#lulu's public accountability continues

[lullabyes22-blog]

On Fanfic, Print-to-Read and Legal Grey Areas

I've had a number of PMs on tumblr and AO3 over the last few months asking if I'd ever consider doing a printed 3D version of Forward but Never Forget/XOXO the way it's popular on fanfictok.

And my feelings are Many :3

It should be noted that there is a difference between printing vs publishing. It should also be noted that sites like Lulu.com have been used in the past to print copies of fanfic - some of which are even up for purchase like regular old books.

However, fanfic, by virtue of its ambiguous occupation in the digital domain, is full of caveats in the form of "Yes, but..." and "Well, actually."

As a medium, fanfic enjoys protections so long as it's being hosted on sites such as AO3, FFnet and other platforms which have the apparatus (legally) to defend the content. To do so, said content needs to be fair use (no profit is being made off its distribution) and transformative, i.e. it takes original content and contributes something new to it.

While the act of printing a fanfic for personal use technically straddles the line between Yea and Nay, it should be noted that the printers, shipping agents and other sundry parties are still making money off of the process. Thus, there is still a commercial profit being made for a technically illegal work, even if the money is not going into the fanfic writer's pocket or to the original creators.

Lulu in its FAQ policy also discourages fanfic from being hosted on its platform - and has been known to take down the accounts/works if they're flagged.

Riot Games as a company are also incredibly litigious when it comes to their intellectual property. They state in their own FAQ that unless it's fair use, any distribution of their stuff will earn you a swat on the rear. Non-commercial projects like Kickstarters, Patreons and Ko-Fi to crowdsource works for widespread distribution are also a no-no.

All of this is to say: it's unlikely I'd put FnF out as a print version at any point in the near future.

:(

I am incredibly flattered folks like this fic enough to want to read it in 3D print, and all the messages of support make me so happy<3

Legal ditherings and blatherings aside:

If you would like to reproduce my works as printed books for your own use, without any intent to distribute them for profit, this is my blanket consent post.

Go for it<3

And please share pics - I would be delighted to see them!

I'm hopeful, that as fanfiction gains traction as a more mainstream medium, that large corporations will be less fussy about its consumption in fandom spaces. However, recent trends are not hopeful in that sphere.

Even fair use content that is now in the public domain has the OG copyright holders clutching their pearls and summoning their lawyers - see the whole Enola Holmes and Sherlock is too Emuuuuutional! hilarity.

I encourage everyone interested in fanfic - and keeping the medium alive and thriving - to check out the Center for Internet and Society. We're going to have a lot of dialogue in the coming years re: net neutrality, fair use, free speech, and copyright, and I promise you, the era will be a litigious one.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Also please support sites like AO3 that, whatever their faults, do so much to keep fandom content alive, and give it a global platform. Especially for LGBTQ+ works, which continue to be squelched and otherwise suppressed in so many parts of the globe.

Also please feel free to contribute further info to this post - and start dialogue.

Just keep it polite and respectful<3

#arcane #arcane league of legends #forward but never forget/xoxo #forward (never forget)/xoxo #fanfiction #ao3 #ao3 fanfic #fanfic printing

[fablekitty]

Hey, I know I am the last person you wanna talk to rn, but my life is in genuine danger (still) because all I wanted was for a apology for the misconception.

I honestly meant no harm at all, and https://www.tumblr.com/lunarsilly/725681668334256128/all-i-wanted-was-for-fable-alologize-for-the

If you read this it will make a lot more sense.

I’m low empathetic and it takes a while for me to feel epmathy, and I think it’s hitting me like a bus

I never meant for you to be harassed anything (as I said in my OG callout posts) and I have not ONCE put your life in danger.

However, Davis has put mine in danger cuz he took some things I said in the wrong manner and it has caused me to get harassed to the point where I have to deactivate most of my accounts.

No, this isn’t ‘karma’ at all because I didn’t even want anything bad to happen to you and I didn’t mean to be malicious, all I wanted was for people to be aware that you could have possibly done this stuff, and benne like

“Hey, I have a choice if I wanna continue supporting them.” And unfollow if they please.

I have not once tried to put you or anyone else in danger, all I was doing was being like “hey, this can be seen as sams since you tagged it as such.”

Also to call you out for your ableism towards your own community.

That whole ‘no TSBS fictives and no factives’ rule is not only ableist, but it further Demonizes DID by saying that alters are their source when they aren’t,

People had a choice to support you, and I hadn’t meant for it to become this huge thing because a mess up in my wording )which I mostly wrote them at 1-5am, mind you. There’s going to be some mistakes since I was obviously running on 2-4 hours of sleep, and I always apologized if I said anything wrong in Davis’s DMs)

I get why you’re upset but this whole thing has gotten me death threats and it has also put not only me, but my family at risk.

Anyways that’s pretty much it, dm me on this app if you wanna respond.

This whole situation began because instead of trying to talk things over with me, you instead chose to cast a stone at me publicly. I’m not unreasonable. I would gladly have clarified anything you were concerned about, whether it be the claims of ableism or concerns about Lulu’s design. Instead, you publicly accused me of being a pedophile, not once, but twice. Which. I won’t lie; is a VERY harsh accusation that shouldn’t have ever been tossed out on a whim. The first was in a comment thread on one of Davis' posts, the other was a public callout post. You cannot downplay it by saying you just wanted to 'spread awareness' and 'let people choose to support me.' All I wanted to do was be left alone, and you wouldn't have it. 

You took my art and made fun of it, called me names, called my partner’s alter names, and tried to make connections to an accusation that wasn’t there to begin with. I have co-workers that follow my SFW account on Twitter. I could have lost my actual job over this. You losing your Twitter account is not comparative to my entire livelihood. You can say you never wanted me to be harassed, but you slandered and insulted me all over Twitter and Tiktok during the entire duration in which this all played out, not to mention all of the posts and videos about me being ableist and treating me like some sort of class traitor.

I only spoke out about it when I was at the end of my rope, which you also mocked and slandered, and thus the harassment continued.

Davis reached out to me about it because after doing his own research, he saw it as unfair that I was being falsely accused of something that could literally ruin my life and career and put my safety in danger.

I didn't ask him to post it, and I certainly wouldn't have asked him to take so much time out of his busy schedule to research and write that entire google doc. All of the accounts he posted there are public socials, all of which have the Lunarsilly moniker attached to them somehow. He's never really talked to me much if at all outside of this situation.

As for the comments made towards people who were clearly against you, entirely unnecessary. If you wanted people to stop and leave you alone then you should have never responded. This stirs the pot and makes more trouble, it also makes you look bad.

I can't convince people to stop attacking you, despite telling them not to come after you in my last tweet about this situation. I can't order Davis to remove your socials from the google doc. All we can simply do is drop the subject and move on.

None of this would have happened if you just came to me first instead of airing out dirty laundry into public places where you were fully aware I was in. Next time you think you've been wronged in some way, instead of acting out, take a step back and breathe. Walk away from the computer/phone and clear your head so you can think straight. That is my absolute best advice to you.

I understand that you're only 15 and probably have some stuff going on at home, and the last thing I want is for anyone to get hurt. Death threats and doxxing are wrong in general, let alone to a teenager, and if you're reading this and have done either of those things to Lunarsilly, I am incredibly ashamed of you.

As for the damage? My alter is traumatized by the claims you've made. My early design of Lunar was never canon. His design belongs to me and I can use it however I please. He is not canon show Lunar.

Speaking of Alters, I want to address the ableism thing.

Once again, all this stress could have been avoided if you’d have just come to me privately on Discord when this was first addressed. I asked you politely to please keep alters of real people from the show avoidant of fronting in the TSBS server. I asked this of you with the knowledge of what was written in the moderator handbook that each moderator must read and follow in TSBS, and had no idea it wasn’t written in the public rules. I will admit fault for not checking that. It was never my intention to come off as ableist towards you nor anyone else.

We didn’t just come up with rules on a whim. We put rules in place to try and keep everyone in the server safe and comfortable, systems and otherwise. Ultimately, the bottom line was that some of the voice actors from the show found discomfort in seeing alters of themselves and their characters in the server, and the business that owns the whole shebang also agreed, and their word is final.

I entirely understand the frustration behind having alters from the show. I have a few of them myself and so does my partner. Yes, they are not their source. But that doesn't prevent the original creators, or actual person from being uncomfortable, much like some alters are uncomfortable with doubles. Everyone's system is different. Mine isn't large. It's not small either, but my alters all do have one thing, a mutual agreement to work together and harmony. If that's something you can't control, then I'd recommend staying out of larger servers such as TSBS.

I was also never obligated to tell you that I'm a system. I don’t exactly go out of my way to make sure every individual who interacts with me is aware of this information about myself. However, if you ever took a moment to look in my discord profile, you would have known. The first line that is on my profile on Discord is “Marshmallow System-DID” and it’s been there this entire time.

All I want is to be left alone. I want this all to finally be dropped so we can move on with our lives. I’m old and tired and simply do not have the time or energy to keep putting towards this situation. Just please, move on and leave me be.

[rhetoricandlogic]

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan – review

Marcel Proust and The Sopranos serve as the unlikely inspirations for this ambitious study of time and relationships

e title of Jennifer Egan's new novel may make it sound more like an episode of Scooby-Doo than an exceptional rendering of contemporary America, but don't be fooled. The book received rave reviews when it was published in the US last year, and for good reason; it has since been named a finalist for several prestigious American prizes. Egan has said that the novel was inspired by two sources: Proust's À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, and HBO's The Sopranos. That shouldn't make sense but it does: Goon Squad is a book about memory and kinship, time and narrative, continuity and disconnection, in which relationships shift and recombine kaleidoscopically. It is neither a novel nor a collection of short stories, but something in between: a series of chapters featuring interlocking characters at different points in their lives, whose individual voices combine to a create a symphonic work that uses its interconnected form to explore ideas about human interconnectedness. This is a difficult book to summarise, but a delight to read, gradually distilling a medley out of its polyphonic, sometimes deliberately cacophonous voices.

The "goon squad" of the title is not itself a reference to The Sopranos: there are no mobsters here. It is one character's name for time: "Time's a goon, right? You gonna let that goon push you around?" Everyone in the book is pushed around by time, circumstance and, occasionally, the ones they love, as Egan reveals with great elegance and economy the wobbly arcs of her characters' lives, their painful pasts and future disappointments. Characters who are marginal in one chapter become the focus of the next; the narrative alternates not only between first-person and third-person accounts, but – perhaps just because she can – Egan throws in a virtuosic second-person story as well, in which a suicidal young man tells his tale to a colloquial "you". She also shifts dramatically across times and places: punk teenagers in 1970s San Francisco become disillusioned adults in the suburbs of 1990s New York; their children grow up in an imagined, slightly dystopic future in the California desert, or attend a legendary concert at "The Footprint", where the Twin Towers used to be, sometime in the 2020s.

