#zero relevance to modern politics economics and life

[anarchotolkienist]

Jesus Christ, what people(s) first arrived in Scandinavia after the melting of the ice has absolutely no relevance to the colonisation of the Sámi. Who cares that, yes, technically Germanic-speaking groups probably arrived in (southern) Scandinavia before the Finno-Ugric ancestors of the Sámi. It's not a matter about blood relation to the actual literal first humans that arrived in some arbitrarily delineated physical space, it's about your concrete relationship to settler-colonialism - as settler or settled, something which is determined through actually existing legal, social and political structures. This is the kind of shit analysis you get as a result of the emphasis of noble savage wooery about being 'one with the land' and whatever being emphasised in left-wing spaces over any concrete material understanding of colonialism and the economic meaning of colonialism - the Sámi are an indigenous people because the Swedish and Danish empires decided to uproot their lifeways and force them away from their traditional lands to seize it in order to make use of the mineral and forest wealth there. Whatever happened between groups of people that no-one save the most crazed 19th century nationalist would describe as "Swedes" and the Sámi some four thousand years ago has zero relevance for this discussion.

[foggypizzabeliever]

No Time? No Money? No Problem! How You Can Get How To Deal With A Teenage Breakup With A Zero-dollar Budget

In every generation, adolescents face a unique set of challenges and pressures. Teenage years are often marked by the search for identity, independence and finding one's place in this world. In the midst of these universal rites, there is a subset that seems to stand out from their peers. These are teenagers who do not care, or at least that's how they appear. This essay examines the phenomenon of apathetic teens, examining their indifference as well as the impact it has on their lives and the society.

The Worst Advice You Could Ever Get About How To Deal With A Teenager With Mental Health Issues

In order to understand why some teens may appear unmotivated or disinterested, we need to first consider the many factors that influence adolescent behaviour. Modern teens are growing up in an era dominated by digital technology and social media platforms. These tools provide constant connectivity but can also lead to feelings of isolation and inadequacy through relentless comparison with curated online personas. The pressure to maintain an ideal image can be overwhelming for any individual; for teens whose identities are still in flux, this challenge is magnified.

Furthermore, current societal conditions contribute to teenage apathy. For instance, economic uncertainties make future planning seem futile for some young people. It is not surprising that some teenagers question the value of investing in uncertain futures when higher education comes with crippling student debt and job markets seem uninviting or unstable.

The educational systems of today are often unable to engage students in meaningful ways. Standardized testing and rigid curricula can stifle creativity and discourage critical thinking. When learning becomes about memorizing facts rather than understanding concepts or developing skills relevant to real-life situations, teens might understandably lose interest.

Family dynamics play a major role in shaping the attitudes of teenagers towards life. In households where parents are either overly controlling or excessively permissive, teens may develop an indifferent attitude as a form of passive resistance or due to lack of guidance respectively.

It's important to not overgeneralize teenage apathy as a sign of laziness or rebelliousness without cause. What appears to be apathy can actually be a defensive mechanism, a way for vulnerable teens to protect themselves against rejection or failure.

How To Deal With A Lying Teenager Explained In Fewer Than 140 Characters

Teen apathy has a ripple effect on communities. Disengaged youths are less likely to excel academically or pursue higher education--decisions that can limit their career opportunities later on in life. When large numbers of youths show indifference to societal issues, such as politics or community projects, the fabric that holds society together starts to weaken.

Adults, including educators, Additional resources parents, and policymakers, as well as anyone who works with young people, must be proactive in addressing this issue.

How To Deal With A Lying Teenager Explained In Fewer Than 140 Characters

- The education system needs to be redesigned so that learning is more interactive and relevant.

- Parents should strive for balance between guidance and autonomy--giving teens space while remaining available.

- Society should create avenues for meaningful youth engagement where teens feel heard and valued.

- Professional help is needed for those who are suffering from mental health issues that could manifest as apathy.

Selfish Teenagers - Navigating the Intricacies Of Adolescent Self Centeredness

Teenage years are often marked by a whirlwind experience of emotions, experiences and developmental milestones. As young individuals transition from childhood to adulthood, their personalities, behaviors, and attitudes undergo significant transformations. During this phase, it is common to observe an increase in selfishness among teenagers. This essay explores the concept of adolescent selfishness, its underlying causes and potential impacts on relationships, growth, as well strategies for guidance.

The Ultimate Glossary Of Terms About How To Deal With A Toxic Mom As A Teenager

At first glance, the notion of selfish teenagers might evoke images of youths absorbed in their own world--disregarding others' needs or feelings and prioritizing personal desires without hesitation. It's easy to label such behavior as a negative trait; however, it's essential to comprehend that self-centeredness during these formative years isn't merely a flaw but part of a natural developmental process.

Adolescence is marked by an intense search for identity--a time when teenagers begin to ask themselves who they truly are and where they fit into the world around them. In their quest for answers, teenagers may seem self-absorbed and reflect more on their own feelings and thoughts than ever before. Teenagers are often more sensitive to how they're perceived by their peers and society due to hormonal changes.

This inward focus may manifest as what adults perceive as selfishness - a refusal to share or help around the home, an insistence on spending more time with friends than family, or frustration over not getting your way. It's important to remember that these actions may not always be driven by a disregard for others, but by a deep need for autonomy and independent.

15 Surprising Stats About How To Deal With A Toxic Teenage Daughter

Social influences also play a pivotal role in shaping teenage behavior. In an era dominated by digital communication and social media, young people are constantly bombarded with messages that emphasize personal success and self promotion. The pressure to stand out can lead some teens to prioritize their own interests above all else inadvertently reinforcing egocentric tendencies.

It would be remiss to not acknowledge that this phase of "selfishness" has an adaptive aspect. It helps teenagers develop the decision-making abilities necessary for adulthood. Without the right guidance or support, selfish behavior can cause strain on family relationships and friendships, as well as hinder the development of empathy.

Parents, educators, and mentors must all show patience and understanding to foster healthy growth during these years. Open communication is key. Teenagers need to be able to express themselves, while also learning about perspective-taking, and how to consider others' feelings.

Encouragement of community involvement or volunteerism can also be used as a practical tool to expand adolescents' worldviews and help them see beyond their immediate concerns. These activities not only encourage pro-social behavior, but also teach valuable lessons about cooperation and collective responsibility.

In conclusion, teenage 'selfishness' should be viewed within the broader context of human development rather than condemned outrightly--understanding that it is often less about deliberate disregard for others than part of navigating personal growth during tumultuous years. The'selfishness' of today's teenager can be transformed into a compassionate adult by guiding them to balance between self-care, care for others and their own needs.

[weaselle]

What the fuck am I even doing

It’s frustrating to get it wrong. The worst is when you think you have a basic understanding of a concept only to discover you haven’t understood it at all. I have wanted to create change since I can remember. I took it upon myself to learn everything I could that seemed relevant to helping people have access to a life that gave them everything they needed in a healthy, sustainable, enjoyable way, instead of this clearly broken human world we inhabit. Turns out, that’s a lot of stuff to learn. I’m reasonably intelligent, but my all-gifted/accelerated-class beginnings and my teacher’s unsuccessful attempts to convince my parents to let me skip grades soon turned into flunking out of high school. Early family tragedy, emotional issues, and personal misunderstanding of my own probably non-binary nature did not create a stable life, and I’ve had to do all my learning amid constant chaos. I’ve had more than 30 employers, including myself. I’ve written and produced comedic theater, I’ve done landscaping, I’ve been an accountant, I’ve run a jackhammer, I’ve worked in a bookstore, I’ve been a cook, a server, a hotel night auditor and front desk agent. I’ve worked 3 full 40-hour-per-week jobs at the same time, and I’ve done circus performance on the streets for money to eat. I’ve lived in more than 25 buildings, and never alone. I’ve spent a year in Germany, two years in Alabama, three years in Portland, two years in San Francisco, six years in Oakland, a year in Santa Cruz, a year in Hollywood... I’ve lived in town houses and apartment complexes and a warehouse and a tool shed and my truck.  Meanwhile, I needed to know... everything. Especially: what people are, what people need, what people have tried already, what the current situation on the planet is, and specifically to understand the explicit ways in which the overall organization of human existence is currently broken, so as to attempt solutions. I’ve done a lot of research into early human development, that journey from something less than human to something more than ape- what are we, what do we need, why are we like this? How do we fit in to ecosystems, and what is our track record of society building and collapse, and how has social power shaped these things, changed or remained the same in the many thousands of years humans have had large societies? I’ve done a lot of looking at human physical animal needs - my mother was a critical care and emergency room nurse, my father a general practitioner doctor with a focus in geriatrics, so I started with a good base. My own struggles lead me to examine mental health and psychology pretty closely. I’ve investigated nutrition and read studies about sleep and dreaming, and read at length about DNA, what genes are, and how they replicate, what that means for illnesses and health and aging. I looked into spirituality and philosophy, parsing the standard young questions about reality, relishing books like Siddhartha , moving on to the Tao Te Ching and the Allegory of the Cave and explorations of various religions. I’ve deeply considered what it means to be a Good Human. I experienced meditation and experimented with paganism, became very interested in witchery, attempted several occult practices. I detailed the pros and cons of modern western education systems contrasted with human biological and child developmental needs as intersecting with what society needs its students to become versus what students need to finish their education knowing. I designed a whole new system of education that addresses deficiencies in current systems. I studied energy production processes and played with my own experimental energy production techniques. I devoured information about sustainable architecture and zero-footprint design. I looked up studies that examine the average hours of work per week done by tribal people living in challenging environments like the Kalahari Desert and the Amazon Jungle, and compared that to anthropological observations of modern western families.  What I’m trying to express is the depth and variation of what I set out to learn. So, because of the width of this spectrum of information I’ve been trying to cram into my brain, I’ve cut corners. I’ve read recaps of recent history, in favor of in depth research of prehistory. I’ve read summaries of political movements instead of the literature produced by the leaders of those movements. I looked at pros and cons of various regime styles instead of tracing back their histories. There are... important areas in which I’ve only gone over the cliff notes, as it were. OF course that is totally inadequate. OF COURSE I don’t understand what I thought knew. smh. There are no shortcuts to knowledge, I KNOW this, I don’t know why I am so caught off guard. Now I have to question my answers. Because, I DO HAVE answers, finally. Projects that start at a manageable level, organizing a single community of about 60 people, one tribe’s worth, in a way that brings every part of modern american human existence under a single roof to be addressed in microcosm in order to generate replicable, scalable solutions and then uses socio-economic success to grow itself outward. Solutions that don’t try to force people to join in, but that tempt people to copy. Solutions that don’t tell people how they must live, but instead give them tools and options and examples. A community that allows minimum wage workers to own property (so that the community does not live under landlords) and provides the means to create outreach programs offering semi-temporary room and board to homeless people (especially those with children) women fleeing abusive relationships, rehabilitated convicts, disabled veterans, etc. That become low-cost support services to the neighborhood the community is in. This community and those that follow, are designed to function as a low risk entrepreneurial incubators such that the solutions to socio-economic inequalities and deficiencies can be developed for sale to the middle class such that the middle class pays low-income workers to create alternatives to current corrupt and broken institutions... creating new banks and schools, reinventing food and clothing industries, competing directly with and eventually replacing Walmarts and Targets and Wholefoods... This gives people more power to demand change to existing institutions by providing blueprints and working examples for alternatives. Eventually these communities and baby institutions can join and grow to form whole cities that are explicitly designed for sustainable low-environmental impact lifestyles, in which the municipality itself owns all the actual property, and therefore there are no landlords and 100% of the “rent” is used for infrastructure, alternative energy production and waste management, and, importantly, funding social programs that ensure everyone has better than the bare minimum access to food, shelter, clothing, information/education, and healthcare. One city can become two, then four. If the current broken and corrupt institutions don’t allow us to change them, they can be replaced entirely. It’s a huge undertaking. I have only just started taking action this last year after more than 20 years of conceptualization, and I anticipate dying without seeing it reach it’s full potential. And here today I find out, I still have AT LEAST a whole master’s degree worth of stuff to learn. That after all my study and research and reading and experience, someone literally half my age can tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about and call me ignorant... and she’s right. She’s absolutely right. I STILL don’t know what I’m talking about, in so many areas, in so many ways. I hate it. Because I’m running out of time. I have to move forward. And I have to do it knowing that I don’t know what I’m doing, which is fine for my own life, but I’m trying to influence other people’s lives, and that worries me. How can I ask people to trust me, to join me, when I don’t even, when I can’t, when I’m still so uneducated and ignorant? But my life is meaningless otherwise. I have chosen to not have children for this, I have turned my back on economic success for this, I have existed on the edge of society for this.

[thehrisworld]

New Post | The HRIS World® | %Excerpt%

New Post has been published on http://bit.ly/2izthQ9

Modern Shakespeare - Why Change Has Much Ado About Everything

About The HRIS World Transformational Leadership Series™ #thwTLS

Leadership needs to change with change -- and yet still discern what and which principles should not be forsaken.

The HRIS World Transformational Leadership Series™ takes both a high-level as well as up-close look at what it takes to inspire commitment so to achieve the vision of a preferred future, the very definition of Transformational Leadership.

Hashtag for The HRIS World Transformational Leadership Series™ is #thwTLS

For more information about this series, eel free to reach out to us by clicking here for more information.

Shakespeare and Much Ado About Nothing is more like Much Ado About Everything…

Our lives, if we stand back long enough, are comedies that, like Shakespeare’s play, combines elements of mistaken identities, love, robust hilarity with more serious meditations found on honour, shame, and court politics.

