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bestworstcase · 10 months ago

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yeah. still cooking but i think this is probably the right track. from the cfvy novels we know beacon is completely overrun and the effort to reclaim the campus was failing, but vale is situated at a pretty far remove from beacon and separated by a large body of water, and this glimpse we got of glynda and the shopkeep during the broadcast:

suggests that the situation in vale was ok. streetlights on outside, big glass windows intact, well-lit interior, books and other wares lined up neatly on the shelves, glynda is in here watching the broadcast (not desperately fending off grimm) and the shopkeep is behind the counter in his work uniform. all of this says “business as usual.”

vale is a big city, in the geographic sense—it spreads out across a much wider area than atlas or mantle. the sacking of atlas lasted for hours without the defenders being pushed back into the city: there were swarms of grimm that flew over their heads to engage the fleet simultaneously, but the troops on the ground held the line.

if salem got to beacon, rendezvoused with summer, and immediately turned around to advance on vale, she probably didn’t do so with a force as incomprehensibly vast as the storm she brought to atlas; as fast as she can spawn grimm, it still took her weeks to gather that storm.

summer’s had a year to build up their forces at beacon, so there would have been a formidable number of grimm ready to go, plus the wyvern. getting those grimm to vale poses an operational challenge if most of them are terrestrial grimm—big ol’ bay in between beacon and vale—but not an insurmountable one by any means, either you modify them to fly or swim and cross the sound or you take the long way around.

despite having a massive force besieging a very small city, salem didn’t encircle atlas:

and she initiated her ground assault on a single front. if she didn’t surround and flank atlas when she had this much of a spatial advantage, i don’t think she would spread out or split a smaller force to encircle a much larger city to attack from all sides either.

what that means is the assault on vale begins from a particular direction at one end of the city, either the harbor (if she crossed the water) or at the eastern edge closest to the shore (if she went around).

vale does not appear to be walled:

but as we can see here, it’s spread out between multiple rivers that can serve a similar purpose as defensible lines (albeit not as well). torchwick’s map:

doesn’t look accurate to beacon’s position relative to vale based on:

but the layout of the city itself matches the layout from rwbyxjl for the most part, except that rwbyxjl is missing the industrial district.

the point is, this is a lot of city to raze. for there to be “nothing left,” salem would have to be very thorough, and she had A LOT of ground to cover. even if—as a hypothetical scenario��vale was completely empty and undefended when she started, it’d probably take her a solid couple of hours to level the entire city to the point of “there is nothing left.”

(yes even with the wyvern. the wyvern did not do a lot of demolition during the battle for beacon, it mostly circled overhead dropping grimm bombs; which complicates the defense in the same way all the flying grimm did in atlas but doesn’t accelerate leveling the city that much.)

the atlesian infantry was able to hold the line in the fields in front of the city walls against an inexhaustible ground assault for hours. vale was for many reasons less equipped to withstand an assault, but it would not have been undefended by any means; atlas was the only kingdom that maintained a standing professional army, which isn’t the same as atlas being the only kingdom with a military:

Each kingdom has a governing council to represent the people and their needs. Next, comes the military. While most kingdoms only call on its citizens to serve when needed, others find it important to be... prepared.

the implication here is that the other three kingdoms have systems whereby a militia can be formed in times of need, and the period of global uncertainty after the fall of beacon certainly qualifies as a time of need. if nothing else, raising a militia and drilling the troops would have been to vale’s benefit in pushing the grimm back out of vale and maintaining that force in case of future attacks or an outbreak of war would have been the smart thing to do. in v5, lionheart implies that mistral’s council is making preparations in case atlas declares war; vale was undoubtedly doing the same, because it’s not a state run by incompetent fools.

all that to say, i think they’d have given salem a pretty good fight. assuming vale was keeping an eye on the situation at beacon—and it would have been the smart thing to do, because that’s a lot of grimm dug in uncomfortably close to the city—they would have had at least as much advance warning as ironwood did (i.e., a couple hours if she’s taking grimm the long way around, less if she’s crossing the water), enough to mobilize defenders to engage her before she reaches the city. then you begin evacuations in the zones immediately behind the defenders and have the defenders fall back in good order as each zone is cleared.

(or, if you’re less organized or less confident in the defenders’ ability to hold the line, or both, you start evacuating from the furthest end of the city from her and work inward until the defense collapses, and then you cut your losses and run.)

the obvious place to evacuate to, as i said, is patch: it’s close by and it’s small and defensible enough to establish a safe zone to use as a staging area from which to retreat once vale falls.

but once you hit a certain critical mass of evacuated people on patch, their horror and fear is going to start pulling in grimm from the sea and the nearby coastline. salem’s forces are concentrated on the far end of vale, but the wild grimm are going to come at patch from all sides. this is where the situation becomes untenable, because patch is a small island and appears to be quite rural; with so few people around, it probably doesn’t have particularly robust fortifications.

(especially not if vale isn’t fully walled.)

if patch’s meager defenses are overwhelmed, things will rapidly deteriorate; it is quite likely that almost everybody in vale will die. this is the point at which the people in charge—whether the council, or the huntsmen leading the civilian retreat if they’re the ones with the authority to make this decision—have to make a judgment call about when to stop evacuating vale and focus on getting everybody who made it to patch out of there safely. when do you cut your losses?

the fact that glynda specifically is not aboard the refugee ship because she’s “trying to find help” is interesting because, if this was the situation, leaving glynda behind is the best thing you could do to give the rest of vale even the smallest shot at escaping—because aside from any small groups desperate enough to try jumping into a bullhead and hoping the grimm don’t catch you, the… only other place you can go, really, is the mountain glenn undercity. and glynda can seal up the old breaches that let grimm into the caverns.

and thennnn you just hope like hell salem is satisfied with razing vale and doesn’t come after you, or doesn’t realize where you’re hiding, in the time it takes glynda and whoever else makes it to mistral to beg for help getting people out of there.

assuming salem mounted an assault on the city, i think this is the most plausible scenario and outcome. if vale got fucking demolished too fast for an evacuation to be mobilized a la the fall of beacon—where it appears they had gotten nearly everyone out of beacon within, like, an hour or two tops, which is bonkers and speaks to a really phenomenal level of emergency preparedness—then i think it was probably a case of salem doing this:

but bigger and with the faults opening in vale much, much quicker than she did in atlas—as in, within minutes—in which case it’s a wonder anyone escaped at all. but i’m doubtful she’s powerful enough to detonate a city as expansive as vale that suddenly.

thoughts cooking.

mountain glenn, grimm overwhelmed the city and the people took shelter in caves, building an entire underground city after the destruction above. an explosion later opens a breach into a grimm nest, grimm flood the city again, and vale seals off the tunnels, implicitly without attempting rescue or evacuation, sacrificing the people to protect the core city.

<- same choice ironwood made.

“i see lives that could have been saved,” and all. vale created the world’s largest tomb.

fast forward a few decades. a single transport ship approaches vacuo with the news that salem came to vale and “there’s nothing left.” the huntsmen aboard “led the civilian retreat, brought as many people as we could…”

that turn of phrase—‘led the civilian retreat’—doesn’t evoke a panicked, disorganized scramble to get away from vale. it calls to mind the orderly evacuation procedures we saw during the battle for beacon, where people were loaded efficiently into transports to move them from beacon into a safe zone established in vale. port and oobleck were in charge of that retreat too. (and it demonstrated generally that emergency evacuation is something vale has on a lock—the assault on beacon blindsided everyone but the kingdom’s crisis response plan sprang into action like a well-oiled machine.)

only one ship, though.

when cinder attacked beacon, they retreated to a safe zone in vale. when salem hit vale, the immediately obvious place to establish a safe zone is patch—it’s close by but separated by a body of water, and it’s relatively defensible (an island). unlike vale, patch probably doesn’t have the room or resources to support a large urban population indefinitely, but you can use it as a relatively secure staging area for a subsequent evacuation to somewhere else. what you probably can’t do is squeeze anything like the majority of vale’s population onto patch island. (i mean, you could if it’s as huge as it appears to be on the map, but the map is NOT to scale and i get the impression that patch is supposed to be quite small.)

mountain glenn. “i see lives that could have been saved.” vale’s greatest failure, standing abandoned as a dark reminder. and “if you can’t learn from [history], you’re destined to repeat it.” did vale learn from its failure in abandoning mountain glenn to die?

in this fractal spiral of a story. ironwood didn’t get his way, but what if he had? “we are saving who we can” -> “brought as many people with us as we could,” with the history teacher whose chosen purpose is to prevent another mountain glenn from happening hunched over, haunted, in the background. is this a fucking counterfactual.

