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#How to increase sales in 2021
rajthebloggersblog · 8 months
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How To Crack More Sales - 5 Definite Ways In 2021 And Beyond. - rajtheblogger.com
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afloweroutofstone · 3 months
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What can the US do to deescalate the siege on Gaza unilaterally? It comes down to Netanyahu and his Gov at the end of the day, no? Would conditioning aid do anything? It honestly looks like they’re to ideologically committed to ethnic cleansing no matter what. The funding at least gets them a seat at the table in what Israel does
The Israeli government is deeply reliant on the US government in a way that gives the US a massive amount of leverage. Most people fail to understand just how far US foreign policy goes to support the Israeli government. Because the Israeli government's current activities would not be possible without US support, the US is the only world power with the ability to stop the Israeli siege on Gaza.
Here are various forms of US government support for the Israeli government which could be used to pressure them into a ceasefire:
Military aid. The US provides Israel with roughly $3.3 billion a year in military aid, equivalent to about 16% of the entire Israeli defense budget. While US military aid is normally required to be spent on US-made weapons, Israel has historically been allowed to use part of its aid on its own weapons industry (a subsidy for the Israeli military-industrial complex which the US is currently phasing out). This aid comes despite the fact that it violates the inconsistently-enforced Leahy Laws against providing US aid to known human rights abusers.
Arms exports. From 2018-2022, 79% of Israeli weapons imports came from the US, much of it funded by our military aid. This includes thousands of bombs and missiles, dozens of aircraft, and nearly 400 armored personnel carriers. The Israeli government also buys large amounts of US weapons directly from weapons companies through the Direct Commercial Sales process— $5.7 billion worth from 2018-2022.
Military ties. The US government has 12 active defense agreements with Israel and a memorandum of understanding on military aid lasting until 2028, has designated Israel as a Major Non-NATO Ally, meets with the Israeli government once every two years for planning and strategy discussions, and conducts regular training exercises with the Israeli military (Juniper Oak and Juniper Falcon).
Direct military support. The US uses its military power to support Israeli objectives, as the last couple of months have shown. The US Navy stationed an aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean Sea for several months to deter Hezbollah from getting involved in last year's violence, and is now involved in active hostilities against the Houthis in Yemen in response to their trade blockade.
Diplomatic support. The US votes in agreement with Israel at the United Nations more than any other country in the modern era. Israel's next three largest supporters at the UN are small island nations which are satellite states of the US. Many supporters of Israel do so only to curry favor with the US; without this, Israel would be even more isolated than it is now. The United States has used its veto power in the UN Security Council to defend Israel 34 times, most recently in October 2023. The US also has a policy of automatically defunding any UN agency which recognizes Palestine.
Trade Relations. The US has a free trade agreement with Israel and is one of its largest trading partners. In 2021, 27% of Israeli exports went to the US, and 9% of Israeli imports came from the US. Israel has a trade surplus with the US that helps to offset its overall trade deficit; if all trade with the US were to cease, the Israeli trade deficit would increase by 27%, with major repercussions for its entire economy.
US domestic politics. The US has adopted a handful of policies which tilt its internal political field in favor of the Israeli government: laws repressing the BDS movement, the refusal to hold the Israeli government accountable for surveillance campaigns in the US, etc., etc.
If the US government wanted to, it could deprive Israel of a large portion of its defense budget, cut off the flow of weapons and munitions which enable their attacks on Gaza, isolate it from its closest military ally, leave it defenseless against overwhelming diplomatic opposition around the world, severely upset its export-import economy, and expose the nation to increased scrutiny within the world's most powerful nation. If even a fraction of these moves were attempted, it would be enough to force the Israeli government to change course, and it would also likely be enough to topple Netanyahu's already-tenuous grasp on power.
Biden can't do most of this unilaterally— most of it would require congressional approval. But that doesn't mean he's powerless: foreign policy is the one area where the President has the most power to act without congress.
It was Biden's choice to veto the UN resolution calling for a ceasefire, to send new Navy forces into the region, and to bypass congress for Israeli arms sales. Biden could chose to act differently in all of these areas, and he could also suspend joint military exercises, launch an investigation into whether US military aid violates Leahy Laws, etc. Even threatening to take these actions could be enough to convince the Israeli government to negotiate for a serious, lasting ceasefire.
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retrocanvas · 2 years
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How to Increase Website Traffic in Just 3 Simple Steps!
So you want more people to see your website? You've put in time, sweat, energy, and possibly even a few tears to create your website. You've promoted your company so that your community is aware of what you do and why your work is valuable. Learn more her
So you want more people to see your website? You’ve put in time, sweat, energy, and possibly even a few tears to create your website. You’ve promoted your company so that your community is aware of what you do and why your work is valuable. Increased website traffic can help you stand out from the crowd, increase sales, and increase user inquiries — but how do you get more page views? First you…
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veganism · 1 month
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The genocide is also experimentation on living beings
Israel is currently testing new weapons in Gaza, some of which will soon be sold globally as "battle-tested," according to Antony Loewenstein, an author who has written a widely acclaimed book on the issue.
For years, the Israeli defense sector has used Palestine as a laboratory for new weapons and surveillance tech, he told Anadolu, adding that this is also the case in the current ongoing war on Gaza.
One of the main reasons why "many nations, democracies and dictatorships support Israeli occupation" of Palestine is because it allows them to buy these "battle-tested" weapons, asserted Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.
Another aspect of Israel's war on Gaza has been the use of artificial intelligence technology, he said.
According to Loewenstein, AI has been one of the key targeting tools used by the Israeli military in its deadly campaign of airstrikes, leading to mass killings of Palestinians-now over 28,500-and damage on an unprecedented scale.
The current war on Gaza is "inarguably one of the most consequential and bloody," he said.
He described Israel's use of AI against Palestinians as "automated murder," stressing that this model "will be studied and copied by other nation-states" and Tel Aviv will sell them these technologies as tried and tested weapons.
In the last 50 years, Israel has exported hi-tech surveillance tools to at least 130 countries around the world.
To maintain its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel has developed a range of tools and technologies that have made it the world's leading exporter of spyware and digital forensics tools.
But analysts say the intelligence failure during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks casts doubts over Tel Avis's technological capabilities.
Israel's reliance on technology "is an illusion of safety, while imprisoning 2.3 million people under endless occupation," said Loewenstein, who is Jewish and holds Australian and German nationalities.
He described Israel's response in Gaza as "apocalyptic," stressing that the killings of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, is "on a scale of indiscriminate slaughter."
- 'BLOOD MONEY'
Loewenstein, who is also a journalist, said Israel has honed its weapons and technology expertise over decades as an occupying power, acting with increasing impunity in the Palestinian territories.
This led a small country like Israel to become one of the top 10 arms dealers in the world, he said, adding that Israeli arms sales in 2021 were "the highest on record, surging 55% over the previous two years to $11.3 billion."
In his book, Loewenstein explores thoroughly Israel's ties with autocracies and regimes engaged in mass displacement campaigns, and governments slinking their way into phones.
The Israeli NSO Group sold its well-known Pegasus software to numerous governments, a spyware tool for phones that gives access to the entire content, including conversations, text messages, emails and photos even when the device is switched off.
Israeli drones were first tested over Gaza, the besieged enclave that Loewenstein referred to as "the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination."
Surveillance technology developed in Israel has also been sold to the US in the form of watch towers now used on the border with Mexico.
The EU's border agency Frontex is known to have used Israeli drone technology to monitor refugees.
Loewenstein explains in his book that the EU has partnered with leading Israeli defense companies to use its drones, "and of course years of experience in Palestine is a key selling point."
"So again, one sees how there are so many examples of nations that are wanting to copy what Israel is doing in their own area in their own country on their own border," he said.
These technologies and "are sold by Israel as battle-tested," he said.
In other words, he contends that Palestinians essentially have become "guinea pigs," and despite some nations and the UN publicly criticizing the Israeli occupation, in reality "they're desperate for this technology for themselves for their own countries."