Yet nothing seems no longer irrelevant and everything seems to be relevant to everyone…

We are busier, hopefully more productive, better organized, more knowledgeable, than any society before us thanks to technology.

Yet at the same time, we are less regulated in our personal behavior and in the use of our tongue.

We need to return to ground zero and see what needs to be rebuilt…

6 Pillars

Trustworthiness…

Respect…

Responsibility…

Fairness…

Caring…

Citizenship…

Character

Raising the bar of expectations has never resulted in lower quality of anything – yet for many leaders, that bar keeps slipping.

Not going to raise quality or even maintain it without raising the bar of expectations, are you?

Without establishing sound character, change is going to be more of a challenge without than with sound character…

Whose Voice Do You Listen To?

Whose voices you choose to listen to will decide – What you believe… – What doors will close on you… – What doors will open for you…

Facts and truth are irrelevant to any of the above.

Unavailable or Available to Learn?

You decide to when make yourself unavailable or available to learn – the facts and truth will sort themselves out as you keep yourself available to learn.

And not available at the levels you choose, but available at all levels.

Many times, if not most of the time, you will rely on information that makes you feel comfortable and not on information that challenges you – to assess your beliefs – to rethink your beliefs – to change your beliefs

That can cause you more problems, more missed opportunities, more closed doors than you really know.

The Only Thing That Doesn’t Change is Change

In 2010, Eric Schmidt announced that every 2 days we now create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003 [1]…

In 2013, knowledge was doubling every 12 months – with the build out of the IoT (Internet of Things), IBM has assessed that will change to every 12 hours [2]…

Yet…

Are you more productive since 2010? 2013? Or are you merely busier?

Busy? Or Productive?

Where have you really focused with all the latest gadgets you have at our disposal? Developing economic gain? Gaining more knowledge? Learning to think differently?

Or are you creating whirlpools of busy-ness that only sucks the life out of you while you abandon character? wisdom? learning? discernment?

Are you truly getting ahead with technology? Or is your technology getting ahead of you?

Most everyone knows Albert Einstein [3] – many of his thoughts and theories are still being proven, some nearly a CENTURY after came up with them, other thoughts of his are still in progress of being proven.

And he did all his thinking about the universe, physics, life… without a computer – as it hadn’t been invented yet… without a smartphone – as it hadn’t been invented yet…

Yes, he was gifted — which is exactly my point when combining technology, knowledge, discernment, even character…

We have the technology that can help us the way it couldn’t him…

The Ways and Means of Change

David D’Souza hits upon many of these points in his interview on BBC’s Radio 4 The World Tonight [4 – time marks 35:17-36:34, the entire topic stars at 31:31and is well worth a listen].

Ths topic on Radio 4 focuses on the effect smartphones have had on our lives in the last 10 years — and unfortunately working more efficiently has not been one of the realizations…

“With 10 years of the modern smartphone, we haven’t seen the productivity gains that you might expect that has been transformed in someways in the ways we work and transformed the way we live but has not transformed our economic fortunes…

“What proliferations of email allows you to do is to circulate information more effectively, and more rapidly, and to more people.

“That doesn’t necessarily, in and of itself, create economic value.

“What we are doing is making ourselves busier but we are not necessarily making ourselves more productive.

“Smartphones allow us to do things that we couldn’t do before, what they don’t do particularly well is regulate our behavior.

“Being able to communicate all the time just increases the amount of noise in an organization, it doesn’t increase the output.”

The ways David focuses upon isn’t productivity and being busy, as both are the ends.

The ways he focuses upon is the actions you choose, the actions we choose: ‘making ourselves‘

What you choose in doing with your technology is resulting in making yourself busier, or making yourself productive…

These choices are seeds for what you create, what you produce or just plainly not and remain a busy body…

Whether you are being busy or being productive, the rate of change of technology around you could not care less — the rate of change of technology is growing logarithmically no matter which you choose to do, so you are left with having to do what you can to change with change… or get left behind.

And the only way to change with change is by being productive, being selective in what you want to be productive about so to leverage your direction and future accordingly.

No society, no culture ever got ahead by being busy.

Forget the What, Learn the How

Albert Einstein once shared that we cannot expect to solve our problems using the same thinking we used to create them, lest we bury ourselves in more problems.

You have been trained by our present education system, which has been enforcing the same thing for more than a century now, to teach everyone to learn what to think…

With the rate of change of technology, this type of teaching and the rate of education can’t keep pace with the rate of change in technology – and truthfully, education is already getting left behind.

Think about that — education is already getting left behind.

That means you need to abandon being told what to think, you need to abandon learning what to think — and you need to learn how to think, with everything.

This is not something new — before the education system we have had for the last century or so, we had to learn many dry things like principles… laws…. morals… ethics… trustworthiness… respect… responsibility… fairness… caring… citizenship… all of them seeds that lead to learning how to think, learning how to build character.

And they were learned them in a mixed-level school room — as well as at home.

You will be hard pressed to find busy-ness and learning how to think in the same room…

Stay Updated

More to come on this.

Do get our newsletter to stay up to date — and give yourself more time away from your busy-ness.

More Content from David D’Souza

If you liked what you heard in David D’Souza’s interview and/or want to read morea about what he is thinking, he has contributed a couple of posts to us here:

What Makes a Great Conference – Why some conferences do well but not great

HR Tech Europe And Differentiating Differently — It’s all about how the data is differentiated, differently – images help!

You can also catch his blog here: 101 Half Connected Things

Discover More From Our Transformational Leadership Series

Open to Discover More!

More Content In This Series…

Modern Shakespeare – Why Change Has Much Ado About Everything

| Garrett O'Brien

Our Top 25 Viewed Posts for 2016

| Garrett O'Brien

Introducing Our Features for Everyone

| Garrett O'Brien

Does Your Workplace Really Support Women?

| Our Audience

What Are the Key Challenges for HR in Europe?

| Garrett O'Brien

Why Business Ethics Doesn’t Work and Never Will

| Garrett O'Brien

What We Are Unwilling to Change? And Why?

| Garrett O'Brien

Is Your Company’s Strategy All Chat and No Metrics?

| Tom Janz

6 Shortcuts for Retaining Your Employees in Record Time

| Our Audience

Do You Know How to Identify Your Future Business Leaders?

| Liam Tarry

Team Alignment and Performance: Data Talks

| Tom Janz

What Comes First — Your Company’s Strategy? Or Your Company’s Talent?

| Tom Janz

10 Traits of Transformational CEOs

| PR-thwrn

search for more content here

Our Social Media Presence

Where to Follow Us

   Follow Us!

Twitter

@thehrisworld : @thw_research : @thwjobs

@HRISWorldStore : @Garrett__OBrien : @thw_videos

NEW: @thwrn_news

LinkedIn

company page: The HRIS World / THW Research

groups: The HRIS World Research Network | The HRIS World LI

Facebook

timeline: Garrett O'Brien | page: The HRIS World

Google +

The HRIS World

paper.li

#THWNews

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/what-the-west-can-learn-yellow-vests/

What the West can learn: Yellow Vests are demanding a Cultural Revolution (8/8)

by Ramin Mazaheri 

For years I have talked about “White Trash Revolutions”, and the emergence of the Yellow Vests proves that my finger is perfectly on the pulse of things: the only people publicly wearing “Yellow Vests” on the streets of Paris prior to November 17, 2018, were… garbage men.

So, imagine me, with my love of Trash Revolutions of all hues (Iran’s 1979 “Revolution of the Barefooted” amounts to the same idea)… and then the French adopted the look of trash collectors as their uniform – I couldn’t be happier!!!

But this idea is not new – even in modern 24/7 politics, genuine historical processes take years or decades to culminate. In 2016, following the election of Donald Trump in the United States, Slavov Zizek expressed the same idea offhandedly: “Sorry, White Trash is our only hope. We have to win them over.”

I could not agree more. But we must go further than just “winning over Trash” – we must let them win.

That is the essence of China’s Cultural Revolution.

I penned this 8-part series because the Yellow Vests show us – urgently, courageously, necessarily, violently – just how relevant China’s Cultural Revolution (CR) should be to Westerns in 2019.

If you have not read the previous 7 parts of this series (and know only anti-CR propaganda) then you may not realize the China’s CR proved how good, productive, efficient and equal society can be – democratically, economically, educationally and culturally – when rural people are supported instead of insulted.

This entire series has not been designed to celebrate China or socialism – it has been written to show what happens when the rural-urban divide is seriously addressed in modern politics, as it was in China during the CR in an unprecedented manner. Society has many seemingly irreconcilable poles of contention – the only one this series seriously addresses is the rural-urban divide.

The CR showed that solutions to this seemingly irreconcilable divide are possible if we accept that Trash is our only hope and not – as the urban-based Mainstream Media insists – the cause of our ills.

Not everyone in a small town is a farmer, but the exclusion of village values is obviously why France’s rural traffic roundabouts have been blockaded for 5.5 months (the government started banning these rural protests on May 11).

More than anything, I think that studying and emulating the CR can end the urban West’s hatred, fear and disgust of rural citizens in power. Islamophobia – every definition includes the fear of Islam as a political force – is pretty bad, but Hillbillyophobia – fear of rural values as a political force – is truly at a modern apex. Thus this series.

The world has seen 2 Cultural Revolutions already – is the West finally ready for 1?

This series used the CR to to illustrate that France and the West are 50 years behind China because they are being wracked by a Yellow Vest movement which is essentially demanding a Cultural Revolution which the Chinese already had. However, because the neoliberal empire known as the European Union has been undemocratically forced on Europe during the interim, the French have even more work to do than 1960s China, but the first step is to realize that the Yellow Vests are essentially demanding a Cultural Revolution.

That IS what this is all about every Saturday – Yellow Vests want institutions to cease their terrible functioning, every major policy to come up for review (constitutional changes, staying in the EU, Eurozone and NATO, Françafrique, austerity spending policies, taxation policies, environmental policies, banking, education, housing, industrialisation, etc.) and new local, grassroots groups to implement them – a Cultural Revolution.

Like Iran from 1980-83 (Iran had the world’s only other state-sponsored Cultural Revolution, obviously modelled on China’s), like China from 1965-74, France wants several years where everything is brought to a halt in order to engage in mass discussions, with the aim of drastically updating French democracy and French culture in order to accord with more modern political ideals.

Capitalists cannot tolerate such a halting. Not only because it would lead to a reduction in their power, and not only because modern political ideals must be Socialist Democratic and not Liberal Democratic – it is also a cultural thing: “keep calm and carry on” is the fundamental ethos of conservatism worldwide.

The two Cultural Revolution have said: “To hell with this – halt! Now waitaminut…. what on earth have we become and should we keep being like this?” Both CRs also led to miniature civil wars, as reactionary or fascist forces, and insanely radical and democratically unwanted leftist forces (like the Mojahedin-e Khalq – MKO), were pushed out.

And, after the halt, as the trajectories of both China and Iran show amazing success. They started over (revolution), then stopped (cultural revolution), then restarted anew yet again.

A Cultural Revolution – China and Iran prove – does something the US and French Revolutions did not do: put into power the formerly-oppressed class of people, which is also the majority class. These four revolutions all eliminated monarchies, but only the former two put the oppressed in charge.

(I do not call the French or American aristocracies “oppressed”, as they previously colluded with the king and shared in the ill-gotten gains – call me a radical, I guess.)

The Yellow Vests are this oppressed class which deserves to lead, and which would certainly lead the country better than France’s current leaders. Everybody in France knows this, but they feel powerless to make it happen. The Yellow Vests are also – everyone in France knows this as well – the majority class. The conditions for Cultural Revolution – for Trash Revolution – are as clear as the yellow vests of garbagemen who wear reflective gear to avoid traffic.

Yes, the Yellow Vests are not solely the result of an untreated urban divide, but anyone following them knows that this is one of the primary causes of the movement.

Those who have been following this series will know what I mean: what should rural “Jimo County, France” be demanding in their nascent French Cultural Revolution?

It’s a genuine political question to ask: is the future only for cities?

Modernized countries need to honestly ask themselves: should humanity’s goal be to empty the rural areas of people?

Are rural areas that bad? That depressing, boring, backward and hate-filled?

The rural-urban migration of the past century is universal, but do we not need any rural inhabitants? Will robots, drones and computers allow everyone to live in supposedly-superior urban areas? Are the values which flourish in rural areas more often than in urban areas not necessary for human culture any more – are these values only hindrances to human progress?

Because if the answer is: “No – rural areas will always have some people; farming areas will never be so efficient as to not need human involvement; rural people actually do learn a useful thing or two about life which city people don’t learn,” then we have no choice but to tackle the urban-rural divide as much as other key societal divides.

So, when we realize that we must clearly affirm that, “Yes, we need rural areas,” that necessarily implies a huge overhaul of value systems in the modern capitalist West, which has become hugely urban dominated. The aspects of this dominance – the financial futures exchanges, mass media, only-urban cultural hubs, the denigration of a collective ethos inherent in rural communities, etc. – are so obvious and so numerous that I don’t need to list them here. The path of history shows that the era of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal of farmer-citizen-soldier have been totally jettisoned in the West, probably due to the industrial/electrical/digital revolutions. However, China’s CR showed how necessary it was to re-balance the scales in favor of the country life.

What is more interesting is to discuss how specific policies of the China’s CR could be translated to the West. The Iranian CR was the democratically demanded introduction of Islam into governance, which resulted in what is clearly Iranian Islamic Socialism (out in book form this summer, Inshallah), but I don’t think the West is interested in religion-based ideas anymore – they have deluded themselves into thinking that religion is always regressive, never progressive. (The West prefers secular zero-theism – which is actually the bleakest and most egotistical version of monotheism, because zero is not a plural number, after all.)