also if there were people left behind in vale, the mountain glenn undercity is the obvious place for them to flee. it’s not safe, but you can get there from vale through the tunnels (less exposed than driving or flying above ground) and if you can barricade the points of ingress to the cavern, it’s at least a more defensible place to set up an encampment than anywhere out in the open.

and i mean it might be that salem massacred the city and let one ship escape to maximize the damage to morale and provoke as much outrage as possible for the sake of getting the sword out of that vault. but mountain glenn is such a crucial narrative cornerstone, and vale has a history of making the kind of sacrifices ironwood tried to make with mantle, and the specific phrasing used here is interesting (“nothing left” vs “no one left,” “civilian retreat” implying an orderly process a la the evacuation from beacon).

i think it’s also the more narratively interesting and dynamic choice for there to have been a judgment call to leave a large number of people behind—it’s a counterfactual vehicle for unpacking team rwby’s conflicted feelings about their decision-making in atlas through comparison to what vale’s leadership did in the same situation, and there being some ambiguity as to whether anyone else survived allows for a thin ray of hope (maybe there are some people still alive) to galvanize the coalition into a counteroffensive (if there’s even the smallest possibility of survivors, we need to help them. we have to try.) and you draw the tension in salem’s character between her extremism and her effort to chart what she believes is the minimally destructive course to the surface by putting a survivor’s encampment within her immediate reach.

#chewing and gnawing

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sendmyresignation · 4 years ago

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You Got Blood On Your Money

Question: how do you make honest art? Is this not the eternal conflict as a creator- how to stay genuine to yourself and your art without tripping into the pitfalls that lay within fame or money or popular culture? Every creator must grapple with the fight between being seen and being sold. But very few artists struggle with this quite as visibly as My Chemical Romance has. From the inception of this band, which has always been more art project than musical endeavor, its members have tried desperately to convey a bone-deep sincerity fundamental to their work. From their very first song, the band proclaims itself as a savior to a generation that had been stripped of their will in the face of unimaginable horror. At the same time, there exists within their music a commitment to storytelling, a desire to fill the empty space in rock music with narrative and macabre and emotion that had been absent. Both of these elements manifest themselves into a band that very seriously considered it their mission to save people’s lives, as well as to create deeply meaningful art. But how do you save as many people as possible without being corrupted by the spotlight? And how do maintain genuine storytelling as you get further and further from the basement shows you got your started in?

These are questions that permeate their music at every turn, something that haunted each album and made itself known in each new project. And while there are many ways to dissect this particular struggle in their discography, nowhere is it more apparent than in the dispute between Thank You For the Venom and its reimagined successor- Tomorrow’s Money. These songs are noticeably similar in their structure as well as lyricism and imagery but instead of the latter building off of the other, they are inverses of each other. And they speak to My Chem’s long battle with becoming a legendary band in the midst of also attempting to keep their identities as artists and outsiders. And in analyzing their differences, it becomes reflective of the band’s main career-long conflict between the commodification of their art and the need to create something larger than themselves. And the question remains, were they successful?

Before we answer that, let's talk about Thank You for the Venom. To begin, it's important to note that Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is an interesting part of My Chemical Romance’s discography because ultimately, it is unconcerned with legacy, but instead is centered on the immediacy of loss and the reactionary pursuit of revenge. In a record overwhelmed with death and grief, there is very little mention of the afterlife for either the living or the dead- characters are murdered but there is very little textual violence. Characters come back to life but there is minimal discussion of how they died or where exactly they were in death. However, that does not mean Revenge is not devoid of mythologizing- it just happens to be about immediate intention rather than a long-term commitment. It is because of this reckless drive forward almost to spite the odds that allows for Venom to exist as the band's declaration- it is their call to arms. Specifically, the track is a pronouncement of My Chemical Romance as renegades fighting against the fake, safe bands writing hits for money instead of survival or purpose: they “won’t front the scene” if you paid them, after all, but are instead running from their enemies. And not only are they an oppositional force, but they are pariahs, targets- something you can try to kill but will fail at. More specifically, in “If this is what you want the fire at will” there is an element of martyrdom, the idea that they are not just a necessary part of the very structure of society but also there is the implication that killing them is to concede to their influence and a necessary part of their lifecycle. Once you get big enough to become a target, you inevitably will be shot down- that is the final step of a great and honest band’s success. This also feeds into the album's wider ideas surrounding revenge as a concept as the greatest revenge is finding success in the aspects of yourself and, by extension, the things you create that other people thought were worthless (I don't think it's a coincidence so much of this album is steeped in comic book imagery and art and mixing punk and metal and theater when those are things the band would get shit on for enjoying). At the same time, this theme exists as the foundation necessary to create an anthem of survival- revenge is the fuel that keeps the protagonist, as well as the band, in motion. Look at the specifics of their thesis- “Just the way the doctor made me” and “You’ll never make me leave” are both reconciliations with the self in spite of the prevailing narrative against them. That connects to the way this song is a statement of a savior and a martyr twofold- “Give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill” as a representation of the band taking on the pain of others to keep them both alive. All told, in Venom there is perseverance in the face of a large, unimaginable adversary. It is a threat directed at your enemies. It’s living as free and ugly and completely yourself as you can until they shoot you down in a hail of bullets. And then even that end is itself a victory.

Here, at its core, Venom is really the singular instance in the entire album where the band reconciles with an image. And the image the band creates for themselves is as outcasts in opposition to the "scene" and as a revenge plot, proving to their audience the value of authenticity and survival and rubbing it in the faces of those who doubted them. These themes about what My Chemical Romance is and what their goals are is something they wrestle with for the rest of their career- how do you say lives, reach an audience, and remain a fighting force against the societal norm when you exceed your mission and become part of the fabric of popular culture? But that is for later, at this moment, Revenge imagines no future. Only this desperate battlecry.

By contrast, Tomorrow’s Money is dealing with the aftermath. Functioning as a cynical reimagining of Venom, the song is structurally, thematically, and even lyrically reminiscent of Venom to an uncanny degree. First and foremost, the songs are structured the same- a slow build-up into a whispered intro, a multi-part chorus, the exact same chorus-verse layout, and a strikingly similar solo. Looking at the two Toro solos more closely, they both feature more building up as well as tremolos, triples, darker tones, and what sounds like a slide progression just ripping through both of them. Tomorrow’s Money is mimicking Venom pretty clearly here- either as a direct reference or because Venom is so reminiscent of the condensed MCR sound that they’re ripping off to make their point. And looking deeper at the themes present in Money specifically, just like Revenge, there is a clear lack of legacy- “we got no heroes ‘cause our heroes are dead” calling back to the very real disillusionment of Disenchanted that’s placed specifically in a song about becoming part of the machine, being heroes themselves, to nod to the fact that the very mission of the band is dead as well.

Simply put, Money tackles similar issues as Venom about fame and audience and creating art while using much of the same language and metaphors to completely invert the claims found in the “original”. To start with, both songs use the verbage “bleeding” to associate with a kind of suffering for your art that was an aspect of their previous band ideology. Namely, it’s the idea that the audience makes the band ill through the “hopeless hearts” as much as the “poison” does. The “what’s life like bleeding on the floor” of Venom is paired with “you’ll never make me leave” is a statement of defiance and survival against the odds while still bearing the burden of other’s pain. Money, on the other hand, explicitly says they “stopped bleeding three years ago” as a rejection of this leftover martyrdom prevalent in Revenge especially. But it also refers to their newfound luxury of comfort, they have a way to stitch themselves together that they didn’t have before. These implications transition directly into the ideas surrounding health, vitality and living- specifically surrounding both doctors and infection. Speaking of the former, Money has an interesting lines in “If we crash this time, we’ve got machines to keep us alive” and "me and my surgeons and my street-walking friends" because they speak to both becoming a part of the “industry” by mentioning mechanization but also specifically evokes the living dead. In the MCR canon, the idea of the undead (both vampires and zombies) are antagonistic forces that represent the outside world, specifically fake people or the music industry. And zombies, in general, are already rife with allegorical connections to consumerism, like how Dawn of the Dead, a known mcr influence, is directly about materialistic culture. Vampires, subconsciously or not, are often representatives of exuberant wealth as well as beauty and desire. They’re also blood-suckers and leeches that someone in this narrative has fallen in love with, as if colluding with the enemy and allowing them to literally drain them and their life force. Thus, in describing themselves as essentially undead (when they crash, they’re revived) as well as directly collaborating with the undead, they are connecting themselves to the very forces they’ve been fighting. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of this association is how they specifically relate it to survival, the only way of staying alive is to accept them, to allow themselves to be hooked up to the machines that make them undead in the first place. Almost as if you make it far enough not to tear yourself apart, you’ll eventually assimilate into and become part of the industry.