The stories circle magnetically around a few characters who recur a bit more frequently than others, and broadly around the American music scene: Lou, a coke-snorting, teenage-girl-seducing music producer in the 1970s, becomes the mentor of an untalented young bass player, Bennie, who becomes a music producer himself, who hires a young woman, Sasha, who has a problem with kleptomania, who sleeps with a young man, Alex, who much later ends up hired by Bennie to engineer the comeback of Bennie's high-school friend Scott, who went off the rails as an adult and ended up one day in Bennie's office with a fish he'd caught in the East River, where Sasha's best friend and boyfriend in college had once gone for an early morning swim with tragic consequences. Bennie's wife works for a publicist named Dolly whose daughter, Lulu, will end up working with Alex; Bennie's wife's brother is a journalist who is arrested for the attempted rape of an actress named Kitty Jackson who has her own fall from grace and is later hired by Dolly to enable the public rehabilitation of a genocidal Latin American dictator.

Each chapter has its own distinct voice and mood, modulating from satire to farce, from melancholy to tragedy. I've never found a description of attempted rape funny before, but when Jules Jones writes (from prison) his account of his assault on Kitty Jackson during an interview, it becomes an uproarious parody of David Foster Wallace that owes more than a little to Nabokov as well, as Jules describes finding himself with "one hand covering Kitty's mouth and doing its best to anchor her rather spirited head, the other fumbling with my zipper, which I'm having some trouble depressing, possibly because of the writhing motions of my subject beneath me." Kitty sprays him with Mace, stabs him in the leg with a Swiss army knife, and runs away. "I think I'd have to call that the end of our lunch," Jules remarks.

If it comes as a surprise that an attempted rape can be hilarious, it is an even greater surprise that a PowerPoint presentation can be moving. Goon Squad becomes more fragmented, and more formally experimental, as it progresses: the penultimate chapter is written entirely as the PowerPoint slide diary of Sasha's teenage daughter Alison, whose brother is obsessed with pauses in rock songs. Those pauses, like the spaces between PowerPoint slides, become a metaphor for the gaps between what we mean and what we say, or the apparently unbridgeable distance between family members. The trick feels appropriate in a book preoccupied throughout by the effects of technology on our lives and culture, from the consequences for music of the digital revolution (as Bennie observes, digital production has transformed not only the industry of music but its sound as well) to the way in which technology is transforming our language. Egan's Orwellian final chapter imagines a future in which English has decomposed into radical text-speak: "if thr r children, thr mst b a fUtr, rt?"

Egan has said that the organising principle of A Visit from the Goon Squad is discontinuity; this may be true, but the reason the book works so well is because of the continuities she has also created: her atomised people collide, scatter and recombine in patterns that are less chaotic than they appear. Egan's characters, and the America they inhabit, are winding entropically down. It's a kind of meditation on the butterfly effect, in which recurrence becomes the measure of the chaos of our lives, the novel reimagined as a series of chain reactions. But Egan's vision of history and time is also decidedly, and perhaps reassuringly, cyclical: the impacts these characters have upon each other are engineered not by coincidence but by connectedness itself, as the people we bump against and bang into become the story of our lives.

#Jennifer Egan #A Visit from the Goon Squad #mahreviews #long post

[luluwquidprocrow]

this is ambitious!! but these are short so i’m gonna try and do it!!!! and not mess up this time!!!!! because trying to do more than one fic in a month has never worked out before!!! but!!!! especially because I’m Not Gonna Give Dates so that should help a little!!! so --

march will include diane fic, a lemonberry ice fic, and maybe [redacted] 

museum fic is still floating around, and probably will not get done in march, but it is at the top of my general wip list 

#lulu's public accountability continues #if you've seen my main lately i think you can guess what [redacted] is #i have some sort of Dates schedule in my head but. not entirely

[kiranasjournal]

New Age, New Chapter

Hello there!

I’m being  grateful for the life given to me. Yup, for every single things. Tentunya di umur baru ini gue sangat bersyukur masih diberi umur oleh Tuhan. Jujur, di akhir 2019, gue personally mempunyai cukup banyak bucketlist to be ticked in 2020. However, after the pandemic strikes in 2020, di tahun ini mengajarkan gue untuk tidak selalu banyak “menuntut” Tuhan dan lebih banyak bersyukur dengan apa yang Tuhan sudah berikan ke gue.

Di tahun ini pun ada perasaan ”incomplete”, karena salah satu sahabat gue gugur dalam bertugas sebagai salah 1 dokter di rumah sakit rujukan Covid19. Seperti pertanda dari Tuhan, mengingatkan gue bahwa umur itu rahasia-Nya, sehingga gue harus selalu menjalani hidup sebaik-baiknya. 

so here I want to share my life experiences with you guys after living for 27 years, some are positives and some could be a lesson too :

1. Have a job that you enjoy being part of it!

Tentu di usia gue yang dibilang produktif, hidup gue ga jauh-jauh dari yang namanya "kerjaan". Tentu, selepas lulus kuliah kita pasti cukup idealis untuk mengejar mimpi kita, tapi ternyata pas kita udah jalanin bisa jadi ternyata kerjaan tersebut bukan hal yang kita cari. I have been there to be honest! As an accounting graduate, menjadi auditor merupakan hampir menjadi impian semua lulusan akuntansi, termasuk gue. Tapi setelah gue menjalani, gue merasa ini bukan yang gue cari, karena I don't feel belong here and enjoy the job. Tidak perlu takut, untuk explore apa yang kalian inginkan. Tentu, kerja itu kita harus bisa enjoy, supaya bisa give out the best out of us to have the best result. Jangan takut untuk mengulang lagi dari awal. Gue akhirnya, memilih profesi lain walaupun harus mulai lagi dari 0, yaitu menjadi konsultan pajak. Dari awal gue kuliah, tidak pernah terpikirkan gue menjadi konsultan. Tapi setelah gue jalani, ternyata gue bisa menikmati pekerjaan gue yang sekarang. Intinya, setiap kerjaan itu pasti ada risks nya, ada ups and downs nya. Namun, jika kita menikmati, kita akan melihat masalah menjadi sebuah tantangan, yang jika kita bisa menyelesaikannya maka akan ada self satisfaction, bukan menjadi suatu beban atau masalah yang membuat kita capek dan banyak mengeluh.

2. As we get older, our circle of friends is getting smaller

Then, what to do? semakin kita tua, tentu waktu kita untuk bergaul semakin terbatas, ada teman-teman yang sudah berkeluarga, atau mungkin continue their studies overseas, membuat circle of friends kita semakin mengecil. Always make sure that you may have least amount of fellow friends BUT have those friends who brings out the best of you and spread positivity. Note that, It is very important.

3. Work Life Balance ?

Since I graduated from uni, gue bekerja di Public Accounting Firm. Dimana, bagi banyak orang sangat susah untuk mencari yang namanya hidup yang seimbang di tempat tersebut. Itu juga yang gue rasakan saat awal bekerja. Gue selalu mengidam-idamkan hidup yang seimbang antara kerjaan dan juga kehidupan personal gue. Ternyata, work life balance is a “MINDSET” dan membutuhkan “time management” kita sendiri. Kita harus pandai-pandai mengatur waktu bekerja, istirahat, menyempatkan diri berolahraga, have that quality time bersama  keluarga/teman/pacar dan jangan pernah lupa untuk melakukan hobi kita. Hidup itu cuma sekali, sangat sayang kalau kita hanya terpaku pada kesibukan kita di suatu kerjaan. Go out, experience things you never did before like diving, hiking, baking, just anything that could enhance your mood and sanity. Sedikit ide dari gue for a balanced spiritual inner peace, go try to do yoga and meditation, cause they work for me. My recommendation for yoga, boleh dicoba penyogastar dan meditasi bisa dilihat podcast/ instagram peacesea. 

4. For anything that is meant for you, it will never surpass you

I admit, as we get older, pasti kita banyak dihantui anxiety and insecurity, terkait kerjaan? karir? keluarga? percintaan?  atau hal-hal lain. Yes, they are very normal! Terus harus gimana?  Jika udah usaha, udah doa, harus ke tahap terakhir yaitu Tawakkal. Nah, ini yang gue masih dalam tahap belajar. Gue pun meyakini, what ever that is meant for me, will never surpass me, yet, if they surpass me, they are simply not meant for me. Banyak pengalaman hidup gue, yang kalau emang udah jodohnya/rejekinya mau serumit apa jalannya, muter-muter eh selalu ada jalannya kok. Yakin deh :) 

5. Always being grateful

Di 2020, mengajarkan gue untuk lebih banyak bersyukur kepada Tuhan. Bisa berkumpul lengkap bersama keluarga, bernapas tanpa sesak, sehat walafiat, mempunyai pekerjaan, itu semua merupakan suatu nikmat dari Tuhan yang benar-benar harus disyukuri. Disaat, banyak pejuang Covid19 seperti dokter yang berada di garis terdepan, tidak bisa berkumpul bersama keluarganya, harus menggunakan APD seharian sehingga makan/minum pun sulit atau bahkan sampai gugur dalam tugas. Selain itu, pandemic ini berdampak juga pada kondisi sosial ekonomi yang menyebabkan banyaknya PHK. Maka, nikmat Tuhan mana yang kita dustakan?

Sekian sharing aku hari ini, semoga bermanfaat ♡

Anyway, I would like to thank my best peeps who I put their picture in my collage above. Thanks for being my support systems, my advisors, peeps who influence my life the most with positive vibes. Some taught me to become who I am now, learning from them to become the best version of me, how to become more confident, sharing life experiences. Although, we might not see each other very often, but when we are together we really do have great time. 

The most importantly they have great influence on me to become woman with beauty, brain and good heart.

Thanks! 26 was awesome, and looking forward to next chapter ahead.

Love,

Kirana

#26to27

[esoteric-marketing]

Three Companies That Are Thriving During COVID-19

There is no question that COVID-19 has impacted thousands of local, national, and international companies around the globe.  Industries such as restaurants and travel via airlines and cruises have been absolutely crippled.  However, there are a fair number of companies in certain industries that have turned a massive profit during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Such companies include:  Zoom, Activision, and Lululemon for example.  Although these companies occupy varying industries, they all have something in common.  

Whether your ordering clothes from Lululemon, talking with friends or family via Zoom, or playing ‘Call of Duty’ (Which is owned by Activision) with the boys.  There is one common thread.  All of the aforementioned products and services are available to people who were previously stuck in their homes during March, April, and May.  

Zoom – Okay, we all know Zoom right?  Great!  As many people already know, Zoom faced a massive public backlash as it related to how the company obtains and secures users data, i.e. video chats and audio conversations.  Allegations of Zoom’s misuse of users data were made at the start of 2020.  However, with COVID-19 arriving on the World stage in February and March, much of the public backlash was overshadowed and in some cases, it was forgotten about altogether.  As we all know over the past three to four months, people have been forced to shelter in place and quarantine within their homes.  This resulted in a massive user surge in apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Zoom, etc.  