But what are being demanded are cultural changes. These precede and influence political changes.

On the level of practical politics, which I will discuss later, I will be sweeping and brief here: neoliberalism (and free-market capitalism) is incompatible with democracy, and we all know it, and thus this particular version of the pan-European project is inherently anti-democratic; the historic heavy, urban-based statism of France is an anti-democratic legacy of the Napoleonic “revolution”; the 1789 French “revolution” was bourgeois and thus not democratic… 2019 France has to stop holding on to all of these falsely progressive legacies. China’s CR – and all forms of socialism – prove that local, socialist democracy is the only guarantee of success and stability. But back to cultural changes….

Above all, a Western Cultural Revolution must begin with an urban mea culpa – the gift of apology is the only way to start in any such situation of familial division and bad blood, which is what France currently has. Even Jesus son of Mary said the same thing, according to Matthew 5:23 – Therefore if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.

After reconciliation comes actual gifts – reparations – in order to even the scales in the favor of rural areas.

But reparations and admission of arrogance/imperialism is verboten in capitalist societies – what the CR proves is that the rural-urban divide can only be healed through a collective mentality, not an individualist mentality: the urban individual must renounce their alleged superiority.

That is the primary psycho-cultural message of the Yellow Vests; the proof of this is obvious in the exaggerated hatred of President Emmanuel Macron.

His aloofness and arrogance are unprecedented in modern times, I agree, but his anti-democratic methods and beliefs are not at all different from his predecessor, Francois Hollande. Perhaps his anti-democratic methods and beliefs are 10-15% worse than Hollande’s, but many Yellow Vests only want Macron to quit simply because they have been so deranged by Macron’s urban sense of entitlement that they lose their sense of scope – I hear it often from Vesters every Saturday. But, just like Trump, Macron is the symptom and not the disease.

Macron has become a symbol of what we can call the “anti-CR forces in France”, and the danger is that if the symbol falls – if Macron actually quits – that could stave off the demand for an actual French Cultural Revolution. Certainly, Macron’s puppet-masters will allow him to resign before they allow the sweeping discussions and changes of a CR.

Thus the first step towards reducing the rural-urban divide in the West begins with a revalorisation of rural areas. As long as mainstream journalists continue insisting on a “red state-blue state” divide, no nation can possibly be united, healthy and successful.

This revaluing is a cultural change – what about practical measures?

The CR sent politicians to do farm work – no wonder the Western political class hates the idea of a CR

The disease which roils the West is something which socialism is based on, and especially Maoism, and which was ably demonstrated in the Great Leap Forward – the collective mentality must triumph over the individualist mentality. Indeed, I fairly refer to the CR as the “Great Leap Forward #2” because the CR was an unquestionable restarting of collectivist projects.

But Westerners don’t wanna! To hell with the collective!

The collective line – which in Western Liberal Democracy is only limited to preserving the solidarity of the 1% among themselves – is really rather religious in its view, as it is based on the idea of something larger than just the individual and goes far beyond day-to-day concerns.

Nor is it mere nationalism, which is just a larger, modern version of tribalism. In neoliberal capitalism the loyalty is only to one’s self and family (and often not even to family, but one’s “household” within the necessarily multi-household “family”… and often not even to one’s household!), so it does not even achieve tribalism. How someone can live without a view of something larger than one’s own self is beyond me – it is truly to live without honor, and only with ego.

(In order to prove the enormous socioeconomic success of the CR, this book drew heavily from the ground-breaking investigative & scholarly work The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village, by Dongping Han, a former Chinese villager himself. Han hailed from and studied rural Jimo County, interviewing hundreds of locals about the Cultural Revolution (CR) and poring over local historical records. Han was kind enough to write the forward to my new book, I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China, which is available for purchase. This 8-part series is not a part of that book.)

Accordingly, Han relates the motivation of someone who worked for free on Jimo’s irrigation project during the CR: “She said that she, like others, volunteered to work at these projects at the time because it was an honorable thing to do.”

The major problem in Western capitalism is that their people are not lacking in honor – that would be untrue, as well as insulting: the problem is they do not believe their governments should promote selflessness and honor, as morality is a strictly personal issue. In China, Cuba, Iran and other socialist democratic-based systems, maybe everybody ignores the government’s morality campaigns, LOL, but such campaigns exist, at least, and thus surely have an impact (and a positive one).

A lesson of the CR is that if the government does not promote a “collective mentality”, then there is no “free-market magic” which can reliably conjure up the same necessary feeling, action and outcome.

But promotion is not leadership – leadership is done by doing! Perhaps the Chinese had a leg up in understanding this concept, as Confucianism stresses leadership by example.

“After the failure of the Great Leap Forward , many farmers in Jimo were so bitter about the food shortages that they declared they would not do any more work for the commune. Why, then, were Jimo farmers willing to work hard for the collective during the Cultural Revolution? What was behind this change of attitude? Some workers and farmers testified that the practice of cadres’ participation in production during the Cultural Revolution made an important difference. They said that when leaders worked hard, common villagers would work hard with them. … More importantly, village youth, politically emboldened through the Cultural Revolution conflicts and educated in the new schools, were ready to challenge party leaders if they did not work with ordinary people. … Common villagers would not tolerate lazy leaders. If leaders did not work, villagers refused to work as well, which would lead to a decline in production and living standards. If the leaders did not work hard, villagers would elect someone else to replace them in the year-end election, someone who was ready to work hard.” (emphasis mine)

Now Macron constantly says that he works hard, but he does not work hard with ordinary people – therein lies a world of difference.

It is impossible for an unempathetic leader (as Macron clearly is), who has never worked a regular, dreary, timeclock-punching job in his life (as Macron never has) to make policies which benefit the average worker when he has no idea what an average worker goes through.

I include that passage because it is a fascinating phenomenon, seemingly unique to Chinese socialism – it is a dagger in the heart of Western technocratism. I wonder: how it can be replicated? Did Mao or Fidel spend time working in the fields at 55 years old? LOL, an elder-worshipping Iranian would probably commit suicide before being forced to watch Khamenei, 80, do hard labor in front of them (the guy already lost use of his right arm due to a bomb from the MKO, so how much more effort should he give?).

But what if Macron spent just one week working at a farm? I think his approval rating would rise 10 points immediately!

Macron is 41 – is he just lazy? Is he so effete that he doesn’t like hard & sweaty work? Or is it that he is trying to cultivate an image of someone who is “above” or “smarter than” everybody else in France, and thus only deigns to spend his time on a “superior” type of work? It’s clearly the latter – Macron is trying to cultivate the image that his mind and soul are too valuable, too finely-tuned, to waste on lower-class work.

(But it’s really surprising that a young Western leader doesn’t do these types of propaganda ops. If anybody in the Iranian government is reading this: I will GLADLY work a pistachio farm for months, even years at a time – sheesh, that sounds like heaven, as I write this from the most-population dense city in the Western world. (Y’all would have to pay to store my stuff, though. I guess I’d lose my apartment in Paris. Not that I own it, of course, but it is SO HARD just to find a long-term apartment to rent here – I moved 10 times in my first 3.5 years in France.) Anyway, I predict that in the future, with viral videos and the omnipresence of screens, there will be some leader who takes advantage of every country’s love of hard work – and this will be denounced as “populism” by general population-hating capitalists.)

Crucially, Han writes, “They participated in manual labor more conscientiously than their predecessors had. In some localities it was stipulated that members of the county revolution committee had to participate in manual labor for about two hundred days a year, and members of the commune revolutionary committees had to work in the fields for more than two hundred days a year.”

How can these ideas be applied elsewhere? Could we possibly imagine President Macron working manual labor for 8 hours a day for 10 days, much less 200? What about Theresa May working at an elder care center? These ideas are delicious but ludicrous – certainly, their defense would be that they have “more important things to do”. They are “above” such work; such work would degrade their incredible abilities.

These unstated, but universally perceived, beliefs, is a real problem – the CR solved this problem; thus this series.

This is a huge, flaming, primary message of the CR – rural toil (but also factory toil, service sector toil, or other toiling lower and middle class jobs) is indispensable in creating good governors. There is only one clear solution – joining the masses at work – and yet it would take a CR in the West for such things to occur.

I have relayed Han’s data which show the economic, industrial educational explosion for rural areas – seeing the cultural changes the CR wrought on their local political leaders: How fortunate (and superior) is the Chinese system that they had the CR?

Such practices are inherently anti-technocratic: a politician with a PhD who has to work some manual labor may be a worse technocrat, due to less time spent wonking out, but he or she is a better human being and governor.

Han relates a great story: A respected Peoples’ Liberation Army veteran returned to Jimo after four years in the army, to much acclaim, and he was elected secretary of a village Communist Youth League. He was asked to work on the irrigation project, which involved four people pushing a wheelbarrow of mud weighing 1,000 pounds. “But his army life had never put him to the test of such hard work.” The leader could not do the work, and thus was the naozheng – the incompetent person – in the group. He was not re-elected the following year.

“It was important that leaders could talk high-sounding words, but they had to live up to what they said at the same time. Otherwise nobody would listen to them. … The CCP’s policy then was: yu chenfen, dan bu wei chenfen (class labels are important, but they are not the exclusive factor in judging a person).”

I find it very hard to believe any demonstrating Yellow Vest wouldn’t agree with these policies and beliefs of the CR; putting politicians to work would be Yellow Vest demand #26 if they only knew about it.

Macron does not appear very physically strong… but that is no matter. What is important is that he only finally said the words “Yellow Vests” in public on April 25rd – he clearly has no interest in working shoulder to shoulder with them, no matter what job we can find for him to not be the naozheng at.

Why would such a sensible policy – forcing politicians to do SOME real work – likely be opposed by supporters of Liberal Democracy? Because forcing them to do things they personally don’t want to do is an alleged violation of Western individualist rights. The irony, of course, is that the 1740-1840 heyday of Liberal Democracy rested upon the stolen wages of slaves. And when the slave-masters were forced to work in the countryside – what a horror the CR was!

I don’t see it that way at all. I think, especially when tied to promises of advancement, it is a perfect apprenticeship for future politicians. China knows that, and they are sending another 10 million urban cadres to the countryside – more well-rounded, respectful leaders in the future for China thanks to CR 2.0.

The Cultural Revolution lessons for modern schools

Culture is taught – it is not inbred. Thus a revolution in education is just as fundamental as a revolution in the “work” of politicians. The CR grasped this as well.

I would be remiss not to include a short section on education in this final part. Previous parts of this series examined Han’s data and conclusions regarding educational policy changes, because giving equal access to education – and making schooling truly egalitarian and not urban-elite based nor technocratic – was truly a primary, if not the primary, motivation and goal of the CR. I reiterate Han’s thesis and data, which I gave in Part 1, because it is so necessary: “…this study contends that that the political convulsions of the Cultural Revolution democratized village political culture and spurred the growth of rural education, leading to substantial and rapid economic development.” Education change is the middle link between political culture change and economic change.

Firstly, there is a major problem of gender imbalance in modern schools: in Iran and seemingly all other modernised areas women outperform men, including at security spots i at university. This is not a cause for celebration, but a huge problem.

If men were outperforming women, we would say that there is some sort of prejudice occurring or, as is the case now, the system is simply set up for young men to fail more often than young women, correct? You never hear this view in the West, as their societies are far more matriarchal than in Asia.

But China’s Cultural Revolution did what I think all schools should do: not simply “be schools”.

It is something like a crime against humanity how young, fun, spirit-filled boys are forced to wedge themselves behind a desk for their entire youth. The Cultural Revolution did what many boys find fun – doing stuff: they had to work on a farm, a workshop, a lab, and even money-making activities. That all beats “school” for young and teenage boys.

Crucially, these are all activities which educate kids on the serious facts of life, facts which are vital for happiness far more than yet more technocratic learning.

A teenager who cuts grass, picks up garbage or simply breaks rocks for 7 hours one day a week learns many things. Among them: if you do not study you will be doing this boring work for the rest of your life; hard work is needed to maintain society; manual labor is hard, and thus those who do it must be respected; “boring” or toiling labor requires just as much attention and effort as “office work”, or mental work, and thus must be respected; some jobs wear humans out faster than others, and thus social safety nets – with different rules – are required to avoid widespread misery.

But in a capitalist system, which is technocratic and not meritocratic, 21st century students are incredibly overburdened by testing and homework.

Of course: this is primarily a result of forcing competition via false scarcities in education and jobs – forcing competition is what free market/neoliberal societies are built upon, of course. The CR recognised this and I relayed Han’s detailing of the enormous explosion in rural school creation.

But Liberal Democratic supporters will insist that schools must remain dull and conservative with nihilistic claims such as: “School is just a way to make sheep; is really just child care, because both parents have to work in order to survive; societal masters are only interested in creating compliant cubicle drones, human robots for factory work, and subservient service industry slaves.” I agree: in capitalist countries.

But in socialist countries, where power has been devolved to workers and away from the 1%/technocratic class, other educational policies ARE possible and ARE implemented. Because the Chinese Communist Party explicitly sought to reduce the influence of schoolteachers, and to reduce China’s longstanding over-admiration for them, it is thus little wonder that schoolteachers across the West have zero interest in teaching the truth about the CR!

A Yellow Vest CR must include major educational reform:

“Exclusive book learning that used mainly the rote method was opposed. During the educational reforms, the concept of education was greatly broadened to include productive labor and many other related activities. Education was no longer limited to reading books inside the classroom; learning could take place in the workshops and on the farms, and many other places. Teachers were not considered to have a monopoly on knowledge. Workers and farmers and soldiers could all impart experiential knowledge to students. In fact, even students might know something the teachers did not know.”