This idea of unavoidable assimilation is compounded with the multiple references to viruses- “You're loaded up with the fame. You’re dressed up like a virus” then being reemphasised with “We’re gonna give it for free. Hook up the veins to the antibodies, got it with the disease, we’re gonna give it to you”. Both these lines condemn fame but also implicates themselves as part of the contagion that is celebritidom at the same time it depicts this process as unavoidable. Not only that, they’re the ones spreading it at the same time they condemn it. This duality, possibly even exaggerated hypocrisy is buried deep into the foundation of Money. Even the ending line, as angry and inflammatory as it is- still names them as complicit as the "I’ll see you in hell" implies that they're going to hell too. Looking even deeper, there are multiple references to the dilution of their message: “Choke down the words with no meaning” and “The words get lost when we all look the same'' both representing meaninglessness in the lyrics while “the microphone’s got a tapwire” is reminiscent of wiretapping or even the surveillance company Tapewire, suggesting their words are under scrutiny, they are being monitored and that could be one of the reasons for meaningless words. All of these lyrics reference, with subtly or, in the case of the last one, very obviously about the sellibility and how rigid the label of “emo” is and how they couldn't escape it - they may not have gotten paid to front the scene, but they sure did inadvertently lead a cause. And being put in that position was clearly very stifling, striping them of their artistry. Even looking at the response to Black Parade, it's clear that popular culture at large did not appreciate the record for its genuine message but for the moment in time it represented or the aesthetics it called back too. In many ways it was taken at face value- “words with no meaning” or just another dark, death obsessed emo record. What Tomorrow's money is is a rejection of the glorification of suffering and nativity of Venom in the face of becoming pop culture icons but it's also, in a way, reconciling with a perception of failure and loss of creative control that will haunt My Chem for the rest of their years.

Ultimately Tomorrow's Money is representative of the band's response to the gradual shift of My Chemical Romance, as an entity, away from martyrs to an accepted part of the music industry and culture. How do you reconcile with that? In this moment, in a post-Black Parade era, they try taking everything down with them- becoming a whistle blower to their truth. But perhaps most importantly, this conflict lays the foundation for Danger Days as both critique of industry’s commodification of art, as well as the reutilization of the obsession with legacy and death in their next project -no longer can they let the machines revive them, they have to get out of the city, yell incendiary graffiti at the top of their lungs, and explode in brilliant colors. It was time to return to calls to arms. It was time to return to the power of not just of death but of living on long after it, the album the act of becoming folk heroes for a new generation. And while the bright lights didn't last forever, by scrapping Conventional Weapons and starting over in the name of artistic integrity they truly created a legacy of material unrivaled in its sincerity, reach, and cultural significance.

As we know, the story didn’t end there. The final chapter used to be closed, and ending with "I choose defeat I walk away and leave this place the same today" as the conclusion of their career. This was not the explosion Gerard wrote about, not the doomsday device but a quiet goodbye, a silent curtain call. It's another round of disillusionment finally fully-realized. And yet, the Reunion seems to be a direct contradiction to their farewell- in some way they did come back because they were needed, because their absence was a gaping hole in music at large which suggests they did change things, that they do have a noticeable effect on the world they inhabit. Looking at A Summoning for even a moment, the picture illustrated to the viewer is that they are an otherworldly power. That they are an entity that you plead for the return of, the hero and the savior on clear display. And regardless of how you feel about the postponement, you can never talk away that fact- some force bodily brought them back in their narrative, that it was human interference that started the resurrection. And that it was primarily through art, especially that video, that they declared their forced-to-be unfulfilled intentions. I've always liked to believe that we've cycled back around, that the cynicism of Conventional Weapons and then later Fake Your Death has had its moment but now it's time to return to that world of rebellion in this era of the desert- the reinhabiting of reckless living and creation. Again, we must ask: what does it mean to make art for the masses? I don’t think we’ll ever truly find the right answer, but I think My Chemical Romance have always tried their best to solve the equation.

#you know the drill. Bibliography Post <33 #yes. i HAVE been thinking a lot about venom recently how can you tell?#my posts #mcr assigned reading

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elivechat · 4 years ago

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NEW AI GOOGLE SEO RANKING RELEASED- CHECK HOW TO RANK NOW

After several months, Google has announced its latest AI update for search engines. This is going to change a lot of things in the SEO space.

Either you are ready for it or not it is going to alter SEO webpage ranking. The new ranking factor is necessary owing to the way searchers querying Google.

From the latest. This algorithm will now allow Google to show important web pages on search instead of the whole page.

That is, paragraphs or related queries will show up if they contain searchers key phrases on Google. Some of these updates are affected already.

Whereas; others will be carried out before the year ends. The technology behind this Artificial intelligence (AI) is called BERT-Deep learning technology. This is one of Google AI updates for search engine ranking.

WHAT IS THIS BERT?

As Google is becoming more and more conversational in its information delivery. It is making sure searchers' demands are very unique and given correctly. That is the reason it has developed this BERTH Technology.

BERT means Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. It is part of an Artificial intelligent learning algorithm which ensures a machine better understands users' query.

Artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm that works to deliver better search queries for Google search. As voice search is becoming a more valuable search feature now.

That is BERT is being featured in the latest Google AI update for search engine updates. What is the implication of that to businesses?

It means that organic ranking on Google means to create content that will be “hyper-relevant” to users intention and what users queries. The mean point is to create an article based on these four (4) searchers' intentions. Which are arranging alphabetically?

· Asking (informational)

· Do (transactional)

· Go (navigational)

· Research (commercial)

1.) BERT INTRODUCTION IN ALL SEARCH QUERY

This shift is needful to help searchers get targeted information instead of showing the whole web page. Though, that is not the whole update. More of these updates are going to be affected before the end of the year.

Some of these latest changes are BERT, which is already implemented. This is an AI technique of understanding Natural Language Processing (NLP). Looking at the growing rate of AI acceptance in the digital space.

Google have updated its search engine rules with BERTH to understand searchers intention and delivery exactly what is queried. And will affect only 10% of search.

But will focus more on long tail key phrases in English language at the moment.

According to Google; today we’re excited to share that BERT is now used in almost every query in English, helping you get higher quality results for your questions.”

2.) NEW AI SPELLING ALGORITHM FOR SEO

Google came up with a new spelling improvement algorithm with AI. This technology will now understand misspelled words in its proper way.

This is one of Google’s major breakthroughs in the last five years of research.

The main motive is to know exactly the intention behind misspelling words in English language. The rest languages may be adjusted in the feature.

3.) SEO PASSAGES INDEXING

After announcing the latest AI search engine updates, Google is going to start indexing passages for queries related to it.

That means, this time if a query is made that would show a passage, or subtopic not all the entire topic would show instead the very passage is expected to show on the query.

The point is passages are to be indexed on SERPs. And if it is valuable it is going to appear in the present of searchers. Though, this latest passage update will only affect 7% of Google SEO.

Let’s hear from what Google said; we’ve recently made a breakthrough in ranking and are now able to not just index web pages, but individual passages from the pages.

By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for.

This technology will improve 7 percent of search queries across all languages as we roll it out globally.”

From all indications, it is going to affect only mobile search not desktop. This latest update is going to narrow the passage, not the entire page.

The point is, businesses that want to appear organically will have to optimize passages to meet long key phrases of Google search queries. If the answer is found between the passage of a web page.

Read also: SEO MEANING AND APPLICATION

��5.) VIDEO BASE SEO LATEST UPDATE FROM GOOGLE

What does that mean, Google will now Optimize 10% of SEO to video content. It will use its AI powered algorithm to know different passages in a video. Give a tag to the video part, analyze and explain it vividly.

And would explain its content; rank targeted video parts within it to video searchers directly. Now Google will not show the full video for the query but the part that is asked by the user.

As a means of delivering mix content to search queries. In section by section in timely form.

Again, it is a huge breakthrough if you ask me; to the video production industry. Google as a major content delivery brand will like to present quality pieces of information be it videos to its users.

According to the Search Engine Journal;“this going to impact the SERPs and maybe video production and planning to make sure the videos are easily understood, section by section.”- SEJ

This is how Google explain it:”using a new AI-driven approach, we’re going to understand the deep semantics of a video and automatically

Identify key moments. This let us tag those moments in the video, so you can navigate like chapters in a book. We’ve started testing this

technology this year, and by the end of 2020 we expect that 10 percent of searches will use this new technology.”

6.) Statistical report ranking

By now you should know that Google search is not only for articles or videos but statistical data or reports from data mining industries. Data sellers or report about statistical information. What this means is; the latest Google update for search engines will now show statistics directly.

