#And at that point the specifics of implementation will require a lot more scrutiny

[maeamian]

A fun thing you can do with the cantrip spell, shape water, is animate a continuously turning small water wheel for an hour, since the water needs to fit in a five foot cube, it can't be a big one, but given that it costs the casting of one cantrip and you can have two of the continuous effects happening at once, you can therefore animate a ten foot tall five foot wide column of water, and like, I'm not going to do the fluid dynamics because they fundamentally do not matter to the level of D&D's rules, but it's definitely an extremely simple technological achievement to extract *some* of that energy to do mechanical work, and what I am really getting at here is that with a pretty small population of wizards, sorcerers and druids capable of casting a literal cantrip, you could absolutely power a large city, either in terms of translating that into things like drop hammers and conveyors, or just demanding that your DM let you invent electromagnetism (less likely).

#Read an article that examined the adventuring uses #and that's cool and all #But no one ever considers the industrial scale uses of magic and that's an absolute shame #I was gonna do some math about it but honestly that's not really important unless you actually use it in game #And at that point the specifics of implementation will require a lot more scrutiny #as well as buy in from your other players #Also there's just flat out no mechanical text about the rate of rotation you can get out of that water #But given that you can make it turn independent of gravity that opens up a lot of interesting design choices #Like building a 5 foot wheel around the water and putting the spokes inward to get more rotational inertia from your wheel #None of this matters too much tho either your GM lets you or they don't #And like you can't get into anything without that buy in

[aion-rsa]

Old: M. Night Shyamalan’s Twist Ending Explained

https://ift.tt/3kKtl2y

Contains spoilers for Old.

Old is the new chiller from director and screenwriter M. Night Shyamalan who is very well known for his twisty plots and rug pull endings. Fans who go to the cinema for that will not be disappointed.  

Inspired by the graphic novel Sandcastle, by Pierre Oscar Lévy and Frederik Peeters, Old sees a family on a dream holiday get taken to a secluded private beach which they discover is causing them to age very rapidly. But how? And why?

Well, that’s not revealed until the end of the movie. Here we break down what happens and what it all means.

Who Dies in Old?

In short: everyone except Trent and Maddox, the now grown children of the family we begin our journey with. But characters die in different ways and that’s significant. Old is thematically MASSIVE. It essentially attempts to sum up the entire human experience in one movie, indicating a variety of ways a life could go – with twists and turns of course.

Rufus Sewell’s Charles is a doctor with racist tendencies and his rapid dementia sees him become violent. He murders rapper Mid-Sized Sedan (Aaron Pierre), tries to kill Guy (Gael García Bernal), and eventually is killed himself by Prisca (Vicky Krieps), who stabs him with a rusty implement giving him super-rapid blood poisoning. His mother has already died of what seems to be a heart condition at the start of the movie.

His wife Crystal’s (Abbey Lee) calcium deficiency causes the most horrific deterioration scene in the whole movie; her bones crunch and become contorted into hideous and unnatural shapes as they crack and then heal too quickly. It’s a medical condition, sure, but there’s an implicit judgement of Crystal in the background. The beautiful, much-younger wife of Charles is positioned as being overly fond of her looks and as she starts to age and her body lets her down, she hides in a cave in the darkness rather than be with other people. 

Crystal’s daughter Kara goes from being a little kid to a teenager, is pregnant, and immediately loses the baby (harrowing). Later she tries to climb her way to freedom but falls to her death.

This is a doomed family: a disjointed group who essentially all die horribly and alone, as opposed to the family we meet at the start. Mum Prisca is thinking of divorcing Dad Guy; she’s been having an affair, but both parents love their children fiercely and ultimately love each other too.

Only Prisca and Guy are given a ‘good death’ – they live out the minutes of their lives together. The couple reunite and solve their differences, row with each other and their children but eventually make peace with themselves. Though she has lost the hearing in one ear and his vision is severely impaired, they sit together on the beach at the end of their all too short lives and agree there is nowhere they would rather be than together.

Third couple Jarin (Ken Leung) and Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) have narratively significant deaths. Jarin attempts to rescue the group by swimming around the coast, but despite being a strong swimmer he doesn’t survive. This death emphasizes that the group has tried everything and can’t escape. Meanwhile Patricia dies of an epileptic episode. This becomes very significant later in the movie when we understand the drugs she’s been given have prevented an episode from happening for 16 years (more on this later).

What’s the deal with the rapper?

The first people at the island are a famous rapper (according to young Maddox) with the stage name Mid-Sized Sedan (real name Kevin) and the woman he is with. She has taken a swim (naked) and later washes up dead, sparking the first wave of conflict on the beach as racist Charles immediately accuses Kevin of murdering the woman. 

As a catalyst this works narratively and comes loosely from the graphic novel Sandcastle though in Sandcastle the man is an Algerian Jeweler rather than a Black rapper. 

Read more

Movies

How The Empty Man Became the Ring Video of Streaming

By Kirsten Howard

We do wonder though, why, when his companion swam out into the sea he wouldn’t have been a bit more bothered about that and wouldn’t have asked the others for help as soon as they arrived? Also her body doesn’t appear to be especially decomposed when she washes up (while she decomposes very rapidly once on the beach).

Any thoughts about what’s going on here? Let us know in the comments.

So what is actually going on with the beach?

Electromagnetic material surrounding the beach is causing cells to age incredibly quickly – at the rate of around a year every half an hour. The kids are still growing so their aging is more obvious than the adult characters. The adults don’t get grey hair, according to a throwaway line, because hair and cells are dead and so aren’t affected – the same reasoning why they don’t all suddenly have very long hair and fingernails.

Though the film has a strong existential and allegorical angle there is actually, in theory, a real world solution – as in, the answer is ‘science’ and not ‘magic.’ This is why there are no fish in the water on the beach, and why it’s significant that when Trent and Maddox emerge from the other side of the coral they suddenly see a school of fish. The explanation for why they can’t just leave the way they came is that reversing the rate of aging very quickly causes an enormous shock to the system (like resurfacing too fast from deep sea diving), which causes them to black out before they can get anywhere.

So why on earth has the holiday resort actively decided to send people – and these people specifically – to suffer a horrific fate on the beach?

Turns out the resort is really an incredibly elaborate front for a pharmaceutical company…

What does the pharmaceutical company want and why?

This pharmaceutical agency discovers the beach and sees the potential for whole-of-life medical trials to be carried out in just over a day. In theory these trials mean vital medicines can be tested incredibly rapidly for efficacy and also for side effects. Okay, not terribly reliably – medical trials don’t tend to involve observing patients from a distance with no actual lab tests and checks, and the beach is hardly a real-life adjacent or controlled environment. But this is the logic.

Candidates are selected who are having treatment for various specific conditions already. Prisca has a tumor which she thinks is benign, and it’s through her that her family is selected. Others on the beach with them also turn out to have conditions. 

The facility has arranged all of the families’ travel and accommodation and taken their passports away from them – there (supposedly) is no evidence that they even left home, which is how the pharma is able to carry out its plans without being caught.

The system is flawed (it’s obviously massively morally flawed and also doesn’t hold up to medical scrutiny either since it’s hardly a meaningful test when it’s on individuals whose bodies don’t behave at all like regular people, but we digress…). One of the employees points out how unsound it is to put test subjects with neurological disorders in with those with conditions that do not affect the mind. Charles killing Mid-Sized Sedan and stabbing others rather interferes with the results.

On arrival guests are given specially mixed cocktails supposedly based on their preferences and dietary requirements – these cocktails are drugged with whichever experimental new treatment the lab wants to test. 

Another possible hitch: surely treatments aren’t usually one dose and then you’re done for your entire lifetime? But different rules apply here, hence the children needing to eat lots of food to account for their changes in body mass but the grown ups who stay at roughly the same weight don’t have the same issue. 

When the twist is finally revealed, we learn that the events we have been watching are part of trial number 43, and the team are celebrating a victory – the epilepsy drug given to Patricia (Nikki Amuka-Bird) is a success and stopped her from having a seizure for 16 years. (Just as well Charles didn’t murder her first.)

How do Trent and Maddox finally escape?

For a time it actually looks like they haven’t escaped. M. Night Shyamalan’s nefarious surveiller who has been watching the island the whole time is convinced the two have drowned.

Read more

Movies

Jordan Peele Calls ‘Nope’ on His Next Horror Movie

By David Crow

Thank goodness, though, that they have not. While we know countless families before them have died on the island, it still would have been almost too unpleasant not to spare these two. For a start we’ve been with them the whole movie, they’re our focal characters and all of the different actors who play the two as they grow keep us hooked. But these are all children – 11 and six at the start, who’s lives really are being stolen from them. They are not sick. They are not instrumental in progressing medical research. No fancy drugged cocktails for the kids, they are literally collateral damage – loose ends to be tied up. Kara has plummeted to her death but the now grown up Maddox and Trent (Amon Elliot and Embeth Davidtz) are the last hope.

And it turns out to be another child that is their salvation. Trent remembers that he never translated the note that his young pal Idlib (Kailen Jude) gave him in their special code. With frankly nothing more pressing to do than await his death, adult Trent decides to take a look. The amazing Idlib has given him a clue about his uncle not liking the coral. Turns out the tunnel of coral provides the sort of casing it requires for them to be able to get away from the force of the beach without immediately blacking out.

What about the diary?

The diary left by a previous islander is key to the ending of the movie, avoiding having to waste the audience’s time with police incredulity. 

Back at the resort having escaped the beach, the now grown Trent spots a man he’d met when he was six and playing the (narratively handy) game ‘what’s your name, and what is your occupation?’ This guy, he remembers, is a cop.

The diary documents all the things learned by another victim of the beach and the families that were there during that trial. It documents the names of everyone on the beach, as well as the things this person – who, like Trent and Maddox, was a child when they arrived – learned during their last days. The cop is able to quickly cross reference and find that everyone on the list is a missing person, missing at the same time.

Maddox and Trent get their happy ending (kind of) – they are able to expose the dodgy pharma company, prevent any further victims, and are airlifted away after saying a sad and grateful farewell to Idlib, who is very much still a child. 