According to a ‘Business of Apps’ article ‘Zoom Revenue and Usage Statistics (2020)’ the company “Zoom was seeing 200 million daily meeting participants.  The following month, this figure had risen to 300 million.  This compares to 10 million in December 2019.” So the usage of the Zoom app skyrocketed, but what does that mean regarding finances?  On January 3, 2020 Zoom’s stock was valued at $67 per share. As of June 10, 2020 Zoom’s stock is valued at a whopping $221 per share!  That is an incredible overall increase of 7.59% within just six months.  Although there is arguably a difficult road ahead of Zoom (regarding the privacy and data issues as it relates to Facebook) the company is poised to continue increasing their profits in the near future. However, this stock should be considered riskier than some of the others on this list.    

Activision – This company is no stranger to individuals who prefer to spend most of their waking hours inside of their homes. Since 1979, Activation has been cranking out hit after hit within the video game industry.  I myself have enjoyed many of their titles including the ‘Call of Duty’ franchise among others.  Its also no surprise that video game usage went up exponentially in the past months due to COVID-19.  This resulted in an increase of sales within the video game industry.  Just ask anyone who has been trying to buy a Nintendo Switch for the past four months.  Its actually impossible!  Anyways, as of March 20, 2020 the Activision stock had fallen to a net value of just $52 per share.  As of June 10, 2020 the Activision stock is now worth $74 per share.  A respectable overall increase of 2.53% in the company’s stock.

Said increase occurred for a few reasons.  Namely, an increasing number of people were now staying at home turning on their Xbox's and PlayStation's to entertain them while they were quarantining.  During the month of March, news broke out that multi billionaire, George Soros had just bought $45 million worth of Activision stock. There’s really no question that when an investor like Warren Buffet or George Soros purchases and/or invests in a company, a plethora of individual investors will tend to follow suit.  Thus, Activision seemed to coast through some of the hardest hitting months of COVID-19.  Either way, its safe to say that the fifth largest video game publisher, i.e. Activision will more than likely weather the COVID-19 storm.  Making them a potentially excellent investment in the coming months and years.          

Lululemon – Lululemon (Lulu) is an athletic clothing brand that got its start back in 1998 in Vancouver, Canada.  Today, the company rivals competitors such as Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour.  However, during the past several months while COVID-19 was grabbing the World’s attention, Lulu managed to do something that the rest of the athletic apparels brands failed to do.  They increased their company net worth.  By a lot! On March 16, 2020 a single Lulu stock was valued at $139.  As of June 10, 2020 Lulu stocks are valued at an incredible $323.  That’s an increase of 2.16% when compared to their stock value before the COVID-19 collapse. This feat was accomplished, while competitors Nike, Adidas, and Under Armour are still in the red by a few percent. The question is, how did Lulu succeed when all others in their industry failed?  

During the Spring semester this school year, I was assigned a group project in my social media marketing class.  Our group decided to spend the following three months researching Lulu, and composing a comprehensive 20 page paper regarding our findings.  Are findings were quite stark when compared to the aforementioned competition within the athletic apparel industry.  My classmates and I discovered that Lulu utilizes their social media platforms in a way that the competition just doesn’t.  For example, Lulu uses their Twitter account to answer consumer questions regarding product care or return policies.  They also used their account to ask for customer feedback regarding the company’s clothing line and other products.  Essentially Lulu is always trying to improve their products and services.  

However, when COIVD-19 came into play, Lulu did something that took the competition weeks and months to catch onto.  Nearing the end of March, Lululemon started using their social media platforms to share workout ideas and tips that people could use at home while quarantining.  This provided a sense of community for Lulu consumers, and it allowed for them to connect with people while they were stuck self-isolating or quarantining at home.  Lulu was essentially reaching out to people providing them with creative ways to stay healthy during the pandemic.  Since people were on social media more than ever, they saw what Lulu was doing and they clearly liked it.  Companies set themselves apart from the competition when they focus on providing a service or a product that actually helps people in their daily lives.  During COVID-19, there was clearly a plethora of people that needed help.  Lulu was there to answer the call in whatever way that they could!  To put it simply, Lulu is a company that I wouldn’t mind investing in for the future.  

[authorscottmckay]

The Novel Writing Process (Indie Publishing Route)

1.) Research the Market

Before you begin, figure out what genre you would like to write in. Horror? Fantasy? Mystery? Romance? Comedy? There are tons of genres, sub-genres, and mixed genres to choose from.

When you have a genre chosen, start reading. Reading is crucial to becoming a good writer. Read what’s hot in your genre right now, study the tropes people like and dislike, and what traits make characters interesting.

By no means am I saying be a copycat. Don’t just write a book about evil spirits rising from an old Native American burial ground because of Pet Semetary’s success and expect fans of horror to enjoy your series. Be original, but take away from your research the “feel” of the books you read. It’s not specifically about what happened in the book, but ask yourself why those events left you craving more and turning the page.

2.) Pre-writing

Depending on who you ask, pre-writing has a specific set of steps and clear paradigms for what is and is not part of this stage. And, as with many steps in the writing process, it is all up to interpretation. To me, pre-writing begins before you jot down a single word. It begins with a spark of inspiration, and is comprised of all the brainstorming, character creation, plot notes, and every other idea you have for your book before you really get down to starting on chapter 1 (or wherever you do begin writing your book; personally, I prefer the ending or somewhere in the middle).

3.) Outlining

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to writing: those who fly by the seat of their pants — aptly nicknamed “Pantsers” — and those who sit down and plot out the entire book in shorthand before they begin — the “Plotters”. I myself am an avid fan of plotting, because I find it greatly decreases the instances of writer’s block, but feel free to skip this step if you’d rather just wing it.

When plotting, simply take the ideas you came up with in the pre-writing stage and organize them from A-Z in your story. This could be a series of bullet points, a death-by-PowerPoint storyboard, or you can shorthand your entire story, then flesh out the details when you go back over it. There are also specific flows to the plot to consider. Find an organizational method that works for you, and ask yourself these questions: Who is the protagonist? Who, or what, is the antagonist? Why does the protagonist want to stop them? What allies do they meet, and what challenges do they face along the way?

For an awesome reference guide, research a concept known as “The Hero’s Journey”.

4.) The First Draft

Now the fun part. Write. Just write. Don’t stop to edit, even if you have a mess of misspellings, punctuation errors, and sentences that come across like a drunk toddler hijacked your keyboard/pen. Just get the words onto the page. Pour your bleeding heart and soul out, have a blast doing it, and understand one simple thing:

The first draft sucks.

The first draft is a heaping pile of manure that should never see the light of day. The first draft would crack mirrors if they had eyes to see it. If you dare to try to publish a first draft, as I have seen impatient indie authors online do, you will invoke my wrath, and I will find you, and I will beat you with a frozen swordfish.

Once you have finished pumping a wordgasm into your Google Docs, Word, Scrivener, or whatever writing program file, sit back, relax, finish your coffee/tea/booze, and cry.

Because now comes the part every writer just loves… So. @&$%ing. Much.

5.) The Self-Edit

“Psh, wait, what? I don’t need to edit my novel. The publishing house will do that for me, or I’ll just hire someone to do it.”

You hear that?

That’s the sound of my swordfish, fresh out of the big ass freezer I purchased just to contain it. And it’s ready for a beat down.

If you were to send a first draft to a publisher, you would be laughed at and rejected immediately. If you’re going the indie route, and an editor you hire needs to spend an enormous amount of time rifling through endless errors, you’ll be digging yourself a massive hole of debt trying to pay them for all that extra work.

Trust me: edit the book to the best of your abilities, and your wallet or publisher will thank you for it later. I would also recommend getting the help of friends and family, if available. These people, reading over your book in the first draft stage (and you better buy them a coffee or something), are what are known as “alpha readers”. We’ll go into depth on the types of readers who help in the editing phase in another post.

There are multiple types of edits to do:

Developmental edit

Read over your story and take note of what makes sense or not, what weak areas could be strengthened, and weed out any continuity errors you find. Just focus on the plot and big scenes. Best to get help with this one in the form of beta readers (see next step).

Copy edit

Go word-by-word checking for typos and spelling errors along with correcting grammar, language, and syntax errors. Also, at this point, deal with any punctuation issues you see. 

Line edit

Focus on the finer aspects of language. Read over each sentence to asses their flow and whether or not they get the idea across. Try to tighten them up and avoid run-on sentences.

Sensitivity edit

A sensitivity edit it highly recommended when writing about other cultures, minorities, LGBTQ+ characters, and social issues you may not be familiar with. You don’t want readers getting pissed and blasting you for being homophobic, misogynistic, racist, and/or ignorant. This may be difficult to do on your own, so I recommend a fresh set of eyes from a friend or family member to help you, particularly if they happen to be a part of the group you are writing about.

 Proofread

This is the final edit. Read through your manuscript one last time to check for any spelling mistakes, grammatical issues, continuity errors, or other glaring problems.

6.) Get Beta Readers

A beta reader is someone who reads your manuscript and gives feedback before it is ready to be published. What defines a beta reader vs. an alpha reader is actually kind of blurry. Personally, I believe beta readers should come after you have done some thorough self-edits. When you get feedback from your betas, apply it to your book, and continue with another round of self-edits.

Whatever you do, get the beta reader feedback BEFORE the professional edit. Obviously, you don’t want to add the feedback into your book after the edits, then have to pay someone to re-edit those parts of the book.

7.) Get a Critique Partner

Got any writer friends? Good. Ask them if they would help you in the self-edit process by reading through your book and giving feedback as a fellow writer, not as a reader. Think of a critique partner as a beta reader who is reading from the author’s perspective. They can have a world of information and writing tips you hadn’t even considered during the first draft.

8.) The Professional Edit

“B-but I already did my own edits!”

Yes! Good job! Here’s a cookie. Chew on it while you send your book off to people who are vastly more experienced than you.

There’s no skipping this step, even if you’re on a tight budget. Your book needs a professional edit in the form of all the edits you just did. Without it, readers will be able to tell it’s an unfinished book, and you’ll come across as an amateur.

I’m not going to lie, if you’re going the indie publishing route, it’s expensive. Get good at saving money from your day job. Some editors charge per hour, some per page, and some per word. A common fee is $0.01 - 0.03 per word. Doesn’t sound intimidating at first glance, but if you’ve just finished 50k words for NaNoWriMo, or you’ve got the next great 120k word urban fantasy that’ll blow the Mortal Instruments out of the water…well, you do the math.

Just, please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t hire some shady “super experienced” all-purpose editor off of Fiverr because you want to save a buck, then wind up getting half-assed work back and need to find a real editor to fix it. Cough… Not that I’d know anyone who did that. <_<

9.) The Book Cover

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is a phrase only to be applied as a metaphor to say “don’t judge people based on their appearance.”