Not the former way, where a query will show the entire webpage. The motive is to allow searchers to get information quicker, better and faster.

Let’s see how Google said it:”Sometimes the best search is statistics. But often stats are buried in large datasets and not easily comprehensible or accessible online.

Since 2018, we’ve been working on the Data commons Project, an open knowledge database of statistical data now we’re making this information more accessible and useful through Google search.”

All these are done with the aid of AI powered algorithms embedded into Google search engine to bring massive advancement in search engine delivery query. Through deep learning technology SERPs will become increasingly tougher if SEO experts are not pretty flexible to the latest from the search engine giant.

CONCLUSION:

From the latest Google update for SEO, it will become harder to rank high on the front page from the old ranking algorithm. Because, the latest improvement on SEO will create more variety in search results. Which in turn will make organic ranking extremely difficult and tougher.

Like, share and comment and follow us on social media. Read more here

Humphrey Udoh

Elivechat Team

#google seo googleseoranking aitechnology googlealgorithm

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rickhorrow · 5 years ago

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15 To Watch : Decade in Review 12219

15 TO WATCH: DECADE IN REVIEW

RICK HORROW’S TOP SPORTS/BIZ/LAW ISSUES OF 2010-2019

with Jacob Aere

It’s hard to believe, but we have reached the end of yet another decade. And in the business of sport, it’s been a busy one. Here are Rick Horrow’s top 15 sport business/law trends and issues of the decade just ending. Stay tuned throughout December for his top 15 sports technology and media picks, as well as his most influential philanthropic/corporate social responsibility actions in sports, and an early look at the year and decade ahead.

State by state, legal sports wagering outside of Nevada sports books takes hold, with massive business implications. On May 14, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the federal ban on sports betting. Since the ruling, 19 states have legalized the practice, with Colorado, Illinois, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Tennessee passing legislation this year. Additionally, 24 states have pending legislation. Legal sports wagering has already had a profound effect on virtually all American professional sports, casting a wider fan base net, spurring innovation in sports media and ecommerce, and birthing an entire cottage industry of related new companies. Sports teams are embracing fans who wager – Monumental Sports & Entertainment, owners of the Washington Wizards and Capitals, is only the latest ownership group to install a sports book in their venue. And tens of millions of tax dollars on net sports betting proceeds are adding income streams to state and community coffers.

Esports becomes a global thing. Only a handful of years ago, esports was only a “sport” in South Korea, and it was generally only followed by geeky techy guys who lived in their parents basements. Or so we thought. By 2018, according to the Motley Fool, esports viewership grew 13.8% to 380 million people worldwide. And analysts expect this number to reach 557 million by 2021. The growth in esports revenue closely parallels the fan numbers, with 2018 industry revenue growing to $906 million, a 38% jump. More than half of U.S. stick and ball pro sports leagues and teams – and their ownership groups and athletes – are investing in sister esports operations, many operating with similar branding to the traditional sports franchises. Multiple “amateur” competitions have +$1 million top prizes. Multi-million dollar esports arenas are in the works. And the sport is under consideration for future Olympics inclusion. The future of sports, it seems, has arrived with a joystick and a giant HD monitor in hand.

College football adds a real playoff. After years of avoiding adding yet another game to the college football season via the auspice of the Bowl Championship Series – a selection system that created five existing bowl matchups involving ten of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision’s top-ranked teams – the NCAA in the 2014-2015 season finally embraced the College Football Playoff (CFP), a bracket tournament between the top four teams in the country as determined by a selection committee, culminating in a championship game at a neutral site. While the payout for the semifinal teams is a modest $6 million, the playoff format delivers tens of millions in additional revenue to the schools, conferences, and contract and access bowl host cities – a handful of which, including New Orleans this year, get to double down on hosting duties and economic impact.

Collegiate student athletes now have a legal path to getting paid. In late September 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom, with LeBron James at his side, signed the Fair Pay to Play Act, a bill that a bill Monday that permits college athletes in the state to get paid for their name, image, and likeness through endorsement deals, sponsorships, autograph signings, and other similar income opportunities. The law carries the potential to force major colleges and universities to allow scholarship athletes to make money through income avenues that the NCAA has warned for decades would bring about an end to college sports as we know it. As other states indicated their willingness to join California – or risk losing top recruits – the NCAA quickly jumped on board, announcing sweeping changes to come to its long-established rules on amateurism. Given how quickly the NCAA doesn’t move, it will be some time before its actual impact will be clear.

After 20 long years, Los Angeles gets an NFL team back in 2016. In fact, it gets two. Largely thanks to billionaire and St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke, Los Angeles has now positioned itself to be the center of the sports universe for the next decade and likely longer. The two-decade span in which Los Angeles lacked an NFL team was brought on in part by the obsolescence of Los Angeles's existing stadiums, the unwillingness of the NFL to add expansion teams after 2002 (when the Houston Texans premiered) or relocate any other teams, and an inability to agree on a plan to build a new stadium, despite several proposals that were vetted but never landed a team willing to relocate under the developers' terms. Kroenke’s privately-funded SoFi Stadium opens next July with a Taylor Swift concert, and will house both the Rams and the Chargers. Additionally, the $4.963 billion venue will host Super Bowl LVI in 2022, the CFP National Championship Game in 2023, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. L.A. is now synonymous with mega sports events.

Rob Manfred became the 10th Major League Baseball Commissioner during a period of labor peace and unrest in almost everything else. At the beginning of the decade, baseball was still healing from its steroid era, a span in the 1990s-2000s where home runs were plenty and performance-enhancing drug testing scarce. Former Commissioner Bud Selig was largely credited with cleaning up the sport, and in 2015 Manfred inherited a league that was in decent baseball shape but desperately trying to stay relevant to the next generation of fans. Slow play was an issue…but a pitch clock somehow made games even slower. PED bats were gone, but the balls appeared to be corked. And Manfred’s decade ends with a nasty sign-stealing scandal involving the World Series champion Houston Astros. One bright spot in baseball continues to be its vast minor league system, which ensures pro baseball is played throughout America’s smaller communities – MiLB saw attendance in 2019 surpass 44 million fans annually. As baseball’s Winter Meetings convene next week in San Diego, MiLB President Pat O’Connor and industry experts present a solution to improved facilities that rests in three key areas: time, money, and space.

The price tag for a pro sports stadium is now written with a “B” rather than an “M.” The $1.3 billion AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas – also known as “Jerry World” in honor of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – was only the beginning of the B-word builds when it opened in 2009. Led by the almost $5 billion SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the crop of new sports facilities over the last decade have become so prohibitively expensive that they’ve moved past the public-private partnerships Rick spearheaded so successfully in the 1990s and 2000s to dwell mainly in the “private” zone, beyond the scale of civic ownership and desire of taxpayers. A 2016 study by the Brookings Institution found that 45 stadiums and arenas in the U.S.’ four major pro sports — football, baseball, basketball, hockey — were constructed or renovated from 2000 to 2014 at a cost of nearly $28 billion. Recent among them were $1.6 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta (2017), and the $1.4 billion Chase Center arena in San Francisco.

Golf gets Tiger, golf loses Tiger, golf gets Tiger back. When we last glimpsed our long-driving hero at the beginning of the decade, he was on a self-imposed hiatus from pro golf in an attempt to salvage his endorsement deals and his marriage in the wake of extramarital affairs, a rehab stint, and multiple major surgeries. For most of the decade, as we watched Tiger struggle both on and off the course, we were sadly resigned to accepting the end of his reign and enormous influence on the sport, and the likelihood that his passing Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 majors was a pipe dream. Then came 2018. Woods emerged from a fourth surgery with a new back and a new attitude. He won the Tour Championship in Atlanta. And on Sunday, April 14, 2019, the greatest comeback in sports history was completed when Tiger claimed his fifth Masters title. Golf viewership is up. The casual fans are back. Tiger has a book coming out, and a playing captainship at the President’s Cup at Royal Melbourne next week. In 2020, the pursuit of Nicklaus continues.

Centered in the NBA, star athletes become media moguls. It started in the 2000s with the rise of social media and athletes’ taking charge of their own brands. This decade, the NBA has become the wellspring of the Athlete as Media Emperor. LeBron James’ and partner Maverick Carter’s “Uninterrupted” network and SpringHill entertainment company upended the world of sports media by working with athletes to tell unique stories from their point of view – and under their management. James’ Hollywood empire has even become a Harvard Business School case study. Fellow NBA future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant won an Oscar for “Dear Basketball” – and his private equity company Bryant Stibel has invested in more than 28 companies, three of which have gone public. Kevin Durant and Russ Westbrook have burgeoning media empires of their own, while Steph Curry is carving out a golf media niche when he’s not on the court. And while she’s not an NBA star, Serena Williams has proved that she can drive to the mogul hoop just fine, thank you, with a robust business portfolio comprising media, fashion, and technology.

The Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal heralds the #MeToo era in sports. In 2015, USA Gymnastics cut ties with Dr. Larry Nassar of Michigan State "after learning of athlete concerns." In November 2016, Nassar was indicted on state charges of sexual assault of a child from 1998 to 2005. He was charged with 22 counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct with minors. Over the course of the next two years, hundreds of gymnasts (including Olympic gold medalists Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney) and Michigan State student athletes accused Nassar of serial abuse. USA Gymnastics was also implicated in the scandal for an alleged cover up and victim payoff system; all of the NGO’s leadership was forced out, and the USOC cleaned house, installing a new leadership group and vowing increased, consistent oversight. Outside of this horrible expose, the sports industry in general was forced to recon with its own #MeToo abuses, as accusations of improper conduct encircled Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson (he was subsequently forced to sell his NFL team), New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft (facing as of yet unresolved solicitation of prostitution charges), and numerous media and team front office execs.

From the Games to the tweets and the kicks, all eyes remain focused on China. It wasn’t enough that Beijing staged a successful Summer Olympic Games in 2008. In 2015, Beijing was selected as host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics after beating Almaty by four votes. Never mind that the region of China around Beijing just gets a dusting of snow at best – they manufacture it. Just like the Chinese government is on track to create 300 million “winter sports enthusiasts” by the time the 2022 Games roll around. More recently, America’s focus on China was centered on basketball and freedom of speech, as the Houston Rockets saw $20 million in sponsorship evaporate after general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong enraged Chinese sponsors and fans in October –after two decades in which no sport was more popular in the world’s biggest market than the NBA. And as the calendar turns to 2020, sneaker brands are waiting to see what the latest round of Trump administration tariff negotiations will do to domestic markets on both sides of the Pacific.

A sting in Zurich finally targets FIFA corruption. A May 2015 sting operation at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich led to the resignation and disgrace of longtime FIFA president Sepp Blatter and a handful of other FIFA leaders accused, among other things, of taking bribes to secure World Cup locations like the controversial Qatar World Cup scheduled for 2022. To set the scene, we turn to (also now defunct and sorely missed) Grantland: “It went down, in the end, like a scene in some 1920s comic novel, Wallander reimagined by Wodehouse: Swiss law enforcement officers politely stormed in through the revolving door of the Baur au Lac, a five-star hotel in downtown Zurich, and surrounded the concierge’s desk. They politely requested the room numbers of several FIFA officials in town for the soccer organization’s annual congress. Then they went to the rooms and politely arrested the occupants.” The ensuing indictment by the U.S. Justice Department of 14 soccer officials and marketing executives finally exposed the corruption charges long whispered against Blatter and his cronies running the world’s most popular sport.

USWNT ascendant. After being ranked #2 on average from 2003 to 2008 in the FIFA women’s soccer world rankings, the U.S. women’s national team was ranked #1 continuously from March 2008 to November 2014, falling back behind Germany, the only other team to occupy the #1 position in the ranking's history. The team returned to the top position in June 2017, after victories in friendlies against Russia, Sweden, and Norway. Two months prior, U.S. Women’s Soccer and U.S. Soccer had reached a deal on a new collective bargaining agreement that would lead to a pay increase. Then came 2019, when the USWNT once again triumphed in the FIFA Women’s World Cup in France and shattered scoring records in the process. Last summer’s Cup created superstars among the likes of Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan, and once again bolstered interest in women’s soccer at all levels in the U.S., especially during the team’s summer-long victory tour, which sold out NFL stadiums nationwide. However, the team’s fight for equal working conditions and pay is ongoing, as while they signed a more favorable CBA through 2021, they still do not receive pay equal to that of the struggling U.S. men’s national team.

A NASCAR in decline changes leadership lanes. Since its peak in 2005, NASCAR has seen a gradual decline, with TV viewership reaching record lows in 2018 and race weekend attendance suffering record lows as well. Further, many of the sport’s biggest driver draws, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, and Danica Patrick retired during the decade. While NASCAR isn’t dying, motor sports insiders see a sport in transition. Globally, NASCAR is broadcast in over 185 countries and territories. Close to home, the sport suffered a major image hit in August 2018 when chairman and CEO Brian France was arrested for DWI and drug possession and took a leave of absence; the racing circuit brought Brian’s uncle Jim France out of retirement to serve as CEO. Looking to right the ship, International Speedway Corp. just closed a $2 billion merger with NASCAR, and is laser focused on fan loyalty and sponsorship success. To wit, according to Forbes: the number of Fortune 500 companies investing in the sport has increased 29% since 2008, and 28% of Fortune 500 companies continue to invest in NASCAR.

Mayweather-McGregor fight The Money Fight. What has been referred to as the biggest fight in combat sports history took place on August 26, 2017 at the brand new T-Mobile Arena outside of Las Vegas. The boxing match pitted 11-time five-division boxing champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and two-division MMA world champion and (at the time UFC Lightweight Champion) Conor McGregor. The fight, scheduled for 12 rounds, was decided in the 10th round when Mayweather defeated McGregor by TKO. The bout recorded the second highest pay-per-view buy rate in history – Showtime recorded 4.3 million PPV buys in North America – and record guaranteed paychecks, with $100 million guaranteed to Mayweather and $30 million guaranteed to McGregor. However, the purse for both fighters was reported to be substantially higher, with Mayweather reportedly earning $275 million and McGregor pocketing $85 million. Since the bout, McGregor has found himself in trouble with the law – he was involved in a bus attack at Barclays Center in April 2018, and earlier this year, was arrested for assault in Miami as well as his native Dublin. (As they say, you can remove the fighter from the fight, but you can’t take the fight out of the fighter.)

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businessliveme · 5 years ago

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End of Era: Passive Equity Funds Surpass Active in Epic Shift

It’s official: inexpensive index funds and ETFs have finally eclipsed old-fashioned stock pickers.

Passive investing styles have been gaining ground on actively managed funds for decades. But in August the investment industry reached one of the biggest milestones in its modern history, as assets in U.S. index-based equity mutual funds and ETFs topped those in active stock funds for the first time.

Stock picking isn’t dead. But the development marks the official end of money managers’ position as the guiding force in the American stock market — and the seemingly inexorable rise of low-cost index-driven investing. If, as expected, the shift keeps gathering momentum, the implications will be enormous for the industry pros, financial markets and ordinary investors everywhere.

Read this: How Asia Can Protect Its Crazy Riches: Satyajit Das

Even one-time star managers like Peter Lynch, who in his heyday turned the Fidelity Magellan fund into a giant through his stock-picking prowess, concedes there’s no turning back.

No Second-Guessing

“We have so many funds beat the market 10 years, 20 years, but we’re not going to second-guess the customer,” Lynch, Fidelity’s vice chairman, said in an interview. “We’re not going to say, ‘You fool! You idiot!’ If you want to buy an index fund, here it is.”

And buy they have. August fund flows helped lift assets in index-tracking U.S. equity funds to $4.271 trillion, compared with $4.246 trillion run by stock-pickers, according to estimates from Morningstar Inc. Investors added $88.9 billion to passive U.S. stock funds while pulling $124.1 billion from active this year through August, the firm estimated.

Read this: DCT Abu Dhabi Announces AED600mn Fund to Attract Entertainment, Business Event Organisers

The unraveling for stock pickers accelerated after the financial crisis, when investors burned by the markets flocked to low-cost passive funds.

Passive funds came onto the scene in the 1970s and took hold with the advent of ETFs in the ‘90s. Their popularity soared with the bull market that began in 2009, as cost-conscious investors rode benchmark indexes and most managers lagged.

Driving the migration is cheaper fees. Passive U.S. equity funds cost an average of about 10 cents a year per $100 of assets, compared with 70 cents for active funds.

Read also: Shining Star of Middle East Stock Markets Seen Losing Sparkle

“That represents investors keeping more of their own money,” said Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst. “If there’s a loser in this, it’s probably the asset-management industry. The rise of passive represents the rise of very low fee products and ultimately that’s going to mean some pain for them.”

Race for Revenue

As fees compress, firms are casting wider nets for revenue. Vanguard Group, the $5.6 trillion giant that started the revolution with its S&P 500 Index mutual fund, is pushing harder into the personal advice business. BlackRock Inc. is looking overseas for growth. Fidelity has turned to securities lending and is trying to build market share by offering zero-fee funds.

Read this: ADIA to Hire as Fund Boosts Active Investments to Over 50%

Flows at Boston-based Fidelity, which lost its position to Vanguard as the largest U.S. mutual fund manager in 2010, show how strongly tastes have changed.