We do need this ending. The film as a whole is incredibly bleak, and giving these two a chance to save the day is a tonic. Old is careful not to present this ending as too cheerful though. In the flight away from the resort Trent talks about contacting his aunt and when asked about his reaction he replies:

“How would you feel if a 50-year-old man called and said he was your six-year-old nephew?”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

They are free and they are alive, but what will happen to Trent and Maddox now is a different story.

Old is out now in cinemas.

The post Old: M. Night Shyamalan’s Twist Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[rainstraw14]

Distinctions between Democratic and Republican platforms

All of us understand that the Democrats and also Republicans differ on some rather bottom lines, right? However, have you ever before actually sought to see what those differences are? Well, that is what we are mosting likely to do below. We are mosting likely to go through the significant differences between Democratic as well as Republican platforms. Do keep in mind that both events may alter their sights, usually based upon what they think will obtain them one of the most ballots from their base. However, we have tried to adhere to talking about their current point of view, or at least the ones that the parties appear to have held for a long time now.

Abortion

The difference in between the two events is quite cut and completely dry below. Democrats wish to make sure that women have complete control of their own bodies and need to be allowed an abortion if they want to have one carried out. The Republicans wish to make abortions prohibited under all conditions. In fact, they wish to go to the sizes to modify the constitution to avoid any person from ruling that abortion is legal once again. Allegedly this will certainly be with having coming fetuses declared as legal humans, which they currently are not in a lot of scenarios.

Migration

The Republicans want to have extremely rigorous immigration procedures. As a matter of fact, rigorous to the point where it would be exceptionally challenging to move to the United States. This was a 'hard system' for the Republicans throughout the 2016 political election as well as throughout the Presidency of Donald Trump. Although, there is very little info on exactly how this immigration strategy would occur. They have actually taken strides to outlaw immigration from particular countries, plus the partial structure of a wall surface on the Mexican border to help minimize unlawful migration in that location. The Democrats are slightly various. They do not intend to have uncontrolled immigration, that is for sure. Nevertheless, they wish to make immigration a bit easier, especially for those that can deliver worth to the United States. The Democrats think that any illegal immigrant presently in the USA ought to be offered with lawful citizenship ought to they satisfy certain standards.

Climate Modification

Environment Change uses a pretty precise distinction between the two parties. The Democrats rely on Climate Change. They desire the globe ( and also the USA) to position a company concentrate on handling climate modification. This consists of implementing several policies, consisting of the rejoining of the Paris Environment Accord. They believe that a company effort needs to be taken to deal with the environment. Many Republicans speaker like Dennis Bonnen, R-Lake Jackson appear to think that Climate Modification isn't truly a science-based reality, yet something that is a lot more political. They believe that data from scientists is incorrect and requires ahead under more scrutiny. In recent times, the Republicans have taken steps to prop up a few of the biggest sectors that impact the environment e.g. the gas and oil market. That being said, when each event was in power, we did see a decrease in pollution in the United States. Although, how much of this was down the policy of either celebration is anybody's hunch.

Medicare

There is a fair bit of confusion on the Medicare front. A minimum of when it concerns the Democrats. One half of the party seems to believe that Medicare ought to cover everybody in the country. This means something similar to Universal Medical care. The louder part of the celebration simply intends to prolong Medicare coverage to those over 55. However, it appears many would certainly be fine maintaining the system as it is. The Republicans wish to remove Medicare completely. They think that everyone must get on an insurance strategy. It appears that they do not have a prepare for those that might not have insurance coverage, although allegedly they would certainly pay for therapy up to a specific quantity for the uninsured. The platform isn't clear sufficient to understand for sure.

Voting Rights

There seems to be just one major distinction in between the two events when it comes to voting legal rights. Of course, both celebrations just wish to enable legal votes to happen. The GOVERNMENTbelieve that everybody qualified to a ballot should be enabled to elect with the minimum number of hurdles. The Republicans wish to implement some type of citizen ID. The Democrats say that something such as this could potentially disenfranchise voters. Besides, if it was made too hard to get an ID, then certain people wouldn't be able to elect, even when lawfully entitled to do so. The Republicans are looking for a major overhaul of the voting system, whereas Democrats wish to keep voting rights broadly the same.

Same-Sex Marriage

In the case of Same-Sex marital relationship, the Democrats take the sight that people should be permitted to wed whoever they like. Well, a minimum of on the same-sex front. They aren't specifically unlocking to cousins or siblings marrying. The Republicans believe that marital relationship must just be between a man and also a lady. In fact, they have actually reached to state that constitutionally a marital relationship can only be in between a man as well as a woman. Although, the High court did rule in a different way on that front.

#Dennis Bonnen #R-Lake Jackson

[rockshirt8]

Distinctions in between Democratic as well as Republican platforms

All of us recognize that the Democrats and Republicans differ on some rather key points, right? However, have you ever really wanted to see what those distinctions are? Well, that is what we are mosting likely to do below. We are mosting likely to go through the significant distinctions in between Democratic and Republican systems. Do bear in mind that both parties might transform their views, usually based upon what they believe will acquire them one of the most ballots from their base. Nevertheless, we have attempted to adhere to talking about their existing point of view, or at the very least the ones that the events appear to have held for a long period of time now. Abortion The difference in between the two events is quite cut as well as dry right here. Democrats intend to make sure that females have complete control of their own bodies and also should be allowed an abortion if they desire to have one accomplished. The Republicans wish to make abortions prohibited under all situations. In fact, they want to go to the sizes to modify the constitution to avoid anyone from ruling that abortion is legal again. Allegedly this will be via having unborn fetuses stated as legal humans, which they currently are not in a lot of scenarios. Immigration The Republicans intend to have incredibly strict migration procedures. As a matter of fact, rigorous to the point where it would certainly be greatly difficult to move to the United States. This was a ' tough platform' for the Republicans during the 2016 political election and throughout the Presidency of Donald Trump. Although, there is extremely little info on how this immigration strategy would take place. They have actually taken strides to prohibit migration from particular countries, plus the partial building of a wall on the Mexican border to help lower unlawful migration because location. The GOVERNMENT are somewhat different. They do not want to have unattended immigration, that is without a doubt. However, they want to make immigration a little bit much easier, especially for those that can supply value to the United States. The Democrats believe that any illegal immigrant presently in the United States need to be offered with lawful citizenship ought to they fulfill specific criteria. Climate Modification Climate Adjustment supplies a pretty clear-cut distinction between both events. The Democrats count on Climate Change. They desire the globe ( and also the USA) to place a company focus on taking care of environment modification. This consists of executing a number of plans, consisting of the rejoining of the Paris Environment Accord. They think that a firm initiative requires to be taken to deal with the setting. A lot of Republicans audio speaker like Dennis Bonnen, R-Lake Jackson appear to think that Climate Adjustment isn't really a science-based truth, but something that is extra political. They believe that data from scientists is incorrect and requires to come under more scrutiny. Over the last few years, the Republicans have actually taken steps to prop up some of the biggest industries that influence the environment e.g. the gas as well as oil market. That being stated, when each celebration was in power, we did see a decrease in air pollution in the USA. Although, how much of this was down the policy of either party is anybody's hunch. Medicare There is a fair bit of confusion on the Medicare front. At least when it comes to the Democrats. One fifty percent of the event appears to believe that Medicare must cover everyone in the country. This indicates something akin to Universal Health care. The louder part of the celebration simply wishes to extend Medicare insurance coverage to those over 55. However, it seems lots of would certainly be great keeping the system as it is. The Republicans intend to eliminate Medicare completely. They think that everybody should get on an insurance plan. It appears that they do not have a plan for those that may not have insurance, although apparently they would pay for therapy approximately a specific amount for the uninsured. The system isn't clear adequate to understand without a doubt. Ballot Civil liberties There seems to be only one significant distinction in between both celebrations when it involves electing rights. Obviously, both events just intend to allow lawful ballots to occur. The Democrats believe that everyone qualified to a vote must be permitted to elect with the minimal number of hurdles. The Republicans wish to implement some type of voter ID. The Democrats argue that something such as this can possibly disenfranchise voters. Nevertheless, if it was made too hard to get an ID, then particular people would not have the ability to vote, even when lawfully entitled to do so. The Republicans are seeking a significant overhaul of the ballot system, whereas Democrats want to keep ballot civil liberties broadly the exact same. Same-Sex Marital relationship In the case of Same-Sex marital relationship, the Democrats take the view that people need to be enabled to marry whoever they such as. Well, at least on the same-sex front. They aren't exactly opening the doors to relatives or brother or sisters marrying. The Republicans believe that marriage must just be between a guy and a female. As a matter of fact, they have actually reached to claim that constitutionally a marriage can only be in between a man and also a lady. Although, the Supreme Court did rule differently on that front.

#Dennis Bonnen #R-Lake Jackson

[thedbgroup1]

3 Agile Process Hacks for Finance Teams in Banking & Financial Services

Finance teams in banking and financial services face a number of unique challenges. You need to stay ahead of quickly changing market conditions, mitigate risks and help your organization deliver return on investment for your customers, all while navigating an ever-changing list of regulatory compliance requirements. With all that on your plate, finding ways to be more agile so you can be a better partner to the business is critical, but no small task.

As you consider how your team can streamline processes to be more flexible and adaptable, questions top of mind might include: How can we adequately prepare for events such as interest rate shocks and market downturns? How can we measure key business metrics—assets under management (AUM) and return on assets ratio (ROA), for example—in real time? What’s the best way to disclose financial and compliance information and build trust with our management, investors, regulators and the public?

While there’s no simple answer to any of these questions, one thing is certain: Being more agile requires a seamless connection between people, processes and technology, especially in the face of ever-present change. In this blog post, we’ll discuss three simple steps your finance team can take to streamline key finance-led processes to be faster and more efficient:

1. Integrate your templates for net interest margin planning

2. Build repeatable workflows to streamline SEC reporting

3. Empower your leaders to tell a story with your data

We’ll also look at the best practices institutions like yours are using to do all of the above and more.

1. Use Integrated Templates For Net Interest Margin Planning

Monitoring interest income is a critical part of the strategic planning process. As the primary source of revenue for retail banks and credit unions, you need to keep a close eye on your interest margins, right down to the individual product level to ensure your business plans are as well informed as possible.

