Two young knights

what did you think of shadow and bone? have you read the books? i only read the duology

Thoughts on Shadow and Bone, now that you've probably seen it?

I think the show is alright? It lacks a real wow factor as far as I’m concerned, but it’s enjoyable. It’s especially enjoyable in those parts I didn’t anticipate to like / didn’t even know would be there. 

Whereas the main selling points leave a lot to be desired.

The good stuff: the visuals. The aesthetic. The overall concept. Production, casting and costumes are excellent, the setting is fascinating. The worldbuilding isn’t perfect and is sometimes confusing, which is probably due to the show jumping ahead of the books and introducing elements that happen much later in the book saga, but I’m loving the vague steampunk-y vibe of it mixed with more typical fantasy stuff and slavic-inspired lore, the fact that it’s set in dystopian Russia rather than your usual ye olde England.

I find it interesting that in this ‘verse the Grisha are simultaneously superstars, privileged elite, legendary creatures and despised outcasts, according to the context and the type of magic they wield. It’s A Lot, and so far it’s all a bit underdeveloped and messy, like a patchwork of different narratives and tropes sewn together without an organic worldbuilding structure. (there are hints to a past when they were hunted, but how did they go from that to being, essentially, an institutionalized asset to the government isn’t clear yet. There’s huge narrative potential in this, and I hope future seasons will delve into those aspects)

Many of the supporting characters are surprisingly solid. I appreciated that Genya and Zoya eventually sort of traded places, subverting the audience’s assumptions about them and their own character stereotypes, despite the little screentime they were given.

Breakout characters/ships for me were Nina/Matthias, and even more so the Crows, i.e. the stuff I didn’t see coming and knew nothing about (having only read the first book). (I thought the entire Crows subplot was handled in a somewhat convoluted way, at least in the first episodes; it was hard to keep track of who wanted Alina and why, but the Crows’ chemistry is so strong it carried the whole Plot B on its shoulders).

HELNIK. As an enemies to lovers dynamic, Helnik was SUPER on the nose, I’d say bordering on clichéd with the unapologetic, straight outta fanfiction use of classic tropes like “we need to team up to survive” and “there’s only one bed and we’ll freeze to death if we don’t take our conveniently damp clothes off and keep each other warm with the heat of our naked bodies” (not that I’m complaining, but i like to pine for my ships a bit before getting to the juicy tropetown part, tyvm). And then they’re suddenly on opposite sides again because of a tragic misunderstanding - does Bardugo hate high-conflict dynamics? It certainly seems so, because between Helnik and Darklina I’m starting to see a pattern where the slow burn and blossoming mutual trust is rushed and painted in broad, stereotypical strokes to get as fast as possible to the part where they *hate each other again* and that’s... huh. Something.

^That’s probably why I’m almost more interested in Kaz x Inej, because their relationship feels a bit more nuanced, a bit more mysterious, and a bit more unpredictable. (I didn’t bother spoiling myself about them, so I really don’t know where they’re going, but it’s refreshing to see a dynamic that the narrative isn’t scrambling to define in one direction or the other as quickly as possible)

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Now, as for Darklina VS Malina... I found exactly what I expected. 

Both are ship dynamics I’m, on principle, very much into (light heroine/dark villain, pining friends to lovers) but both are also much less interesting than they claim to be, or could have been with different narrative choices. I’ll concede that the show characters are all more fleshed out and likable than their book counterparts, and the cringe parts I vaguely remembered from the books played out differently. And, well, Ben Barnes dominates the scene, he’s hot as HELL, literally every single second he’s on screen is a fuck you to Bardugo’s attempts to make his character lame and uninteresting and I’m LOVING it, lol.

But yeah, B Barnes aside, Darklina is intrinsically, deliberately made to be unshippable. 