While many of its biggest active products, such as the $118 billion Contrafund, racked up better returns, customers pulled $20 billion from its traditional equity fund lineup in the first half of 2019 and poured $52 billion into its passive offerings, Morningstar estimates.

“They’re far more tolerant of passive products, partly because of how they’re investing,” Kevin McDevitt, the Morningstar senior analyst who assembles the fund flows report, said in an interview. “It’s kind of a set it and forget it kind of thing.”

Financial advisers are helping to fuel the move. They can build client portfolios from an array of index offerings. That approach caps potential gains, as index funds won’t top any year’s performance charts. It also limits manager risk — the chance that a star will suddenly stumble.

The passive wave is forcing firms to cut the fees they charge in order to stay competitive. Meanwhile, their expenses for technology, talent and regulatory compliance are rising, further squeezing profit margins.

Some active managers have suffered relentless outflows as higher operating costs hurt relative performance, and their own stocks have suffered. Bloomberg’s index of large asset managers fell 34% in the five years through Aug. 30, even as the S&P 500 rose 46%.

More Deals?

Pressure on the industry is spurring speculation of more consolidation. PwC forecasts a 14% decline in the number of funds and a 22% drop in expense ratios by 2025.

Michael Burry, hero of Michael Lewis’s book “The Big Short,” warned last week that passive fund inflows are inflating a new stock and bond bubble that is bound to blow up as money linked to fund indexes exceeds amounts traded in individual stocks.

“The theater keeps getting more crowded, but the exit door is the same as it always was,” Burry wrote in an email exchange with Bloomberg. “All this gets worse as you get into even less liquid equity and bond markets globally.”

To be sure, U.S. stocks held in passive and active funds combined represent less than one-third of the total market, with the balance owned by individuals, pensions, insurers and other investors, according to the Investment Company Institute.

And active managers remain confident.

Capital Group, founded in 1931, has resisted indexing. The closely held, Los Angeles-based firm says its long-term returns mostly beat passive products, whose lack of agility would be exposed in a bear market. The firm’s $190 billion Growth Fund of America, managed by a 13-person team, returned an annualized 8.1% in the 20 years through August, versus 6.3% for the Vanguard 500 Index Fund.

“Many investors believe they are making the ‘safe’ choice in picking an index fund,” said Steve Deschenes, Capital Group research and development director. “The most popular index funds expose customers to the full brunt of downturns. Strong active managers can provide less volatility and a smoother ride.”

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frankmiller1 · 5 years ago

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The Evolving Language of Data Science

…or Grokking the Bokeh of Scarse Meaning Increasement

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Dr. Inigo Montoya

I’m a technical writer at Indeed. One of the many great things about my job is that I get to work with smart people every day. A fair amount of that work involves translating between them. They will all be speaking English, but still might not understand each other. This is a natural consequence of how knowledge advances in general, and how English develops in particular.

As disciplines evolve, alternate meanings and new words develop to match. That can extend to creating new phrases to name the disciplines themselves (for example, what is a data scientist?). English’s adoption of such new words and meanings has always been pragmatic. Other Western languages have more formal approval processes, such as French’s Académie française and German’s reliance on a single prestigious dictionary. The closest to formal authorities for correct English are popular dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, and Merriam-Webster. None of them reign supreme.

This informal adoption of new words and meanings can lead to entire conversations in which people don’t realize they’re discussing different things. For example, consider another recently adopted word: “bokeh.” This started as a term in the dialect of professional photography, for the aesthetically pleasing blurred look that strong depth of field can give a picture. “Bokeh” is also the name for a specific python data visualization package. So “bokeh” may already be headed for a new meaning within the realm of data science.

As a further example of the fluid nature of English, “bokeh” comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ). In its original form it meant “intentional blurring,” as well as sometimes “mental haze,” i.e., confusion.

Bokeh of flowers

Photo by Sergei Akulich on Unsplash

Data science bokeh

https://bokeh.pydata.org/

The clouded meaning of “data”

A data scientist told me that when she hears “the data” she tends to think of a large amount of information, a set large enough to be comprehensive. She was surprised to see another team’s presentation of “the data” turn out to be a small table inside a spreadsheet that listed a few numbers.

This term can also cause confusion between technical fields. Data scientists often interpret “data” as quantitative, while UX researchers interpret “data” as qualitative.

Exploring evolving language with Ngram Viewer

A product science colleague introduced me to the Google Books Ngram Viewer. It’s a search engine that shows how often a word or phrase occurs in the mass of print books Google has scanned. Google’s collection contains most books published in English from AD 1500 to 2008.

I entered some new words that I had come across, and screened out occurrences that weren’t relevant, such as place or person names and abbreviations. I also set the search to start from 1800. Medieval data science could be interesting, but I expect it to be “scarse.” (That’s not a typo.)

Features

When I first came across this newer meaning of “features,” I wasn’t even aware that it had changed. From previous work with software development and UX, I took “features” to mean “aspects of a product that a user will hopefully find useful.” But in data science, a “feature” relates to covariates in a model. In less technical English, a measurable property or characteristic of a phenomenon being observed.

This dual meaning led me to a fair amount of head-scratching when I was documenting an internal data science application. The application had software features for defining and manipulating data features.

The following graph indicates this emerging meaning for “feature” by tracking the emergence of a related phrase, “model feature.”

Diving into Ngram’s specific citations, the earliest mention I can find that’s near this meaning is in 1954. Interestingly, it’s from a book on management science:

The next use that seems exact turns up in 1969, in the Digest Record from Association for Computing Machinery, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Leaving aside the intervening comma, the example is so dead-on that I wonder if we’re looking at near the exact moment this new meaning was fully born:

To grok

“Grok” is an example of English going so far as to steal words from languages that don’t even exist. Robert A. Heinlein coined the word in his 1961 science fiction classic Stranger in a Strange Land. In the novel, the Martian phrase “grok” literally means “drink” and metaphorically means “understanding something so completely that you and it are one.”

Like many other aspects of science fiction and fantasy, computer programming culture absorbed the term. The Jargon File from 1983 shares an early defined example:

GROK (grahk) verb. To understand, usually in a global sense especially, to understand all the implications and consequences of making a change. Example: “JONL is the only one who groks the MACLISP compiler.”

Since then, computer jargon has absorbed “grok” and applied it in many different ways. One immediate example is the source code and reference engine OpenGrok. It’s intended to let users “grok (profoundly understand) source code and is developed in the open.”

Salt

Salt is an example of a common word that has gone through two steps of technical change. First it gained a meaning relating to information security, and then an additional one in data science.

As a verb and noun, “salt” originally meant what it sounds like – adding the substance chemically known as NaCl to food for flavoring and preservation. It gained what is perhaps its better-known technical meaning in information security. Adding “salt” to password hashing makes encrypted passwords more difficult to crack. In the word’s further and more recent permutations in data science, “salt” and “resalt” mean to partly randomize the results of an experiment by shuffling them. The following ngram graph tracks the association of “salt” and “resalt” over time.

This was hard to parse out, and required diving deeply into Ngram’s options. I ended up graphing the different times “salt” modifies the words “food,” “password,” or “data.” Google stopped scanning in new books in 2008 – you can see the barest beginning of this new usage in 2007.

Pickling

Traditionally “pickling” refers to another way to treat food, this one almost entirely for preservation. In Python, this refers to the object serialization method made possible by the Pickle module. Data scientists have found increasing use for this term, in ways too recent to find on Ngram.

The bleeding edge of language?

Here are some words that may just be in the sprouting stage of wider usage.

Scarse

This came from an accidental jumble of words in a meeting, and has remained in use since. It describes situations where data is both scarce (there’s not a lot of it) and sparse (even when there is some, it’s pretty thin).

This meaning for “scarse” doesn’t appear in the Ngram graph. So it appears we’re seeing mutation and evolution in word form in the wild. Will it take root and prosper, continuing to evolve? Only time will tell.

Increasement

“We should look for the source of that error message increasement.”

I’ve observed this word once in the wild–from me. “Increasement” came to me in a meeting, as a word for the amount of an increase over time. I had never used the word before. It just seemed like a word that could exist. It had meaning similar to other words, and fit those other words’ rules of word construction.

In the context I used, its meaning isn’t exactly the same as “increment.” Increment refers to a specific numeric increase. One wouldn’t refer, for example, to an increasing amount of users as an increment. You might, however, refer to it as an increasement.

Searching for increasement revealed that this word previously existed but fell out of common usage, as shown on the following graph.