In the book world, we DEFINITELY judge books by their covers.

If you do absolutely no other form of advertising, make sure you have a damn good book cover. The cover is going to count for about 80% of your advertising. You might have a book that’s going to change peoples’ lives and make you a household name along with a buttload of money. But if the cover sucks, no one is going to buy it except for a few family members and friends.

Make sure you research what book cover styles are popular in your genre so it stands out to readers as something they might enjoy. For example: most urban fantasy YA novels feature a model of the main character in the middle, and they might be holding some sort of weapon; the background is neat, perhaps a city scape or a mystical forest; the font of the title and name are custom-made and might have a swirling, curved, or twisted shape to them.

10.) Formatting

This is often a package deal with book cover designers. Get your book formatted for readability on whatever platform you’ll be publishing it to.

11.) Get an ISBN

Submit your book for an ISBN. Easy peasy. Now, if you’re just going to publish on Amazon, they do have their own free ISBN, but if you want to publish to other sources like Kobo and iBooks, you’ll need to get your own.

12.) Publication

This is it. The moment you’ve been waiting for. Once you’ve got your book all together in an awesome package, find which platform you want to publish your book to — Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Blurb, Lulu, Smashwords, etc... — and follow their guidelines for setting up an account, giving them your tax info, and uploading your files.

Congratulations! You’ve just published a book. Is it your first one? Then revel in the fact that you are now officially an author. Go out and celebrate with a steak night and a beer (or whatever is appealing according to your diet), then get back to work.

13.) Extras

Not mentioned in this process are things like building your author platform, marketing, advertising, getting deals with bookstores and libraries, and setting up book tours. These don’t have a set place in the writing process. When it comes to marketing and building your author platform, those are things you need to do even before you begin writing your book, all throughout the process, and long after it’s all finished. Things like planning when to officially launch your book, and whether or not pre-orders will be available, are important considerations as well.

Every writer has their own process. This has been my personal experience with the indie writing and publishing process. Comment down below if there is anything you would add to help aspiring, brand new, and veteran authors achieve their writing goals. Thanks for reading!

#writer #writing #advice #bibliophile #process #tips #writeblr #publishing #selfpublishing #indie #indiepublishing #amazon #kindle #kobo #ibooks #ebooks #smashwords #lulu #books #reading

[janeandrye-blog]

How to Get More Exposure For Your Music

It takes months, and mostly years, of hard work and patience to finally hit the general public.The venues to get one's creations noticed are many and few simultaneously. The artist transmits the group on miscellaneous missions (never regarding money on the part of the group) and the best road teamers are rewarded in various ways. As an artist entails many things. Take a couple of days off, take it easy, and come back refreshed! It brings them exposure and makes followers a complete section of the artist's success. At some point, if you are like me, and work alone 14-15 hours a day, you will get burned out.). Another good idea would be to design your personal exclusive merchandise (Tshirts, bags, mouse pads, mugs, greeting cards, etc. And to be honest, the royalties are extremely decent. A street team is a group of individuals who are committed to help an artist spread the term about their function. And as a result, I received more exposure in two months than I had were able to achieve in more than three years! SELLING ONLINE AND OFFLINE 95% of poets go the self-publishing way. BUILDING A STREET TEAM You can only achieve this much on your own. This is very simple to do, especially if you aren't computer-savvy, in fact it is free. Finally, frustration and discouragement are part of the job. If you are a amateur photographer, why not sell your images to other performers for their book/CD covers? UPDATING YOUR STATUS Part of your promotional period should be used to revise your position across the various networks you participate in. Always acknowledge your followers and supporters, those that work in the shadows for you personally. Reverbnation lets you do that very easily! Make a number of all your skills and find what you have to give you. When you sign up for their site, you receive access to an individual studio. From there, you can upload your own videos or video clips from YouTube and stream them on a 24/7 basis. NETWORKING Public networking sites are crucial for promotion these days. All you need is a Paypal accounts. Reverbnation offers you the perfect way to do it: once your mission is launched, the site helps to keep counts for you and all you have to do is check your stats! Finished . I love about this concept is that it allows an artist to attach with their fan base on a different level. Make use of TweetDeck or Hootsuite. You will find loads of broadcasts every day and the neat thing is that you may also interact in boards. You should be capable to rely on others. Do points YOURSELF! What's more, people may also help spread the word by sharing the widgets almost everywhere on the Internet! If you are not camera-shy, you can also web host your own show, using your webcam. Also, usually do not hesitate to ask for tips and advice from those who have a verified successful background in your market. Sometimes, one little thing will make an enormous difference. Before throwing links at someone, introduce yourself correctly and get to know them just a little. I personally use Reverbnation & Audiolife. You can also promote yourself. This is something that I do once a month with Livestream (and most people love it! They will print your books, CDs, calendars, picture books, and photos for you. Print-on-demand or POD is a great service and I recommend Lulu. And royalties are truly decent. The best thing about diversification is that it makes it harder for people to label you in one category. The best part is they are totally free! Hence, you have the golden possibility to "meet up with" hosts and listeners who frequently happen to be hosts or promoters of the artwork themselves. Start by thinking about the following questions: "What's my long-term goal as an artist? If you are a musician or a spoken word artist, you likely have heard of Reverbnation. I make use of it myself and I really like the reality that I can send pre-formatted news letters to my group of fans, build a street team and start missions with the click of a key, and promote my CD and tracks through easy-to-share widgets. It signifies that you have to diversify. WEBSITE/PROFILE PAGES Nowadays, if you need to attract more supporters, you should build a niche site or at least have a regularly updated profile page.. They provide you with a free of charge store that you could promote everywhere you wish.) and sell it using providers like Zazzle or Cafepress. It is possible to talk about anything, address questions and worries from your fans, educate them on issues that matter for you, and invite them to take part in discussions. It is also important that you be ready to support other artists and causes, and serve as a positive role model. While this is simply not a poor thought at all, additionally it is important to know that product sales obey the 10-90 rule: 10% creative imagination and 90% promotion/marketing. The best blog services are Wordpress and Blogger." Be extremely honest in your answers, because they will determine your job and how lengthy you may last in the business. I have joined with some of the most incredible artists and supporters in North America and also have followed their advice very cautiously. A blog is an extremely nice tool to use. They imagine that they can count on the quality of their work for it to sell itself. , nor wait for others to do it for you. They want to learn about you and what you care for. You must become professional in your strategy, dedicated, and alert to your surroundings and global issues. Both sites have partnered to permit Reverbnation members to sell their merchandise and music for free. I have already been a guest on numerous shows, which includes allowed me to promote my books and CD, and tell the globe why I am a poet and spoken term artist. I heard that CD Baby is very good. I used this medium and got to know great people.. You may be surprised by how much help and support you will receive in return! Open a merchant account, upload your data files, fill in the necessary info, and you are on the way. I recommend Blog Chat Radio. To me self-publishing is even more rewarding than complicated because I have to promote all my items myself, and it gives me the chance to really become familiar with my readers and listeners. BLOG/COMMUNITY If you need to build your web presence, it is crucial that your fans and followers be involved. All you need is a PayPal account. What is my mission statement? Continue to keep a laptop and pen useful, and write any suggestion and idea provided you.-) For a website, use Wix or Weebly. And if you are actually fluent in two or more languages, you could also translate documents. Then, feel free to embed the display screen anywhere you want. However, street teamers obtain free stuff, which is always nice! You can also join writing communities and forums like Red Space and share some of your stuff there. They are excellent! LAST WORDS Always remember this: treat others how you would like to end up being treated. This is the first step to get respect from fellow performers, and hence exposure. DIVERSIFICATION I've a motto: the more you have to give, the more exposure you'll get! You will attract more followers. Use your Paypal accounts address to get royalties when people purchase your products during your personal (free) store. What do I would like to perform with my creation(s)? You should be able to do it in one convenient place. Setup your store (in two moments), upload your files, complete the information, and start selling your CDs, MP3 albums, person tracks, Tshirst and tote hand bags within minutes! However, it could be very time-consuming. I acquired introduced to numerous new listeners. The visitors to my site provides been large since I started listening to BTR shows!; If you're a poet/writer, you can offer poetry/speech-on-demand or proofreading services. You can also use Internet radio. If you only focus on music or spoken term, there are some nice options out there. Make sure that you have a look at Facebook, Twitter, Ning, YouTube, and MySpace. You can also sell your music digitally, using major retailers like ITunes or Amazon. Ning is especially impressive, since it offers a great deal of options! & most importantly: build interactions before thinking about sales! IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS Lots of independent artists believe that once their CD or book is available, the work is performed. You may eliminate up attracting a lot of different people!

#music #poetry #creation

[ruffboijuliaburnsides]

So this is basically a direct follow-up to this thing about Magnus growing up with Taako and Lup that i wrote for @weatheredlaw. This one is dedicated to @marywhal just because.

~~

“I thought we agreed,” Lup protests when Magnus asks to go to his interview alone, instead of all three of them together.  “They’ve gotta take all of us if they want any of us!”

“I know,” Magnus says, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder.  “And I appreciate the hell outta that.  But I just…” he hesitates.  “I feel like maybe they’ll appreciate my skills better if they’re not lookin at you two at the same time, y’know?”

“Chill, Lulu,” Taako says airily.  “If Maggie wants to interview alone, let him.  We’ll talk him up plenty.”

She doesn’t look pleased by it, but she only grumbles softly in elvish about stubborn little boys, and Magnus grins triumphantly.  Getting Taako on his side hadn’t been expected, but definitely kept this from being more of a scene in a public place.  Which is good, because the secretary sticks her head in the door just then.

“They’re ready for you.”

“Cool,” Taako says. “Our little brother needs to interview on his own, that won’t be a problem, right?”

“Uh,” she says.  “N-no, I don’t think so?  I’ll let them know…”

The conversation continues as they walked out the door, and leave Magnus to wait alone for his interview to start.  It takes a while – probably because the twins were interviewing together, and were, well… themselves. It’s nearly an hour (he thought, anyway, since there was no clock in the room) before the secretary came back for him.

“They’ll be waiting in the lobby for you,” she says before opening a door and gesturing for him to enter.  “Good luck!”  Magnus smiles weakly at her and steps through the door.

There’s three people sitting behind a table – a gnome, an elf, and a human – with notes and papers, and a couple of chairs facing them on Magnus’ side of the table.  He picks one – it creaks slightly when he sits down.  They clearly weren’t intended for tall, heavy guys.

“Hello Mr… Burnsides?” the elvish woman says.  Magnus nods.  “All right, thank you for applying to study at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration.  As I’m sure you know, our study program is very intense and highly competitive.  What makes you a good candidate for this program?”

“Well,” Magnus says slowly, all the talking points Lup and Taako had prepared for him echoing in his head, “I don’t necessarily know that I am.”

