter Bio.

The constraints (160 characters) and the short-hand of the platform provide the opportunity to get creative. It’s also worth noting that the platform is comparatively much less stuffy than LinkedIn, so feel free to have fun with it.

Just don’t go full 2014 with MARKETER | WRITER | LOVER OF PANDAS or mention that you like to drink coffee.

While I haven’t taken advantage, it’s a good idea to hashtag any industry relevant keywords to boost the discoverability of your profile, and don’t forget to @ your company!

6. Instagram

Instagram bios force you to make due with 150 characters or less.

Given the platform’s users can’t put links into posts, that is one of the most important functions of the bio.

Like Twitter, make sure you include hashtags that lead to relevant galleries, or @ links that lead to your company’s profile.

Think of your Instagram bio almost like PPC ad copy that you are using to drive people to content. You have to be short and savvy about how you use your space.

7. Speaking Proposals and Collateral

The great thing about writing your bio for speaking engagements is that you know the specific audience it should be tailored for.

So often we struggle with our LinkedIn/Twitter/Company bios because we are trying to be all things to all people.

To knock your speaking bio out of the park, learn all you can about the audience for the specific event or conference. Who has attended in the past? What was the most popular topic?

Uncover their needs (articulated or not), and tailor your bio messaging to demonstrate why you will be the speaker that’s forcing latecomers to stand in the back.

I hoped this post helped you shed imposter syndrome (I’m projecting) and now you can write bios for any platform that put your best foot forward.

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/how-to-write-a-professional-bio

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