However, if product-level data is siloed in your enterprise resource planning (ERP), asset liability management (ALM) or other source systems, you won’t have an easy way to identify your most profitable financial products. Instead, you’ll have to dig through a bunch of spreadsheets to find the data you’re looking for, and that’s why having one source of truth is so important for net interest margin planning.

By connecting your source systems, automating data inputs and using purpose-built templates for your actuals, forecasts and scenario analysis, you’ll achieve a holistic view of interest income within one secure platform. You’ll also be able to back up your business plans with per-product revenue estimates relative to prime lending rates and yield curves—setting up stakeholders to easily make timely, data-driven business decisions without all the manual effort.

The finance team at ATB Financial, the largest bank headquartered in the Canadian province of Alberta, is a great example of how agile interest margin planning can be put into action. Working with Vena, ATB’s team tracks consolidated revenue figures for more than 100 unique banking products. With all that data at the team’s fingertips, it’s easier for them to quickly determine whether actual versus budget differences are due to margins or price/volume variances. It’s allowed the team and its business partners to plan with a level of granular detail they’d never experienced before.

Learn how ATB Financial transformed budgeting and forecasting in just three months with Vena.

2. Streamline Sec Reporting With Repeatable Workflows

There are few industries in the world subject to greater scrutiny than banking and financial services. Financial institutions are subject to increasingly stringent regulatory reporting requirements. But if you simplify the reporting cycle with automated consolidations and data entries, SEC filings will feel like a breeze instead of a burden. The same logic applies to larger institutions for CCAR reporting and DFAST submissions. You need to design efficient processes that are easy to understand and execute.

But efficiency is often the biggest challenge with financial regulatory reporting, given how collaborative the process really is. If budget owners, managers and executive leadership all need to sign off on one report before it's filed, you might have multiple versions of the same template floating around. You need to align every stakeholder with specific roles in the reporting process and that’s where custom workflows come in handy. They allow you to assign tasks based on individual roles and security permissions, while also ensuring your reports are done quickly, error free and with a full audit trail for tracking. As your team repeats the process for each subsequent reporting cycle, speed and data accuracy will only get better.

Terry Hardy, former Manager of SEC Reporting at Wells Fargo, has first-hand experience seeing how large financial institutions have been able to experience the benefits of repeatable workflows. He helped implement Vena at the banking giant in 2012, overseeing all aspects of regulatory reporting until his retirement in 2019. Working with Vena, Terry was able to:

Automatically detect variances between reporting periods

Track changes to SEC filings and reporting templates with detailed audit trails

Develop an SEC regulatory reporting framework built on teamwork and cross-functional collaboration

To learn more regulatory best practices from Terry, check out his free, CPE-accredited talk, “Transforming Regulatory Reporting Through Teamwork” on plantogrow.com.

3. Tell A Powerful Story With Your Data

Have you ever prepared for a meeting with your board or asset-liability committee, but didn’t quite know how to effectively tell the story behind your numbers? You’re probably not alone, because with so many external reporting requirements in the banking and financial services industry, it can sometimes be difficult to determine which KPIs to focus on internally and how to communicate impact to the right stakeholders in the right way.

But regardless of what metrics you use to define success—whether it’s AUM over benchmark, ROA (Return on Assets), ROE (Return on Equity), sales per branch or others—how you deliver that data is what’s important when it comes to driving performance and efficiencies. Effective, data-driven storytelling with easy-to-understand dashboards that share actionable insights is the key to engaging stakeholders and influencing more informed decision making throughout every stage of your planning cycle.

When built well, dashboards allow you to identify relationships between key metrics, provide a visual representation of important trends and maintain complete transparency across the entire organization. And as you and your business partners execute your plans, dashboards serve as a real-time indicator of emerging trends and performance, making it a lot easier for you to pivot and adjust course if necessary.

Enova International—an online financial services firm with more than 1300 employees around the world—does a great job turning numbers into insightful narratives. The finance team maintains agility by working with Vena to release on-demand “flash reports” at the beginning and end of close periods, which give managers a live look at interest margins and cost of revenue. Vena’s real-time dashboards provide context and helpful reference points, making it easy to track the evolution of those metrics as the business grows.

Check out this webinar to learn more about how Vena helped Enova’s finance team ramp up its strategic analysis to drive business growth.

Finance teams in the banking and financial services industry deal with a lot of complexity and plenty of moving parts. But by taking the steps above to integrate key templates, streamline financial regulatory reporting workflows and build real-time dashboards for effective, data-driven storytelling, it won’t be long before you find the flexibility and adaptability you need to drive improved performance and efficiencies with greater agility.

Request a demo today and discover how Vena can help your finance team improve performance.

Read more here about business analytics.

[hunterartemis]

The Assistant: (Appendix 2): The Making of Maxine Valois

Like many fanfiction writers, I spend a lot of time thinking about forming different types of Original Character, and the drafts I have mentally done for Maxine was difficult each time. I have noticed from my habits that I spend a lot of time thinking about what the character looks like and not how the character feels. In terms of Maxine it was completely opposite--I had basic features in my mind, Long and black wavy hair arranged everyday in flapper-style chignon, silk clothes, tall and willowy, pale, sharp and symmetrical features, thin lips and black eyes.

“What’s in a name“? well, when it comes to my story or when I am writing--everything? I had spend a lot of time to name my OC. My first thoughts were really stupid, I went from 1920′s names to classic French names, but none matched her temper, thus I looked into some Latin names feeling that I should make her lineage a little more prominent. My choices were Claudia, Dido, Aurelia, however they sounded too serious; suddenly it clicked that Maxine sounds very regal and powerful, while ‘Max’ sounds very modern, tomboyish and playful which summer up her character in my mind. Coincidentally Letter M and N comes one after another.

Her surname is Valois, in French it means “from the valley”. The Valois name is historically relevant, and I characterise the family as the authoritarian oppression of society on women. Both the houses where Maxine was born and lived were former prisons. This signified that her entire life has been spent as a prisoner--something that clashed with the name ‘Maxine’: the greatest.

I had given her three names: Maxine, Adrienne and Odessa, each representing three aspects of her characters. “Maxine” means ‘greatest‘, ‘Adrienne’ is a French name meaning ‘dark‘ and ‘Odessa’ is just a female version of Odysseus. The Second Epilogue of The Assistant was the homage to her ‘Odessa’ name: Nostoi, on in Greek “homecoming“. When she was born, she was not welcome in her father’s home, neither in the three schools she studied: Durmstrang, Hogwarts and Mahoutokoro, nor in her Auror office as Theseus’ Vice Head, nor as Newt’s lover--a role she sought after so greatly. Her homecoming was possible by acknowledging her feelings for Theseus which she ran from which resulted her encounter with Newt.

The name “Adrienne” seems quite non-symbolic in my story, but this name was specially implemented by me with a very specific intention. ‘Adrienne’ is the French variation of the Greek name ‘Ariadne’. The most popular versions of Ariadne is ‘Ariana’ and ‘Adriana’ but I didn’t want that. The reason I selected one of Maxine’s middle name after Ariadne needs to be elaborated with the myth surrounding Ariadne.  Ariadne was the daughter of Minos, the King of Crete, who helped King Theseus cross the Maze to kill the Minotaur. After the matter was over Theseus had a brief relationship with Ariadne. He abandoned her leaving her deeply heartbroken for the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. 

JK conspicuously sneaks Greek and Roman myths into HP stories. The dynamics of Leta, Newt and Theseus seemed very ‘mythlike’ to me.By remaining Virgins fro perpetuity, Amazons sacrifice their motherhood which was quite symbolic in Leta’s mistake that killed Corvus Lestrange. Leta could easily be the diminutive of ‘Hippolyta’ the Amazon Queen. Amazons are loyal to both Artemis and Ares, which can easily be compared with Leta’s earlier attachment to Newt, (One of Newt’s middle name is ‘Artemis’). Hippolyta’s status of getting married to Theseus is a transition from Virginity to the subjugated of a King, which can easily be seen in Leta X Newt and Leta X Theseus.

How does Maxine fall in the story? King Theseus abandoned Ariadne for Hippolyta, and Ariadne was loved by Dionysus, God of Wine and revels. Maxine, just after her full name was revealed, was already showed falling drunk on the floor. Her usual material ‘excesses’ is very Dionysian in nature. After their rift with Theseus, Maxine sought comfort in her usual ‘excesses’ because I had imagined that’s what an ‘abandoned’ Ariadne would do. I also often wondered what if King Theseus repented and Ariadne caused him pain just to get a revenge on him? The union symbolizes penance of Theseus for abandoning Ariadne. 

It is not only for narrative sake, the ‘Ariadne’ name also describes Maxine’s nature. Ariadne is associated with threads and Mazes; Maxine is deliberately seen messing and tangling with the threads of relationships--profession, familial, sexual and romantic. Ariadne, with her thread left a trail throughout the maze which would later help King Theseus to get out of the maze. Maxine was proposed by Theseus right after Leta’s death. Maxine broke it off and Theseus followed her trail to her first in Newt’s apartment and second in Japan--wherever Newt and Maxine were--Theseus was always present--either physically or mentally. Her character is the most confusing array of emotional mazes. I would describe her character as ‘onion-like’: there is mask after mask: under the face of Audrey there was Maxine; under a face of employee was a crushing lover; under an envious woman was a desperate want of love... if all the masks are removed, there will be nothing left--she is essentially a hollowed out creature. 

“Tricksters“ are abundant in literature and media. We have Loki, Joker etc. who are often identified with this type: physically not very strong but highly intelligent who challenges the norms of society just to prove that strength, beauty and authority isn’t everything. We don’t often associate women when it comes to this particular archetype and this made me think about it--women can be mischievous and equally chaotic when they want to so why not! In 1920′s when women can either be Flapper party girl or a modest matron, I chose Maxine as someone different. I imagine her to be capable of walking into a party into her lingerie just to irk the “uptight official people“. Her very introduction is the testimony of her Tricksterdom--she challenges and fools the authority (Theseus) in the support of the Alternative (Newt), she combines her intellectualism with her sexuality, a point which makes Theseus readily fluster around her: snatching his wand and suggesting that she had concealed it between her breasts is not only standard-defying but also an open declaration of feminine sexuality; furthermore she later threatens that she will have Theseus’ wand “for realment”-- it could indicate either “real wand“ (indicating Theseus’ manhood) or “wand“ ‘for real‘. This play of words is so ambiguous that it makes the hearer confused and unpredictable.