"And that's how in fact, the Palestine laboratory has been so successful for Israel for so long," he said.
In his exhaustive probe into Israel's dealings with arms sales around the world, he noted that the country has monetized the occupation of Palestine, by selling weapons, spyware tools and technologies to repressive regimes such as Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 and to Myanmar during its genocide against the Muslim Rohingya people in 2017.
"This to me is blood money. I mean, there's no other way to see that and again, as someone Jewish, who has spent many, many years reporting on this conflict, both within Israel and Palestine but also elsewhere, it's deeply shameful that Israel is making huge amounts of money from the misery of others," he said.
"This is not a legacy that I can be proud of."
- 'NO NATION ACTUALLY HOLDING ISRAEL TO ACCOUNT'
Profiting from misery is to some extent the nature of what capitalism has always been about, but Israel does this with a great deal of impunity, "because Israel does what it wants," said Loewenstein.
"There is no accountability, there is no transparency, there is no nation actually holding Israel to account," he added.
Israel's regime is shielded from any political backlash for years to come because nations are reliant on Israeli weapons and spyware, said the author.
Israel may not be the only player employing surveillance technology that leads to human rights violations, but it still plays a dominant role, which is why Loewenstein insists that it deserves singular attention.
Israel's foreign policy has always been "amoral and opportunistic," he said, calling on all nations to take a stand and hold Israel accountable, and acknowledge that the world is buying what Israel is selling.
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California's antitrust case against Amazon
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California’s antitrust case against Amazon feels anachronistic, like a witchcraft charge, or some other ancient crime that we no longer prosecute. It’s true, antitrust spent 40 year in a coma! The Amazon case neatly illustrates how it was sedated, and why it finally roused.
Back in the Reagan years, antitrust underwent a profound change. For 90 years, America’s trustbusters had pursued monopolists under the theory of “harmful dominance” — the idea that when companies get big enough, they can inflict harms on workers, communities, customers and the political process. They become “too big to fail” and “too big to jail.”
Senator John Sherman said it well, when campaigning for his landmark 1890 Sherman Act, America’s first comprehensive antitrust law: “If we will not endure a King as a political power we should not endure a King over the production, transportation, and sale of the necessaries of life.”
https://marker.medium.com/we-should-not-endure-a-king-dfef34628153
For American competition regulators, the problem with big companies was that they usurped the power of democratically accountable law. The executives who commanded these firms became “autocrat[s] of trade with power to prevent competition and to fix the price of any commodity.”
But for the business lobby, the ability to be an autocrat — to impose your will on your workers and suppliers and customers without interference by elected lawmakers or the regulators who report to them — was a feature, not a bug. The power of a monopolist to take away others’ freedom to trade, work and live as they choose was essential to “liberty.” That’s why, as self-proclaimed “libertarian” Peter Thiel has it, “Competition is for losers.”
Under Reagan, the business lobby got its way. Their champion was Robert Bork, Richard Nixon’s disgraced solicitor general, whose book, “The Antitrust Paradox,” was a kind of gnostic reading of US antitrust law, insisting that the lawmakers who voted for the Sherman Act and its successors actually liked monopoly:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down
These lawmakers, Bork said, viewed monopolies as beneficial, thanks to the efficiencies they realized by not having to engage in wasteful competition. The FTC, DoJ and the courts had been misapplying antitrust through its history. The only time the state should act against monopolies is when they use their market power to raise prices.
This “consumer welfare” theory of antitrust was the poison dart that plunged trustbusting into a 40-year coma. Bork and his cronies at the University of Chicago School of Economics — the cradle of neoliberalism — set up a sweet side-hustle, building complex mathematical models that only they understood.
These models were used to prove that every monopoly was untouchable under consumer welfare enforcement standards — even if a company bought all its competitors and then increased prices 1,000% (as Luxottica-Essilor did for eyeglasses, after buying nearly every eyeglass brand, retailer, insurer and lens-maker), it was still untouchable.
The Bork models could “prove” that these price-hikes were the result of “exogenous” factors — increasing wage bills, oil shocks, or just because the moon was in Venus. Price-gouging could be blamed on anything except corporate greed.
This highly technical change in antitrust enforcement is one of the most consequential, worst-understood shifts in our society. Today’s headline inflation numbers rarely mention the monopoly CEOs who gleefully notify their shareholders that they’ve been able to raise prices far in excess of their costs, simply because they lack meaningful competition:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/02/its-the-economy-stupid/#overinflated
It was obvious from the start that “consumer welfare” was a scam, a ruse designed to let monopolies flourish and to install “autocrats of trade” on their thrones. Despite its ideological bankruptcy, “consumer welfare” was able to repel its critics for decades, because it had deep-pocketed backers — no different from tobacco-cancer denial or climate denial.
But, as with cancer and climate denial, inaction on antitrust created mounting harms that made it increasingly obvious that the story was a lie. In 2017, we reached a turning point when a third-year law student published “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox” in Yale Law Journal, which demolished Bork’s arguments so comprehensively that today, that former law student is the chair of the FTC: Lina Khan.
Khan’s leadership — and that of her colleagues, Robert Kanter at the DoJ and Tim Wu in the White House — have been nothing short of inspirational, an object lesson in the prospect that “personnel are policy.” But they are not alone — they are part of a raging current sweeping through state governments and legislatures all over the world, from the EU to China.
And state houses, too. Which brings me back to California’s antitrust case against Amazon. Amazon exerts serious harmful dominance, of course — you can’t have missed the way that its conduct erodes local tax bases, immiserates workers, inflicts climate harms, wrecks local businesses and independent firms that rely on its platform.
But none of that is in the California case against Amazon. Rather, the case focuses on a narrow, and ingenious “consumer welfare” theory of how Amazon has raised prices — the one thing that consumer welfare claims to defend us from:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62908412
Amazon is a classic “chokepoint capitalism” business. The company’s “Prime” program and other lock-in tactics were deliberately and explicitly designed to ensure that the majority of customers for the majority of goods turn to Amazon first. It worked:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie
That means that any business that wants to sell anything had better offer those goods on Amazon, or forfeit a large portion of its market — perhaps the majority. When large firms like Birkenstocks held out and refused to sell on Amazon, the company tacitly encouraged counterfeiters to sell substitute goods to customers searching on its site:
https://www.geekwire.com/2016/birkenstock-announces-it-will-leave-amazon/
The result is that nearly every firm was corralled into Amazon’s walled garden, and as those firms disappeared behind Amazon’s walls, more customers bought into Prime and found themselves locked into Amazon’s walled garden, too. Amazon is quite explicit about this strategy, which they call “the flywheel”:
https://twitter.com/rgibli/status/1561761732108107777
That meant that instead of competing in the market, these Amazon suppliers competed on Amazon. Amazon created a $31b/year “ad” business mainly made up of payola that Amazon vendors spend to rise to the top of the Amazon listings:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/not-an-ad/#shakedowns
Even after spending $31b, independent merchants find themselves unable to make a go of it on Amazon’s platform. Desperate, they sell out to “gators” — aggregators who professionalized the business of navigating Amazon’s Byzantine rules and scams, spawning a multi-billion-dollar, socially useless industry:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gator-ade
But no matter how much you spend on Amazon “ads,” and no matter how skilled you are at avoiding Amazon’s other traps, you will struggle to top the listings unless you purchase a slew of Amazon “services” — most notably, “fulfillment by Amazon” and Amazon Prime Fulfillment.
All told, a successful Amazon seller is likely handing over 35–45% of the purchase price to Amazon in fees and commissions. That vastly exceeds the profit margin on many goods, which presents merchants with a stark choice: lose money on every sale, or charge more for everything sold on Amazon.
No business can survive for long if it loses money on every sale (at least, not without the backing of the Saudi royals — looking at you, Uber). So Amazon sellers hike prices, just to cover the vig extracted by Amazon itself.