Socialism rests on two pillars: redistribution of money and redistribution of political power. Redistributing political power in the realm of education can have enormously positive impacts on how rural societies view, and benefit from, schooling.

The Yellow Vests want a Cultural Revolution – will it succeed? Right now, I’d say ‘No”

Brexit, the election of Trump and the Yellow Vests – these are all viewed as horrifically negative historical & sociopolitical developments in the West’s fake-leftist and elite circles. The Yellow Vests are yet another “basket of deplorables” who have been rendered insane by… what exactly? Racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism….

Firstly, we should ask, in order to find parallels: did China’s deplorables have these problems of prejudice and “identity politics” when their CR started in 1966? Or what about Iran’s barefooted?

No, neither did – that cannot be disputed – and the reason why is indicative of why I feel the Yellow Vests will not achieve their revolutionary goals:

Iran and China already had governments inspired by socialism when they embarked on their Cultural Revolutions, whereas France does not. State-sponsored efforts to end prejudice is just one of many, many proofs which show how much more politically-advanced China and Iran were when they embarked on their Cultural Revolutions than the Yellow Vests are.

I am not blaming the Yellow Vests: because the West has totally rejected socialism’s advances and ethos – unlike Iran and China – they have many types of reactionary problems which China and Iran did not suffer from as strongly at the time of their CRs.

There is a tremendous amount of political regression among the Yellow Vests and their leaders, who have aims which are merely incremental improvements and not truly a new French order. This was illustrated by my last article, A French cop on why French cops will never join the Yellow Vests – many Vesters not only expect but want the cops to join them… even though it cannot and should not work because they are the devoted dogs of the reactionary order! Whoever heard of a revolution were the forces of order remained unchanged? Is France still stuck in hippie, utopian 1960s thinking?! Perhaps they are… it leads to regression, individualism and nihilism.

This political-cultural backwardness and conservatism of many Yellow Vests cannot cannot be repaired by an 8-part series, nor by protests which only attracted 2% (1.3 million) of the nation on its biggest day (the first Yellow Vest demonstration, on November 17, 2018, – data according to a police union, not the French Interior Ministry).

So when I wrote that “everyone knows” the Yellow Vests are the majority, that is true – the problem is that they don’t act like it!

It is amazing how effectively the French political class is able to suppress polling about the Yellow Vests. This suppression coincided with March 23, when President Emmanuel Macron deployed the army, unveiled even harsher measures of repression and banned of urban demonstrations. The latest poll I can find, from a month ago (even though this is the most important issue in French society) still has their approval rating at 50%, and that follows months of anti-Yellow Vest propaganda.

But being a Yellow Vest and merely supporting the Yellow Vests are two different things entirely. After all, the latter can be appeased even more easily than a right-wing Yellow Vest can be bought off. The Yellow Vests are the cultural majority but not the political majority.

Therefore, what the Yellow Vests are is this: they are the nation’s political vanguard party.

However – there is no “nation” anymore. There is no more political and economic sovereignty in Europe, and that is a concrete, structural, “rule of law” reality and not hyperbole.

The prime adulthood of France, and 41-year old Macron exemplifies this 100%, is full of people who grew up being culturally inculcated into blindly and hysterically supporting not modern socialist democratic ideals, but instead the neoliberal empire known as the European Union, and also the even more undemocratic banking empire known as the Eurozone.

Therefore, there is no “France” for the Yellow Vests to be – as they should – raised upon the People’s shoulders and put into power nationwide; the Yellow Vests, thus, have to be a pan-European movement in order to succeed in their aims. We are talking about an order of magnitude, here.

The reality is that the Yellow Vest movement reflects the same schizophrenia as most Western governments and societies: this is succinctly encapsulated by a favourite phrase and policy of the West’s – “humanitarian intervention” (whatever that is – as though nations were dogs which were humanely euthanised).

Vesters are certainly clearer than most – this is why they are the vanguard party, i.e. the most enlightened local leaders – but they also partially suffer from the tremendous cognitive dissonance and intellectual fog caused by the intersection of European neo-imperialism, bourgeois-centered European Enlightenment ideals, and the undemocratic concepts and political structures of the liberal democratic European Union empire.

Yellow Vests, especially on the right-wing of their spectrum, are often so blinded by their “glorious” view of France’s (bourgeois) “revolutionary history that they have not updated their political thought in 200+ years – they don’t want to admit their revolution was not enough; that they probably need a true revolution before a 2nd revolution; that the CRs of Chain and Iran should be their model.

And yet they do admit this….

Simply review number 7 on the list of their 25 primary demands: “Rewriting a Constitution by the people and for the interest the sovereign people.” It’s the latter part which would require a revolution in French/Western culture because it is obviously rooted in socialist democratic ideals; the people were not sovereign in US and French Revolutions (the only Western nations to have revolutions), as non-Whites, women and the poor, landless masses were all most glaringly excluded, of course.

This “they do but they don’t” is exactly why French society is both “revolutionary” in self-conception but incredibly reactionary in practice.

It would take a Cultural Revolution to sort out these issues, and that is what the Yellow Vests are truly asking for; it is the leftist ones which are willing to slough off the ancient husk of 1789, not the right-wing Vesters.

Any way you look at it, two things are clear: the Yellow Vests still have very far to go, and victory will look like Cultural Revolution.

Series Conclusion

This series emphatically demonstrated that China’s post-1980 economic success did not start with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms but instead was built upon on the Cultural Revolution’s hugely successful creation of human, educational, and economic capital in China’s rural areas.

By focusing on and promoting the values of the rural areas, China has soared past us all today – this is the hidden lesson of the CR and the genius of Maoism.

Han’s book, this series, and the lessons of the Cultural Revolution should have tremendous interest for developing countries – the CR is a blueprint for lifting essentially non-industrial societies into the socioeconomic stratosphere. The blueprint is not provided by the IMF – they have certainly had decades of chances.

The idea that China’s success is due to being a “Western sweatshop” is, it is rarely remembered, merely a way to credit the West for China’s success. No, it is due to Chinese innovations and adaptions of ideas already present around the globe.

A key flaw in Western capitalist allegations that the CR was simply a way for Mao to gain control: if that’s true – what could he have possibly gained by encouraging criticism of Confucius? The CCP was already in control – there was no “pro-Confucian Party” which was taking the CCP’s power. Confucianism is an inherently conservative ideal – why rock that boat? Bring up this point to those who are anti-CR and they will certainly be totally flummoxed.

But criticising Confucianism – which is such a thrillingly productive and superbly admirable philosophy which I have learned much from for years – was a way to pull down the dominant class and replace it with the oppressed classes.

However, Chinese culture remains incredibly Confucian, any Chinese person will tell you. I predict that one day the ubiquitous phrase “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” will be replaced with a regional generalisation of “Confucian Socialism”, and this phrase will describe not just China but include Vietnam, Korea and (hopefully) others. This is exactly the same as how “Iranian Islamic Socialism” is a variant of the larger “Islamic Socialism”. These truths are self-evident, if not yet fully flowered….

When discussing the anti-Confucius campaigns, Han writes: “But it had specific meaning for ordinary people. The major theme of the campaign was to criticize the elitist mentality in Chinese culture. It promoted Mao’s idea that the masses are the motive force of history and that the elite are sometimes stupid while working people are intelligent. These were not empty words. Villagers toiled all year round, supplying the elite with grain, meat and vegetables. But they were made to feel stupid in front of the elite. They did not know how to talk with the elite, and accepted the stigma of stupidity the elite gave to them.”

This idea – that rural Trash are stupid, that urban leaders are right to view themselves as “elite” – is something which has to be remedied in the West, or else Western society can never be whole. The rural-urban divide is the most urgent divide in the West today, but the CR shows it can be resolved.

Unfortunately, because they adhere to capitalism-imperialism, many nation in the West are not trying to be united at all – their people subsist on contempt for “the other” as well as competition to join the 1%, as capitalism-imperialism ceaselessly instructs them.

**********************************

This was the final article in an 8-part series which examined Dongping Han’s book The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village in order to drastically redefine a decade which has proven to be not just the basis of China’s current success, but also a beacon of hope for developing countries worldwide. Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!

Part 1 – A much-needed revolution in discussing China’s Cultural Revolution: an 8-part series

Part 2 – The story of a martyr FOR, and not BY, China’s Cultural Revolution

Part 3 – Why was a Cultural Revolution needed in already-Red China?

Part 4 – How the Little Red Book created a cult ‘of socialism’ and not ‘of Mao’

Part 5 – Red Guards ain’t all red: Who fought whom in China’s Cultural Revolution?

Part 6 – How the socioeconomic gains of China’s Cultural Revolution fuelled their 1980s boom

Part 7 – Ending a Cultural Revolution can only be counter-revolutionary

Part 8 – What the West can learn: Yellow Vests are demanding a Cultural Revolution

[aank88-blog1]

Shared PDF Book Trading Strategies for Capital Markets

Introdution About This Book: In his superbly entertaining and informative book, Hedgehogging,investment guru Barton Biggs quotes Charlie Munger, alter ego ofWarren Buffett and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway: “I have knownno wise person over a broad subject matter who didn’t read all the time—none, zero. Now I know all kinds of shrewd people who by staying withina narrow area can do very well without reading. But investment is a broadarea. So if you think you’re going to be good at it and not read all thetime, you have a different idea than I do....You’d be amazed at howmuch Warren [Buffett] reads. You’d be amazed at how much I read.” In its2005 listing of the world’s 400 richest people, Forbes described Munger asa self-made man with a net worth at $1.7 billion, making him number 387.This is a book about trading and financial markets that takesMunger’s advice seriously. It borrows insights from many disciplines andcasts a wide net in the search for perspective. It uses financial history todevelop an understanding of market institutions and to provide a filter forviewing current market practice. It uses finance theory as a framework foranalysis and to build a toolbox that traders can use as they battle in thetrenches, which is where it really counts. In this respect, the book seeks toplace the markets and trading strategies in the bigger picture of the globalpolitical economy. It describes how the capital markets work in practice;what the drivers are, how they can be recognized, and how sensible trading strategies can be developed and implemented. Above all, the bookunderstands markets to be dynamic real-time reflectors of the world inwhich we live, rather than mathematical abstractions.Financial markets are rational (but not perfect) discounters of events,information, and trends. However, the book presents an argument (alongwith evidence) that some bets in the market are better than others. That is,1IntroductionCopyright © 2007 by Joseph Benning. Click here for terms of use.there are some bets that have a demonstrably better chance of success,with less risk. The market is not a strictly random walk. While some maybe fooled by randomness, in Nicholas Taleb’s memorable phrase, thisbook argues that the opposite can be the case as well: Nonrandom eventsare sometimes incorrectly attributed to chance. The result is that valuableopportunities are missed. The underlying thrust of strategy should be totake a broad enough view of events to be able to recognize favorable conditions and capitalize on them, a modus operandi similar to card countingat blackjack, but infinitely more complex.The book is divided into three sections. The first presents a conceptual framework for market analysis. It can be thought of as a road map tothe discussion that follows. The second section explores core elements ofthe capital markets. It describes market organization; key elements of thesecurities and derivatives that account for the bulk of the instrumentstraded, and key price drivers. With the liberal use of examples, it goes onto elucidate different trading strategies and how to implement them,depending on market view. Finally, the last section considers risk management, reviews some recent developments in behavioral finance research,offers a view of how markets function, and sums up.THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKThe conceptual framework for the book sees financial markets not asmathematical abstractions but as engines of discovery that reflect the economic, political, and social forces that shape—and are shaped by—thesocieties in which they reside. Accordingly, the model presented to organize this discussion is a qualitative one. It portrays the markets in terms ofcycles, big ones and little ones. The little ones are business cycles. The bigones can be sparked by major events, or they can gather force as trends inapparently unrelated areas coalesce and produce discontinuities that resultin rapid and unexpected change. These discontinuities can produce effectsthat ripple through financial markets for years or even decades to come.The idea that ripple effects can affect prices down the road years laterin a predictable way is controversial. Many, if not most, finance theorists(though not practitioners) subscribe to the idea that markets quickly, almostinstantaneously, absorb and discount new information. Market prices are acombination of random noise and reaction to new information. The newinformation is thought to be quickly reflected in market prices, which area reasonably accurate assessment of fundamental values, on average, overtime. If prices do fall temporarily out of line, arbitrageurs will buy thecheap securities and sell the expensive ones until their prices revert back totrue fundamental values. Sometimes price are high; sometimes they arelow, but over time and on average they are priced about right. Markets aremean-reverting, or at least sufficiently so, so that no one is able to beat the2 Introductionaverage on a risk-adjusted basis over time. That, in a nutshell, describes thecore of the efficient market hypothesis (EMH).This book has no serious quarrel with the general thrust of that argument. Considerable research has shown that most new information is in factdiscounted fairly quickly. Among the more compelling evidence offered isthe fact that no one has shown a way in which the market can be beaten systematically over time, after adjusting for risk. The view developed here isfrom a different perspective. It is that there are market tipping points wherethe odds of generating trading profits are better than average. In that sense,a successful trader is like a blackjack player who is adept at counting thecards. But there is an important difference. Successful card counters are routinely escorted out of the casino. In the financial markets the players aretypically given broad hints about policies likely to affect market prices.Knowing how to interpret those hints and act on them is critical to successful trading. But that requires understanding the historical forces that drivemarkets and the economic, political, and social institutions that guide them.Note the idea that there are historical forces in play. The Danish philosopherKierkegaard is credited with making the observation that life must be livedforward, but can only be understood backwards. So we must understand history. As history unfolds, so do markets. The pace is uneven, filled with discontinuities. But understanding history provides both a framework and alens for viewing and understanding market behavior.This book suggests that while most information is rapidly incorporated into market prices, not all of it is, at least not immediately. Sometimes it takes the market rather a while to fully incorporate newinformation into the price structure. Recognizing and acting on situationslike this is the trader’s equivalent of card counting. But that is difficult formany traders to do. There is always the uncomfortable feeling of the trainhaving left the station. And it is difficult to act without putting themarket’s behavior in some kind of recognizable context that gives structure to decision making. Accordingly, the market model presented in thefirst chapter is designed to help structure decision making in such a waythat the odds of success are better than they ordinarily would be.After the model is presented, the first section goes on to detail economic, political, social, and institutional developments that have shaped(and continue to shape) the capital markets. An important part of the story,often forgotten, is that history, institutions, and culture matter. Financialmarkets do not exist in a vacuum. They function in the rough and tumbleof the real world; they have long memories, pace Harry Markowitz, andthey exhibit recurrent patterns of behavior. It is temptingly easy to beseduced by the four most dangerous words in the English language: “Thistime it’s different.” Trying to trade without putting market behavior insome sort of political, institutional, and historical context is simply askingfor trouble.Introduction 3INSTRUMENTS, INSTITUTIONS, AND RISKThe second section of the book concerns the instruments and institutionsof the marketplace. It discusses key characteristics of the major instruments in the major market sectors. Treasury notes, bills, bonds, and repurchase agreements are covered on the debt side, as are Chicago Board ofTrade Treasury futures and federal funds. Eurodollar futures contracts arebriefly discussed. The mechanics of swaps and options are considered. Onthe equity side indexes such as the Dow Jones 30 Industrials, the S&P500, and the Russell 2000 are analyzed, as well as the companion futurescontracts that trade against them. Gold, though not a capital market instrument, is followed by many market professionals and is regarded by manyas the canary in the coal mine. It is also central to the story of the formation of modern capital markets. Accordingly, some notes on gold tradingare included as well.On the debt side of the equation, considerable time is spent on Fedpolicy, the yield curve, and Treasury futures contracts. Pricing modelsbased on the yield curve and Fed policy are developed. Market structureand the mechanics of Treasury auctions come in for some discussion.Some rationales for adopting trading strategies based on monetary policyare explored. Methods of strategy implementation are examined as well.The chapter on basis trading reviews the traditional cash-and-carry modelusing Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) Treasury bond and note futurescontracts. Specifics of the delivery process and its relevance to basis trading are considered using numerous examples.With respect to equities, the book reviews some of the more prominent stock pricing models and criticisms of them. It examines three prominent U.S. equity indexes and the methodology used to construct them andtheir usefulness as benchmarks. It discusses important structural features ofequity markets, requirements for exchange listing, valuation theories, andtheories of market timing. It also takes a look at exchange traded funds(ETFs), their pricing and uses. In addition to cash market indexes and ETFsthis section devotes a chapter to equity index futures contracts. Particularattention is paid to the cash-and-carry model. Several examples are provided for calculating the fair value of equity index futures contracts, giventhe cash index price. Strategies discussed for equity indexes include program trading, growth versus value, trading sectors against broad-basedindexes, and correlation trading against other indexes and ETFs.The third and final section of the book surveys some recent developments, touches on value at risk (VaR) as a framework for risk management, discusses gold markets, considers market volatility, and examinessome of the more important criticisms behavioral finance has leveled atthe neoclassical model. Finally, it offers a summary and suggests thatthere is an art to trading that combines analysis and interpretation.