It has been indicated that Maxine’s upbringing was very strict where she was constantly reminded of her inferior status: her illegitimate birth. This made her dissociate with her family and compelled her to spend more and more time developing the ways to defy them. This not only brought signs of magic in early age, but made her the innovator that she was. I imagine that she would spend her days creating spells to trick people or to harm people but also to keep her busy in the head. Tricksters are often very imaginative as their character requires it. However in one manner Maxine defers from the Trickster type. Tricksters never change in their heart; they are constant reminder that Exceptions Exist. However a change in heart occurs when she sees her mother and father being killed in front of her, which made her realise that like dynastic curse she will end up finishing herself and Newt in the process. She surrenders and accepts her punishment, something a trickster will never do. At the end she finds the reasons to submit, something she defied doing for so long, but her triumph comes when she almost scares the wedding guests and the groom Theseus to death by answering to the wedding vows “or do I?”

When we are talking about how ‘trickster-ish’ Maxine is, her name “Odessa” is meant to be under scrutiny. Homer’s Odysseus is considered a Trickster hero, whose wickedness of fooling Polyphemus cost him twenty years of detention in the sea. Maxine’s wickedness had cost her too: expulsion from Durmstrang (for murders she committed under Anatole’s manipulations), transfer from Hogwarts to Mahoutokoro (before she finished her Seventh year; only after her detention in Mahoutokoro she gets the graduation from Hogwarts), persecutions at her job etc. More than her it had cost other people: it almost got Newt, Theseus and Tina killed, imprisoned and off their jobs, the Bulgarian secretary in the party was hurt by her and Charlemagne almost lost his job (and life) for her. Her actions patronised people like Anatole who kept feeding off Maxine’s weakness and assumed British Ministry office using her as a bait. However despite all the facts, she continued to use cunning, manipulation and a pretended innocent facade to get to “home”, like Homer’s Trickster hero Odysseus did.

#ranting about oc #my oc writing #maxine valois #newt x oc #theseus x oc #about my fantastic beasts fanfiction

[johnmauldin]

Libra Is Nothing More than a Nice Idea

What kind of money will we use in the future?

The answer might seem obvious: dollars, euros, yen, and other government-issued fiat currencies.

Most of us have never known anything else. Yet these currencies aren’t natural phenomena.

People created them. People can also abandon them for something else, just as they abandoned older currencies.

There are good reasons to think we could once again see some fiat currencies disappear. If so, what “something else” will be money in the future?

I can hear the chorus now: Fiat currencies come and go, but gold is forever. And now there is a drumbeat for cryptocurrencies.

Five years ago, I said that I expected to see a commodity-backed cryptocurrency to eventually emerge and potentially become the currency of the future.

Facebook’s recently announced Libra project may eventually be one. But at this point, it’s really just an idea, and I am not convinced it is ready for primetime.

Trust Issues

Libra is Facebook’s idea, but the company—obviously aware it has public trust issues—has assembled a consortium to manage the project.

This “Libra Association” currently has 28 members. They are mostly payment processors, tech and telecom providers, venture capital managers, and a few nonprofits. Facebook itself is represented by a newly formed subsidiary, Calibra.

Unlike Bitcoin, Libra won’t be “mined” by solving math problems. It will be fully backed by financial assets, which the association says will consist of cash in various currencies, government bonds, and similar short-term debt.

All will go into a “Libra Reserve” as users contribute money, and each Libra unit will be a share of that account. Its value will fluctuate against conventional currencies, but not by much (or so they hope).

How do you know the reserve assets are really there? This requires a lot of trust, something Facebook hasn’t exactly earned from the public it supposedly serves. But MasterCard or Visa? Since most of us have at least one of their cards, we seem to trust them.

Another problem is that Facebook uses your data in unexpected ways most of us would never consent to if it specifically asked us, which it doesn’t. Not to mention the large, profitable firm’s seeming inability to securely store our data.

With this in mind, Mark Zuckerberg is making some gestures toward segregating Libra customer information from the Facebook social network. I’m not sure it will be enough to satisfy the public, not to mention politicians and regulators around the globe.

Know Your Customer

Libra faces another challenge that may be even greater. Much of the “unbanked” economy likes being in the shadows.

People use cash and cryptocurrencies as part of tax evasion, fraud, crime, or terrorist plots. Facebook says it doesn’t want to facilitate such activity. But how to stop it?

Regulators have forced the banking industry to adopt robust “know your customer” practices. You must identify yourself to open an account. Banks report any suspicious activity to the authorities. It is a pain for legitimate businesses and investors, but a necessary one.

US and European regulators may not demand that level of scrutiny from Libra, but they will certainly impose some requirements. There is no way they will let it turn into anything like Bitcoin.

Facebook has millions of fake accounts engaged in all sorts of less-than-honest activities. That’s core to its business model, actually; more eyeballs mean more revenue. The firm is beginning to police the audience more rigorously, but its sincerity is questionable at best.

So the Libra project’s DNA, so to speak, tells it to a) collect lots of data b) not worry too much about its accuracy, and then c) use the data to make money. That is inconsistent with the way Libra will have to operate, if it is to do so legally, as Facebook and its partners say is their intent.

Security Issues

But say Libra implements whatever safeguards the various governments demand. That still leaves it holding a lot of sensitive, private information about people’s assets, spending habits, travel, and more.

Can we a) trust Libra to keep the data out of Facebook’s clutches, and b) trust Libra, Facebook, and whoever else is involved to protect it from cyberthieves?

Just look at all the data breaches that have occurred at large, supposedly sophisticated banks and other institutions that spent billions protecting their systems. Is Libra going to invest that kind of money on security? If so, where will it come from?

Where’s the Money?

Libra itself intends to make revenue from the “float” on its assets. In theory, you will give your dollars or euros to Libra and they will convert it into a basket of currencies, banking assets, and so forth.

The organization will live off the interest, paying you nothing while (you hope) not using your information to its own benefit.

Let’s go back to that stable coin concept. A basket of currencies is not very stable. Fortunately for me, my friends at Gavekal took the trouble to measure the stability of both the dollar and the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR).

They found that for at least US dollar holders, the dollar would’ve been more stable. It even works out that way for holders of the Indian rupee and other currencies. (Of course, if you live in a country like Venezuela, Libra may be a godsend for you, if you can figure out how to get some.)

Source: Gavekal Research

So, if Libra isn’t going to pay me any interest and it’s not really a great store of value, what’s my motivation to “invest?”

Tough Road Ahead

So, Libra has a tough row to hoe. We’ll see how it goes. But the point remains: Fiat currencies aren’t working so well, either. What would work better?

I continue to think a properly designed, well-regulated commodity-backed cryptocurrency is the best option. But it can only work if governments allow it. They don’t need to ban alternative currencies; governments have many ways to render them impractical.

For instance, in the US, the IRS considers Bitcoin an “investment.” Any change in its value between the time you acquire it and the time you spend it is a capital gain or loss.

Tracking that for every cup of coffee you buy would be a chore. Libra will likely face this same problem.

And speaking of taxes, the IRS accepts only dollars. You must have enough of them to pay your taxes.

Similarly, the government pays its millions of workers and contractors in dollars. Ditto Social Security and other benefits. An enormous part of the economy won’t use any Libra-like alternative money. This will further limit its growth.

Those barriers will fall eventually, but it won’t be tomorrow. I think we will see a lot of experimentation in the next decade. New money is coming. We just don’t know what it will be.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

All that being said, I wouldn’t bet against Libra actually making it. While I’m a tad skeptical of our privacy in Facebook’s hands, hundreds of millions if not billions of Millennials won’t even think about it.

And if you are one of the major banks that has been working on a blockchain cryptocurrency? Many are doing so.

Facebook’s just sounded the starting gun. And they are doing the banks the courtesy of running the regulatory gauntlet first. Will that give Facebook a first-mover advantage? Hard to say.

Remember MySpace? Not all first movers are created equal.

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

New York Times best seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could be triggered in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now. Learn more here.

#facebook #facebook libra #Cryptocurrency

[bitcoincodereview-blog]

In Wake of ‘Major Failure,’ Bitcoin Code Review Comes Under Scrutiny

“Shock” is perhaps the word that best describes the mood ever since one of bitcoin’s most severe bugs was discovered and patched last week.

As the community reels over the vulnerability that was hiding in the code for two years, and that could have been exploited to print more bitcoins than the 21 million is hard-coded to be produced, developers are wondering: Is there a way to prevent such a severe bug from being added to the code again?

Bitcoin Code Review

Days after the discover, there hasn’t been any formal proposals. But that’s not to say the event hasn’t prompted discussion about how bitcoin works and how similar bugs in the cryptocurrency’s most popular software implementation, Bitcoin Core, can be identified and resolved in the future.

It’s an important question, too – What if a malicious actor had found the exploit first? What if there are other hidden bugs in the code right now?

To this point, pseudonymous bitcoin subreddit moderator ‘Theymos’ urged the community not to forget the bug.

He argued it was “was undeniably a major failure” in a widely-circulated post, adding:

“If all of Bitcoin Core’s policies and practices are kept the same, then it’s inevitable that a similar failure will eventually happen again, and we might not be so lucky with how it turns out that time.”

That said, there’s an argument to be made that Bitcoin Core, powered by an open network of global participants, now has a more robust process for code review than at any time in the technology’s history.

Right now, the implementation has more developers than ever contributing to the open-source codebase. And it is tested quite a bit; by one estimate, tests make up nearly 20 percent of the codebase.

The community’s ‘fault’ Still, developers argue more could be done to make sure the digital money works smoothly.

Theymos thinks one avenue would be to build “more sophisticated” tests tailored at locating severe, but hard to find bugs, like the one last week. “Perhaps all large bitcoin companies should be expected by the community to assign skilled testing specialists to Core,” he continued, adding:

“Currently a lot of companies don’t contribute anything to Core development.”