You might be thinking that this is an opportunity for Amazon’s rivals: if your local retailer (or even Walmart) opted not to charge all those fees, then the same merchants could offer the same products on their shelves at a 35–45% discount and still make the same amount of money. As habituated as we are to Amazon, as much as Prime means we turn to it first, a 45% discount would surely tempt some of us to shop elsewhere.
But Amazon’s thought of that too, which is why they make every merchant that sells through their platform sign a “most favored nation” guarantee that they will not charge less for their products anywhere else — which means that the price is the same everywhere.
And that’s the heart of the California antitrust case against Amazon: Amazon’s market dominance makes it impossible to survive without offering your products on Amazon; to succeed there, you must turn over 35–45% of your gross to Amazon. That leads to higher prices on Amazon, and, thanks to the most favored nation deal, it pushes those same higher prices to every other retailer.
Amazon, in other words, is undermining “consumer welfare” by forcing up prices — not just on Amazon, but everywhere.
This is sleazy as hell of course, but, as noted, it is just one of Amazon’s myriad of sins, and far from the worst one. California AG Rob Bonta has managed to thread the microscopic eye of Robert Bork’s needle — but like busting Capone for tax fraud, the need to pursue this strategy reveals the poverty of our other enforcement regimes.
“Consumer welfare” was always a lie and a sham. The harms inflicted by chokepoint capitalists — to workers, suppliers, and our politics and regulation — are not limited to making us worse off as “consumers.” No one is a mere “consumer” — a kind of ambulatory wallet. We are also workers, citizens, and residents. Even when monopolies make our prices go down, they also make our wages stagnate, lowering our overall purchasing power.
It’s heartening to see California take on one nodule of the Amazon cancer, but that can only be the start. Even if Amazon is forced to stop price-gouging us, it will still inflict innumerable harms. This needs to be seen as the first step in taming monopolies — not as an end in itself.
[Image ID: The flag of California. It has been altered so that the bear is rearing on its hind legs, and its forelegs are crushing an Amazon lower-case 'a' logo. The 'smile' beneath the Amazon logo has been inverted into a frown. Atop the California bear stands a trustbuster-era editorial cartoon illustration of Roosevelt, swinging his 'big stick.' From the star in the California flag emanates a read beam-weapon that is bathing the Amazon 'a' with lethal rays. The 'a' is wreathed in flames.]
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idsb · 10 months
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Can you elaborate a bit on the strategy OR's team is using and what makes it way too early for that kind of approach? (I'm fascinated by stuff like this)
yeah so basically Olivia's current manager manages people like Jennifer Anniston, Paul Rudd, Mark Ruffalo, and Jason Bateman - huge huge huge movie stars and they don't really have any singers on their roster [they do have Selena but she's an outlier bc she fits what these people go for and doesn't really market herself as an artist like how Taylor is one].
Olivia signed with them in February 2022, and almost immediately there was a STARK difference in how she was presented: her personal posts slammed on the breaks, she stopped doing interviews, promo for Sour slammed on the breaks except for very PR-ish feeling posts, etc. This makes a lot of sense for the clients her manager has: while they are very very very famous and very very very beloved, I don't think you could tell me anything about Paul Rudd's actual personality. Jennifer Anniston does not have an instagram. I have never seen or heard of a Jason Bateman interview. the people this firm manages are EXTREMELY high-end famous people; people who are elevated in a way where they do not interact with the general public. like. ever. If they do, it is in an extremely polished way because they are such mega-stars that giving pieces of themselves personally is not merited (and to tie back into Selena, her PR strategy has been contingent on not giving very much of herself outside of HUGE things like giant magazine covers every once in a blue moon, or her doc. She's really elevated above the GP with her stardom level and doesn't partake in celeb culture, isn't really Seen anywhere, etc). She's been focused less on being personable and more seeming elevated, like I said, and out of reach: significantly more adult fashion choices, minimal personal socials, hardly any windows into her life, etc.
This, as a VERY young artist who is a confessional songwriter, just Does Not Work. I think Olivia chose them because she wanted to be taken more seriously and establish career longevity, but for everything she has built her career around: being a super personable girl who could be your bestie (and who you want to be your bestie) who writes extremely confessional songwriting, having this extremely thick veil between you and your fanbase and audience just is not going well so far imo - she's been very left behind culturally because she's not participating in that culture and both her entire first album and herself as a person were a MASSIVE pop culture staples in 2021. I think this will have pretty significant negative effects on album 2 sales and will kind of destroy the very dedicated and passionate Gen Z following she had, and translate her into more like... adult-y radio pop demographic - which is the exact opposite move you'd want if you're trying to establish career longevity at this stage (trying to cement the dedication of the fanbase you've built + increasing it). it can work when you're already well-established and extremely beloved, aka Selena. It doesn't work when you're a young artist still climbing and I think her making that decision was a little hasty and rooted in feeling too big for her britches.
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cindylouwho-2 · 1 month
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Etsy Fourth Quarter Earnings 2023 - Still Banking on Improving Marketplace Sales, But Not Revealing Many Plans
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Slide 23 from Etsy's 4th quarter 2023 earning report, © Etsy. it shows what percentage of sales each major category has, with performance in the quarter.
Etsy’s fourth quarter results for 2023 were as uninspiring as expected, but despite revealing few plans, the corporation is convinced it can increase gross marketplace sales through its gifting and other initiatives. There was a lot of interesting information for shop owners, though, so let’s get right to it. 
First, here are the resources that you should read/watch yourself, if you want to know more:
the press release
transcript of the conference call
slides from the conference call
video of the call (click on “Webcast” under “Latest Quarterly Results”)
my summaries of the fourth quarter 2022, and the third quarter 2023 for comparison
Then, the basic numbers (covering October to December 2023, compared to the same period in 2022):
Sales on Etsy were $3.6 billion, down 1.4% year over year
Total sales for all 3 marketplaces (Etsy, Reverb, and Depop) were $4.0 billion, down 0.7%. [Elo7 was officially sold in mid August; its numbers were still included in the comparison totals of 2022]
Etsy’s revenue (including all 3 sites) was $842.3 million, up 4.3%
Seller service revenue was up 9.4% to $226.5 million, while marketplace revenue was up 2.6% to $615.8 million
Net income was $83.3 million, down 24% (mostly due to the layoff costs of $27 million in the quarter)
Active buyers on Etsy alone stand at 92 million, a third consecutive all-time high
Active sellers on Etsy alone are now 7 million, the fourth large jump in a row compared to the previous quarter; numbers had been stagnant through the end of 2021 and all of 2022 [Note that “active” means one charge or transaction in the past 12 months; many “active” shops currently have nothing for sale.]
Sales where the buyer and/or the seller was not in the United States were 45%, up from 44% last year, but down from 47% in the previous quarter
Sales on mobile are 68%, up from 67% last year [this includes both the buyer app and mobile browsers]
As always, I am reporting what Etsy’s representatives said in the main text, with my commentary in square brackets.
Etsy Search
At the moment, Etsy’s search algorithms aim to show shoppers things they are most likely to buy. They are currently working on changing that to showing what buyers are most likely to love after the purchase. They refer to items that consistently get high reviews, have good photography, and whose shop owner provides good customer service, has quality return policies and ships on time, as “quality” items, or, “the best stuff.” 
This is all a work in progress, so search may not change drastically any time soon. Past calls and interviews have related this to the increase in Etsy Picks assigned in the past few months; they plan on using those Picks to train the algorithm to find “quality”, especially quality photos. The items staff identify as “quality” convert twice as well as other listings, so there is obvious benefit to Etsy showing them higher up in search results. 
Etsy has added some of the features in its “neural ranking model” to non-US searches; previously it was only in the US searches. 
Advertising
Offsite Ad spending was down 4% in the quarter vs. 2022, in part due to competition bidding higher than Etsy thought was worthwhile. At the time of the call, that spending was back to normal. Per slide 21, money from Offsite Ads fees covered about 35% of what Etsy spent on the ads during the quarter. 
CEO Josh Silverman explained why the performance marketing (Offsite Ads) spend can be unpredictable.