Previous examples:

The Fathers of the English Church

Paul was, that he should return again to these Philippians, and abide, and continue amongst them, and that to their profit; both to the increasement of their faith

The Harleian miscellany; or, A collection of … pamphlets and tracts … in the late earl of Oxford’s library

….when she saw the man grown settled and staid, gave him an assistance, and advanced him to the treasurership, where he made amends to his house, for his mis-spent time, both in the increasement of his estate and honour…

Perhaps it’s time for “increasement” to be rebooted into common use?

Bottom line

Language is likely to continue evolving as long as we use language. Words in general, and English words in particular, and words in English technical dialects above all, are in a constant state of flux. Just like the many fields of knowledge they discuss.

So if you’re in a technical discussion and others’ responses aren’t quite what you expect, consider re-examining the technical phrases you’re using.

The people you’re talking with might grok those words quite differently.

from Engineering https://engineering.indeedblog.com/blog/2019/08/the-evolving-language-of-data-science/

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juliandmouton30 · 7 years ago

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"Does architecture have a Harvey Weinstein hiding within its ranks?"

Architecture has a culture of quietly condoning sexist behaviour, just like Hollywood, argues Anna Winston.

"To be dangerous is to be artistically daring". In all the comment pieces I have read so far on the Harvey Weinstein scandal, this, from British playwright Lucy Prebble's piece in the London Review of Books, stood out. This was the piece that came closest to pinning down what it was about this whole debacle that made me feel both relieved and angry.

If you're a woman working in architecture, you might not be so surprised to hear that it reminded me of your industry – an industry I have been writing about for more than 10 years.

Prebble's comment hit home because it reflected a common trope in architecture – the eccentric but brilliant man who is allowed, even encouraged, to behave badly and is thus tacitly allowed to treat other people like things.

Architecture, like Hollywood, has a culture of quietly condoning and facilitating gender-related power games and sexually inappropriate behaviour from men while publicly wringing its hands about equality. I have been directly affected by this, and I'm not even an architect. Even architecture journalism is infected with this disease of silent acceptance.

Does architecture have a Harvey Weinstein hiding somewhere within its ranks? The simple answer is, probably, yes. But wherever he is, he is being enabled by a much wider problem, and one that the seemingly endless debate about women in architecture – with its worthy awards programmes and debates – has sadly had too little effect on.

Prebble's text contains more than just the one parallel. "Today's monster is yesterday's 'character'…" it reads. "Hollywood is run on charm as well as tantrums. There are elements of machismo that are glorified as an eccentricity of showbiz power. The flare-ups of big producers and agents are legendary… Ex-assistants will exchange war stories with the relish and nostalgia often reserved for remembering a classic Broadway production."

This too: "In the arts, professionalism can be interpreted as a sort of inauthenticity, and those who can't control themselves are seen as more 'instinctive'." Now doesn't that sound familiar?

It's not always easy to put your finger on why something made you uncomfortable

Weinstein was enabled by an industry caught up in a sticky and insidious web of power and control. Architecture is not the same as the film industry. But when pundits scratch their heads about the disparity between the number of women who study architecture and the number of women who actually end up working in senior positions within the industry, it's hard not to want to bang your head against a brick wall.

How is it that so many people can't see that the problem is not women deciding to have children? It is not the long hours, or the bad pay. It is the power structure. It is the condoning of otherwise unacceptable behaviour in the name of genius or talent. It is, in the words of actress Emma Thompson "a system of harassment and belittling and bullying and interference".

To give you some idea of the scale of this problem, more than half of the women who took the 2017 Women in Architecture Survey said they had experienced direct or indirect discrimination in the past year. Of those, 14 per cent experienced sexual harassment, while 32 per cent reported sexual discrimination. One architectural assistant was even told "women do not belong in architecture as they bring too much emotion to the subject".

The findings included incidents where women had been expected to flirt with clients, been ignored and talked over, and been expected to prepare food and drink when male colleagues were not.

A survey carried out last year in New Zealand found that women accounted for only one per cent of senior roles in architectural practices. Architecture schools in the country have had more than 50 per cent female students since 2000. It takes a long time to qualify and even longer to make it to the top in architecture, but this incredible disparity can't be accounted for by time alone.

The stats vary, but they tell variations of the same story. In 2013, 44 per cent of architecture students in the UK were female, while just 12 per cent of partners in practice were women. In the US last year it was more like 50 per cent of students and 18 per cent of registered, practicing architects.

All of these stats are easy to find, thanks to a small handful of women who pushed for the data to be gathered and disseminated. You don't really need the stats though. A quick glance around the industry will quickly demonstrate that in architecture, women are still largely the facilitators, while men are the feted geniuses.

This has been changing slowly, and there are an increasing number of female-led practices, but it will take more than a handful of visionary women to change the culture of the profession.

It will take more than a handful of visionary women to change the culture of the profession

The Architecture Foundation – one of the rare examples of an organisation that actively promotes equality through its programming instead of just talking about it – still struggles to sell tickets to lectures by female architects in the same volume as it does for lectures by men of equal professional standing.

For more of what we're up against, read some of the comments on stories about inequality in architecture on Dezeen – and bear in mind that the worst sexist comments don't even get published, thanks to the poor moderators who have to read them.

Or attend one of the international festivals or exhibitions where men regularly put their colleagues into uncomfortable positions by pursuing younger, less powerful women within the same field in plain view, often cheating on their wives – who are sometimes their colleagues or professional partners as well.

Or remember that Zaha Hadid is still the only female to have won both the Pritzker and the RIBA Gold Medal in her own right. Or that she was often described in disparaging terms for behaviour that, in men, generally becomes part of their genius mythos.

There is a pattern that recurs across architecture. Women handle the promotion, organisation and dissemination of the work and ideas, creating space and platform for the men to do the actual architecture – or at least to take credit for it. It is no coincidence that most of the biggest and best-known architecture firms are led by men, but the most successful architectural PRs and specialist PR practices are led by women.

"I think the design world's Harvey Weinsteins are a special breed of horrific and especially prey on the intellectual labour of women," one architect told me.

I don't think many women in architecture and its related fields would ask for positive discrimination

It doesn't just affect women either. The culture of bullying and belittling that this is part of affects people of all genders, colours and backgrounds.

Many of the powerful men in architecture are wonderful to work for and with – capable of engaging in fiery debate, and pushing us to do better without making it a power play and without bringing sex into the dynamic in any way. But most of us know the stories about those who might be described as more "problematic". You are warned about them before accepting jobs or commissions. You go in knowing that you need to focus on the positive effect the association will have on your careers long-term and grit your teeth to get through a few months or years. Your livelihoods hang in the balance if you say anything. Architecture is a small world – much smaller than Hollywood.

It's not always easy to put your finger on why something made you uncomfortable, to pinpoint exactly when you realised that something was awry, to explain why you left that job or didn't go to that event. It isn't an easy thing to publicly identify specific examples and talk about solving this problem.

In a recent Facebook thread relating the Harvey Weinstein, a Seattle-based curator, writer and educator – who studied architecture at Yale – wrote: "In architecture, art, academia, they are too genteel for anger. Instead we'll get frozen out and gaslit with the implication that the confrontation is evidence of our lack of analysis and intellectualism."

Women have their own secret language of warning and sympathy when it comes to handling unwanted sexual attention. There is the quiet suggestion to watch out for wandering hands and bat away inappropriate comments. The sympathetic glance when the inappropriate hug from that older male architect goes on a bit too long at a social event. The gossip about the womanisers and the late night sharing of knowledge over drinks on the rare occasions when there are no men around. The quiet support for women who have held on and made it through despite everything. Some might argue that these quiet support systems are part of the problem. But for most of us, it's the only coping mechanism available, and the pressure shouldn't be on us to name and shame.

This pervasive problem is all over the design industry too. Perhaps it seems more pronounced in architecture, as the role of the architect carries more historic baggage and more anxiety about its relevance and power today. Perhaps it is because being a "character" was, for a long time, the best way to get a building through all the hoops from inception to opening without compromising on absolutely everything, and it just became a habit. Perhaps it's that seven years of education produces a sense of entitlement, swiftly followed by disillusionment and an endless angst. Perhaps it is because it is to do with the way practices are structured, how much work you need to do before you get paid, and how hard it is to go it alone. Or perhaps it is because it is so closely in contact with the development and property industries, where the sexism is both rampant and often far more blatant. Perhaps I just know more architects. Ultimately, it doesn't matter why the problem is there. What matters is that it stops.

Let us do our job without all the gender-based power games

I don't think many women in architecture and its related fields would ask for positive discrimination. And they don't necessarily want to be labelled as "women architects" or "female architects", or even "female architecture journalists" or "female critics". Some women in architecture have pointed out that this kind of language can be useful in recognising and focusing on the achievements of women who would otherwise be neglected. But you could easily argue it also normalises the idea that men are more entitled to be architects because they don't need to qualify their job title with an extra word.