[fmservers]

Make people valuable again

Vint Cerf Contributor

Share on Twitter

Vinton Gray Cerf, a co-founder of i4j -- innovation for jobs, is widely hailed as one of "the fathers of the Internet". Cerf was a manager for the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding groups to develop TCP/IP technology and currently serves as the Chief Evangelist of the Internet for Google.

David Nordfors Contributor

David Nordfors is the co-chair and co-founder of the i4j Innovation for Jobs Summit together with Vint Cerf.

More posts by this contributor

The future of business is good jobs as a service

The future of work is 5 billion customers looking for a good job

There is a disconnection between the pace and progress of the technical achievements made by innovators and entrepreneurs and the ways in which those technologies have added to human happiness.

We have increased our technological powers many times and still we are not happier; we do not have more time for the things we find meaningful.

We could use our powers for making each other — and thereby ourselves — more valuable, but instead we are fearing to lose our jobs to machines and be considered worthless by the economy.  The link between better technology and better lives overall has become so confusing that many people no longer reflect upon its existence.

We are co-founders of i4j — Innovation for Jobs, an eclectic community of thought leaders that has been exchanging ideas since 2012 about how innovation can disrupt unemployment and create better jobs. We believe we have found an approach for doing so that we lay forth in our new book, “The people centered economy – the new ecosystem for work.” The book presents a system of ideas, ranging from helicopter perspective down to details of scenarios. It puts theory in perspective with a number of relevant real-life case examples written by i4j members, founders of major companies, such as LinkedIn, startup CEOs, investors, foundation directors and social entrepreneurs.

The problem today, we suggest, is that our innovation economy is not primarily about making people more valuable; it is instead about reducing costs.

The main danger is easy to summarize: when workers are seen as a cost (which is now the case), cost-saving, efficient technologies will compete to lower their cost and thereby their value. The “better” the innovation, the lower their value. People are struggling to stay valuable in a changing world, and innovation is not helping them, except for the chosen few. The need to be valued and to be in demand are part of our human nature. Innovation can, and should, make people more valuable.

The economy is about people who need, want, and value each other. When we need each other more, the economy can grow. When we need each other less, it shrinks. We need innovation that makes people need each other more.

The purpose of innovation should be a sustainable economy, where we work with people we like, are valued by people we do not know and provide for the people we love

If innovation does this, we will prosper.

The present “task-centered “economy that sees people as cost is plagued by many symptoms of its lethal illness. We present several in the book, here is one of them.

The rise of the working middle class boosted by Roosevelt’s “New Deal” has been all but wiped out. People like blaming their political opponents for these kinds of things but the wealth gap has been growing steadily, since 1980, under Republicans and Democrats alike. No, this is beyond politics.

The root cause for all this is the very essence of our task-centered economy: placing tasks, products and other things at the center of the value proposition instead of people. It seems very natural to see it this way, because, after all,  you want your house painted and there are painters who want to paint it – how can it work any other way? Yet, wanting things done better and cheaper, combined with innovation that makes that happen, is the cause of the troubles.

The future of work is 5 billion customers looking for a good job

Companies will cut labor costs, as automation and offshoring lets them. When people earn less they will have less money to spend. The companies adapt to their shrinking purses by innovating still cheaper products and services and cutting labor costs even more. It is a spiral pointing downward toward a point zero where people earn and spend zero.

At the heart of this problem is the old saying, “A dollar saved is a dollar earned.” This maxim rings true to you and me in daily life, and it applies to companies. But paradoxically, in the economy, the opposite is true: a dollar saved is actually a dollar lost.

One person’s earning is always other people’s spending and if everyone spends less, people earn – on average – less.  Economies run on the spending and re-spending of the same money. Velocity counts. Economic growth is killed by companies that are competing solely for profits. We are not saying it’s wrong to save and not be wasteful, it’s good and necessary, but that is not earning. Saying that saving and earning are the same introduces the paradox and is a recipe for a failed economy.

It might not be possible to solve the growth-profit paradox in a task-centered economy, because it is inherent in the mindset. This mindset always looks at work and asks what is the most cost-efficient way of doing it. What keeps the economy from collapsing is the inherent limits of automating work. Workers have remained a necessary, if undesired, cost. But what will be the outcome if artificial intelligence allows almost all work to be automated? Now the task-centered mindset creates an implosion. With a task-centered mindset, innovation is set to kill economies.

Is the AI and machine learning revolution that seem to threaten our jobs different from previous industrial revolutions? The times are different but you may be shocked by the similarity in the patterns of change. Read the following excerpt of original text from the Communist Manifesto, where Bourgeoisie is replaced with Internet Entrepreneurs, Proletariat with On-Demand Workers, Civilization with Digital Economy, and Revolution with Disruption.

“Internet entrepreneurship cannot exist without constant disruption of markets, bringing uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions. Internet entrepreneurship has created the modern working class — the on-demand workers, who must sell themselves in bits and pieces. They have become a commodity, exposed to the whims of the market. Their work has lost all individual character, and all charm. It is only the most simple and most easily acquired work that is required of them. The on-demand worker’s production cost is limited almost entirely to his living costs. But the price of a commodity is in the long run equal to its production cost. Therefore, the more the individual character disappears from his work, the wage decreases in proportion. The lower middle class will gradually become on-demand workers, partly because their specialized skills are rendered worthless by new methods of production.”

The accuracy of this message from the grave is nothing less than spooky. The analogy is clear, as is the message it sends: Internet entrepreneurship is the new bourgeoisie.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) can provide basic security, but it can’t replace work. People will always need to be able to depend on strangers — even adversaries. The day people no longer need to work, why should they want to depend on people they don’t know or don’t like? Utopian ideas about UBI don’t provide an answer. Meaningful paid work does and is the glue that holds societies together. The utopian UBI discussion is just another symptom of lost bearings. We start debating which jobs can’t be done by machines, whether machines can become exactly like people, whether machines should pay taxes, and so on. These are all interesting philosophical questions, but discussing them will hardly solve the practical problem: innovation is disrupting society. We need practical solutions. The first requirement is to be able to see them.

A key reason behind the confusion is that lack of perspective; reality needs a new lens. We can’t explain what we see because the good old ideas that once made things understandable are now making the world unintelligible instead. This happens often in history — for example, people in the middle ages had long thought that the earth was the center of the universe, but as scientists traced their movements in the sky, the more complex and incomprehensible their orbits became. But simply by switching perspective, placing the sun at the center, complicated orbits were transformed into nearly-circular ellipses of great simplicity. This was the “Copernican Revolution”.

We suggest that doing a similar switch: that moving people to the center can be equally constructive. A “people-centered economy” view could enable us to simplify the innovation economy and engineer it better just as the “Copernican revolution” did for physics and astronomy. The economy is all about people, after all, so it seems only natural to place us at the center. And it does indeed make the economy look simpler, as shown in the figure.

Our present task-centered view splits people in two: a worker-persona who earns money on a labor market, and a consumer persona who spends the money on a consumer market: a disconnected reality in which we are living double lives! It might seem like the time- tested and obvious view, but it is actually complex, disconnected, and wrong.

Switch to the people-centered lens and we are whole again. The labor and consumer markets are replaced by a single market where people are offered two kinds of services, one for earning money and another for spending it. It is a less confusing picture. By definition, organizations serve us, not the other way around. They are the ecosystem in which we are embedded, which helps us create and exchange value between each other.

Just by switching to a people-centered lens, things fall more neatly into place around us:  

A people centered economy has a simple and handy definition of the economy: People create and exchange value, served by organizations.

Seen through the people-centered lens, the thorny question of the future of work is rephrased: “Is AI-innovation being applied more to earning or to spending?” The simple answer is “spending” and the straightforward conclusion is that we need more innovation that helps people earn. Through the people-centered lens an obvious “rule number one” of a sustainable innovation economy becomes clear to see:

We need as much innovation that helps us earn as there is innovation that helps us spend.

Today, we are surrounded by excellent innovation for spending, but there is very little good innovation for earning and none for earning a livelihood.  

We need startups that compete to innovate a really good earning-service, perhaps something like this:

“Dear Customer, we offer to help you earn a better living in more meaningful ways. We will use AI to tailor a job to your unique skills, talents, and passions. We will match you in teams with people you like working with. You can choose between kinds of meaningful work. You will earn more than you do today.   We will charge a commission. Do you want our service?”

The good news is that the world’s labor market is ready to be disrupted by innovative new ways to satisfy the customers’ needs and wants to earn a good livelihood.

And the market opportunity for this is huge! Here is an estimate: According to Gallup’s chairman Jim Clifton, of some five billion people in the world who are of working age, three billion want to work and earn income. Most of them want a full-time job with steady pay, but only 1.3 billion have one. Out of these 1.3 billion people with jobs, only 200 million are “engaged” in what they do for a living — i.e., they enjoy what they do and look forward to each working day. These lucky few, however, are outnumbered 2:1 by those who are disengaged, expressing displeasure and even undermining the work of others. The remainder of the population are simply disengaged from what they are doing, dragging their feet through the work day.

This is the sad state of the global workforce that creates roughly a hundred trillion dollars’ worth of products and services every year. Humanity is running at a fraction of its capacity. Imagine using modern information technology to tailor jobs to every one of the three billion people wanting to work — work that is well matched with their unique skills, talents, and passions; work in which they are assigned to valuable tasks and partnered with people they like to work with. In such a world, the average world citizen would be able to generate several times the per-person value created today. How much more value would they create than the unhappy, mismatched workforce of today?

A doubling of value creation is surely low, but even that figure adds $100 trillion in value to the world economy. If the job providers charged the same commission as Uber does, 25 percent, on the incomes people earned through their services, this would generate revenues of $50 trillion from commissions alone, plus additional revenues from add-on services, such as liability insurance and health benefits.

The Untapped $140 Trillion Innovation For Jobs Market

At this size, tailoring better ways for people to earn their livelihood would be the single largest market in the world. Even at only one percent commission, hardly noticeable for the earners, the potential market size is two trillion dollars. We think this should be an attractive opportunity for entrepreneurs, investors and governments to explore.