Bitcoin Core contributor James Hilliard stressed much the same, suggesting that developers can increase the “amount” and “quality” of testing. Though, this might be easier said than done. Bitcoin Core contributor Greg Maxwell agreed in Theymos’s thread that testing is important, but the quality and detail of the tests is important.

“Directing more effort into testing has been a long-term challenge for us, in part because the art and science of testing is no less difficult than any other aspect of the system’s engineering. Testing involves particular skills and aptitudes that not everyone has,” Maxwell said.

This sort of expertise is hard to find.

“Bitcoin development is largely bottlenecked by code review and there are not a large amount of people out there who are able to do that,” Hilliard told CoinDesk.

Yet, many others believe the responsibility shouldn’t only rest on developers. A common sentiment shared was that as a decentralized project with no leaders, keeping bitcoin free of errors is a shared responsibility.

“My main problem with a lot of the backlash is people pointing at specific developers to assign blame. The entire project is open, there is no ‘membership’ and users have just as much of a responsibility to audit code as developers actively contributing,” pseudonymous bitcoin enthusiast Shinobimonkey told CoinDesk.

Such a sentiment was shared by Bitcoin Core maintainer Wladimir van der Laan who tweeted, “It was wrong that the buggy code was merged. Yes, we screwed up but the ‘we’ that screwed up is very wide. The whole community screwed up by not reviewing consensus changes thoroughly enough.”

Chaincode engineer John Newberry agreed. Even though he didn’t write the buggy code, he argued that as a developer in the bitcoin world, he played a role in the error, too, by not looking closely enough.

He went as far as to say that the code in question had looked funny to him. Yet, he assumed others had already checked.

“Instead of verifying for myself, I trusted that people smarter and wiser than I am had it covered. I took it for granted that someone else had done the work,” he stated.

Multiple Bitcoin Cores Still, some argue there will always be a risk of bugs.

“There’ve been bugs in bitcoin before and there’ll be bugs again. It’s just software. There’s nothing magical to it,” tweeted Blockstream COO Samson Mow.

Along these lines, there’s another popular idea floating around.

Today in bitcoin, there’s one main bitcoin software, Bitcoin Core, run by 95 percent of bitcoin nodes. (At least that’s according to one count – interestingly, there’s no way to see every bitcoin node, because some nodes want more privacy and don’t advertise their existence to the rest of the network.)

One idea, then, is to make more bitcoin code implementations. That way if one implementation has a disastrous bug that crashes the network, the other implementations could still be fine, keeping bitcoin as a whole running.

And to a certain degree, this already exists. There are lesser-known code implementations, such as Bitcoin Knots and Btcd. Elsewhere in the cryptocurrency world, this is becoming the norm. For instance, ethereum has two dominant implementations, geth and parity, each of which can be used by anyone running the software.

Still, many bitcoin developers worry that adding more than one implementation could introduce problems that would be even worse than last week’s vulnerability.

“What many people do not realize is that having people run different implementations makes it easier for attackers to partition the network,” Bitcoin Core contributor Andrew Chow argued in a conversation outlining the pros and cons.

As such, developers don’t necessarily agree on exactly what needs to be done.

Theymos perhaps put it best when he said:

“I don’t know exactly how this can be prevented from happening again, but I do know that it would be a mistake for the community to brush off this bug just because it ended up being mostly harmless this time.”

Metal shield image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

SecurityBitcoin CoreBitcoinBug

Staking Isn’t Just a Way to Earn Crypto Money – And It Shouldn’t Be Jake Yocom-Piatt Jake Yocom-Piatt Jun 22, 2019 at 09:30 UTC  Updated Jun 22, 2019 at 09:32 UTC OPINION Jake Yocom-Piatt is the project lead for Decred and the creator of btcsuite — an alternative full-node Bitcoin implementation written in go whose source code has been used in several notable projects.

Staking is money you don’t want to miss out on — simple as that, right?

While most cryptos today are trading 70 -90 percent below their all-time highs, staking is making what looks like easy money, scoring coin holders up to 30 percent rewards. More and more people are paying attention, with staking touted as the best way to make semi-passive returns in a bear market.

Coinbase is launching staking support, and new staking coins are cropping up to compete with the established players like Tezos, Dash and Decred.

It’s not really that simple. Staking is getting attention for all the wrong reasons, and it’s time to re-examine its role.

Misconceptions around how it works and why it exists will have lasting consequences if expectations aren’t set now. Projects that implement any form of proof-of-stake (PoS) need to plan for long-term sustainability, not just the immediate future.

If You’re Going to Stake, Stake Right Staking is evolving from being a semi-passive reward, to becoming a powerful incentive for participating in governance. Projects that plan for the future will figure out how to incentivize active participation, while those who elect a set of governors based on the quality of their kickbacks won’t last.

Choosing to stake on the right projects for the right reasons is the best way to earn rewards.

Proof-of-Work (PoW) was introduced on bitcoin as a block validation method to timestamp transactions without the need for a trusted third party. PoW has an established track record with bitcoin securing its network using energy. People began exploring PoS as a way to use less energy to do validation “work.”

PoS is more accessible and decentralized, empowering coin holders, who “stake” coins to “forge” blocks by maintaining an online wallet or node.

Staking started as just another method for recording transactions securely, but it’s constantly evolving. Some implementations are a hybrid with PoW, while others add delegates who either receive votes from, or are empowered to act on behalf of, the group.

Staking for Rewards vs. Staking for Participation As Zaki Manian, co-creator of Cosmos, pointed out in an interview with CoinDesk, “[P]art of the dynamics of proof-of-stake is how frequently do people just vote to give themselves more money?”

In this scenario, coin holders collect exorbitant rewards without putting in any work.

Staking has been erroneously portrayed as the crypto version of a bond. While there are projects that don’t require any more work than staking funds for a reward, this approach is ultimately unsustainable and will get participants who thought they could “park and earn” into trouble.

It’s not unusual for projects to employ a toothless charade for centralized parties to claim they’re not in control. These systems are often overly complicated and characterized by confusing procedures and non-binding voting, which in practice discourage voter participation and lead to voter apathy.

When it comes to participation, several staking projects have voting on treasury spending — projects like Dash, Decred and PIVX are paving the way in governance where the community participates in project-level decision making. Decred’s participatory voting feature, for example, allows token holders to vote on everything from protocol decisions to choosing to hire its PR firm.

Today, staking spans a gamut of implementations beyond locking up funds, from ensuring the security of a blockchain to changes in consensus rules. PoS doesn’t necessarily imply governance, but its incentive structure combined with governance has radical implications for participation.

Staking for Rewards and Power With the right incentives, staking can not only return rewards, but also give you input on a project’s future direction. When staking your coins, they usually go through a lock-up period while voting — rules on this vary from project to project.

After voting, you get your coins back as well as a staking reward.

If you vote against the project’s interests, while you’ll still get the immediate staking reward, over time you’ll feel the negative market effects of bad decisions like an all-expenses-paid stakeholder’s ski trip to Switzerland. In a system that gamifies decision-making and other processes, voting on decisions has a longer-lasting effect beyond earning an immediate staking reward.

Staking governance is powerful because it embodies a philosophical underpinning of the crypto movement: the belief humanity’s accepted forms of large-scale decision-making aren’t working well.

Staking aims to put that into practice — in crypto in the near term and on a societal scale in the distant future. This means eliminating corrupt intermediaries in favor of peer-to-peer interaction, and shirking representative democracy in favor of direct voting.

Individual sovereignty is tantamount; if you have skin in the game (i.e. are financially invested), you should help determine the direction of that game. But with that comes the responsibility of making informed decisions, and not necessarily trusting anyone else is going to make them for you. If you want to participate in staking long-term, you need to understand a project well enough to stake it.

If you want to have a say in how a project is run, you need to stake one that incorporates your sovereignty as a user. To participate, you need to keep up on changes to its consensus rules and actively vote for what you believe is best for it.

Staking can yield significant rewards, but to simply receive compensation for voting sets up a poor alignment structure. Coin holders must understand the responsibility that comes with locking up their coins and use it wisely — and only then enjoy the fruits of their labor.

[sevmeyinkimseyifazla-blog]

Why You Must Experience SEO 2019 At Least Once In Your Lifetime

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Seo or SEO will be a powerful method to generate targeted traffic to your internet site and hopefully increase your bottom level line. Whilst many marketing tactics rely upon you reaching out to your own audience, SEO gives you the particular power to achieve people whenever they are actively searching away information related to your providers and products. Light hat SEOs the actual suggestions of Google and other research engines like google. As Google's search engine outcomes become increasingly monetized and additional platforms such as Amazon plus YouTube gain more SoV plus search volume, I think jooxie is overdue for the focus associated with SEO to shift far through Google. Traditional SEO is usually focused on building (keyword relevant) links and (keyword relevant) content material. The main reason they may sometimes misunderstood is because you will find a whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, I actually must note that after our own 2017 edition of SEO developments launched last year on Research Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you if you're accountable for search engine optimisation (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search may be the trend in 2019. It helps your SEO work to ensure that your key phrases are added to the traguardo description and it will supply you a ranking boost in case your specific terms are apparent in this area. Moreover, a Google Penguin update drastically changed the function of backlinks on SEO, producing it more difficult to obtain link juice to a internet site. Gone are the times of traditional SEO techniques, on the internet content is changing. The cognitiveSEO Rank System offers accurate country, language plus city precision for all your own tracked keywords. Even if your URLs normally are not pretty, ” if you avoid feel as though they're adversely impacting users and your company in general, don't change all of them to be more keyword concentrated for better SEO. ” In case you do need to alter your URL structure, make certain to utilize the proper (301 permanent) type of redirect. In this particular post, we've broken down the particular very best SEO techniques to assist you skyrocket your rankings plus boost your number of regular monthly visitors. An accessible URL is definitely an important SEO ranking aspect. Heidi Cohen: To increase 2018 SEO results, marketers will proceed moving away from disposable, after and done content. They concentrate on SEO Internet marketing objectives and provide top search motor rank like Google and Bing. Collectively, these developments are plus can continue to have the dramatic impact on the method in which we search optimize our websites in 2019 plus form the core of the newest SEO 2019 update briefing.