“So performance is dynamic on a, really, hour-to-hour basis depending on the ROI we're seeing on every dollar we're spending. And we've got pretty sophisticated algorithms that work on, is this bid -- is this click worth this much right now and how much should we bid. And so to the extent that CPCs rise, we naturally pull back, or to the extent that CPCs lower, we naturally lean in. The other thing, by the way, it's not just CPCs, it's also conversion rates. So in times when people are really budget constrained, we see them actually -- we see conversion rate across the industry go down. We see people comparison shop a lot more. And so we are looking at all of that. And not humans, but machines using AI are looking at a very sophisticated way of what's happening with conversion rate right now, what's happening with CPCs right now.”
Etsy also does testing twice a year where they stop running ad such as Google Shopping ads in part of the country, and then compare with the areas still advertising to see if the buyer still would have bought. Silverman admitted that the data shows “often the answer may be yes.”
Overall marketing costs went up 7% in the year. 
The Gifting Initiative
Etsy is now aiming to brand itself as the place to go to buy gifts. Gift Mode is just the start of this campaign. Their surveys report that more than half of US gift giving is based on personal occasions that occur year round, such as birthdays, or “just because”. People in the US spend an average of $1600 a year on gifts, but Etsy’s US buyers only average $38 spent per year on gifts from Etsy. They estimate that less than half of Etsy buyers in 2023 used the site to buy at least one gift. There is obviously an opportunity to do better. 
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The percentage of US residents thinking of Etsy as a good place to buy a gift is now down to 10%. [Previously, the company reported it was 12%, and I commented last quarter that I’d like to see a more recent survey to judge if they have used this knowledge to improve. 
“Only 12% of buyers will name Etsy top of mind as the place to shop for gifts.” They don’t seem to have any updated numbers showing how they’ve been improving that situation. [It’s time to go after that “enormous opportunity”, Josh!]”
So despite wanting to grab a bigger gifting share before now, Etsy has managed to lose ground. This is my biggest fear about the gift push: the market was there before now, and Etsy’s own research demonstrated that. Are they only going all in now that they have run out of other ideas?] 
There were 6 million visits to Gift Mode in the first 2 weeks. [I am not really impressed, given that they promoted it very heavily, and I was personally responsible for over 100 of those visits while researching my Gift Mode blog post.]
Other plans to bring in buyers
Silverman stated “[o]ur focus will be to make Etsy even more Etsy”, and to differentiate the marketplace from sites that sell everyday needs. The following quote deserves to be read in full:
“Most other players are competing head-to-head to sell the exact same merchandise, focused on selling at $0.02 cheaper or shipping it two hours faster, and this has resulted in the commoditization of the entire experience. But that's just not Etsy.”
[This seemed to be a completely unironically-intended comment, with no recognition of the fact that he actually discussed speeding up shipping times in the same presentation, nor of the well-known fact that so much on Etsy these days can usually be bought cheaper on Aliexpress or Shein.]
He also said that the “special” aspect of Etsy is what sometimes holds the site back, as buyers might consider Etsy limited to specific items, or might “worry about the post-purchase experience”. Bringing people back more often is a goal. [They’ve been saying that for years now, though.]
The company is currently doing buyer loyalty program research, but gave no further details. He also cited “shortening our estimated delivery dates this year by at least 2 days” as something that buyers should like, but it is unclear to me reading this if the work done last year (the year discussed in this call) already shaved 2 days off of delivery dates, or if the statement is this year’s goal. I think it is the latter [but the only ways to do that are to improve the accuracy of their tools - and I am not sure that they are currently 2 days longer than reality on average - or to pressure sellers to ship faster. Since Etsy is once again updating shop settings to add weekends to shop processing times without notifying us, I guess we can assume the latter? UPDATE (Mar 19): Silverman clarified at a recent talk that "we think we can cut shipping times on Etsy by at least two days this year."]
Other things sellers need to know
Etsy Ads now involve some localization outside of the US, which increased conversion rates. [If your ad performance changed in non-US countries during the quarter, this is the most likely reason.]
Neither sales or Etsy’s revenue are expected to increase until the second quarter, and they expect revenue to grow faster than sales this year. [Revenue is almost certain to increase, as the corporation has been surveying sellers on what they would be willing to pay more for.]
“In 2023, we removed approximately 140% more listings for violations of our Handmade Policy than in 2022.” [No word on how many of them were removed erroneously, though, as we know the “Temu” bots pulled a lot of truly handmade items that had photos stolen and listed on other sites.]
Silverman promised “innovation planned to improve the predictability of shipping costs for both buyers and sellers”, but provided no details. [I am not sure what would make my personal costs more predictable, given they change every single week with Canada Post’s fuel surcharge right now. Is it going to be forcing people to use Etsy Labels with calculated shipping? Or is this more calculated shipping options for countries outside of the US, and for new carriers? Restricting the amount a listing can charge for shipping? I really have no idea, but I hope all those people they hired for “fulfillment” jobs a few years back are coming up with something that is actually useful.] 
Miscellaneous
Depop had a decent quarter in sales and revenue. 
Reverb sales were flat. “The Reverb team made some organizational changes late in the year” which are expected to be profitable [i.e., they laid off over 30 people in October].
The Etsy layoffs in December were referred to by CFO Rachel Glaser as “our recent workforce realignment”. [At least she didn’t call those former employees churn.] The call provided no details on the restructuring they previously said would be done by the end of this quarter. 
October sales were not good, but November and December improved. January “was a little bumpy.”
Outside of the US, sales in Germany were mostly steady, while the UK, Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria improved.
The upcoming $15 fee for newly-opened shops will largely go to paying the costs of the technology for vetting sellers; it is not expected to result in much profit. 
My thoughts: this is going to be a rough year for many Etsy sellers
As I discussed last quarter, Etsy’s upper brass didn't seem to think they were responsible for the lackluster sales performance of their marketplace, and this quarter that extended to not admitting they overhired since early 2022, and not acknowledging that Etsy’s reputation as a gift site actually dropped over the past few years. The last one is particularly galling. Why keep talking about how there was great room for improvement in Etsy brand recognition for gift buyers and then fail to improve even a tiny bit? What were these folks doing the past 2 years? 
It’s clear they think bravado will get them through this, including the bold move of claiming everything will improve in the second quarter and throughout the year without revealing any real details. No wonder the stock dropped yet again. 
That said, they likely have some reasons for thinking that revenue will pick up at least, if not sales. As mentioned above, they have been extensively surveying sellers about raising fees and/or charging us for things we currently get for free (or mostly do not want). Possible downsides for Etsy include the fact that the Indie Sellers Guild and the Artisans Cooperative (among others) are likely to get more negative press for Etsy if fees are raised yet again, just as happened in 2022. It does not help that Etsy didn’t really follow through on improved services the last time they raised fees. 
And the more I think about the comment on shipping costs, the more I believe they are considering making Etsy Labels compulsory for at least some in the US, with set shipping charges sellers won’t be able to change. Bonanza did this last year, charging its US sellers $2 per order extra if they didn’t use Bonanza labels and didn’t get an exemption from the program. Most Etsy sellers using the labels and being forced to show that price as the shipping cost for buyers is the only way I can think of making shipping prices more predictable for buyers, other than capping shipping charges outright (and that sounds like a nightmare to implement). eBay does it, though. Am I missing something? [UPDATE Mar. 5, 2024: Etsy is surveying buyers about how much they like cheap shipping.]
Perhaps more importantly, the planned search changes have the potential to disrupt the status quo a great deal. We know that Etsy frequently takes a lot longer to develop these types of technologies than they expect, so it may not happen this year, but the work on promoting “quality” listings will continue, and that is already affecting some shops that used to do better in Etsy search. Do everything you can to make sure your images are "high-quality". If you rely on internal search to get most of your Etsy sales, this is a very good time to follow my usual advice and diversify your traffic sources. 