It makes me mad, because it’s - archetypally speaking - made of shipping dynamite: yin/yang-sun and moon, opposites attract, COMPLEMENTARY POWERS AND SO ON. And what does Bardugo do with these ingredients? A FUCKING DELIBERATE DISASTER:

^ Placing the kiss so early on (season 1, episode five) effectively kills the romantic tension that was (correctly) building up until that point, and leaves the audience very little to still hope for, in terms of emotional evolution of the dynamic. 

Bardugo lays all the good stuff down as early and quickly as possible (the bonding, the conflicted attraction, the recognizing the other as one’s equal, etc) only to turn the tables and pull the rug so y’all sick creepyshippers won’t have anything to look forward to, because THEY’VE ALREADY HOOKED UP AND THAT BELONGS TO THE PAST, IT’S OVER, THEY’RE ENEMIES. This, combined to the fact that she falls for him *without* knowing who he really is, is the opposite of what I want from a heroine/villain ship (it’s basically lovers to enemies, and while that can be valid too, I wanted to see more pining and more prolonged, tormented symbolic attraction to the Shadow/Animus on Alina’s part). 

But here’s the trick: it’s not marketed as lovers to enemies - it has all the aesthetics and trappings of an enemies to lovers (the Darkling is, from the get go, villain-presenting, starting from his name), so it genuinely feels like a trollfic, or at the very least a cautionary tale *against* shipping the heroine with the tall dark brooding young villain, and I don’t think it’s cool at all. It makes the story WAY less interesting, because it humanizes the villain early on (when it’s not yet useful or poignant to the story, because it’s unearned) but it’s a red herring. The real plot twist is that the villain shouldn’t be sympathized with, just defeated: there’s a promise of nuanced storytelling, that is quickly denied and tossed aside. So is the idea of incorporating your Shadow (a notion that Bardugo must be familiar with, otherwise she wouldn’t have structured Alina and the Darkling as polar opposites who complement each other, but that she categorically refutes)

Then we have Malina. The good ship.

Look, I’m not that biased against it. I don’t want to be biased on principle against a friends to lovers dynamic that antagonizes a heroine/villain one, because every narrative is different, and for personal reasons I can deeply relate to the idea of being (unspeakably) in love with your best friend. So there are aspects of Malina that I can definitely be into, but it troubles me that in this specific context it’s framed as a regression. It’s Alina’s comfort zone, a fading dream of happiness from an idealized childhood, to sustain which the heroine systematically stunts her growth and literally repressed her own powers, something that in the books made her sickly and weak. But the narrative weirdly romanticizes this codependency, often making her tunnel vision re: going back to Mal her primary goal and centering on him her entire backstory/motivation, to the point that when she starts acting more serious re: her powers and alleged mission to destroy the Fold, it feels inorganic and unearned. 

Mal is intrinsically extraneous to Alina’s powers, he doesn’t share them, he doesn’t understand them, he has little to offer to help her with them, and so the feeling is that he’s also extraneous to her heroine’s journey, aside from being a sort of sidekick or safe harbor to eventually come back to. People have compared him to Raoul from Phantom of the Opera, and yeah, he has the same ~magic neutralizer~ vibe, tbh.

The narrative also polarizes Mal’s normalcy and relative “safety” against Aleksander’s sexy evil, framing Alina’s quasi-platonic fixation on the former as a better and purer form of love than her (much more visible and palpable) attraction to the latter. This is exacerbated by the show almost entirely relying on scenes of them as kids to convey their bond. I’m sure there are ways to depict innocent pining for your best friend that don’t involve obsessively focusing on flashbacks of two CHILDREN running in a meadow and looking exactly like brother and sister. LIKE. I get it, they’re like soulmates in every possible way, BUT DO THEY WANT TO KISS EACH OTHER?