“Tailoring jobs” is a virgin market waiting to happen, because previously we did not have the technology for it. But now, since only a year or two, we have good enough tools. Increasing smartphone penetration and new capacities like cloud computing and big data analytics could, in principle, tailor rewarding jobs for every person on earth. Even if this is unrealistic today, it is still a huge potential market, even if it is applied to only a fraction of the world population looking for a good job. It will be wrong to assume that the workers must belong the well-educated elite, because they are already well served with good job offers. Quite the opposite, The big market for AI-tailored jobs is the vast majority of excluded, un- and underemployed people who are lacking the opportunity to live up to their abilities.

A simple innovation that helps many millions of these people can be a much better business than something advanced that helps the already well-served. It is similar to how, before the first industrial revolution, the most successful manufacturers sold expensive things to rich people.

With the introduction of mass production this changed in an, at the time, surprising and unforeseeable way, when selling cheap things to the masses became the new highway to success. Back then, the people running the old economies could hardly imagine how selling crafted goods to people with thin wallets could be better business than selling them to kings.

Today, as we are introducing mass-personalized goods and services, many business leaders will have great difficulties imagining how creating special jobs for people with little income can be better business than tailoring jobs for the engineers that companies compete for.  

We are at the beginning of a revolution in strength finding, education, matchmaking, HR, and new opportunities in a long-tail labor market.

The i4j community includes entrepreneurs and investors who are interested in exploring this opportunity and we are welcoming more to join. An ecosystem of critical mass can open the doors to a people-centered economy and we intend to help it happen.

  Via Jonathan Shieber https://techcrunch.com

[thechasefiles]

The Chase Files Daily Newscap 6/19/2018

Good Morning #realdreamchasers! Here is The Chase Files Daily News Cap for Tuesday June 19TH 2018. Remember you can read full articles by purchasing Daily Nation Newspaper (DN), via Barbados Today (BT) or Barbados Government Information Services (BGIS).

MIA: CLOSER OECS TIES - Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has served notice that Barbados wants to deepen political and economic cooperation with other islands in the Eastern Caribbean. In her first regional speech since assuming office, Mottley yesterday told the 65th Meeting of the Organisation of the Eastern Caribbean States’ (OECS) Authority that her administration wanted mutually beneficial solutions to various issues, including climate change, freedom of movement, and transportation challenges. The Prime Minister’s suggestions at the Harbour Club Hilton Hotel, Gros Islet, St Lucia, were immediately welcomed by St Lucia’s Prime Minister Allen Chastanet and new OECS chairman, St Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves. “Much of what we face is common, the challenges that have confronted us are similar, but in spite of the cooperation between our people . . . we have not yet seen the level of inter-governmental cooperation that matches that which our people have been engaged in at a personal level and at the level of our private sector,” Mottley said. She added that it was important to solve climate change issues, pointing to the influx of Sargassum seaweed as an opportunity for economic benefit “rather than treating to it as a nuisance that affects our coasts and our tourism industry”. Freedom of movement was another area of concern for the Prime Minister. “Wherever I go in the Eastern Caribbean there are those who are concerned about the manner in which they are allowed to move within our ports of entry. “This is one of the first areas of priority that I would wish for us to discuss . . . . If you are in a port of entry for six or eight hours there is no reason to be treated as a prisoner of war,” she said. Mottley was keen to discuss the way forward for regional airline LIAT. She also said: “It is time that we stop talking about inter-island ferry transportation and do it. “My people in Barbados stand ready to engage in this conversation. What the modalities will be ultimately will be determined by our conversation and by our flexibility. We are family and as family we must be prepared to prioritise discussions among ourselves on the things that matter most,” she said. Gonsalves said “strategically it is important for Barbados to link with the OECS in the best way possible”. “We have full freedom of movement in the OECS and I think it is going to be easy for us to do it with Barbados,” he said. Chastanet, who preceded Gonsalves as OECS chairman, said OECS Heads and Mottley would discuss regional and international issues, and explore opportunities for increased cooperation between the OECS and Barbados. (DN)

REMAINING GOVERNMENT SENATORS SWORN IN -  The two remaining Senators appointed by Government, Kay McConney and Rawdon Adams, took the Oath of Office this morning before Governor General Dame Sandra Mason during a brief ceremony at Government House. Senator McConney, who has also been appointed minister of Innovation, Science and Smart Technology, is a former diplomat who served as Barbados’ Consul General in Toronto. Senator Adams, the son of late Prime Minister Tom Adams, is a finance professional of over 20 years’ experience. The proceedings were witnessed by Cabinet Secretary Cecile Humphrey, other officials and relatives of the two new Senators. The swearing in comes on the heels of a recent amendment made to the Constitution to accommodate the fact that they have not been resident here for the past 12 months. (BT)

PSVS WANT AN URGENT REVIEW OF BUS FARES IN LIGHT OF FUEL TAX IMPOSITION – Private public service vehicles (PSV) operators are calling for an urgent review of domestic bus fares in light of the new fuel tax levy announced by Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Mia Mottley in last Monday’s mini Budget. The new tax, which takes effect on July 1, replaces the road tax and is expected to raise $80 million annually. It is to be levied at a rate of 40 cents per litre of petrol, 40 cents per litre of diesel and five cents per litre of kerosene. Delivering her mini-Budget in Parliament, Prime Minister Mottley however announced that commercial vehicles will still be required to register on an annual basis, but will now pay 50 per cent of the previous fees paid as road tax. In a joint statement released today, the Alliance Owners of Public Transport and the Association of Public Transport Operators complained that they were not consulted on the measures, which are expected to have a significant impact on the sector. Describing it as an “unfortunate oversight” the two associations said they were “eager to work with the relevant authorities” and were hoping to have talks with the Prime Minister, as well as the Minister of Transport and Works Dr William Duguid before July 1. “The new fuel tax will be of great concern to us, so we want to speak about how this will affect our business in relation to our operations generally,” said spokeswoman Ingrid King, while pointing out that in terms of the annual registration, the provisions announced so far applied to commercial vehicles. “Traditionally our sector is treated a bit different because of its unique structure so we do need to get some clarification on that. If the broad term of ‘commercial vehicles’ applies to us, or if we are going to be treated in a different subset,” she explained. As for the controversial issue of a hike in bus fares, the spokeswoman said: “It is a call for a review. We have a position as to where we feel the fares should be, but of course all of this is said in the context that Government has a responsibility to do reviews in an appropriate time.” Back in December, the International Monetary Fund had recommended an increase in local bus fares from $2 to $5, while zeroing in on the operations of the state-run Transport Board, which it said were currently restricted in terms of revenue collection. However, the PSV spokeswoman acknowledged that the final decision on any such increase was up to Government, while arguing that the pending increase in taxes would severely affect their bottom line. “They [Government] are the ones that have the ability to control the fares. The fares have been where they are at for roughly about six years and we have given them reasons and several proposals of things that can ameliorate what is happening in the industry.” The operators are also seeking immediate clarification on a myriad of other issues, including permits, changes to bus routes and duty-free concessions. “We are not saying that there might be any one answer that is proposed or that is given, but if we look at it in context, . . . we can make the operations smoother and less painful,” she said, adding that “transportation is the life blood and it is important to get these issues ironed out”. When contacted this evening, Dr Duguid told Barbados TODAY a meeting has been scheduled for Wednesday with the operators to discuss their concerns. He said an update would be provided following those talks. (BT)

PORT CONTRACTS UNDER REVIEW – The Barbados Port Inc. (BPI) is on the verge of electing a new board, and several multimillion-dollar contracts for work at the Bridgetown Port will remain under review. Though the Government promises the examination won’t be a “witch-hunt”, Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey said it was necessary to ensure the interests of Barbadians were being protected. Humphrey’s comments came yesterday at Shed Four of the Bridgetown Port after he completed a tour of the Port, along with numerous officials including BPI’s chief executive officer (CEO) David Jean-Marie. One of the contracts, which he said was worth close to $60 million, involves a company, Berth 5 Project Limited, and the other with Global Ports Holding Plc (Global Ports) for the extension of Berth 6 is worth $190 million. “We’re in the process now of creating the new board for the port and that should be done this week, by latest next week. “It’s not our intention to have a witch-hunt on anybody but as a Government you want to review those contracts, especially where those contracts are so significant . . . we just want to make sure at the end of the day Barbadians benefit from it,” Humphrey said.  This contract issue was first highlighted by Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who questioned the last administration’s motives in relation to these contracts and asked Attorney General Dale Marshall to look into them. However, in a subsequent response, the Democratic Labour Party defended its positions. The former governing party said that under the arrangement with Global Ports, Barbados was obtaining an immediate loan of US$110 million without the need for a sovereign guarantee or reliance on central government funding. Global Ports was given a 30-year concession for berth 6, whereby a concession fee of US$34 million is paid to BPI upfront, and during the course of the concession agreement, there would be revenue sharing. The loan would facilitate the construction of the 1 200 feet of additional berthing capacity to expand its cruise and growing trans-shipment business. During his port visit Humphrey also viewed the staff gym, numerous sheds and the proposed Berth 6. He praised the port for its efficiency. The BPI’s CEO made it clear, however, that no construction had started and the matters were on hold. He spoke about the organisation’s great relationship with Barbados Workers’ Union, and boasted of its modern equipment. He said he was looking forward to working with the new minister and board. This tour preceded Humphrey’s visit to the nearby Bridgetown Fisheries Complex to familiarise himself with the issues there. (DN)

MARKET ILLS – The Bridgetown Fisheries Complex is bursting at the seams, and vendors are crying out for relief. Led by president of the Barbados National Union of Fisherfolk Organisations (BARNUFO), Vernel Nicholls, they put their pleas for relief to Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy Kirk Humphrey, who toured the facility yesterday. His visit came days after several fisherfolk made headlines after they were shut out after an inspector closed stalls because of unsanitary conditions. “I’ve been in this market from very early over the years. For instance, the boning hall, that is full. Then there is another area in the back and that is full. So what happens is that sometimes people have to get in here early and basically fight to get space to operate. “One time that didn’t happen, so I know the market is now holding more people than it initially was holding and that is because of the amount of people . . . ,” Nicholls said. She said the growth meant well for the industry as BARNUFO had been working assiduously to attract more young people, some of whom were working alongside their parents. Humphrey, accompanied by Permanent Secretary Esworth Reid, acting senior superintendent of markets Gregory Payne and other officials, said this was both good and bad. “It’s good in that it’s a [sign] of entrepreneurial development and that people are still interested in the fishing industry. But if there has been that expansion, then there is a need to review the physical space that people actually have to come to work in.” The upset vendors also argued that the closures were happening too often because of the inaction of general workers, who they claimed were not doing their jobs. A distraught Sandra Hinds recalled the money she lost after she sat idle for about four hours last Friday, one of the busiest work days. “I angry and I talking the truth, I lost a lot of money that day . . . . This thing must come to an end,” she lamented.  Paulette Noel, who works in the boning station, said she was disgusted that when the general workers cleaned, they did so without using disinfectant. In response, Humphrey pointed out the poor infrastructure and highlighted areas which needed repairing. “These conditions are not fit for anybody and if there is anything that we must do and do in short order, is to improve the conditions in which people have to come to work and sell fish,” he said. He added a review was needed and promised to meet with fisherfolk to hear all their concerns.  (DN)

WOLRD HEALTH ORGANIZATION CLASSIFIES VIDEO GAMING AS A DISORDER – Video gaming can be addictive in the same way as cocaine or gambling, the World Health Organization said Monday in a much-anticipated update of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). “After consulting with experts across the world, and reviewing evidence in an exhaustive manner, we decided that this condition should be added,” Shekhar Saxena, director of the WHO’s department of mental health and substance abuse, told the news agency AFP. Online and offline “gaming disorder” is grouped with “disorders due to substance use or addictive behaviours” in the ICD’s 11th edition, the first major revision in nearly three decades. The wording of the new entries has been known since January when the WHO announced that problem gaming would be recognized as a pathological condition. Key symptoms include “impaired control” — notably the inability to stop playing — and focusing on the game to the exclusion of everything else. “The person does so much gaming that other interests and activities are ignored, including sleeping and eating,” Saxena said by phone. In extreme cases, gamers unable to pry themselves away from a screen drop out of school, lose jobs, and become cut off from family and non-gaming friends. Symptomatic behaviour must continue for at least a year before it is considered dangerously unhealthy, according to the new classification. Some 2.5 billion people — one-in-three worldwide — play some form of free-to-play screen game, especially on cell phones, but the disorder only affects a “small minority”, said Saxena. “We are not saying that all gaming is pathological.” The games industry raked in $108 billion dollars worldwide in 2017, more than double movie box-office receipts, according to Superdata, which tracks the games and interactive media sector. Nearly 40 per cent of those sales are in East Asia, especially China and South Korea. Other important markets include the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Brazil. In South Korea and the United States, clinics have sprung up to treat video game addiction, along with community and online support groups. So-called “shooter games” such as Fortnite — described on the support website Game Quitters as the “hottest game in the world” — are either played online or on offline consoles. The inclusion of “gaming disorder” in WHO’s revised catalogue of diseases met with resistance, both from industry and some experts. “The WHO process lacks transparency, is deeply flawed, and lacks scientific support,” Michael Gallagher, president and CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, said in a statement in March. In a study to be published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions, a group of 36 researchers said there was insufficient evidence to warrant the new category. “Given the gravity of diagnostic classification and its wider social impact, we urge our colleagues at the WHO to err on the side of caution for now and postpone the formalization,” they wrote in a study reviewing academic literature. The ICD identifies about 55,000 separate injuries, diseases, conditions and causes of death, and is widely used as a benchmark for diagnoses and health insurance.  (BT)