Etsy’s branding pivot to being the place to get gifts could also have a big impact on some shops and categories, if it is successful - and that is a big “if”. I’m not thoroughly convinced Etsy can manage this change in consumer consciousness, considering that the site’s reputation continues to be hammered by controversies around scams and non-handmade items. Kitkats, anyone? 
Many other comments do not bode well for most shop owners: a continuing push for discounting, emphasis on faster shipping times, and financial restrictions/impositions on “newly-opened” shops all indicate that traffic may flow away from small business owners who choose not to comply, or are unable to comply. 
Last quarter I said “[d]on’t be surprised if there are major site changes in 2024”, and I appear to have been correct. But really, anyone reading these reports over the past few years could have seen it coming.
Stay well informed, everyone! It’s the best weapon we have.
Reminder that you can sign up to receive my Tumblr and website blog posts via email.
UPDATED March 19, 2024
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Opinion | The GOP tax plan is to let the rich pay less and make you pay more
By Jennifer Rubin
President Biden, consistent with his idea of building an economy from “the bottom up and the middle out,” has tried to get the rich and big corporations to pay more taxes. The MAGA GOP, abandoning all pretense of populism, has a scheme to junk the progressive tax code and replace it with a national sales tax, with devastating results for the middle class.
That tells you a lot about the contrasting visions of the two parties. One still fights for the little guy in practical, concrete terms while the other proposes one harebrained scheme after another with no regard to the needs of average Americans.
Biden’s American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit for a year and permanently made it fully refundable, meaning that parents receive the money regardless of how much they owe in taxes. Keeping his promises not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year and to get businesses to pay more, Biden raised $300 billion in revenue in the Inflation Reduction Act by placing a new tax on stock buybacks and enacting a minimum tax on big corporations. To the chagrin of tax cheats (and their sympathetic Republican politicians), the law also boosted funding for the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evaders.
None of these were radical changes in the code. More far-reaching plans to increase the individual top marginal tax rate, to boost the corporate tax rate, to equalize tax treatment of capital gains and ordinary income for those making more than $400,000, and to eliminate the step-up basis for the estate tax never passed.
The principle underlying all of these measures, which would be comparatively small adjustments that would not hit the vast majority of Americans, was simple: The rich have made out very well and should pay more taxes; working- and middle-class taxpayers shouldn’t.
“Over the past 40 years, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, and too many corporations have lost their sense of responsibility to their workers, their communities and the country,” Biden said in a speech in September 2021. “CEOs used to make about 20 times the average worker in the company that they ran. Today, they make more than 350 times what the average worker in their corporation makes.” He added, “Since the pandemic began, billionaires have seen their wealth go up by $1.8 trillion. That is, everyone who was a billionaire before the pandemic began, the total accumulated wealth beyond the billions they already had has gone up by $1.8 trillion.”
That grotesque widening of income inequality offends most Americans, who consistently tell pollsters the rich should pay more.
GOP politicians and their wealthy donors see things differently. The first tax measure proposed by the MAGA House was to try to take back funding for the IRS to chase down tax cheats.
“The debate should focus on one accurate and alarming number: the IRS has 2,284 fewer skilled auditors to handle the sophisticated returns of wealthy taxpayers than it did in 1954,” Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote. “The decade-long, House Republican-driven budget cuts have created dysfunction at the IRS, where relatively few millionaires are now audited.”
But allowing tax cheats to avoid paying what they legally owe is not the sum total of the GOP thinking on taxes. “As part of his deal to become House Speaker,” Semafor reported, “Kevin McCarthy reportedly promised his party’s conservative hardliners a vote on legislation that would scrap the entire American tax code and replace it with a jumbo-sized national sales tax.”
A mammoth 30% sales tax would be grossly regressive, socking it to the same working- and middle-class families Republicans ostensibly worry are paying more at the pump and grocery store because of inflation.
You know the idea is rotten when Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, blasted the move. He told Semafor: “This is a political gift to Biden and the Democrats.” Even Norquist knows that because the poor and middle class spend a much higher percentage of their income on necessities such as food and clothing, the impact would be devastating.
Unsurprisingly Democrats leaped at the chance to blast the scheme. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted:
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Biden also hammered Republicans: “National sales tax, that’s a great idea. It would raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.”
The GOP plan boils down to this: Let rich tax cheats get away with not paying what they owe while redoing the entire tax system so the overwhelming burden will fall on those less able to pay. Genius! Well, if you are a Democrat running in 2024.
The plan is unlikely even to get a vote. But it is indicative of the utter lack of seriousness that pervades the GOP. They throw out one boneheaded idea after another, hoping to please some segment of their base or donors, with nary a care in the world for the needs of their constituents nor for the actual challenges we face.
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naturalrights-retard · 11 months
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STORY AT-A-GLANCE
In 2022, Pfizer became the first drug company in history to break $100 billion in annual sales. That year, Pfizer spent $2.8 billion on ads, an increase of $800 million from 2021
But Pfizer’s success isn’t due to direct ads. It’s because a) the U.S. government spent $1 billion of taxpayers’ money to promote the experimental COVID jab, and b) Pfizer paid millions to consumer, medical and civil rights groups that lobbied for COVID jab mandates on Pfizer’s behalf
Special interest groups paid by Pfizer to push for COVID jab mandates and coercive vaccine policies include the Chicago Urban league (which argued that the jab mandate would benefit the Black community), the National Consumers League, the Immunization Partnership, the Advertising Council and a long list of universities and cancer, liver diseases, cardiology, rheumatology and medical science organizations
April 19, 2023, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its COVID jab guidance. The original monovalent mRNA shots are no longer recommended for use in the U.S. Instead, the CDC recommends people 6 years old and older get an updated bivalent mRNA COVID shot, even if they’ve not completed the monovalent series
While the World Health Organization seems to be backing off from endless COVID boosters for all, there’s clear evidence that mRNA gene therapy is here to stay. mRNA “vaccines” are in the works for influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), shingles, genital herpes and cancer, just to name a few
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rajthebloggersblog · 8 months
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How To Crack More Sales - 5 Definite Ways In 2021 And Beyond. - rajtheblogger.com
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cogitoergofun · 6 months
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released an updated road map this week for reaching zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The new report emphasizes that solutions like carbon capture technology and carbon credits have not lived up to their promise of removing CO2 from our atmosphere, while renewables have made the most progress toward reaching lower emissions targets.
The IEA initially released its first landmark roadmap report back in May 2021 where it outlined that the world needed to end fossil fuel development ASAP. The new IEA report explains that international cooperation and investment in clean energy have shown the most promise for averting the worst of the climate crisis. Emerging tech like hydrogen fuel cells and other emissions-capturing claims previously accounted for an estimated 50% reduction of emissions to reach net zero by 2050 in the 2021 report. Those methods only make up 35% of emissions reduction in this new version of the IEA’s roadmap.
“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is very costly. We must do everything possible to stop putting it there in the first place,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement. “The pathway to 1.5 °C has narrowed in the past two years, but clean energy technologies are keeping it open. With international momentum building behind key global targets such as tripling renewable capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030, which would together lead to a stronger decline in fossil fuel demand this decade.”
The pathway to not surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming is still open because there have been major investments in electric vehicles and solar power over the last few years, the report says. “Solar PV capacity additions increased by nearly 50%, and currently track ahead of the trajectory envisaged in the 2021 version of our Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE Scenario),” the report explained. “Electric car sales expanded 240% and stationary battery installations by 200% since 2020.”
This rapid expansion in renewable energy sources is made possible by cost reductions for the technology needed for solar, wind, heat pumps, and batteries. The cost of manufacturing clean tech has decreased by almost 80% between 2010 and 2022, according to the roadmap.
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mariacallous · 1 year
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Americans bought an estimated 150m guns in the past decade, as a drumbeat of mass shootings and other violence has convinced more people that owning a gun for self-defense will make them safer.
In a country where the leading cause of gun death is gun suicide, public health experts say a growth in gun ownership is likely to lead to more deaths.
In the 10 years since the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, the US gun safety movement has gained some political power, while the National Rifle Association has been weakened by internal disputes and legal battles. At the same time, overall gun ownership in the US appears to have grown.