You may generally see outcomes of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts once the webpage proceeds to be crawled and listed by a internet search motor. Possibly the best form of interpersonal media to pay attention in order to when turning to SEO will be Google Plus. A single of the most successful methods to ensure your clients get your photography business is by means of implementing an SEO strategy, this specific is more than just generating it to number 1 about Google, it means ensuring of which a varied and steady flow of traffic is heading to your site, over and even above that of your rivals. If you are usually willing to improvise your internet site search and boost up your own Google ranking, but do not really have time or resources with regard to doing that, hire an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist for the same objective. Mobile SEO is usually mobile search engine optimization or even optimizing content for a much better search ranking. Titles on pages and explanations affect what people see within search results, so it's important to check these out within any SEO audit. Search motors give some guidelines for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, but big search engines maintain result ranking as a industry secret. Along with $80 billion forecast to turn out to be spent annually on SEO — and content marketing set for you to be considered a $300+ billion industry by simply 2019 — it might end up being tempting for stakeholders to discover SEO and content marketing while cost centers rather than profits centers. While that will theory is sound (when concentrated on a single page, when the particular intent is to deliver electricity content to a Google user) using old school SEO strategies on especially a large web site spread out across many web pages seems to amplify site high quality problems, after recent algorithm modifications, and so this type associated with optimisation without keeping track associated with overall site quality is self-defeating in the long run.

Dave Gregory, Content Marketing Supervisor from the UK based functionality marketing agency, SiteVisibility, predicts that will 2019, and not 2018, will be going to be the true year of voice. If we consider Google's Guide then there are almost 200+ factors that lead a web site in ranking, which we have got researched and clustered in twenty one On Page SEO Factors, that will needs your attention in 2019. SEO Wise Links can automatically link important terms in your posts plus comments with corresponding posts, web pages, categories and tags on your own blog. 41. An effective cultural media strategy needs a strong SEO plan. Google does make a few of this data accessible in their particular free Webmaster Tools interface (if you haven't set up a free account, this is a very useful SEO tool both for unearthing search query data and with regard to diagnosing various technical SEO issues). AI and Tone of voice Search Impact SEO, Lets notice how voice search analytics Impact's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and can impact in the particular coming time. A great many businesses determine to hire external help to be able to get the full benefits associated with SEO, so a large component of our audience is mastering how to convince their customers that search is a good investment (and then prove it! ). Nevertheless, SEOs tend in order to prefer links higher on the page. Because your site, because of to the nature of your current business is going to end up being more image orientated than written text heavy, you may be at a moderate disadvantage when it comes in order to employing SEO techniques such because keywords, backlinking and so up. The much better you get at SEO, the particular more traffic - and even more leads - you're likely in order to attract over time. To find away more read our 2019 developments in SEO marketing report. Are voice searches plus it's expected that by 2019, 67 million voice-assisted devices will be going to be in make use of in the U. S. These types of kinds of changes and provide on your website shouldn't become a problem logistically — the particular overall practice among the greatest web companies nowadays is making sure that websites are flexible sufficient, especially for SEO purposes. Whether you will be a marketer, webmaster or enterprise owner, it is very significant invest in voice SEO marketing to reap benefits in 2019. We said earlier that cultural media isn't a direct SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor, so you're most likely wondering why we're even talking about it. The particular effects of Black hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION are temporary, it shouldn't take the particular search engine long before this spots these illegal strategies plus then penalizes you; the research engine may spam your hyperlinks and if you continue making use of these malpractices the search motor will altogether block your web site and links. Algorithmic chasers, technical SEOs, plus Google Doodle followers should develop their technical skills to concentrate on emerging voice search technology and AI applications. Single Grain is a electronic marketing agency in order in order to companies like Uber, Amazon plus Salesforce grow their revenues on-line using SEO and paid marketing.

Presently there are a few fundamentals that will can help boost the technique, but SEO, or seo, will be hardly ever considered. While employing the services of a great SEO agency can get a person good marketing copy for the particular website and an effective make use of of the related keywords, getting a brilliantly designed website may help a lot when this comes to attracting people plus even the search engines in order to your website. You are able to get into important SEO-related data like the particular page title, description, and key phrases for every page or a person can have the system instantly populate this data depending upon a document name or various other fields. SEO has become broadly adopted as an online advertising strategy due to the effectiveness. Creating high-quality content along with SEO in your mind through the beginning boosts search presence. In contrast, dark hat SEO is about attempting to take shortcuts and video game search engines. You may also use Google Analytics in order to find SEO keywords for content material optimization. Keyword research is the particular process SEOs value to discover what search queries consumers get into into a search engine with regard to a given topic. Within today's rapidly shifting world, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques can change on the dime—and the worst part is usually that you might not actually know it. Hacks that can have won you a front-page result as recently as 2016 are not only obsolete right now, but they may even harm your website's rankings. I believed it as simple as a good example to illustrate an factor of onpage SEO or ‘rank modification', that's white hat, fully Google friendly plus not, ever going to trigger you a issue with Search engines. So in the event that you want to get began which includes basic SEO, the particular first thing that I would certainly recommend would be choosing the set of keywords for every page on your website. Away from page, SEO has contrasted along with it. Undoubtedly, off page optimisation is all about link developing, but the quality links plus content. Via a direct incorporation of Google's Search Console, Siteimprove SEO helps you understand how the particular world's most popular search motor and its users see and—more importantly—find your website. On Page Ranking Factors — Moz's on page ranking elements explains the different on web page elements and their importance within SEO. Surprisingly enough, some sort of lot of SEOs out generally there do tend to underestimate typically the power of Google Trends The particular tool has a separate "YouTube search" feature, which hides below the "Web search" option. An SEO agency may work together with a organization to provide an added viewpoint, when it comes to knowing and developing marketing strategies intended for different sectors and various sorts of business websites. Given the ratings and search volume, SEO may drive considerable traffic and qualified prospects for Grainger. SEO stands for lookup engine optimization - that significantly has stayed the same. But they keep on transforming their algorithms making it challenging to rely on one specific tool for SEO optimization Plus today you could have a good appropriate rank which may not really last in the coming 6 months. The Technical Audit Checklist Produced For Human Beings — Within this post by Distilled, a person will find a link in order to a Google sheet that offers an technical SEO audit register and links to resources upon how to complete each checkbox. Then each time the term SEO appears on your web site, it's automatically changed into the link you specified. Keyword Analysis for SEO: The Definitive Guideline — This comprehensive guide simply by Brian Dean teaches you the number of strategies for obtaining keywords and determining intent intended for your target market. On-page and off-page SEO function together to improve your research engine rankings in complementary style; however, SEOs generally advise obtaining your on-page SEO ducks within a row before focusing as well much on off-page SEO. Within 2019, web-based businesses will follow more voice-to-text technology to raise engagement and search activity. There are many SEO web sites suggesting that they can supply a service to make the website LSI friendly, or meet up with ‘LSI requirements'. The particular art of web SEO is situated in focusing on how individuals search for things and knowing what type of results Search engines wants to (or will) screen to its users. Social press SEO would encourage your present customers to come back whilst helping you develop authority with regard to potential ones. He is an expert in SEO, Content Marketing, plus Pinterest Marketing. An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION expert plays a huge part in helping companies build their own businesses and attract new clients through website traffic. Here's a true statement you don't need to hear as often: Your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION technique for 2018 shouldn't concentrate on keywords. (1888PressRelease) Packet Marketing, a Boston-based, full-service SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION and search engine marketing techniques firm today announces they have been rated as the number five SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION firm in the 2010 Advertising World Top ten SEO Firm Award initiative. According to Forrester Study, the number of global smart phone subscribers is expected to achieve 3. 5 billion by 2019, crossing the 50% mark regarding smartphone penetration by 2018, plus reaching 59% by 2019. On-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ensures that your site can be read by both possible customers and search engine automated programs. In 2019, voice-search will become the dominant way that individuals search. But SEO is all regarding the organic” rankings, which show up in the middle of the particular search results page. The most important SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION factor for creating high-quality articles is doing good keyword analysis. Criteria changes in 2018 seem in order to centre on reducing the strength of old-school SEO techniques, along with the May 2015 Google ‘Quality' criteria update bruisingly familiar. Keep in mind in SEO article writing suggestions you keywords have to create sense too. Domain Authority within SEO is a rank that will measures how popular and reliable search engines call at your own website. If the key phrases you might be hoping to rank with regard to don't show on the page, this will be much more difficult to achieve your goals : making on-page optimization a important part of most SEO strategies.

[castingdirect]

RAPE CULTURE ENGLAND: More than 200 Pupils Listed As Excluded By 4 UK Counties (In Depth)