EASY ENTRY – The newly elected Mia Mottley-led administration has abolished the “illegal” visa requirement for Haitian nationals entering Barbados. Telling Barbados TODAY this evening he was shocked when he learned over the weekend that such a requirement was in place, Minister of Home Affairs Edmund Hinkson said with Haiti being a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), there was no logical reason to impose visa requirements on its citizens. “It should not have been on in the first place. I was shocked to learn that on Saturday,” Hinkson said. “That is clear law . . . that was absolutely incorrect. If Haiti is a member of CARICOM and the Treaty of Chaguaramas speaks to non-discrimination and equal treatment, how can you have put on visa requirements on Haitians? Why do we do this to our own people?” Hinkson also revealed that his ministry was in the process of preparing a white paper on immigration with a view to deepening the integration movement and this country’s relationship with the rest of the region. “We are going to look clearly at reforming the immigration legislation of Barbados as well as the policies of it. Clearly our Immigration Act is outdated,” he said, going on to make reference to a section of the legislation which bars “imbeciles and mentally and physically handicapped persons” from entering the country. “We have been mandated to look at that. I mean, you would have heard Prime Minister [of St Vincent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph] Gonsalves was reported in the press about two weekends ago as saying that Barbados and Trinidad are the worse culprits in terms of offending . . . the Treaty of Chaguaramas in terms of how we treat CARICOM nationals. We have to look at all of that,” the Minister of Home Affairs said. He insisted that Barbados ought to respect the regional conventions and treaties that it has signed, while stressing that with CARICOM being the only region in the world with which Barbados has a trade surplus of over 50 per cent, it was important that the island addresses its relationship with the rest of the Caribbean. Hinkson also argued that Barbados must play a leadership role in CARICOM, especially since it has lead responsibility for the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). “Unfortunately, over the past ten years of Democratic Labour Party administration, relations with intra-Caribbean declined when they should have gone forward. After the 2007 [cricket] World Cup we had tremendous cooperation in terms of travel between CARICOM countries for CARICOM nationals “Clearly we have a duty as Barbadians to the Caribbean to now advance relations with CARICOM nationals. Clearly our immigration policies and legislation have to be part of that reform,” the minister said. (BT)

CONFESSIONS MUST BE VIDEOTAPES – Electronic recording of confession statements by police is now mandatory. This was disclosed by attorney Andrew Pilgrim yesterday during an Evidence Act Seminar organised by the Supreme Court at the Radisson Aquatica Resort. He made the point to Australian legal scholar, Stephen Odger, who is in Barbados to update the local legal fraternity on developments in the area of case law in Australia. Odger was speaking to the local judiciary, magistrates, attorneys, and staff of the Department of Public Prosecutions about the positive effect of video recording confession statements in Australia, a practice which Chief Justice Sir Marston Gibson said afterwards, had “tremendous implications” for Barbados. But while the Chief Justice was unsure about whether the new provision in the Evidence Act had in fact been proclaimed, Pilgrim told the media on the sidelines that police were aware of the change and electronic recording was being done since December. He said: “The days of moving through without confession evidence being electronically recorded are now over. That is the effect of the law effective December 11.” The outspoken Queen’s Counsel added: “My big concern about the Evidence Act was the impact of having all our confessions admissible without recording and I have been advocating for that from the time the act was passed in September 1994.” He suggested that last year’s judgment handed down by the Caribbean Court of Justice in the case of convicted Barbadians Vincent Edwards and Richard Haynes may have forced the hand of Parliament. (DN)

BROKEN DREAM – An afternoon cruise aboard the popular party boat MV Dream Chaser came to a bloody end yesterday because of a stabbing incident that sent passengers into a state of shock and panic. The four-hour ISSA VYB cruise was coming to an end at around 4:50 p.m. and the vessel was preparing to dock at Cavans Lane in Bridgetown when things turned ugly. Barbados TODAY understands that an altercation among a group of men escalated, and one patron broke a glass bottle and repeatedly struck another cruiser, leaving him battered and bloodied. A series of videos which have gone viral on social media capture the attack, with some of the recordings showing a group of men assaulting a youngster while a woman can be heard in the background screaming, while other videos show at least two men bleeding profusely. The promoters of the event swiftly took to Instagram to apologize for the incident in a post which read: “We the host of ISSA VYB would like to apologize for the unforeseen event which took place causing the cruise to end abruptly. We also hope that no one was hurt in the midst of those uncalled for actions.” While police continue to investigate the circumstances that led to the bloody skirmish, captain and part-owner of the MV Dream Chaser John Moore told Barbados TODAY management of the vessel was angry over the stabbing. Moore also suggested the attack was the culmination of a dispute which began long before cruisers boarded the vessel. “The incident that took place is pretty much something that has been going on within the society, which is apparently a group of guys who came on board who had [past grievances]. It just happened they ended up on the vessel yesterday together,” Moore said. “As management and a businessperson we have put a lot into this vessel. The Barbadian public comes out and enjoy themselves and they felt bad, as well as my business partners. “We are not happy with what took place because this is now six months that we were on the water and we put a lot into the boat, so having an incident like this extended to the public in the worse way is not something we are happy with.” Moore said as a result of yesterday’s stabbing his management team had decided that from now on all drinks would be served in plastic cups, placing a virtual ban on serving bottled drinks. “As management we sat down last night and we came to an agreement that we will do our part in terms of trying to deal with the perpetrators that caused the disturbance on board. “Just to make the public feel more comfortable in moving forward, one of the things that caused the problem yesterday was having bottles on board where the bars were selling drinks with bottles. We have made a decision that we will no longer accept bottles on board to the patrons. All drinks will now have to be transferred from the bar into plastic and there will be no exceptions,” he said. Moore revealed a maximum of eight security guards were assigned to the boat but said “before the security could actually get around to this situation, it had already escalated”. “When something gets to that point where people are running all over the place you really aren’t sure what is happening. It is hard to contain a situation when you are not sure where it is coming from. That was the problem.  If it was something that we saw unfolding our security could have dealt with it early,” he stressed, while hinting at even tighter security on future cruises. “Moving forward from here incidents will happen but it is how you deal with them. This one got out of hand and we obviously have to look at security. We will sit down with our security and assess what happened and whatever changes have to be made we at Dream Chaser will make them to ensure that going forward the public is satisfied. “It would make the cruise boat look bad to some extent, however, the public have to be reassured that changes will be made to ensure safety. We want the public to be happy when they come on board our boat and promoters will be comfortable doing work with us,” Moore stressed. (BT)

ST. MICHAEL MAN MISSING AFTER JOLLY ROGER CRUISE – A St Michael man is still missing after failing to return from a Jolly Roger cruise over the weekend. He is 49-year-old Andrew King of Goodland Main Road. Police Public Relations Officer Acting Inspector Rodney Inniss told Barbados TODAY King was reported missing in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He left on the boat for an 11 p.m. cruise. However, it was only after the Jolly Roger returned to its dock outside of Carlisle House, The City that patrons realized he was missing. Inniss said both the Coast Guard and the Marine Unit of the Royal Barbados Police Force have been notified and investigations are continuing. (BT)

MYSTERIOUS LOSS OF PASSENGER LEAVES JOLLY ROGER BOSS PERPLEXED – Mystery surrounds the fate of a Goodland Main Road, St Michael man who has gone missing from a weekend cruise aboard the Jolly Roger. Police said Andrew King, who boarded the vessel on Saturday night for an 11p.m. cruise, was reported missing in the early hours of yesterday morning after he was discovered missing when the boat returned to its dock outside Carlisle House, The City. Public Relations Officer of the Royal Barbados Police Force Acting Inspector Rodney Inniss told Barbados TODAYthe Coast Guard and Marine Unit had launched a search for the 49-year-old King but he had not been found up until the time of publication. Meantime, Allan Kinch, the owner of the Jolly Roger party boat, told Barbados TODAY he was at a loss to explain what happened to the passenger, particularly because of the level of security on board the vessel. “We don’t know what would have happened. We are still waiting to hear from police and coast guard to see if they have an explanation because they were interviewing people on the cruise. People said that they saw him getting on and didn’t seen him when the cruise was finished,” he said. “The Jolly Roger is safe. We don’t really know what the circumstances are for this incident. Nobody has come forward to say they saw him jump off or fall off [and] there was no altercation to say that something happened. It was a very pleasant, peaceful cruise. “We have added additional ropes around the deck and above the sides and we have lights shining out into the sea as well all around the boat,” Kinch explained. (BT)

WAITRESS TO ANSWER FOR FRAUD – A 37-year-old waitress, accused of several counts of fraud, was granted $37,000 bail with strict conditions when she appeared in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court over the weekend. Tachira Femi Burke, of Sergeants Village, Christ Church, is alleged to have committed 25 indictable offences between December 11, 2015 and June 24, 2016.On one count she is accused of endeavouring to obtain $1,400 from the account of Champion Auto Wrecker Service Inc maintained at the RBC Royal Bank (Barbados) Limited via a false cheque made payable to her. On another count she is alleged to have dishonestly obtained $1,800 from the company’s account, while on the 23 other occasions $1,400 via the same means. The accused was not required to plead to the indictable charges when she appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant. And while there were no objections to bail by the prosecutor she now has to report to Worthing Police Station every Monday and Thursday before noon with valid identification; hand over all travel documents to the court and must apply for permission to travel. Burke returns to court on October 9. (BT)

LIGHTER FOUND IN PAYNE’S BRA – A young woman, who allegedly told a security officer there was no need to search her but was later found with illegal drugs, has three months to pay the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court a $1,500 fine. Norelco Alora Payne, of 5th Avenue Peterkin, Bank Hall, St Michael, pleaded guilty today to possession, possession with intent to supply and possession with intent to traffic $170 worth of cannabis. The police report on the incident revealed that Payne, who was “scantily” dressed, was preparing to board the Jolly Roger pleasure cruise yesterday when she allegedly told the security officer that there was no need to search her. However, the officer proceeded with her duties and a lighter was found in Payne’s bra. She was taken to a bathroom for a further search and 35 wrappings containing the illicit drug were also found on her person. She admitted ownership when police were called in, but declined to say anything in her defence when she appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant today. If Payne, who is known to the court, fails to pay the fine by September 18 she will have to spend three months in prison. (BT)

MADDEN HELD – A Jamaican national, who allegedly imported $6,000 worth of cannabis into Barbados, has been remanded to Dodds prison until June 20. He is Richardo McClean Madden, of St Ann’s, Jamaica, is also accused of possession, possession with intent to supply and trafficking of the illegal substance on June 13. The accused was not required to plead when he appeared before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant today, as the offences allegedly occurred in the District ‘B’ jurisdiction. However, Sergeant Cameron Gibbons objected to bail on the grounds that he is a non-national and had no ties to the country, as well as the fact that the offences occurred when he first entered the country by air on the aforementioned date. Madden will make his next appearance before the District ‘B’ Magistrates’ Court. (BT)

ALL ABOARD – Over the next decade, some 80 new vessels of all shapes and sizes are expected to join the cruise sector of the global tourism industry, and Barbados is seeking to capitalize on some of this new business. Minister of Tourism and International Transport Kerrie Symmonds said, “Recent figures from [the] Florida Caribbean Cruise Association say some 80 cruise ships will be coming on stream between 2017 and 2026, and this year, 16 new ships will be taking to the water, representing 33,000 new berths. Currently, cruise ship passengers represent over 60 percent of Barbados’ visitor arrivals, and despite the promising growth prospects and increasing numbers – we recorded over 818,000 cruise passengers for 2017 – we cannot rest on our laurels.” The minister said home porting had served Barbados well, “with a 30 per cent increase in this sector between 2008 and 2017. 22 per cent of our passenger arrivals, or some 137,000 people, have moved to and from this island via this method, and we have some major lines, including P & O from the UK, TUI, and Aida from Germany. Fred Olssen, now known as Marella Cruises, will be home porting this upcoming winter season with two vessels. Ideally, we want to become the major hub for home porting in the southern Caribbean”. Symmonds, who was speaking at an event held to mark the 30th anniversary of the Freewinds cruise ship adding Barbados to its ports of call, disclosed that a water taxi and ferry service between the north, west, and south of the island would be starting shortly, and also announced plans for the other towns in Barbados. “Speightstown will become a heritage, artistic and culinary centre for the island, while Holetown will evolve into an entertainment and tourism district. We also plan to refresh the entertainment package in St. Lawrence Gap and want to make Oistins the epicentre for the fishing industry and related services.” Minister of the Creative Economy, Sports and Culture John King, spoke of his close relationship with  Freewinds, which started in 1992 when his then band, Sygnacha (pronounced Signature) was asked to open a performance for the ship’s band at Independence Square, and he came away impressed with the professionalism they demonstrated. He stated that “In 2004, the captain called me again to perform, and at that time I was going through some challenges in my personal life and I benefited from the self-development programmes they offer.” In addition, King commended the vessel’s crew for their efforts in assisting ordinary Barbadians. “I have seen first hand how many of our young upcoming entertainers have been able to ply their trade on this vessel, to share their talents with persons whom they would probably have never come into contact with, and how everyday Barbadians can come onto this ship and have the experience of a lifetime.” The ship’s captain, Mike Napier, who has been at the helm of the Freewinds from the time it made its inaugural visit here in 1988, outlined some of the activities the crew had participated in and the local organizations they had assisted during that time. “We have hosted hundreds of events with the Lions Club of St. Michael; the Sunshine Optimist Club; Kiwanis Club of Bridgetown, Rotary Club, the Department of Emergency Management; the Salvation Army; the Royal Commonwealth Society, the Good Shepherd Primary School; the St. James Parish Independence Committee; the Nightingale Home, the YMCA; the Barbados Association of Office Professionals; UWI and George Washington House. We have also done training in maritime safety and security in association with the Royal Barbados Police Force, the Barbados Fire Service, the DEM, the Barbados Defence Force and the Barbados Coast Guard.” Beyond that, “We have held concerts to mark Barbados’ independence, and one year, we even converted one of the ship’s lifeboats into a float and had a Kadooment band for the Crop Over Festival,” Napier said. He also took the opportunity to thank Barbados Port Inc., the Customs and Immigration Department and Eric Hassell Shipping for the assistance they had provided to the cruise line over the years. (BT)