People who choose to own guns are still a minority of the US population, with about a third of Americans saying they personally own a gun, and fewer than half saying they live in a house with a gun, according to survey estimates.
But the total number of American gun owners appears to have risen in recent years. One large survey conducted by Harvard and Northeastern University researchers estimates that the number of American gun owners rose by 20 million since 2015, from an estimated 55 million to 75 million people.
The number of Americans who choose to carry guns in public also appears to be rising, with 16 million people saying in 2019 that they carried a handgun at least once a month, and 6 million saying they did so daily, according to a new research study. That’s roughly double the number who said they regularly carried handguns in public in 2015.
Surveys over the past few decades show that an increasing proportion of Americans say they own a gun for self-defense, not hunting or recreation, said Deborah Azrael, a Harvard firearms researcher. In 2021, Gallup found, 88% percent of gun owners cited “crime protection” as their reason for owning a firearm.
Americans’ perception of the risk of crime and violence has often not lined up with reality: Gallup also found that, for nearly three decades, large majorities of Americans said almost every year that crime had risen nationally since the year before, even in the years when it was falling sharply. In 2013, Pew found that the majority of the public was simply unaware that the country’s gun homicide rate had fallen nearly 50% since 1993.
In the past three years, the coronavirus pandemic, nationwide protests against police violence and the insurrection at the US capitol supercharged US gun sales, with an estimated 5 million Americans becoming gun owners in 2020 and 2021, researchers found.
The top reasons for buying a gun early in the pandemic, according to a survey of California residents, were concerns about lawlessness, concerns about people being released from prison, the “government going too far,” and “government collapse.”
“When social problems happen, guns are one of the tools at the disposal of Americans”, and for many Americans, they are “a familiar tool”, Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist who studies US firearms culture, told the Guardian in an early 2020 interview, as gun sales surged. “If there’s a run on toilet paper, what’s going to be next? It’s just the prudent thing to get a gun.”
The majority of US gun owners are still white men, and the largest proportion live in the South, according to survey data. But research studies and gun industry sources agree that the demographics of gun ownership is shifting, with women estimated to make up half of new gun purchasers since 2019, and people of color making up nearly half, according to one major survey. Between 2019 and 2021, an estimated 5% of Black adults in the United States bought a gun for the first time.
Because of the political influence of gun rights advocates, there is no official government data on how many Americans own guns, or even exactly how many guns there are in civilian hands. Estimates range from 345m to 393m to more than 420m, according to the firearm industry trade group’s most recent data.
While there’s lots of interest in the eye-popping total number of guns in the US, “what matters is how these guns are distributed across people and households”, said Matthew Miller, a Northeastern University professor who specializes in firearm research, and what that distribution means for their increased risk of gun suicide, homicide or accidental injury.
His 2021 study found that a surge of gun buying before and during the pandemic meant that an additional 5 million US children now live in households with guns.
The best proxy for US gun sales over time is examining the number of federal criminal background checks conducted on gun sales by licensed firearms dealers. (In many states, individuals can sell guns to each other without any background check.)
Two widely cited estimates, both based on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ background check statistics, put the number of gun sales in the US since January 2013 at around 150m, though that figure is likely an undercount.
Because Americans can buy multiple firearms at one time with a single background check, and because some states also allow people with a concealed weapons license to buy guns without background checks, the actual number of gun sales in the past decade is almost certainly higher than 150m, said Mark Oliva of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun industry trade group that estimates there were at least 152m guns sales since January 2013.
At the same time, the number of background checks over the past decade will also include some double-counting of the same guns re-sold between people, said Jurgen Brauer, the co-founder of Small Arms Analytics, a firearms data company. Brauer estimates that, by the end of December, the total number of US gun sales in the past decade will reach nearly 164m.
Gun deaths have been rising in recent years, with a stark 35% increase in the nation’s firearm homicide rate in 2020, but a study that examined the pandemic surge in gun sales and increase in gun murders at the state level found no evidence of a clear association.
There were nearly 21,000 firearm homicides and more than 26,000 firearm suicides across the US in 2021, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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libratalks · 1 month
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The Resurgence of CDs: the "forgotten format" remembered by me
I know what you're thinking. There is no rebirth of CDs, Isha.
The facts tell us that they have been dying a slow death since their peak in the 2000s, suffering a 97% drop in sales revenue back in 2020. It fails to be a viable commercial format due to performing terribly in sales' data, with only a 1.1% increase in the US during 2021. No one is buying CDs, and those who are, well they just don't matter in the grand scheme of things for a few reasons. There are various sources of media that say otherwise, yet Damon Krukowski boldly states that one of the reasons why journalists have been penning articles regarding "the resurgence of CDs" is because there is a sense of false consciousness attached: it is an attempt by the industry to substitute the interests of the rich for one's own; to distract music consumers from facing the deeper problems within music distribution, such as a supposed booming economy in the music industry despite there being a great income inequality. To which I say, true, but un(?)fortunately, our minds do not resort to that aspect of the resurgence of CDs immediately. I mean, really, when I came across a sticker-peeled, used copy of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill in the snug CD section of my temporary hometown's Oxfam (I was in Bath during my second year of university), I was hardly thinking of the effects of CD sales in the music industry. What I was thinking about was the excitement I felt in the pit of my stomach to be eight years old again, sat on my bedroom floor, wanting to scream the lyrics to Ironic whilst dancing around my stereo. If there is a resurgence of CDs, it is thanks to my generation: Gen-Z.
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Perhaps one of Krukowski's faults is that he is building his conclusions based on CD sales from corporate stores, not independent stores that sell pre-owned copies. An hour ago, I was stood in a place named Record Collector in Sheffield, a whole store dedicated to collecting CDs along with artist memorabilia, such as tour posters and band autobiographies. There are also places such as Oxfam and Truck Store in Oxford where pre-owned copies of various CDs are sold at cheap prices ranging from 99p to £5. These stores are where the heart of CD-love lies. It's the accessibility with personal ownership that is comforting, along with the affordable pricing in contrast with vinyl prices. This reason for CD appreciation has always been evident, yet the introduction of MP3 files and the quick accessibility to downloads back in the 2000s is one of the murderers of the CD craze. Once there was a rise in MP3 players being sold, CD sales nearly halved between 2000 and 2007. Despite this, various artists and music fans remain defending CDs against MP3 players due to MP3 files becoming compressed when downloaded, affecting the audio quality of the song. With CDs, the audio is never compressed nor tweaked in any way. Yes, you could also just encode your MP3 files at a higher bit rate, but that leads me to my next favourite thing about CDs.
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THE CREATIVITY IS UNMATCHED. I have always been a visual learner of some sort, falling in love with aesthetics that are carefully crafted in front of me for my own enjoyment. It's why I adore films over books, possess a keen eye and attention to detail when it comes to their direction and fashion, and it is also why I love CDs in the way that I do. I mean, I have a whole Instagram page dedicated to the craftsmanship that artists have demonstrated through their CDs. I own a growing collection, ranging from artists like Hole and Radiohead, along with Avril Lavigne and Alanis Morissette. All CDs I own are bought based on two things: how much I love the music and how much I adore the artwork. This creativity that artists can build on introduces a realm of sentimentality for when a music consumer witnesses time taken to produce a delicate work of art, where thorough thought has been given to which photos will be used for the cover - what colour scheme we are aiming for in terms of the album's aesthetic - which font should be used for the title and should it be the same for the lyrical pages in the booklet? - these are intricate details that an artist recognises and appreciates, no matter what. With so much love and care given to a piece of work that you have crafted, not always alone but with a team, you can't help but feel a sense of inspiration along with appreciation for the beauty of it all - allowing you to feel a strong connection with the artist. With that, no other music format could even compare to the liberation of creativity that CDs possess.