Reports are coming in from Counties around the UK about schools and more specifically the 'rape culture' and exclusions for alleged sexual offences of pupils which reveal more than 200 exclusions of pupils from schools in Worcestershire, Dorset, Cumbria and Hertfordshire. In no particular order we look at reports coming in from around the UK in relation to the Rape Culture that's been highlighted throughout the education system. And whilst 15,000 submissions on Everyone's Invited makes some very harrowing reading, it's also a shock to know that more than 200 pupils have been excluded from schools in just four UK counties, with more results to come and the number expected to be in their thousands overall. Schools from Hertfordshire, Worcestershire, Cumbria and Dorset have submitted their reports on students, offences and expulsions, as students reveal they felt unsafe when attending the London Oratory Sixth Form, because of vile sexual harassment that wasn't taken seriously. Two former pupils from the London Oratory have described how they endured shocking sexual harassment, and to protect the victims, their names have been changed. Jane and Janet attended the West London school for their sixth form studies, and the leading Catholic state school in Fulham has recently come under fire for allegedly fostering a rape culture, and it's famous alumni include actor Simon Callow, and the children of former Prime Minister Tony Blair and Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg. Both ex-pupils claimed to have been harassed by fellow students and say their accusations of sexual harassment, intimidation and stalking that were reported to teachers were not treated seriously. The pair said they were left feeling neglected and unsafe on school property, but the London Oratory's headmaster Dan Wright issued a lengthy statement to SW Londoner insisting they took the claims seriously. Jane claims she was stalked by a male student in the lower school for over three months: 'It was mostly online, which was part of the issue because I didn't know it was someone from school. A lot of it was stalking, following me home. Sending me messages about what they were going to do to me, sexually.' 'Then it got a lot scarier, talking about the details of my bedroom, so at one point I felt as if I was in a lot of danger.' When checking her requested messages on Instagram, Jane claimed she discovered she was being bombarded with abuse from the boys in the years below her. 'It was very confusing,' she says: 'Saying that everyone in the school knows I'm a dirty slut.' When the abuse escalated the police got involved - 'It eventually came out that it was coming from a boy in school and he had edited pictures, claiming them to be under a fake account with my name,' Jane said. According to Jane, police advised the issue was dealt with internally as they were both pupils at the school. The boy was suspended for a matter of days but eventually returned, and Jane claimed she was asked by teachers not to discuss the incident with anyone else and to move on. 'he school's response was very much that I needed to be careful about how people can access my details online. Yes, they punished the boy, but they let me down,' Jane said. As a result of the harassment, Lucy said she felt too intimidated to travel to and from school at normal hours as she feared she would be confronted by her stalker, so she began eating lunch in the toilet to avoid the crowds. Jane also claimed the school failed to inform her teachers of her trauma and she was reprimanded in lessons for losing focus. She said: 'There was never the comfort where I felt I could talk to a teacher and not fear that I was going to be blamed for what happened.' Janet claims to have had a similar experience during her time at The Oratory. She said she also began receiving unsolicited attention from a boy in the lower school which started in silent study in an area that only sixth formers were permitted to use. Janet said: 'He would come and sit next to me. I'd find that a bit annoying but you couldn't react without rock solid evidence. He started being a little odd with me, unsolicited kind of behaviour, making me uncomfortable.' 'It went from me going to study, sitting down at my desk to get on with work and I'd hear a voicer from under my table, comments about him looking up my skirt.' Janet alleged that when she took the case to a senior teacher, she was advised to ignore the behaviour as the pupil would be leaving in a few months after he finished his exams, and she claimed if Janet had been focusing on her work, she would stop noticing the unwanted attention. Janet said: 'It's very hard to work when someone is under your desk, no matter how hard you concentrate. The general consensus was essentially just you have to deal with it he's a younger year and he probably just fancies you, but I didn't feel safe.' Both Jane and Janet experienced further harassment and abuse during their time at the school from fellow male pupils, but due to the school's alleged response to their previous concerns, the pair said they never felt comfortable reaching out for support. When allegations emerged online via the LOS Testimonies page on Instagram, which has since been taken down, Janet felt compelled to get in touch with senior members of staff about her own experience. She composed a lengthy and detailed email about her time at the school, starting with an introduction and stating that she was no longer a pupil. The reply she received told her to check 'Parent Portal', something that can only be accessed by current pupils. Janet said: 'I am not a parent at the school, I made that very clear in the first line and immediately I felt they hadn't even bothered to read the first sentence of the email. I put a lot of time and emotion into that email so that they could understand the experiences of past pupils, and just to get that response was so upsetting.' The school issued a statement to SW Londoner, stressing it was committed to supporting victims of harassment. It read: 'It is right there is a light being shone on the testimonies that have been shared on Everyone's Invited.' 'Those are extremely serious issues that deserve public scrutiny and we are absolutely committed to rooting out any behaviour of this kind - it is completely unacceptable and we do not, and will not, tolerate it.' 'Our deepest sympathies are with those who have suffered these dreadful experiences, and we encourage anyone who has concerns or who has experienced this to come forward so we can take swift action, including involving the Police.' 'As those who have made these specific allegations wish to remain anonymous, it would not be right for us to share details on the specific circumstances. That said, for those who have been affected or have concerns, we have counselling and support programmes in place both inside and outside the school's structures.' 'This is something we take very seriously, and over a year ago we commissioned an externally led review and as a result of that prior to lockdown had been putting in place a revised comprehensive pastoral programme across our whole school community to explore issues around having healthy relationships and respect for one another.' 'This tackles head on all the relationship and online challenges young people face today as they emerge into adulthood. This is now being rolled out across all year groups and covers a range of areas, including age relevant approaches to the contemporary challenges of online lives, social media and pornography.' 'In sixth form, we continue to focus on personal responsibility, self-development and considerate co-existing, amongst much else.' 'The programme extends to integrating peer, cross year and parental involvement through discussion groups, issue sharing and workshops. In line with statutory requirements, the School put its RSHE programme through a parental consultation process back in January and February 2021: respondents were unanimously supportive of it.' 'Given recent developments, we have carried out two detailed consultations with sixth formers on what more we could be doing to prevent issue around sexual abuse and harassment both in school and outside of it.' 'We are committed to doing everything in our power to ensure these issues are dealt with properly and that we have the right culture for our boys and girls to prosper and thrive.' CUMBRIA PUPILS EXCLUDED DOZENS OF TIMES FOR SEXUAL MISCONDUCT Schools in Cumbria excluded pupils for sexual misconduct 31 times in 12 months, figures reveal. But charity Rape Crisis said the figures do not show the true scale of the abuse inside schools, following thousands of allegations by students across England. Department for Education (DfE), figures show Cumbria schools excluded students 31 times for sexual misconduct in 2018-2019 - one permanently and 30 temporarily. This was unchanged from the previous year, but down from 42 in 2016-2017. Of the exclusions in 2018-2019, 30 occurred in state-funded secondary schools and one in a primary school. They were among 1,972 sexual misconduct exclusions, which include incidents of sexual abuse. sexual bullying and sexual harassment - across England in that year. Though a 13% drop on the year before, Rape Crisis said the number of exclusions will not show the true scale of sexist bullying and sexual violence being perpetrated in schools, particularly against schools. 'The women and Equalities Select Committee published a comprehensive report into the issue with clear recommendations in 2016, some of which are yet to be implemented. No-one in Government can claim not to have known about this situation and action clearly should have been taken before now.' More than 14,000 testimonies have been posted on Everyone's Invited website where pupils can anonymously share their experiences of abuse and assault. Some students have accused their establishments of not tackling a 'rape culture'. Website founder Soma Sara said the number of students who have the confidence to report incidences of sexual misconduct pales in comparison to the number who have suffered. The Government announced an immediate review into sexual abuse in schools in the wake of the allegations, while an NSPCC helpline and an Ofsted review were also launched. Children's charity Barnado's said young victims of harmful sexual behaviour often feel embarrassed or fear they won't be taken seriously. Javed Khan, Chief Executive, said: 'In some cases exclusions are necessary, but all children displaying inappropriate sexual behaviour must have access to therapeutic support so they can understand, confront and change their behaviour through trauma informed rehabilitation.' He added that the introduction of statutory relationship education in September was an important step, but much more is needed to prevent harm. Overall, Cumbria schools excluded pupils 3,648 times in 2018-2019 - 3591 of which were fixed, and 57 permanent. A Government spokeswoman said: 'Where schools do not meet the strict safeguarding standards that we have in place, we will take swift action and we will always back teachers to remove a pupil from the classroom where this creates a calm and disciplined environment. 'We could encourage anyone who is aware of any specific incidents - and feels comfortable reporting their concerns - to do so.' WORCESTERSHIRE PUPILS EXCUDED 23 TIMES FOR SEXUAL MISCONDUCT Schools in Worcestershire excluded pupils for sexual misconduct almost two dozen times in one year, figures reveal, and the charity Rape Crisis says the figures do not show the true scale. Department for Education figures show Worcestershire schools excluded students 23 times for sexual misconduct in 2018-2019 - all of which were temporary exclusions. Of the exclusions, 21 occurred in state-funded secondary schools and two in special schools. Overall, Worcestershire schools excluded pupils 2,959 times in 2018-2019 - 2,878 of which were fixed, and 81 permanent. Rape Crisis said the number of exclusions will not show the true scale of sexist bullying and sexual violence being perpetrated in the schools, with Katie Russell saying that they have known of a high prevalence and the serious impacts of sexual violence and abuse in schools, with the Women and Equalities Select Committee published a comprehensive report into the issue with clear recommendations, and that the Government should have already taken action by now. DORSET SCHOOLS EXCLUDED MORE THAN 100 PUPILS FOR SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN DORSET Schools across Dorset excluded more than 100 pupils for sexual misconduct over a 10-year period, figures reveal. The Department for Education figures show Bournemouth schools excluded students 45 times for sexual misconduct between 2009 and 2019, one permanently and 44 temporarily. Of these, the vast majority, 39, occurred in state-funded secondary schools, two in special schools and four in primary schools. In Poole there were 45 exclusions with 43 in state-funded secondary schools and two in primary schools. And in the rest of Dorset, there were 12 exclusions, all in state-funded secondary schools. They were among the 1,972 sexual misconduct exclusions, which include incidents of sexual abuse, sexual bullying and harassment, across England in that year. Overall Bournemouth schools excluded pupils 2,386 times in that year, of which 2,316 were fixed, and 70 permanent. HERTFORDSHIRE DOZENS OF SCHOOL EXCLUSIONS OVER SEXUAL MISCONDUCT IN HERTFORDSHIRE SCHOOLS Pupils in Hertfordshire have been excluded on dozens of occasions in a year, figures have revealed. Schools in Hertfordshire excluded pupils for sexual misconduct on dozens of times in one year, but Charity Rape Crisis says this isn't a true reflection. The DfE said Hertfordshire schools excluded students 52 times for sexual misconduct in 2018-2019, one permanent and 51 temporarily. This was a decrease on the previous year's total of 59. Of the exclusions in 2018-2019, the vast majority, (46), occurred in state-funded secondary schools, three in special schools and three in primary schools. Overall, Hertfordshire schools excluded pupils 8,089 times that year, with 7,965 of which were fixed, 124 permanent. This is a continuing story and will be updated regularly. Read the full article

[uk-news-talking-politics]

Silencing Black Lives Matter: Priti Patel's anti-protest law

By Ian Dunt

We knew this was coming. Priti Patel has been extremely clear about what she thinks of Black Lives Matter. "Those protests were dreadful," she said last month. She's also been clear about what she thinks of Extinction Rebellion. At a police conference last year she branded its activists "eco-crusaders turned criminals". Now we see what she plans to do about it.