There was a moment of silence, and the gnome leaned forward, ears perked up, alert.  “Well, now,” he said, “that’s not the answer we were expecting, young man.  Care to explain?”

“Yes, sir,” Magnus says, a little sheepish.  “It’s just… Taako and Lup’ve been basically my only family since I was a kid.”  That prompted a soft, amused murmur from the human, and the elf hid a smile behind her hand.  Magnus tried to ignore it – sure he was only 17, but he wasn’t a baby anymore.  “They wanted to do this, but they’re… well, they say family sticks together.  So they weren’t willing to come here without me.”

“I can understand that,” the gnome says, nodding.

“Well, yeah, except I’m not really any good at magic,” Magnus says.  “And I’ve never really been to school.  I can read and write okay, and I can do a little math, but mostly I help unload ships or trains or wagons or whatever – it pays good enough and I’m strong, so I can do it pretty easy.”  He pauses, and clears his throat uncomfortably.  “But I know they told you that you’d have to take me on otherwise they wouldn’t come, and… and, well, you’d be stupid to not try to get them here, ‘cause they’re the best.  They really really are.” Magnus straightens a bit in his chair, trying to project an adult image, trying not to look young or unsure or afraid.  “So I don’t care what they said.  If you want them, but you don’t want me, that’s fine.  I’ll talk them around.”

“That’s a very noble sentiment, Mr. Burnsides,” the gnome says, smiling at last.  He looks like a good guy, Magnus thinks, and he’s less intimidating then the other two.  Maybe because he looks small enough for Magnus to pick up and carry like a fucking football.  “That said, we haven’t come to a decision yet, so while we’ll take that into account, let’s go on with the rest of it, all right?”

“Sure.”  Magnus deflates a little into his chair, feeling like a weight’s been lifted off him.  He said his piece – now it’s up to them.