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If there's anything you're going to take from me and my ranting, please let it be this: close your eyes, think of an album, or a song, or an artist that you can't help but feel a strong connection to, and buy one of their CDs. Go through the cover booklet, consume and appreciate each framing of text on each page - ask yourself why they chose to use that font or that colour - have the music playing at the same time and read through each page that consists of their lyrics... Let yourself be completely enamoured by the artist's choices of creativity and build your critical thinking in terms of what could be going on inside their minds.
You'll find yourself tapping into a whole new aspect of consuming music, especially in terms of appreciating visual individuality and the liberation that comes with it. All these feelings... thank you, CDs.
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energy-5 · 4 months
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Incorporating Renewable Energy into Your EV Charging Routine
The shift towards electric vehicles (EVs) has been a significant stride in the collective effort to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. As the electric vehicle market continues to grow, with global sales hitting over 6.6 million in 2021, a 108% increase from the previous year, the focus now turns to how we power these vehicles. Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources for EV charging is the next critical step in ensuring that the benefits of EVs are fully realized. This article explores the ways in which individuals and communities can incorporate renewable energy into their EV charging routines.
Firstly, the concept of 'green charging'—the process of using renewable energy to charge electric vehicles—is not only environmentally sound but also increasingly economically viable. The cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has dropped by about 90% since 2010, making it an accessible option for many. Homeowners with EVs can install solar panels to capture energy during the day, which can then be used to charge their vehicles in the evening. For those without the option to install solar panels, choosing a green energy provider for their home charging setup that sources electricity from renewables is an effective alternative.
In addition to solar power, wind energy is another potent source for EV charging. Wind energy has experienced a dramatic increase in its adoption, with the global wind power capacity reaching 837 GW in 2021, an increase of 93% from the capacity in 2016. EV owners can tap into this resource by purchasing wind energy credits or by selecting energy plans that prioritize wind-sourced electricity. This ensures that the energy used for charging their EVs comes from clean sources, even if they are not directly connected to a wind farm.
The integration of smart chargers has made it easier for EV owners to charge their vehicles when renewable energy production is at its peak. Smart chargers can be programmed to operate when renewable energy generation is high, which usually coincides with low demand periods such as mid-day for solar or night-time for wind. By doing so, EV owners ensure their vehicles are charged using the cleanest energy possible while also taking advantage of lower energy prices during these off-peak times.
Another key element in aligning EV charging with renewable energy is the development of a robust public charging infrastructure that is powered by renewables. Governments and private companies are investing in the installation of public EV charging stations that are directly connected to renewable energy sources. For instance, in California, which leads the US with over 39% of the country's EV sales, there is a plan to install 250,000 charging stations by 2025, many of which will be powered by renewables.
On a larger scale, energy storage systems play a vital role in matching renewable energy supply with EV charging demand. Energy storage solutions, like lithium-ion batteries or pumped hydro storage, can store excess renewable energy generated during peak production times. This stored energy can then be used to provide a consistent and reliable source of green electricity for EV charging, regardless of the time of day or weather conditions.
There is also a growing trend towards vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems, where EVs do not just consume power but also have the capability to return energy to the grid. This technology allows for a dynamic energy exchange where EVs can be charged during renewable energy peak production and then supply energy back to the grid when it's needed the most. This not only ensures optimal use of renewable energy but also provides stability to the energy grid and potentially offers financial benefits to EV owners.
Finally, to truly capitalize on renewable energy for EV charging, there needs to be increased collaboration between policymakers, renewable energy providers, and the automotive industry. Incentives for residential and commercial solar installations, tax benefits for purchasing green energy, and subsidies for smart chargers are just a few of the ways that can accelerate the adoption of renewable-powered EV charging.
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brianbrianbrain · 3 months
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hi hi i'm 君たちはどう生きるか posting again! anyways this is mostly plugging the book (to myself also because i haven't read it yet, haha) by going through cool facts on Wikipedia.
following IDs are all screenshots of text from the Wikipedia article for How Do You Live?
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ID. After the conclusion of World War II, the book underwent several changes such as vocabulary and was republished in 1945 by Mira-sha Publishers.[5] In practice, that meant removing mentions of imperialism, criticism of capitalism, unpatriotic behaviour, and references to the problems of class.[6] The English translation from 2021 is based on the original. End ID.
idk about you but nothing excites me more than when i get to read something that they wanted to remove "mentions of imperialism, criticism of capitalism, unpatriotic behaviour, and references to the problems of class" from.
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ID. This book is one of the "Nihon Shoukokumin Bunko" series that intended to convey knowledge and ideas of free and progressive culture to school children in Japan (Shoukokumin literally means younger citizens). However, many of the works were discouraged by the rise of Japanese militarism in 1930s.[5]
Political scientist Masao Maruyama praised the composition in which a child named Koperu observes reality and naturally portrays the process of discovering various things. He also commends how this complements the main character's discoveries, which are conveyed in the form of letters from the child's uncle. Moreover, the question "How Do You Live?" which is also the title of this book is not only the ethical problem of "how to live", but also about the kind of social scientific awareness to live. It is evaluating the problem of existing.[9]
According to author Yoshino Genzaburō, How Do You Live? was not originally conceived as a literary work, but was intended as a book on ethics. However, according to Takada Riko, this book is also a liberal arts theory written for students of former junior high school during the height of culturalism. Takada focused on the privileged family environment and the "high" social class of the heroes. Those were drawn by the author, who was inspired by the people during his time at Takashi Associated Junior High School (now a high school attached to the University of Tsukuba). He mentioned that this book is intended to resonate with educated boys, which, during that era, was a limited number of privileged citizens.[10]. End ID.
very fancy, very cool. free and progressive culture!! idk what culturalism is lol. evidently Miyazaki was also writing from the "privileged family environment."
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ID. Legacy: The novel appears in one of the scenes of the Studio Ghibli animated film also titled How Do You Live?, but titled internationally as The Boy and the Heron (2023). Although the novel appears in-universe and serves as a major plot point, the film is otherwise not connected to the novel and is not an adaptation.[13] The release of the film led to increased sales and reprints of the book in Japan. It was sold in large quantities in the Mercari marketplace app. Iwanami Shoten announced that the total circulation of the book reached 1.8 million copies, making it the number one book on Iwanami Bunko.[14] End ID.
i've heard that obviously the plots are very different but that there are still tons of parallels! definitely not expecting a straight adaptation, they are in very different settings and mediums.
other random thoughts: i should learn japanese lol. and read the original original. fuck hey where do i find this anyways. idk i'll figure it out. do you think the library has this
ok but yes i'm genuinely considering... i got a calendar in mandarin from my mom for christmas... i should brush up my mandarin + my spanish by doing translations... start learning japanese and practice with more translations... to round it out to 5 languages i should also get on russian like i said i would a while ago... i do know the korean alphabet but i can't do the words...
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cindylouwho-2 · 11 months
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Etsy’s 2022 Transparency Report: Murky Stats and Non-Facts
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Etsy claims its mission is to “Keep Commerce Human”, and unironically uses that tagline at the start of its 2022 Transparency Report - a report that details how the site’s automation is attacking legitimate Etsy shop owners with ever-increasing frequency. The deeper you dig, the more you can see that acknowledging the humanity of the seller base is not part of the corporation’s game plan. 
Policy Enforcement Has Gone to the Bots
The Trust and Safety division is responsible for policing the site in areas involving fraud as well as items prohibited on Etsy, including manufactured items falsely listed as handmade. Etsy admits that automation is responsible for 95% of the listings and shops flagged for rule breaking in 2022. These reports more than doubled over 2021′s total, to around 36 million. 
Despite this huge increase in flags, there was only a 16% increase in items removed year over year (a total of 1.9 million), meaning that Etsy automation is not improving in detecting real problems. Over 34 million flags were apparently unfounded; only 5% of the total flags were deactivated. That means that millions of listings were temporarily removed from the site or at least from search, when there was nothing wrong with them. It sometimes takes weeks for Etsy to restore these pages, and often that does not occur unless the shop owner opens a support ticket and complains (even though Etsy claims that every flag is reviewed “within four working days, on average”). 