On Tuesday, the Home Office published the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill. It covers a wide range of areas, from sentencing to digital information. But it has a specific section on the policing of protests. And the function of this section is simple: It aims to silence them. It is cancel culture on a statutory footing, directed against the left.

This is not a metaphor. It is the literal and explicit function of the legislation.

The policing bill does this by amending an old piece of legislation called the Public Order Act 1986. This older Act gave police officers powers which they have used against protestors ever since. If they believe that a demonstration risked "serious public disorder, serious damage to property or serious disruption to the life of the community", they could impose restrictions on it - for instance on where it went, whether it moved or how many people could be present.

This week’s policing bill adds a further justification for the restrictions: noise. If the noise of the protest “may result in serious disruption to the activities of an organisation” – for instance by distracting employees in a nearby office, then the police can impose restrictions. It goes without saying that this applies to almost any protest at all around parliament, the whole purpose of which is to get the attention of politicians. It can therefore cause “serious disruption” of an organisation.

It also applies to passers-by. If the noise of the protest could have "a relevant impact on persons in the vicinity of the procession", the police  can impose restrictions. The standard for this threshold is very low indeed: If the police believe that just one person nearby could be caused "serious unease, alarm or distress", they can impose restrictions.

Wherever you look in the legislation, it works to lower the point at which the police can intervene. The old legislation, for instance, said they could do so to prevent "disorder, damage, disruption or intimidation". That old formulation remains, but the Home Office has added a new criteria: "impact".

Look closely at those words. The ones in the old legislation were all negative. But the new one is entirely neutral. Legally, it seems very broad. But if you look closer it is actually quite specific. It aims its sights at the entire purpose of protest.

The point of a demonstration is to be heard, to make an argument, to encourage others - whether they are people passing by, or workers in a company, or MPs in parliament - to hear the protestors' point of view. In other words, to have an "impact". This is why we call them 'demonstrations'. It is a demonstration of a political view, expressed so that it can convince others. That is what makes it a vital part of free speech.

Demonstrations are not just any kind of free speech. They are the free speech of the unheard. They are the last medium of communication and influence available to people who are frozen out of the formal political system, either in the media or in parliament. And those are the people Patel is trying to silence.

The government is effectively sticking duct tape over the mouths of protestors. They are requiring, quite literally, that they do not make noise. They are silencing them. The inability to be heard is now a precondition for being able to protest.

"Protesting in the way that people did last summer was not the right way at all," Patel said of Black Lives Matter. Well now we know what the right way is: a way in which no-one can hear you.

She then opens up a new front against demonstrators. She increases the number of them who can be prosecuted for failing to abide by the police restrictions.

These restrictions are usually announced to protestors by police on loudspeakers and on social media. But when those who broke the restrictions ended up in court, they could always say they were unaware of them. And that was entirely reasonable. Protests are chaotic events, often involving large areas, many people and - yes - a lot of noise. It's very likely a protestor won't have seen a tweet from the police or been in a position to hear their announcements on a loudspeaker.

This defence was open to them because the 86 Act said they had to have "knowingly" failed to comply. But the new legislation makes a very significant change. It applies if they "ought to know" of the restriction.

This is an astonishing move. It means that even if a demonstrator hasn't seen the tweet sent by police, or heard the announcements on a loudspeaker, they can still be prosecuted.

Patel is also making the definition of a protest much wider. Previously "assemblies" and "processions", which are the legal categories of these types of events, had to involve more than one person. But MPs have spent the last few years getting increasingly irritated by Steve Bray, the Remainer campaigner who stood outside parliament during the Brexit crisis. And the Home Office is keen to clamp down on Extinction Rebellion's plan for a "Rebellion Of One" campaign which would see people take action on their own. The bill seeks to undermine these events by giving police the powers they would have over normal demonstrations even for "one-person protests''.

It then takes aim at the statue debate which blew up around Black Lives Matter. The government seems intent on raising the maximum penalty for criminal damage of a memorial from three months to an astonishing and completely disproportionate ten years. A memorial is defined extremely broadly indeed, as "a building or other structure, or any other thing" which has "a commemorative purpose".

And then Patel does something really quite extraordinary, which should not be possible in a properly-functioning liberal democracy. She gives herself the power to fundamentally change the meaning of the law at any time without any real parliamentary scrutiny.

The 86 Act hinges on the phrase "serious disruption". It's police suspicion of that eventuality which authorises the powers they have over protestors. But the new legislation allows the secretary of state to "make provision about the meaning" of the phrase. She can do this using something called statutory instruments.

Statutory instruments are powers given to ministers allowing them to change or update law with no real parliamentary scrutiny. They're supposed to be used to implement something that is in an Act of parliament - for instance by changing the type of speed cameras that are used in road safety legislation. It's uncontroversial, unfussy stuff that parliament doesn't really need to be consulted on. But Patel isn't using them for anything like that. She is using them to unilaterally change the meaning of an Act of parliament.

She could, of course, have put what her definition of "serious disruption" is in this new bill. That means it would have got all the scrutiny you'd normally get for legislation - committee stage, impact assessments, press attention, full parliamentary votes. But she hasn't done that. Instead, she has given herself the power to make it whatever she wants, whenever she wants, with only a slim scrap of scrutiny available. The criteria for whether a protest can go ahead and how is now effectively in the hands of the home secretary.

Just a few weeks ago, education secretary Gavin Williamson insisted that "free speech underpins our democratic society". He did so because he was ostensibly concerned about left-wing students no-platforming conservatives in universities.

But this legislation shows just how shallow those sentiments were. This government isn't interested in free speech. It is interested in culture war. Those on the government's side of the culture war have their speech legally protected. Those on the other side are silenced.

#right to protest #priti patel

[eznews]

Roughly 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees and their dependents rely on the military health system, which is the military’s sprawling government-run health care framework that operates hundreds of facilities around the world. The military health system also provides care through TRICARE, which enables military personnel and their families to obtain civilian healthcare outside of military networks.

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Under the proposal in the latest version of Esper’s defense-wide review, the armed services, the defense health system and officials at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness would be tasked to find savings in their budgets to the tune of $2.2 billion for military health. Officials arrived at that number recently after months of discussions with the impacted offices during the review, said a third defense official. A fourth added that the cuts will be “conditions-based and will only be implemented to the extent that the [military health system] can continue to maintain our beneficiaries access to quality care, be it through our military health care facilities or with our civilian health care provider partners.”

However, the first two senior defense officials said the cuts are not supported by program analysis nor by warfighter requirements.

DoD Unified Medical Budget vs Veteran Medical Care Costs (in Billions) | President’s Budget Historical Data

The department’s effort to overhaul the military health system have recently come under scrutiny, as lawmakers pressed the Pentagon on whether the pandemic would affect those plans.

“A lot of the decisions were made in dark, smoky rooms, and it was driven by arbitrary numbers of cuts,” said one senior defense official with knowledge of the process. “They wanted to book the savings to be able to report it.”

“It imperils the ability to support our combat forces overseas,” added a second senior official, who argued that Esper’s moves are weakening the ability to protect the health of active-duty troops in military theaters abroad. “They’re actively pushing very skilled medical people out the door.”

However, a Pentagon spokesperson said the system will “continually assesses how it can most effectively align its assets in support of the National Defense Strategy.

“The MHS will not waver from its mission to provide a ready medical force and a medically ready force,” said Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence. “Any potential changes to the health system will only be pursued in a manner that ensures its ability to continue to support the Department’s operational requirements and to maintain our beneficiaries access to quality health care.”

Esper rolled out the results of the first iteration of the defense-wide review in February, revealing $5.7 billion in cost savings that he said would be put toward preparing the Pentagon to better compete with Russia and China, including research into hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, missile defense and more.

But the proposed health cuts, in the second iteration of the defense-wide review, would degrade military hospitals to the point that they will no longer be able to sustain the current training pipeline for the military’s medical force, potentially necessitating something akin to a draft of civilian medical workers into the military, the two defense officials said.

The second official noted the challenge in finding outside doctors given longstanding complaints from some U.S. hospitals and researchers that there aren’t enough physicians to serve civilians.

“How’s a ‘draft’ even going to work?” the official said “The U.S. is dealing with a doctor shortage.”

As a result, the proposed reductions would hurt combat medical capability without actually saving money, the officials argued. The Pentagon is already significantly overspending on private sector care and TRICARE because patients are being pushed out of undermanned military health facilities to the private health care network, they said. The cuts also would follow nearly a decade of the Pentagon holding military health spending flat, even as spending on care for veterans and civilians has ballooned.

The officials blamed the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, or CAPE, under the leadership of John Whitley, who has been acting director since August 2019, for the cuts. CAPE conducts analysis and provides advice to the secretary of defense on potential cuts to the defense budget.

During Whitley’s confirmation hearing to be the permanent CAPE director last week, Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) pressed him on the health cuts.

“Folks in my state have expressed some concern and opposition to some of the policies, which allow only active-duty service members to visit military treatment facilities,” Jones said. “What do I tell those folks?”

“The department does have work to do on expanding choice and access to beneficiaries,” Whitley responded. “Sometimes that’s in an MTF, sometimes that’s in the civilian health care setting.”

Whitley has specifically tried to eliminate the Murtha Cancer Center as an unnecessary expense, said one senior official.

Last fall, Whitley and CAPE also sought to close the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, which prepares graduates for the medical corps, as part of the defense-wide review, the people said. Although at the time Esper denied the proposal, CAPE is now seeking major cuts to USU as part of the $2.2 billion. The reductions include eliminating all basic research dollars for combat casualty care, infectious disease and military medicine for USU, as well as slicing operational funds.

“What’s been proposed would be devastating, and it’s coming right out of Whitley’s shop,” said the senior official. “Instead of a clean execution, USU would be bled to death.”

The officials pointed out that USU has contributed to the Covid-19 response in recent months by graduating 230 medical officers and Nurse Corps officers early from the class of 2020 School of Medicine, leading and participating in research clinical trials for virus countermeasures and contributing to the Operation Warp Speed effort to develop a vaccine.

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