“Now, first of all, I’d like to hear more about your employment history.”

~~~

“Well, how’d it go?” Lup asks as soon as he steps into the lobby.

“Uh, pretty good I think?” Magnus answers.  Honestly, it’s a lie – he has absolutely no idea how it went.  The gnome (if he’d said his name, Magnus couldn’t remember it) had asked him a whirlwind of questions about all sorts of things – his family, the twins, his hobbies, his job, his dreams; just to name a few – and it’d left him more confused than anything.

“’Course it went good, we prepped the hell outta him,” Taako said, linking arms with Magnus.  “And they loved him because fuckin everybody loves him, and this time next week we’re gonna be moving into IPRE campus housing.”

“Yeah, with any luck,” Magnus says, laughing uncertainly.

“Gods, isn’t it cute how he’s so nervous about this?” Lup says, linking arms with Magnus on his free side.  “Even if you weren’t a total catch, they definitely want us, so you’re a shoe-in.”

“And Lulu hasn’t been wrong about you yet!” Taako declares.

“What about when she told me she didn’t think humans could catch on fire?” Magnus asks dubiously.

“Shut up, dumbass,” Lup chirps. “We’re gonna go home and celebrate!”

“Koko’s makin’ his famous pot roast,” Taako says, as they both start tugging on Magnus’ arms to lead him out of the lobby.  Everything else aside, that was exciting – Taako’s pot roast was Magnus’ favorite meal, hands down.  He forces a smile and, as they make it through the door, tightens his grip on their arms and puts on a burst of speed that drags both of them behind him, shouting and protesting.

Up in a second floor window, unseen, the gnome watches the three of them run off with a faint smile on his face.

((next fic))

#taz balance #magnus burnsides #lup #taako #taz fic #my fic

[emilylangridgematerialsaut12]

SDL Holiday preparation (12 Pages)

Front Cover: Something I explored was Ellen Lupton's favourite typography posters - I would like to try something like this with Bold and large text alongside imagery and colour. 

Page 2: Quotes and Imagery: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/39248.Ellen_Lupton - Quotes from Ellen Lupton and which books / magazines they are from, I think this site will be very useful for my pages.  

How posters work - Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2015

Q & A with Ellen Lupton PUBLISHED APRIL 1, 2009

“Ellen Lupton makes this industry smarter. If graphic design has a sense of its own history, an understanding of the theory that drives it and a voice for its continuing discourse, it’s largely because Lupton wrote it, thought it or spoke it.” — Katherine Feo, AIGA

How would you define ‘indie publishing’? Indie publishing is author-driven. The traditional publishing industry is controlled by publishing professionals — editors, marketing people, promotional staff, and the publishers in charge. These are all skilled people. In our book, we use the term broadly, to encompass everything from handmade zines to print-on-demand books to offset publications distributed by the authors to small imprints created by design firms who wanted to get into the content business.

How is it different from the traditional publishing industry? Because it’s author-initiated, indie publishing side-steps the traditional barriers of the publishing industry. It gets beyond the gatekeepers. Now, those gatekeepers act as guardians of quality to some degree, but they also contribute to a homogeneous and profit-driven publishing industry that many authors find hostile and hard to penetrate. Indie publishing often serves niche or local markets that can’t be addressed by mainstream publishing.

What are the benefits of publishing yourself? If you have had difficulty breaking into the mainstream publishing world, going independent is liberating. If you end up producing a successful book, the profits can be substantial, but this shouldn’t be the main motive to get into publishing. Few authors make substantial bucks on their books — regardless of who publishes them. For most of us, writing and producing books is a labor of love.

What are the risks? Most forms of indie publishing cost money, and that’s a risk. When you work with a commercial publisher, they foot the printing bill. Publishers also provide essential services like editing, proofreading, design, distribution, and marketing. The indie publisher has to take on all these tasks alone (or find friends to help out). It’s not easy, especially the distribution part. Self-published books are still viewed as less legitimate than commercially published books, although this is starting to change.

Do you see indie publishing as part of a wider D.I.Y. movement? We are seeing more independent production in all creative fields — music, art, theater, design, etc. Younger creative people are interested in creating new institutions and networks outside the official art world or music/literature establishments. They are comfortable using technology to disseminate their ideas.

How has the internet affected the development of indie publishing? The internet allows indie publishers to reach potential readers outside the bookstore system. Today, anyone can set up an Amazon Marketplace account or sell publications directly from their web sites. Print-on-demand publishers like Lulu and Blurb produce books when someone buys them, sending the finished book directly to the customer. These technologies are creating new possibilities for authors, especially those whose work is directed at narrower, smaller audiences.

What advice would you give someone publishing their first book? Love your book. Get advice from lots of people in order to have the best possible content. Consider the different avenues that exist for publishing your work, including mainstream publishing as well as independent ventures.

Think about your audience and the best way to reach them. And think about your own primary goals for publishing a book. For example, an artist having a gallery exhibition might use a print-on-demand book as a tool for building his or her career via grant applications, networking with galleries and curators, securing lecturing and teaching opportunities, and more. A well-designed, carefully authored book has many functions. Selling copies to lots of people is just one of them. You might use a book as professional portfolio for landing a job or attracting clients — maybe all you need is a few copies.

What are some of the common mistakes people make designing books? It’s important to use good software. The industry standard today is Adobe InDesign, which is available for both Mac and PC and can be easily learned via software manuals or technical workshops. Programs like Microsoft Word or Publisher are extremely cumbersome and will ultimately be frustrating to a person trying to design a refined and elegant book. Choosing a good typeface is also important. Avoid Times Roman, which was originally designed for newspapers and is so widely used as to be banal. Beautiful, high-quality typefaces such as  Garamond often come bundled with layout software and computer operating systems. Keeping your design simple and consistent from page to page is a rule of thumb for any book design. You also need to “unlearn” some habits from high school, such as leaving two spaces between sentences — this is not done in formal typesetting, and it will make your book look amateurish.

What do you look for in good book design? Beautiful type, elegant margins, consistent pages.

Have you ever bought a book just for its cover? Of course! Cover design is extremely important. A cover is not only a billboard advertising your book on a shelf, it’s also an online logo for your book that needs to look great at 100 pixels high. Getting help from a good graphic designer on your book cover is a worthwhile investment.

What will be the impact of e-books on publishing? I believe that e-books are going to be very, very good for authors. By lowering the cost of publishing, e-books will make it easier for more authors to get their work published and to reach specific audiences who want their content. What I’m less sure about is how e-books will affect graphic designers!

Are we finally seeing the ‘End of Print’? I do believe there is a sea change going on. After decades of unsuccessful attempts at creating electronic book readers, suddenly the time seems right. I don’t think print will disappear, but I think we will see less of it. It remains a tactile, permanent, stable medium that users can feel a personal attachment to.

What role do you think print-on-demand will play in the future? Print-on-demand is where digital media and print meet. I think we will see a lot more of this as prices go down in the future. Ultimately, it is a more sustainable way to publish and involves less financial risk, but right now, it is too expensive for large-scale endeavors.

How will e-books and print co-exist? E-books are great for disposable reading — magazines, casual fiction, newspapers. Perhaps every physical book in the future will come with an e-book supplement. I often want to quickly reference a book I read, and e-books would be great for that. Personally, I collect books, but I don’t need to keep the latest Richard Price book on my shelf forever.

As a designer, do you feel an attachment to print? I am very attached to print. I don’t want to see it disappear in my own lifetime, that’s for sure. I love the tactility, permanence, and scale. But I do find myself reading more and more online.

Princeton Architectural Press and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2002

“Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, educator, and designer. Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore, where she has authored numerous books on design processes, including Thinking with Type, Graphic Design Thinking, Graphic Design: The New Basics, and Type on Screen. She serves as a senior curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. Recent exhibitions include Herbert Bayer: Bauhaus Master, Face Values: Understanding A.I., The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, Beauty—Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, How Posters Work, and Beautiful Users. Her book Design Is Storytelling was published by Cooper Hewitt in 2017. She received the AIGA Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 2007. She was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2019.”

EDUCATION BFA, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 1985. Doctorate in Communication Design (DCD), University of Baltimore, 2008.

Ellen Lupton introduction: Ellens MICA program is focused towards graphic design as a legible, understandable, practical discipline. The work that the students do is founded in the reality of design practice. The work is self-motivated and experimental and aimed at meeting the demands of the design industry. 

“Increasingly, our students come to MICA with ideas for their own books. And they see MICA as a place where the faculty is very active in the design field. We can make connections for a graduate student who has the ability to write and publish. Increasingly, our alums are going out and publishing their own books in addition to working as designers in a range of studios and companies.” - Ellen runs her own design centre, and education programme - where students and young creatives can go for ideas.

“To me, success is being part of a community and engaging in a conversation about what you do. That community can be large or small. It can be focused around something narrow and professional like typeface design or publication design, or it could be more outward and social, like exploring “slow design” or building up the cycling community where you live. Success means being part of a conversation. You’re not just going to work every day and getting stuff done for clients; you’re contributing to something bigger. You’re engaged in the AIGA or in community organizing around design or social issues or national politics — anything.”

Ellens work focuses on social justice, movements and communities. Her main style is bold, powerful and follows a going with the grid format. Ellen believes success comes from being inspired by peers, and working with those around you. Ellen is inspired by typography, and is driven by reworking fonts.

[erhiem]

Billie Eilish’s second album, happier than ever, is out now.

Courtesy of Artist

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Courtesy of Artist

Billie Eilish’s second album, happier than ever, is out now.

Courtesy of Artist

Billie Eilish has a message to the world: “I’m not your friend / Or anything, damn / You think you’re the man / I think, therefore, I am.Still just 19, the pop supernova has spent the past few years leading a very public life. She’s won seven Grammys in two consecutive years, circles around her peers Board The Hot 100 became a statistic of further discussion and scrutiny, some of it perhaps a little too familiar.

His second full-length album, happier than ever, is out now. like its predecessor, When we all fall asleep, where do we go?, it is a collaboration with his brother and producer, Phineas O’Connell. But after a career debut like few others, Eilish’s style continues to evolve: new sounds (including a whirl in a bossa nova-inspired groove), a new visual toolkit, and a worldwide stage as a very young woman. Songs shaped by experiences.

Eilish talks to NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro about where happier than ever Finds him and his outlook on life, fame and performance. Listen to the radio version at the audio link, and read on for the edited transcript.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity..

Lulu García-Navarro: You had great success with your first album, and there’s always a lot of pressure for a second album after that. did you feel that way?

What’s interesting is that I didn’t feel any pressure to make the album. I was not worried; I was super confident. I really felt like I did the best I possibly could with a second album: I wasn’t doing exactly the same thing, but I didn’t change anything else, I grew. I thought it was really good. this was when i started released Music from the album, putting out singles, that all of a sudden I was like, “Wait.”

[Laughs] “People are going Listen For this?”

Yes! “People are going to listen and tell me how they perception Now? No!” But, that’s okay. It’s really just about liking me and getting real fans to like it. That’s all I care about.

this album is called happier than ever. So, how are you: Are you happier than ever? why did you say it like that?

I mainly wanted a title for my album with, like, non-mispronunciation. I think it was a strong, easy to pronounce, easy to say, not-to-be-misunderstood title. [But the song it’s named after] One of my favorite songs on the album. This is one of the most important songs I’ve ever written.

tell me why What is this song about?

Have you ever wanted to say something to someone for a long time? You really don’t know what you want to say or how to say it – and then maybe you have a conversation with someone else, or you think about it a little bit, and you know exactly what you need to do. Have been trying to say this the whole time? It felt like: that whole writing process, that recording process. Everything included in this song felt like how it feels when you find the words for something.

Is it about a special someone, or is it more about the feeling when you really understand something about your relationship?

I mean, obviously it’s about someone, but it’s also really about a feeling and a kind of feeling. I mainly hope people listen to it and go, “Oh yeah – he is What am I trying to say?”

youtube

You’re 19 now, and you’ve been in the public eye for a while. Tell me about the songHot“

You can understand it just by listening, I would say. I think it was a moment to be really angry as a young woman in the public eye: You know, it’s infuriating. being a young woman is hard enough No You are in the public eye, and just a lot of people are looking at you… let alone being famous and having millions of people constantly looking at you. It’s just thoughts coming from a place of anger and injustice and feeling angry at the world and society, I guess.

However, what have you learned about dealing with that glare? I mean, what do you do to make a living?

I honestly don’t know. I guess you can’t do much. … it’s like, if you’re going to the dentist to get your wisdom teeth checked, and they give you anesthesia and then you say to yourself, ‘I’m not going to sleep, I’m not going to sleep’ Am, ‘You can’t sleep. … you just have to keep going and not be afraid to live, I guess. And I wish I could take my own advice in that realm, no matter what. You can change, and you can change your mind, which I think the Internet forgets.

And I mean, you’re changing: You’ve changed your look recently, you’ve been experimenting with different types of music on this album. I want to ask about your beauty, how you view clothing and appearance in your art – and if you see it as part of the music, and how you interact with people who love your music. We do.

With the aesthetics and eras of a musician or artist, it’s all just for the eyes.. It’s not really real. I think you can definitely change your look to try to change yourself. But in terms of album promos, and photo shoots there’s a certain genre – that doesn’t change you. It’s just a substitute for something you want to accomplish visually, you know? I did the same thing for my first album: I chose a look and an aesthetic and a style specifically for that album, and all the shoots and stuff included in the video, I wanted it to be kind of creepy. , more like the theme of horror and darkness and monsters under your bed.

For this I needed old Hollywood and pretty and classy themes. It’s just funny that people see new photo shoots and immediately think you’re a different person. I see people call me Blonde Billy – like, “Blonde Billy said this, but Green Billy didn’t.” And I’m like, what the fuck? I am not a person category. I am the same person, for the rest of my life. I like this thing this time, and I like this thing at that time.