"I am not a female architect. I am an architect," argued Danish architect Dorte Mandrup in a piece published by Dezeen. "When we talk about gender, we tend to talk about women. Men do not really have a gender. They are just... neutral. Non-gender. That is why you do not recognise the term 'male architect'."

We are not asking to be the female equivalent of anything. We are just asking to be architects, designers, journalists, critics, consultants, directors, partners, professionals, without having to be wary or to make ourselves small, without being overlooked or having to be a "bitch" and "difficult" to be heard. Let us do our job without all the gender-based power games, pay us fairly for it, and I promise you that the entire industry will benefit.

In the process of writing this piece, I spoke to a number of people who shared their experiences of abuse, assault, harassment, discrimination, gas-lighting, predatory and manipulative behaviour and more. Some of them have given very specific examples and have named names. They include some of the most famous architects in the world, as well as rising stars in respected practices, curators, heads of schools, tutors, colleagues and friends. They are not easy to talk about or read. This is a problem in every kind of practice and at every level. Anyone that would like to share their own experiences is welcome to contact me.

Anna Winston is an award-winning editor, writer and curator. She is a former editor of Dezeen and Bdonline, and has been working in architecture and design for over a decade. Based in Antwerp, she is currently researching the future of augmented reality and public space, and is also working on a project focusing on the design of death.

Photograph is by FangXiaNuo.

The post "Does architecture have a Harvey Weinstein hiding within its ranks?" appeared first on Dezeen.

from ifttt-furniture https://www.dezeen.com/2017/10/25/opinion-architecture-harvey-weinstein-scandal-hollywood-sexism-anna-winston/

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samanthathompsonphoto-blog · 8 years ago

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PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Agent Research

Commercial Photography Agent Interview

When researching Wyatt-Clarke Jones Agency I came across a really useful interview with four commercial photography agents talking about the role of an agent, how they do it and the multifaceted agency industry. I thought it would be a really good source of research to help develop my understanding of the commercial agency industry and also learn from an agent’s perspective. Overall aiming to help my ambitions of becoming and agent and starting up an agency with Alex. The Interview was on by the creative review and spoke to agency directors, Katy Niker or Burnham Niker, Carolyn Trayler of Trayler & Trayler, James Gerrard- Jones and Kim Pappas of Process. I think its also really interesting hearing about the industry from agency directors as they have seen first hand their agency’s grow, develop and succeed, so I think its really valuable to learn from them as myself and Alex one-day hope to be our own agency directors. Below I have gone through the interview and analysed it as I went along. Someone to watch over interview(https://www.creativereview.co.uk/someone-to-watch-over-you-2/)

Let’s start with how you get your photographers’ work in front of people. Are face-to-face meetings still important? What digital tools do you use as well?

Katy Niker: “It is harder to get in to see people these days, especially if you’re unknown. An established agent certainly has a better chance than a photographer on their own. Everyone is so busy that trying to do individual appointments with art directors, something I was doing 20 years ago, is almost impossible to do now. So we do ‘portfolio presentations’, where art buyers/print producers book us a room and we bring in drinks, nibbles and all our photographers’ portfolios. We’re in there for a couple of hours and the art directors can come and go as they please. It’s an informal way of showing work, it doesn’t feel like a hard sell” This point takes me back to the first bit of research I did about the role of an agent and how they are promoters. Its really interesting to learn about the different techniques they use to promote their photographer work, at its also really interesting to see how the agency industry has changed from meeting with art directors to promote the photographer so now having portfolio presentations drawing in audiences from different environments hopefully presenting multiple opportunities for the photographer.

James Gerrard-Jones: “Our blog, Twitter and emails all form an essential part of what we do, but it’s still important to see people face to face. It’s one of the reasons I still love real, physical portfolios; they get across the quality and personality of the photographer’s work, but also give us an excuse to come in and see people.” This indicates the importance of having an active online presence, promoting the photographers and getting them out there but also shows me that portfolio reviews are still out just as important to promote the photographers.

Has this wider range of digital tools helped how you look for new photography talent yourselves?

Katy Niker: “If you’re an established agent, you’re lucky that on the whole you don’t have to look for talent. I’m sure everyone here gets approached on a daily basis, but most of our stables will be full, therefore we’re not necessarily looking to take on photographers. I aim to have quite long-term relationships with mine and hence don’t change photographers that often” This allows me to understand how different galleries work and highlights the importance of having long and committed relationships with your photographers.

How often will a submission coming in that way lead to taking someone on?

Kim Pappas: “But it can trigger a relationship. I had an email from a photographer two and a half years ago; I now represent him. You don’t take someone on from that first email though – you meet up, see their book, they have a show or a campaign. You’re gradually building a relationship with them, seeing whether you’d be happy to talk to this person on a daily basis, as that’s what we end up doing. You have to fall a little bit in love with your photographers.” Allowing me to see the process of how photographer’s agents connect with there photographers and that it’s a slow process, teaching me that the agent needs to be patient and really love the photographer before representing them.

Katy Niker: “As well as being a photographer with great work, you also have to know about their personality. You are going to have testing, hectic times, you need to know they can cope with that pressure. Pre-production meetings, last minute changes on projects, the many personalities that they will come across. There isn’t room to have a really big ego, no-one can wear it anymore, no-one has the time!” Myself and Alex, need to be careful who represent and look out for the egos within the industry, its important that we have a personal relationship with the photographers and like them for their personality as well as they work. This interview is really making me aware that when representing an artist, you are committing to a relationship with them so it is important to be picky!

What are the implications of having fewer art buyers in agencies?

Carolyn Trayler: “We hold hands more than we ever did, all the way through. We’re dealing with project managers now who aren’t as trained as art buyers were. Where there was one art buyer in an agency, there might be four or five project managers who may not know about things such as usages or the complexities of a shoot.” This shows that as agents you need to be prepared for complications and difficulties which might arise from shoot and working with people in different areas of the industry. Its made me think about how I need to make sure that I use my positive and professionalism to my advantage and rectify these implications to the best of my ability. I think I will learn most from experience on the best way to deal with complexities.

Carolyn Trayler: “These agencies are the ones who are more creative. The UK was famous for its creativity in agencies and it is in danger of losing that. Once, art directors could go along to an art buyer, who was in the job because they were passionate about it, they loved art, they went to exhibitions, looked at photographers’ portfolios – and she would give him some ideas, and suggest artists. That was her job. Now, there’s none of that going on and you get traffic people having to see it through for a budget, account people who don’t know anything about creative photography – who only worry about the client – and an art director who just eventually gives up battling for his idea because he’s lost the creative process and the enjoyment out of it. So the actual end product doesn’t end up as stunningly creative as it could be.” This point is again highlighting to me the complexities and difficulties an agent may be faced with, but it also shows me that there are ways around tricky situations but the wider photography industry is forever changing and therefore always changing the problems agents face.

Has how fees and rights are worked out remained stable, or have these processes changed since you’ve been working in the industry?

James Gerrard-Jones: “We’ve been working on establishing accepted norms for usage based on media, territory and duration. This has been a great thing and the usage calculator is available online at the Association of Photographer’s (AOP) website. But as agents we use our experience and trusted relationships with agencies to work out unique agreements depending on the project. It’s one of the key benefits of having an agent; you can trust that we know when and where to draw the line for you. When to ask for more and when to settle for less.” This really shows me how important the negotiating of fees is to the role of an agent and also the importance of getting it right, this also highlights to me the importance of gaining experience in the field in order for my understanding to better around fees and negotiations. But also how there is a lot of guidance out there like on the AOP website in order to set guidelines, but to be aware that things are always changing so its about being prepared to work on your feet and put in to practice what you learn from experience. Really motivating me to get experience in the field in order for me to learn first hand from other agents.

Finally, what qualities do you think it takes to be a photographer’s agent?

Kim Pappas: “You have to be a life coach, an accountant, a mother, a good friend, a counsellor, a negotiator, a lawyer. You have to be creative yourself, an art critic and a problem solver. To be a really good agent you have to have all those skills. And lots of tenacity.” Out of all the points in this interview this is something which really stood out to me and really made me realise the extent of the agency job and motivating me to become skilled in all of these area in order for me to become a successful photography agent.

Researching this interview has given me a thorough overview of what it takes to be an agent in the photography industry today. Highlighting to me the importance to choose the photographers carefully and create a relationship with them. But this has also shown me how extensive the job is and how the agent really does need to hold a large list of transferable skills, skills I need to personally develop in order to success as a photography agent.

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