The 36 million flags equal roughly one-third of Etsy’s current site inventory. Clearly, these bad bots have meant a large loss of visibility and sales for shops that comply with Etsy’s rules, and often those shops aren’t even given coherent reasons for the removals. Frequently, there is no public announcement of a new “ban”, such as the removal of amber items that started in February 2022. [I had 2 items removed and then reinstated. They were wrongly removed, despite the fact I had selected the correct material attributes for both - agate and labradorite. The word amber was only used as a colour. I was not selling amber, and both focal beads were larger than the “1.25 inches” Etsy Support cited as the safety threshold.] 
Unfortunately, the “Looking Ahead” portion of this report promises even more focus on machine learning to do the job Etsy truly needs real humans involved in. This problem is not going to disappear. 
[Please note that I have no issue with using automation for some of these situations, but if it is only 5% accurate, it needs more human oversight.]
It Gets Worse - Meet The “Mature Content Classifier”
Here’s exactly how Etsy describes this “mature content classifier”, a new site feature:
“...in 2022, we developed a mature content classifier which identifies potentially mature listings using text and image recognition. Using this technology, we work to keep these kinds of items from being displayed to users who aren't looking for them, while still allowing those who are to find them. While no technology is perfect and we may sometimes get it wrong, we’ve seen a 17% decrease in flags of mature content from our member community since adding this classifier to our search experience.” [my emphasis]
This comes as no surprise to many sellers of both “mature” and non-mature items, as there have been many reports of items that are no longer searchable for many (if not most) words in their titles. For example, an affected listing will show up for a search that includes the shadow-banned words, but not other searches. Words and phrases that can trigger this issue include:
sex and sexy
pinup
nude
BSDM
harness bra and body harness
pussy
panties
I am sure you can imagine many others! (but these are ones sellers have discovered and discussed publicly). For most of them, it makes no sense for Etsy to remove the item from all searches except those containing the offending word/s, since many of the words can be used innocently. “Nude” can be a colour, for example. 
The most bizarre so far is the dog diaper listing, which was affected not only by the words “menstrual” and “panties” but also the lead image of a toy dog wearing the garment. Switching up the photos so the toy was not the lead made the item searchable again. 
If your items are not at all mature and should not be classified as such by Etsy, contacting Support may help you get them restored, although many cannot even get a straight explanation from Etsy on this point. For some shops, removing the offending word from the title but keeping it in the tags may restore searchability, as can changing the first photo. 
However, it is obvious Etsy is going to refine this “classifier” in the future, meaning that more items will be affected - both mature and not - and the current fixes may not always work. Sellers of items that are mature or even border on mature, or rely on certain search terms that may be affected, should seriously reconsider depending on Etsy for any significant amount of business income. This "solution” Etsy is touting isn’t going to end. 
Resolving Order Issues Is Quicker Now Because Sellers Aren’t Involved In Most Cases - And Often Can’t Get Etsy To Help When Things Go Wrong
After a short section on intellectual property infringement, Etsy goes on to brag about the “improving” cases through its Purchase Protection Plan as of August 1 2022. “On average, cases were resolved by our team in just 14 hours in 2022. That’s down from 4.5 days in 2021.” 
What they don’t mention is that Etsy’s automation of this area means many cases are closed by bots almost instantly these days, as I detail in my blog post on the topic. Sellers often have great difficulty getting errors corrected, and Etsy is automatically forcing refunds from seller money in almost all cases over $250 USD now. While it is great for buyers that they can instantly get a full refund for the package stolen from their front porch, sellers are left with no protection with these larger orders. Even if they can prove signature confirmation and have photos of the delivered package from the courier company, Etsy still takes any refund over $250 from the shop’s account. 
As explained on my blog, there have been many ridiculous refunds issued from seller funds, including the following situations:
the buyer didn’t pick the item up at the post office
Etsy’s automation said the order was shipped late, but the message from Etsy listed the correct date as being “late”
a not-as-described case where the customer used a screenshot from another shop to prove the item wasn’t as described
a buyer returning an order without notifying the seller (which Etsy policy does not allow) 
the purchaser promised to return a damaged item, but recalled the package through USPS once Etsy issued the refund (thereby getting both the package and their money back)
In many of these types of examples, it was difficult or actually impossible for the shop owner to get their money back from Etsy, often because they could not reach Etsy or could not get an Etsy employee to understand the problem. Despite this, Etsy is claiming that “Sellers are also getting more access to support”. The corporation then flat-out lies by stating “we expanded our popular Help Center live chat support to be available to all sellers, 24 hours a day, every day.” I know this statement is as false as the day they announced it, as I was one of the sellers who filed [unresolved] Support tickets complaining that we did not have access to Live Chat. Today, I still frequently cannot get more than email options when trying to access chat through the Help Centre, and often have to use a help link generated by another seller to see the chat option. 
Furthermore, even if an Etsy shop owner can contact Etsy through live chat, any serious issue must be escalated beyond that first tier of support, and some of those other tiers can now take weeks and even months to get back to sellers. In another example of Etsy’s shoddy automation, I filed a ticket 10 days ago regarding a listing in my shop that displays the “Sorry, this item is unavailable in your region” message when clicked on from the United States, and only received a cut and paste reply that explained some plants and seeds can’t be sold in the US. (It’s not a plant or seed, nor does it contain those substances. I can’t even figure out why they think it does. Plus, I have 4 other listings of the same material that haven’t been affected!) It’s obvious from my stats that this item was removed from US search and was made unpurchaseable there back in August 2022, yet not only did an Etsy employee not review this removal in any way, but 10 days later I still cannot get a real answer from Support.
It’s not just me. I advised 2 different sellers on appealing their shop suspensions back in March, but neither appeal has been decided yet (as of May 9). The Etsy forum is flooded with posts from new merchants who have correctly updated their tax ID numbers but still have suspended shops. Owners of hacked accounts can wait over 10 weeks to get Etsy to act. Most of Etsy’s social media posts get a large number of replies from disgruntled sellers who cannot get help with serious issues (or even sufficient explanations of what is happening). So even when live chat works, some of us may end up with worse “Support” than they did in the past, as the people staffing chat aren’t allowed to do many things on their own.
The Future Isn’t Any Brighter
So why is Etsy harming sellers in these ways? Why can’t the “Keep Commerce Human” company use actual humans to make sure its sellers are treated humanely? 
The answer comes in 2 parts:
Staff cost money. Etsy can’t spend cash hiring adequate Support or Trust and Safety staff if it is going to stay profitable. It is becoming evident they are running out of ways to make more money, so they aren’t going to spend any more dollars on helping the human collateral of faulty automation, regardless of how unfair the non-human bots are. Their business model isn’t profitable if they “Keep Commerce Human” by hiring humans to deal with human problems. 
In the recent quarterly report, Josh Silverman admits that shoppers have trouble finding the best things on Etsy - with over 100 million listings, there’s just too much stuff to wade through. It’s one of the 3 main points Etsy feels is holding the site back from having broader appeal. So when Etsy removes my keychain and pendants for spurious reasons, and puts the full onus on me to get the items relisted, it not only saves them money on staff, but also reduces the number of items in some searches, giving them an instant improvement in the oversaturation area. Or, put another way, Etsy will still get the same sales if my listings and your listings and some dog diapers modelled on a stuffed toy don’t show up now and again. They’ve learned they can lose a certain number of listings - even best-selling ones - without really losing money overall. They’ve made this clear in the past when discussing “churn” when they do something that forces shops to leave the site permanently. While Etsy’s primary goal isn’t to remove legitimate listings, doing that doesn’t hurt the bottom line, and does help with the “too much stuff” problem. What’s not to like, from an executive's point of view? 
The corporation sees nothing to fix here. Sure, we can argue they shouldn’t release bad bots before they work better, but that would also cost money. Building faulty automated “solutions” is really Etsy’s thing, and they aren’t going to stop just because individual human shop owners lose thousands of dollars when their best sellers get deindexed or Etsy refunds an item that the buyer signed for. 
You’ve been warned. 
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