Up to that point, the songnot my responsibility” is saying something similar with its title – that is, everything you see is about you, not me. Am I right in interpreting it this way?

Yes to be sure. And this goes for many different things. This applies to all women who wear whatever they want and a man says, “Oh, don’t expect me to bother you if you’re wearing this.” It’s like, no—it’s your responsibility not to disturb me. It is no one’s responsibility to cover up or restrict or restrict oneself to the weak will of someone else. This is not our job.

There’s a lot in this album about femininity and what you’re talking about, the way it can be twisted, the way it can be taken advantage of. when the songyour power“Was released, I sent this to a group of my female friends and relatives, because I think it speaks to something that a lot of girls and women have dealt with. When did you realize that every girl, every woman , is there a story where they were taken advantage of?

I don’t even know when I realized it. The song is kind of from a point of view, like… it wasn’t a real situation in my life, but I thought it would be interesting to write it as if I were talking to someone I was friends with or my family, or someone. Someone I knew, and they were abusing their power. And I was talking heart to heart with them, trying not to tell them.

It’s about many, many different situations that I’ve seen. Some lines are about my life, some lines are about things I’ve seen, some lines are general things I’ve seen about women taking advantage. And it’s a crazy thing and I wish I had to hear a song like this when I was little.

youtube

We must say, there are happy songs in here too – about love, the good part of connecting, the empowering part of being with someone. I really want to go to Billy Bossa Nova because I lived in Brazil, so I’m very glad to hear that. Have you been to Brazil?

No, i did not do it!

Oh you have to go.

It’s like the main place I should go. The first fan account I ever had was Billie Eilish Brazil. Actually.

Oh wow

I have a very special place in my heart for Brazil. I wanted to respect bossa nova and the whole culture of Brazil and its surroundings because I love it so much. I don’t know, I just like a little feel-good, you know, go around feeling, sexy little song.

And you just made a lot of people happy in Brazil, I can tell you right now… the last thing I want to talk about is “my futureThere’s a line in the song that says, “I’m in love with my future / I can’t wait to meet her.” I couldn’t stop thinking about it, it’s a really interesting line. why did you write it?

Thank you. I love that line too. I think it means a lot. I think the most direct meaning is the future I am, the future person I am going to be – but also the future world I am going to live in and the future friends and future people I will surround myself with. It is not really about wishing for the present and the past and wishing to be in the future, but about being hopeful and satisfied with the idea of ​​change. And I can’t wait to see what’s in it.

Well what do you want now? I mean, you conquered the world in every way. What do you want when you see this?

good question I want happiness and contentment with myself. I want to feel better about myself, and more than that, I feel proud of who I am. I don’t know what my future holds, but I really want to do the show – that’s the main thing I look forward to and see for myself.

What does it do for you when you’re performing?

There is no feeling on stage in front of people that you really like you and that someone you like is just looking at you and you are watching them. … I never feel like I’m above anyone when I’m on stage: I feel the same way with them, and I feel like I want to impress them and have fun with them. I never want to spend that much time doing the show again, thank you so much.

youtube

The post Billie Eilish On ‘Happier Than Ever,’ Changing Styles And Growing Up In Public : NPR appeared first on Spicy Celebrity News.

#IFTTT #WordPress

[luluwquidprocrow]

so there’s, two different fics i’d like to get done for this month, of course the Fresh Hell Mad Rush to finish ellington fic is still very fresh in my mind (i mean i’m happy i finished it and particularly proud of certain parts but i know to me some of it reads as rushed. but! life goes on.) so i am telling myself to get one of the two done -- the museum fic, because i started it almost a year ago, or, the second one does not have a nickname but is a fic i should have finished for last year’s sugar bowl tournament so, realistically that’s the one i think i’ll go for this month???? museum fic needs some plot work and the sugar bowl one is just following a specific format since i based it off of 13 suspicious incidents, and i know where i’m going with it, i just need to, put it all together 

so IDEALLY that’ll be, february 27th, i think, and saying it this early will hopefully allow me to get it done BY february 27th at the latest

#lulu's public accountability continues #13SI has been next to my bed for almost a YEAR because of this fic #what else is next to my bed...........mixed up files and bad beginning i think #i also just throw books ON my bed as well and. keep them there.

[your-dietician]

Breaking Down The Details of Britney Spears' Conservatorship : NPR

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/breaking-down-the-details-of-britney-spears-conservatorship-npr/

Breaking Down The Details of Britney Spears' Conservatorship : NPR

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

One of the biggest questions surrounding the conservatorship of Britney Spears is how a woman who’s been able to perform, cut records and work for her millions of dollars is somehow unfit to make decisions about her own life. She has been subject to her conservatorship, which gave control of her to her father, Jamie Spears, and others for 13 years. And in dramatic courtroom testimony last month, she claimed she’s being abused by her father, among others on her conservatorship team. Jamie Spears is now asking for those allegations to be investigated by the court, and he has denied wrongdoing, saying he’s acting in his daughter’s best interests.

A new article from The New Yorker magazine has fresh details about why Britney Spears was put into this arrangement and why she is so desperately trying to get out. It’s by Jia Tolentino and Ronan Farrow. And Jia Tolentino joins me now. Hello.

JIA TOLENTINO: Hi, Lulu. It’s great to be here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You have an astonishing amount of detail about this story. I think at the heart of it, though, it’s about Britney’s love for her kids, right?

TOLENTINO: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I mean, take us back to 2007, when the paparazzi was saying Britney was, quote, “going crazy.” What was really going on behind the scenes?

TOLENTINO: Yeah, so this is an aspect of the story that I don’t think has been central enough to the public narrative around her so-called breakdown. So she’s in her early mid-20s. She got married six months after meeting Kevin Federline, you know, has two children within 12 or 13 months of each other. You know, many people who are close to her around the time suspect that she was dealing with severe postpartum depression. And we have to remember how famous she was, how central she was to a tabloid industry that was reaching its all-time aggressive peak. Everywhere she goes, there’s mobs of paparazzi, you know, jumping out of their cars in the middle of the road, chasing her down on foot, flashbulbs everywhere, shouting provocations to get her to break down.

And so she gets divorced when she’s still nursing her 2-month-old second child. The more that she’s not with her children, the more she sort of spirals; the more she spirals, the less likely it is that she will have access to her children in the future. And I think it’s important to note that the two incidents that sort of cemented that era as her, quote-unquote, “crazy era,” when she shaved her head and when she hit the paparazzo’s car with an umbrella, those were directly preceded by her driving to Kevin Federline’s house, followed by photographers, asking to see the children and being refused.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And then enters a man called Sam Lutfi, who got very close to Spears. Can you briefly explain who he is?

TOLENTINO: Yes. So Sam Lutfi, he’s this sort of obscure Hollywood operator with undefinable, somewhat suspicious motives, a history of legal disputes. But he swoops in to her life after Britney has fired her longtime manager, Larry Rudolph, and he sort of assumes this controlling role. And what Lutfi told us in an interview that – one of the things that created this conflict between him and Britney’s parents, who were genuinely worried about her and worried that he was exploiting her, was that he would tell her, you want to cancel that meeting? Go ahead and cancel it. You want to buy this car on impulse? Just buy it. And her parents become afraid that he is just going to siphon her money off while she’s in crisis – that, you know, she’s going to end up underwater in debt, exploited, sort of drained of this fortune that she has built.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And you and your colleague Ronan Farrow got to speak with a woman called Jacqueline Butcher, a close friend to the Spearses for a long time. And she testified 13 years ago to create the conservatorship because she wanted Spears also away from Lutfi’s influence. But she now regrets that. What did she tell you?

TOLENTINO: So Jacqueline Butcher was a close friend of Lynne Spears and close to the Spears family for, you know, close to a decade. And she was present in Britney’s house and, you know, had good reason to believe that the parents were right in thinking maybe this crisis is due to this man, Sam Lutfi, that is in her house at this time of breakdown. And she gives this primary testimony that is central to the conservatorship going into place. And, you know, she says in an interview, I thought we were helping, and I wasn’t, and I helped a corrupt family seize all this control.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, let’s talk about Britney Spears’ parents because we had then a fragile Spears, surrounded possibly by people who did not have her best interests at heart, and then her father – tell us about him. I mean, once Britney has her breakdown, for lack of a better word, you did tell this horrific scene with her father screaming at Britney.

TOLENTINO: Yeah, so by all the accounts that we heard, Jamie and Britney did not have the best relationship growing up. It’s sort of well-documented. Lynne Spears, Britney’s mother, writes about in her memoir that Jamie was wrestling with pretty severe alcoholism for most of their, you know, life as a family together. And Jamie, though, assumes authority as conservator. And Jacqueline Butcher, who was there in the room at the – you know, at the lawyers’ offices around much of this, she says that one of the reasons was that Jamie wasn’t afraid of Britney being angry at him.

And there is this brutal scene that Jacqueline told us about – you know, it’s shortly after the conservatorship is in place, and they’re all sitting in Britney’s office in her house in Beverly Hills. And Jamie turns to Britney and says, baby, you’re fat; we’re going to get you a trainer. And within eight weeks from now, we’re going to look at that TV, and they’re going to be saying, Britney’s back.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What did you find out about how her father controlled her during this conservatorship? Because he was controlling, according to your reporting. He wouldn’t allow her to use the phone or talk to anyone. She couldn’t even pay for a fancy dinner because she’s only allowed $2,000 a week while making millions.

TOLENTINO: So it’s important to mention that throughout all of this, she has only ever had a lawyer who was appointed by the court that she did not have a choice in selecting. And she has never been able to hire her own lawyer because in the eyes of the conservatorship, she is formally incapacitated to do so. And so one of the central ways, multiple people told us, that she was manipulated or coerced or coaxed into cooperating with the conservatorship structure is that the conservatorship becomes a singular condition of being able to continue to see her children. And that is one of the reasons that, especially from the outside, she has seemed to cooperate, or so our reporting bore out.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The judge this past week refused to take her father off her conservatorship despite accusations that she is being abused – accusations by her, we should say. What is next for Britney? I mean, what can she do? And do we know any information about what her diagnosis is?

TOLENTINO: We don’t know. And it’s not our right to know, right? It is not our right to know any of this, really. I think that’s one thing that weighed heavily on me as I – as we were reporting. But one thing that I’ll say about the diagnosis thing – conservatorships, probate conservatorships of the type that Britney Spears is under, these are intended for people that cannot provide for their own food and shelter. These are structures for people who are elderly, dealing with severe dementia, for people with profound disabilities, for people with, you know, sort of catastrophic terminal conditions, right?

And we spoke to disability rights attorneys who – you know, who spoke to the fact that someone might be wrestling with a mental illness, even a severe one, doesn’t mean that all of their rights should be taken away in the form of the conservatorship structure. One pointed out that, you know, Britney could have been found holding an axe and a severed head, and she still would have had the right to hire her own attorney. And she wasn’t in this case.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I guess, finally, what really emerges from your story is a woman who has, since she was a little girl, been exploited, you know, by the media, by her fans and by her own family and someone who is now trapped. What does it tell you after reporting this that someone as famous as Britney Spears is in the position she is for the whole world to see?

TOLENTINO: There’s a way in which Britney Spears is so talented, so famous and so perfectly suited to the – you know, kind of the terrible celebrity machine that her fame was used against her in this respect. Her fame and success were used against her. She was making so much money. She was so valuable that people said that makes you inherently vulnerable. There’s a way in which she was made to pay for other people’s desire to use her. And it strikes me as a genuine injustice. It is a tremendously sad story.

You know, I don’t know about you, but if you if you’ve heard the audio of her testifying in court a couple weeks ago, I was reminded listening to her of the unbelievable amount of strength that she has to be able to speak up for herself like this after what she’s gone through in the last couple of decades. And you were reminded of why she’s Britney Spears in the first place.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: That’s Jia Tolentino from The New Yorker. Thank you very much.

TOLENTINO: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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[shirlleycoyle]

Twitter Is Banning Amazon ‘Ambassadors’ and It’s a Total Mess

In 2019, responding to increasing criticism and critical reporting on the horrendous working conditions at Amazon warehouses across the world, the giant corporation deployed an army of Twitter "ambassador" accounts to defend its reputation.

The accounts appeared to be operated by actual Amazon warehouse workers, but all started with "@AmazonFC" in their Twitter handle, and were clearly controlled by and designed to promote Amazon on social media by offering what seems like personal and favorable perspectives on working conditions. At the time, the accounts went viral and, as happens on Twitter, people began making accounts that parodied their dystopian tone, tweeting about some of the poor labor conditions for Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers.

Then, the meme died down and people stopped paying attention to the accounts.

This week, however, as the NLRB begins counting votes in a historic unionization effort in Amazon's warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, and Amazon's public relations apparatus has shifted into a fully combative, fact-free, and erratic strategy, the @AmazonFC accounts have re-emerged. As these accounts have gone viral again, Twitter has begun suspending many "@AmazonFC" accounts. A minority of these accounts might belong to Amazon, and could return once they have corrected whatever violation prompted Twitter to ban them. A majority of these accounts don't belong to Amazon, and could return if they clearly declare themselves as parody accounts, Twitter has told Motherboard.

Whether the Amazon ambassador accounts are truly operated by Amazon, are parodying those accounts, or are just created by trolls to confuse people for no reason, there's one thing they all have in common: they essentially offer no value to Amazon workers or customers, and are all part of Twitter's dysfunctional information environment, where authentic, inauthentic, and malicious content are mixed into one toxic soup that would make any reasonable person give up on learning the truth about what it's like to work at Amazon. This situation, which ultimately helps maintain the status quo, is favorable to Amazon, which can continue raking in unprecedented profits at the expense of its workers.