For daily or breaking news reports follow us on Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter & Facebook. That’s all for today folks. There are 195 days left in the year. Shalom! #thechasefilesdailynewscap #thechasefiles  #dailynewscapsbythechasefiles

[emmagarciarest]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years. The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media. Politically charged misinformed snippets. Ads cloaked as content. Public relations propaganda. Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being “fact checked” where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible. As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can’t justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects. There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms. Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline. A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org. DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy, Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings. Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain. but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web. As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven’t been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance. The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites. When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website’s link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company. Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics. Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit. Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow’s editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.” eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them. The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites. traveltips.usatoday.com homeguides.sfgate.com smallbusiness.chron.com the Arizona Republic Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn’t ignore the easy money opportunity. Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: “Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand.” As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run. As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion. Even if they couldn’t necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit: Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability. As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far… …but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn’t sustainable either. About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won’t discover moving the content to niche brands wasn’t enough. As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential “how to” guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn’t solve the user’s problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results. Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems. Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access. Categories: directories from SEO Book http://www.seobook.com/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT from Tumblr http://localseoguru.tumblr.com/post/158678411218/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT from Local SEO Guru http://thelocalseoguru.blogspot.com/2017/03/dmoz-shut-down.html via IFTTT from Blogger http://buyvipbids.blogspot.com/2017/03/dmoz-shut-down.html via IFTTT

[ubizheroes]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years. The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media. Politically charged misinformed snippets. Ads cloaked as content. Public relations propaganda. Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being “fact checked” where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible. As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can’t justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects. There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms. Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline. A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org. DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy, Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings. Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain. but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web. As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven’t been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance. The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites. When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website’s link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company. Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics. Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit. Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow’s editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.” eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them. The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites. traveltips.usatoday.com homeguides.sfgate.com smallbusiness.chron.com the Arizona Republic Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn’t ignore the easy money opportunity. Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: “Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand.” As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run. As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion. Even if they couldn’t necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit: Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability. As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far… …but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn’t sustainable either. About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won’t discover moving the content to niche brands wasn’t enough. As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential “how to” guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn’t solve the user’s problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results. Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems. Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access. Categories: directories from SEO Book http://www.seobook.com/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT from Local SEO Guru http://localseoguru.tumblr.com/post/158678411218 via IFTTT from Tumblr http://tomeucapella.tumblr.com/post/158678628145/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT

from Network Coaching http://thenetworkcoaching.blogspot.com/2017/03/dmoz-shut-down.html via IFTTT

from Blogger http://imlocalseo.blogspot.com/2017/03/dmoz-shut-down.html via IFTTT

from IM Local SEO https://imlocalseo.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down/ via IFTTT

from Gana Dinero Colaborando | Wecon Project https://weconprojectspain.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down/ via IFTTT

from WordPress https://mrliberta.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down/ via IFTTT

[andrew-forbes]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years.

The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media.

Politically charged misinformed snippets.

Ads cloaked as content.

Public relations propaganda.

Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being "fact checked" where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible.

As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can't justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects.

There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms.

Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline.

A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org.

DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy,

Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings.

Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain.

but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web.

As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven't been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance.

The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites.

When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website's link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company.

Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics.

Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit.

Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow's editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.”

eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them.

The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites.

traveltips.usatoday.com

homeguides.sfgate.com

smallbusiness.chron.com

the Arizona Republic

Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn't ignore the easy money opportunity.

Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: "Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand."

As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run.

As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion.

Even if they couldn't necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit:

Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability.

As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far...

...but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn't sustainable either.

About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won't discover moving the content to niche brands wasn't enough.

As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential "how to" guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn't solve the user's problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results.

Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems.

Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access.

Categories: 

directories

from SEO book AnthyHayesYT http://ift.tt/2nP5bnE via Going Here

[evasalinasrest]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years.

The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media.

Politically charged misinformed snippets. Ads cloaked as content. Public relations propaganda. Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being “fact checked” where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible. As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can’t justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects.

There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms.

Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline.

A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org.

DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy,

Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings.

Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain.

but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web.

As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven’t been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance.

The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites.

When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website’s link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company.

Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics.

Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit.

Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow’s editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.”

eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them.

The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites.

traveltips.usatoday.com homeguides.sfgate.com smallbusiness.chron.com the Arizona Republic Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn’t ignore the easy money opportunity. Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: “Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand.”

As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run.

As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion.

Even if they couldn’t necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit:

Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability.

As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far…

…but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn’t sustainable either.

About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won’t discover moving the content to niche brands wasn’t enough.

As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential “how to” guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn’t solve the user’s problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results.

Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems.

Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access.

Categories: directories

from SEO Book http://www.seobook.com/dmoz-shut-down

via IFTTT from Tumblr http://localseoguru.tumblr.com/post/158678411218/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT

from Local SEO Guru https://localseogurublog.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/dmoz-shut-down/ via IFTTT

from WordPress https://evasalinasrest.wordpress.com/2017/03/21/dmoz-shut-down/ via IFTTT

[kellykperez]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years.

The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media.

Politically charged misinformed snippets.

Ads cloaked as content.

Public relations propaganda.

Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being "fact checked" where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible.

As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can't justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects.

There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms.

Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline.

A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org.

DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy,

Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings.

Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain.

but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web.

As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven't been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance.

The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites.

When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website's link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company.

Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics.

Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit.

Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow's editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.”

eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them.

The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites.

traveltips.usatoday.com

homeguides.sfgate.com

smallbusiness.chron.com

the Arizona Republic

Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn't ignore the easy money opportunity.

Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: "Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand."

As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run.

As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion.

Even if they couldn't necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit:

Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability.

As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far...

...but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn't sustainable either.

About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won't discover moving the content to niche brands wasn't enough.

As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential "how to" guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn't solve the user's problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results.

Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems.

Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access.

Categories: 

directories

from IM Tips And Tricks http://www.seobook.com/dmoz-shut-down

[ubizheroes]

DMOZ Shut Down

Last August I wrote a blog post about how attention merchants were sucking the value out of online publishing. In it I noted how the Yahoo! Directory disappeared & how even DMOZ saw a sharp drop in traffic & rankings over the past few years. The concept of a neutral web is dead. In its place is agenda-driven media. Politically charged misinformed snippets. Ads cloaked as content. Public relations propaganda. Mostly correct (but politically insensitive) articles being “fact checked” where a minor detail is disputed to label the entire piece as not credible. As the tech oligarchs broadly defund publishing, the publishers still need to eat. Aggregate information quality declines to make the numbers work. Companies which see their ad revenues slide 20%, 30% or 40% year after year can’t justify maintaining the labor-intensive yet unmonetized side projects. There is Wikipedia, but it is not without bias & beyond the value expressed in the hidden bias most of the remaining value from it flows on through to the attention merchant / audience aggregation / content scraper platforms. Last month DMOZ announced they were closing on March 14th without much fanfare. And on March 17th the directory went offline. A number of people have pushed to preserve & archive the DMOZ data. Some existing DMOZ editors are planning on launching a new directory under a different name but as of the 17th DMOZ editors put up a copy at dmoztools.net. Jim Boykin scraped DMOZ & uploaded a copy here. A couple other versions of DMOZ have been published at OpenDirectoryProject.org & Freemoz.org. DMOZ was not without criticism or controversy, Although site policies suggest that an individual site should be submitted to only one category, as of October 2007, Topix.com, a news aggregation site operated by DMOZ founder Rich Skrenta, has more than 17,000 listings. Early in the history of DMOZ, its staff gave representatives of selected companies, such as Rolling Stone or CNN, editing access in order to list individual pages from their websites. Links to individual CNN articles were added until 2004, but were entirely removed from the directory in January 2008 due to the content being outdated and not considered worth the effort to maintain. but by-and-large it added value to the structure of the web. As search has advanced (algorithmic evolution, economic power, influence over publishers, enhanced bundling of distribution & user tracking) general web directories haven’t been able to keep pace. Ultimately the web is a web of links & pages rather than a web of sites. Many great sites span multiple categories. Every large quality site has some misinformation on it. Every well-known interactive site has some great user contributions & user generated spam on it. Search engines have better signals about what pages are important & which pages have maintained importance over time. As search engines have improved link filtering algorithms & better incorporated user tracking in rankings, broad-based manual web directories had no chance. The web of pages vs web of sites concept can be easily observed in how some of the early successful content platforms have broken down their broad-based content portals into a variety of niche sites. When links were (roughly) all that mattered, leveraging a website’s link authority meant it was far more profitable for a large entity to keep publishing more content on the one main site. That is how eHow became the core of a multi-billion Dollar company. Demand Media showed other publishers the way. And if the other existing sites were to stay competitive, they also had to water down content quality to make the numbers back out. The problem with this was the glut of content was lower ad rates. And the decline in ad rates was coupled with a shift away from a links-only view of search relevancy to a model based on weighting link profiles against user engagement metrics. Websites with lots of links, lots of thin content & terrible engagement metrics were hit. Kristen Moore, vp of marketing for Demand Media, explained what drove the most egregious aspects of eHow’s editorial strategy: “There’s some not very bright people out there.” eHow improved their site design, drastically reduced their ad density, removed millions of articles from their site, and waited. However nothing they did on that domain name was ever going to work. They dug too deep of a hole selling the growth story to pump a multi-billion Dollar valuation. And they generated so much animosity from journalists who felt overwork & underpaid that even when they did rank journalists would typically prefer to link to anything but them. The flip side of that story is the newspaper chains, which rushed to partner with Demand Media to build eHow-inspired sections on their sites. traveltips.usatoday.com homeguides.sfgate.com smallbusiness.chron.com the Arizona Republic Even the bastion of left-wing thinking Salon couldn’t ignore the easy money opportunity. Brands which enjoy the Google brand subsidy are also quite hip to work with Demand Media, which breathes new life into once retired content: “Sometimes Demand will even dust off old content that’s been published but is no longer live and repurpose it for a brand.” As Facebook & Google grew more dominant in the online ad ecosystem they aggressively moved to suck in publisher content & shift advertiser spend onto their core properties. The rise of time spent on social sites only made it harder for websites to be sought out destination. Google also effectively cut off direct distribution by consolidating & de-monetizing the RSS reader space then shutting down a project they easily could have left run. As the web got more competitive, bloggers & niche publications which were deeply specialized were able to steal marketshare in key verticals by leveraging a differentiated editorial opinion. Even if they couldn’t necessarily afford to build strong brands via advertising, they were worthy of a follow on some social media channels & perhaps an email subscription. And the best niche editorial remains worthy of a direct visit: Everything about Techmeme and its lingering success seems to defy the contemporary wisdom of building a popular website. It publishes zero original reporting and is not a social network. It doesn’t have a mobile app or a newsletter or even much of a social presence beyond its Twitter account, which posts dry commodity news with zero flair for clickability. As a work around to the Panda hits, sites like eHow are now becoming collections of niche-focused sites (Cuteness.com, Techwalla.com, Sapling.com, Leaf.tv, etc will join Livestrong.com & eHow.com). It appears to be working so far… …but they may only be 1 Panda update away from finding out the new model isn’t sustainable either. About.com has done the same thing (TheSpruce.com, Verywell.com, Lifewire.com, TheBalance.com). Hundreds of millions of Dollars are riding on the hope that as the algorithms keep getting more granular they won’t discover moving the content to niche brands wasn’t enough. As content moves around search engines with billions of Dollars in revenue can recalibrate rankings for each page & adjust rankings based on user experience. Did an influential “how to” guide become irrelevant after a software or hardware update? If so, they can see it didn’t solve the user’s problem and rank a more recent document which reflects the current software or hardware. Is a problem easy to solve with a short snippet of content? If so, that can get scraped into the search results. Web directories which are built around sites rather than pages have no chance of competing against the billions of Dollars of monthly search ads & the full cycle user tracking search companies like Google & Bing can do with their integrated search engines, ad networks, web browsers & operating systems. Arguably in most cases the idea of neutral-based publishing no longer works on the modern web. The shill gets exclusive stories. The political polemic gets automatic retweets from those who identify. The content which lacks agenda probably lacks the economics to pay for ads & buy distribution unless people can tell the creator loves what they do so much it influences them enough to repeatedly visit & perhaps pay for access. Categories: directories from SEO Book http://www.seobook.com/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT from Local SEO Guru http://localseoguru.tumblr.com/post/158678411218 via IFTTT from Tumblr http://tomeucapella.tumblr.com/post/158678628145/dmoz-shut-down via IFTTT

from Blogger http://imlocalseo.blogspot.com/2017/03/dmoz-shut-down_21.html via IFTTT

from IM Local SEO https://imlocalseo.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down-2/ via IFTTT

from Gana Dinero Colaborando | Wecon Project https://weconprojectspain.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down-2/ via IFTTT

from WordPress https://mrliberta.wordpress.com/2017/03/22/dmoz-shut-down-2/ via IFTTT