Twitter, in its statements to Motherboard, seems to be almost as confused as everyone else. One account viewed by Motherboard was suspended, then reinstated, then suspended again. Some accounts have been banned for impersonation, others have been banned for spam and platform manipulation. Using Twitter's password reset feature, it's possible to see at least part of the email address that registered the account; some seem to use Amazon.com email addresses. Many others do not. Twitter has suspended accounts of both types. Amazon has not commented on the situation.

As someone who spends most of his days staring at the internet, and specifically AI-generated human faces, some of the Amazon ambassador accounts that got the most attention recently seemed clearly fake and at least attempting to be funny. Take the now suspended AmazonFCLulu account, for example. '

A closer look at Lulu's avatar reveals the telltale signs of an AI-generated face. Notice, most easily, the strange distortions in the outer edges of her hair and the not-quite-right reflection of lights in the eyes.

It's not something you'd notice just scrolling by on Twitter, (in fact, it can be quite difficult to tell the difference between a human and AI-generated face depending on the context), but refresh Thispersondoesnotexist.com enough times and you'll pick up on a similar pattern of distortions.

Even if you've never seen or heard of AI-generated faces in your life, you could also tell Lulu isn't a "real" Amazon ambassador because of the exaggerated, comical sycophancy with which she's defending Amazon.

To be fair, Amazon's public relations machine will aggressively push back on easily verifiable negative reporting and gaslight its own employees. In fact, Lulu's UTI statement here appears to be directly referencing a tweet from the verified Amazon News account, which mocked the notion that Amazon workers resort to peeing in bottles because of how demanding their jobs are. Amazon workers do pee in bottles, and we know this for a fact because they sent us pictures of the bottles, and because Amazon's own internal documents show this as well.

@AmazonFCDarla, another recently banned ambassador account, also featured a seemingly AI-generated face and sycophantic defense of Amazon. "Amazon takes great care of me!" Darla tweeted yesterday. "It isn't anyone's fault that I have children to take care of."

@AmazonFCDarla and @AmazonFCLulu are just two of the accounts Twitter suspended yesterday. Another used a photo of a guy from Dude Perfect, the YouTube trickshot guys; it was quickly suspended. Other ambassador accounts that appear to be endorsed and operated by Amazon, are still online, and posting only slightly less deranged content about how much they love working at Amazon. The accounts belonging to Amazon were registered with @amazon.com emails. The accounts we noticed had seemingly AI-generated faces were registered with other emails, or required an email before continuing the account verification process. @AmazonFCDarla and other seemingly fake Amazon ambassador accounts had open direct messages. The official Amazon ambassador accounts did not.

Explaining a joke never makes it funny but I believe the joke is that a lineup of slightly monstrous faces are groveling before one of the most powerful entities that have ever existed on this planet, holding in their pee and apologizing for procreating. It's a parody of the real Amazon, which actually makes it difficult for its workers to easily go to the bathroom without paying a price.

I've seen many people online seemingly not get the joke, and think these accounts are real. I don't blame them. Part of the problem here is that Amazon's treatment of its employees, and in particular the way in which the company tried to reshape the reality of working at Amazon on social media was so bald-faced, it would be hilarious if it wasn't true.

"People are really gullible, but it's also Amazon's fault with having these bizarre uncanny valley accounts in the first place, plus their whole pee bottle saga," Aric Toler, a researcher at the open source investigations team Bellingcat, who has been tracking various Amazon ambassador accounts, told Motherboard. "After the initial reports of Amazon FC accounts there were endless bad/obvious parody accounts that popped up. It's happening again now with the labor push and the bad Amazon News tweets."

If you've been taken by an Amazon ambassador account that is now suspended, chances are it was a parody account. But don't feel too bad. If your goal is to find out what it's actually like to work at Amazon, the "authentic" Amazon ambassador accounts are a joke as well.

Twitter Is Banning Amazon ‘Ambassadors’ and It’s a Total Mess syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[phgq]

Vaccine prices under PH nego at par with Indonesia, others  

#PHnews: Vaccine prices under PH nego at par with Indonesia, others  

PASIG CITY – The vaccine prices that the Philippine government is currently negotiating with the vaccine manufacturers are lower than the prevailing market price, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr. assured following the queries during Friday’s Senate hearing.

“I can assure you that the price of Indonesia and the price of the others will be almost, hindi po nagkakalayo ( not a big difference),” Galvez said during the continuation of Senate Committee of the Whole inquiry on the national immunization program on 15 January 2021.

This was revealed to dispel information circulating online that the Philippines is procuring Sinovac vaccine at PHP3,600, which is significantly higher than the price released by the Indonesian government for the same vaccine brand at USD13.57 or PHP651 for the procurement of 160 million doses.

“I can assure you that in our negotiation, the prices relative to our neighbors are fair and considered the best price,” he added.

The vaccine czar said the national government cannot disclose yet the actual negotiated price with the vaccine manufacturer as to not hamper the ongoing negotiations as well as harm the deals with other vaccine companies. He committed that all prices will be available to the public in due time.

Vaccines to be procured by the Philippine government are secured through multilateral arrangements with fund managers such as the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB). With these fund managers, he said the country can be assured of more strict and transparent documentation when it comes to procurement.

“We assure the public that it (vaccine procurement) will undergo strict [procedure] considering that all our vaccine procurement will undergo ADB and WB stringent regulatory requirements,” Galvez said.

Volume orders, lower prices

He said the centralized procurement implemented by the national government, which is a prevailing practice in many developing and developed countries, ensures greater access to vaccines at lower prices. Moreover, it guarantees equitable distribution, as well as complies with regulations relative to the use and sale of vaccines among countries.

“Given there is not enough supply yet, the Philippine national government’s approach is to pool national volumes to get a seat at the negotiating table and secure the most number of vaccines at the best prices with our partners in the private sector and the LGUs (local government units),” he added.

At present, at least 80 percent of the global vaccine supply have been pre-ordered by the vaccines’ countries of origin. The two percent has been secured under the COVAX Facility, while the remaining 18 percent is now up for grabs by developing countries such as the Philippines.

The tripartite method, which is a first-of-its-kind deal in the world, will help the country secure its vaccine requirement. It locks-in the orders of the Philippines with pharmaceutical companies whose products are already in the advanced stages of development and have shown promising results.

Under such tripartite agreements, Galvez said the national government tries to get the best price through negotiations with vaccine manufacturers, while the LGUs and companies provide the funding.

A total of 17 million doses have been secured through tripartite agreements forged between LGUs, private companies, and the national government with British-Swedish vaccines maker AstraZeneca last Thursday.

The first batch of vaccines consisting of 2.5 million doses purchased by private firms last November 2020 will be delivered in May of this year. On the other hand, the 14.5 million doses ordered by 39 LGUs and 300 companies through a tripartite agreement signed on January 14 will arrive in the country by the third or fourth quarter of 2021.

“The government will strive to meet its target of 148 million doses of safe and effective vaccines this year at the earliest possible time,” he added.

The government’s “Whole-of-Nation Approach”, he said, will ensure that the government will be able to secure safe, effective, and sufficient vaccine doses for all Filipinos.

The arrangement will also “fulfill the government’s responsibility to ensure equitable distribution.”

Based on vaccine expert panel endorsement

A vaccine will only be procured once it has been endorsed by the Vaccine Expert Panel. Likewise, only vaccines that received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) will be administered to the public.

The selection, procurement, and administration of Covid-19 vaccines in the country will strictly adhere to the government’s stringent protocols to ensure transparency and accountability, he assured lawmakers.

“Only those vaccines endorsed by the vaccine expert panel will be purchased. Only those issued an EUA by FDA (Food and Drug Administration) will be administered. With regard to the prices of vaccines, we also want to assure the public that the negotiations will result in the best price available given our total volumes,” Galvez said.

The FDA granted Pfizer-BioNTech an EUA on Thursday, January 14. AstraZeneca, Sinovac, and Gamaleya have also submitted their respective applications for EUA.

 Vaccines portfolio

Galvez also clarified that given the limited supply of the vaccines, the government cannot afford to choose one or two brands of vaccines, hence the creation of a vaccine portfolio.

“We have been pursuing a portfolio strategy and are negotiating with seven vaccine manufacturers. These are the Serum Institute of India for Novavax, AstraZeneca of U.K., Pfizer of the U.S. and Germany, Janssen J&J of the U.S. and Belgium, Moderna of the U.S., Sinovac of China, and Gamaleya of Russia. This proves that we are not favoring any one particular brand or country,” Galvez said.

 Vaccines will help end pandemic

 Meanwhile, vaccine expert Dr. Lulu Bravo emphasized the importance of vaccines in the ongoing battle versus the deadly Covid-19.

“We have this old adage that prevention is better than cure, and with vaccines, it is an investment in health. I’ve always taught our medical students and everybody else that a superior doctor prevents disease, and an inferior doctor treats disease,” Bravo said.

“We really need to rely on experts to tell us what to do next. The safety concern is paramount. We will not compromise the safety of our people. That is very important in vaccine development. Any vaccine that shows signs of safety concern is thrown away as soon as it is detected,” she added.

Bravo added that the context behind the efficacy rates of vaccines, particularly Sinovac, which has a 50-percent efficacy rate.

“That 50 percent efficacy was actually set by WHO (World Health Organization) long before, at the beginning of the pandemic. They (WHO) even said that efficacy of 50 to 70 percent would be already acceptable in the midst of a pandemic because these efficacy rates needed to be put in place when you have a severe pandemic,” she said.

“When the incidence is so high, that 50% efficacy would really be good enough to have that kind of protection, because no protection, of course, is worse than partial protection. I guess that would be a good efficacy rate should you be able to get that vaccine,” Bravo added. (PR)

  ***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Vaccine prices under PH nego at par with Indonesia, others  ." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1127582 (accessed January 16, 2021 at 09:57PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Vaccine prices under PH nego at par with Indonesia, others  ." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1127582 (archived).

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Self-published books now represent 30% to 40% of ebook sales. E-books themselves compose near to 40% of all books sold, as well as in 2018 they are readied to outsell print publications in the United States. All this bodes well for self-publishing authors, for http://www.thefreedictionary.com/amazon ebook marketing whom e-books are the favored style. They will certainly continue to see a healthy and balanced development in sales as a growing number of individuals adopt e-reading.

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If you are still asking yourself whether to self-publish or take the traditional course, you may go through the benefits and drawbacks of each alternative. In case you choose to self-publish, we have assembled a listing of publishing solution firms that are prominent among independent authors. The basic solutions that these firms supply are manuscript conversion into publishing-ready layouts and also accessibility to several retail platforms.

Yet prior to you go via our list, learn about the 2 primary kinds of posting service firms: merchants as well as aggregators. A releasing company that sells publications exclusively through its very own retail shop is categorized as a store. Examples include Amazon's Kindle Direct Posting (KDP) as well as CreateSpace, Apple's iBookstore, Barnes & Noble's Press, and also Kobe.

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A collector not just supplies a publishing and also retailing platform for e-books, however also distributes them to a number of companion online merchants as well as libraries. This assists authors get the best possible reach, without needing to layout their book per publisher's standards and preserve numerous publisher accounts. Collectors can additionally get ebooks right into networks that writers can not come close to straight; e.g., Scribd, a virtual library with a subscription solution and more than 80 million individuals worldwide, does decline e-books directly from authors.

While the term "aggregator" applies to distributors of e-books, "distributor" is used for firms that make print publications readily available to brick-and-mortar stores, libraries, and also scholastic institutions, e.g., IngramSpark. Some aggregators, like Lulu and also Bookbaby, also disperse and retail print publications. Given the level of overlap and also the important resemblance in what they do, both types can be referred to as "representatives." The listing of business listed below complies with no specific order.

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Had by Amazon, KDP publishes and retails ebooks that can be continued reading Kindle devices or on devices that have set up the Kindle application. This is one publisher that an independent author can not pay for to ignore: About 80% of all English-language ebook sales occur via Amazon, and also self-published titles alone account for 42% of this number.

If KDP Select works well for you (as well as discounting is a reliable way to advertise salesas the success of book marketing services like Bookbub shows), you can re-enroll right into the program as sometimes as you want. Participation in KDP Select additionally makes your book readily available to subscribers of Kindle Unlimited as well as the Kindle Owners Borrowing Collection for Amazon Prime members, and also you will get extra repayments depending on the variety of web pages clients check out.

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If you have actually produced your ebook in Word, you can transform it to.MOBI making use of free conversion software like Calibre. KDP pays writers nobilities of 35% or 70% on the book's sticker price. This is Amazon.com's posting system for print books and also utilizes print-on-demand publishing, where no stocks are helda book is published only when a consumer positions an order.

Under this program, writers can make their books available to online and also offline stores such as Barnes & Noble, as well as to representatives such as Ingram as well as Baker & Taylor. On being included to the distributors' directories, the show up in the buying systems of the distrubutors' network of sellers, collections, as well as scholastic organizations, and can be ordered whenever a customer places a request at any of these locations.

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Amazon takes a 40% cut from every regular sale, and also 60% from sales made through their Expanded Circulation program. Royalty is paid after subtracting Amazon.com's commission (40% or 60%), a set fee, as well as a per-page cost from the book's market price. Keep in mind that CreateSpace does not currently offer the hardcover layout.

Its greater than 40 country-specific ebook stores provide unique benefits to ebook-pro.com הוצאת ספר authors: They can price their publications differently in each country depending upon the costs of equivalent books, and also also established costs in the regional currency. Moreover, writers can schedule free book and discount rate uses anytime, and there is no exclusive circulation contract.

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Apple uses a level 70% royalty rate. Previously recognized as SPACE Press, this is a self-publishing website from Barnes & Noble. It makes up 3% of ebook sales, almost all of it from the United States. It additionally offers print-on-demand posting. Books published with Barnes & Noble Press retail only at their online and physical book shops.