Which brings me to a general complain: for a young adult saga centering on a young heroine and full of so many hot people, this story is weirdly unsexy? There are a lot of shippable dynamics, but they’re done in such a careless, ineffective way that makes ZERO EFFORT to work on stuff like slow burn, pining and romantic tension, and when it does it’s so heavy handed that the viewer doesn’t feel encouraged at all to fill the blanks with their imagination and start anticipating things (which is, imo, the ESSENCE of shipping). The one dynamic that got vaguely close to this is, again, Kaz and Inej, and coincidentally it’s also the one we didn’t get confirmed as romantic YET. Other than that, where’s the slow burn? What ship am I supposed to agonize over during the hiatus to season two? Has shipping become something to feel ashamed of, like an embarrassing relative you no longer want to invite in your home?

Anyway, back to Alina/Darkling/Mal, this is how the story reads to me:

girl suspects to be special, carefully pretends to be normal so she can stay with Good Boy

the girl’s powers eventually manifest; she’s forcibly separated from Good Boy

the girl’s powers attract Bad Boy who is her equal and opposite but is also a major asshole

girl initially falls for Bad Boy; has to learn a hard lesson that nobody that sexy will ever want her for who she is, he’s just trying to exploit her

also, no, there is no such thing as a Power Couple

girl is literally given a slave collar by Bad Boy through which he harnesses her power (a parody of the Twin Scars trope)

you know how the story initially suggested that the joint powers of Darkness and Light would defeat evil? LOL NO, Darkness is actually evil itself and the way you destroy evil is using Light to destroy Darkness, forget that whole Jungian bullshit of integrating your shadow, silly!

conclusion: girl realizes being special sucks. She was right all along! Hiding and suppressing her powers was the best choice! She goes back to the start, to the same Good Boy she was meekly pining for prior to the start of the story.

... there’s an uncomfortable overall subtext that reads a lot like a cautionary tale against - look, not just against darkships and villain/heroine pairings, but also *overpowered* heroines and, well... change? Growth?

Like, it’s certainly a Choice that Alina starts the story *already* in love with Mal. That she always knew it was him. The realization could have happened later (making the dynamic much more shippable, too), but no. 

INTRO :: LONG JOURNEY ——— like butterfly wings

the end of the trimester marks a new point in hwang minjun’s life. through the many twists and turns, he’s gradually shaping himself and spreading his wings.

minjun isn’t my first muse of the year, but he is the one i’ve grown incredibly attached to, with connections i never imagined he’d have. i missed the halfway point of the year, i meant to post this on his birthday, july 10th, but better late than never, right? this also serves as a thank you to everyone who plotted with minjun—he continues to develop as a character because of you all, both he and i can’t thank you enough !

PERSONALITY

not a lot has changed in terms of his personality, he continues to be a person eager to please, an overachiever at times, to the point where he’d push himself a little too far. he’s learning to overcome this flaw, to let others take care of him, listen when he’s being told that he’s working too hard. to give himself a break when he needs it. he’s opening his arms to different types of people, more than happy to accommodate all types of personalities if it meant building friendships. at the end of the day, he still has a lot of love to give.

CAREER

the beginning of it all—the valentines event drew out minjun’s infamous aegyo, which went viral within the blink of an eye. it may not be as significant as what follows, but it’s still an event that brings a smile to his face.

fear accompanied him when he auditioned for project origin, but the experience made him realise something important—what matters is that he stayed true to himself as he performs, gives it very best with every little stomp and twist, pour all he can with each move. and eventually, he’ll be rewarded.

type zero chipped away at his confidence, the pressures of being a replacement were heavy on his shoulders. gradually, he learns that he doesn’t have to deal with it on his own—after all, type zero is a group first and foremost, lifting one another up. it’s fine to be himself, he doesn’t need to pretend to be someone else.

being a part of project origin and legacy boys gave him opportunities he wouldn’t dare imagine even in his wildest dreams. the tour opened his eyes to new heights, brought him out of his shell, introduced him to a greater stage, one he had the privilege to perform on, including a solo performance. boarding a plane hadn’t been easy, minjun never ventured so far before. it’s a terrifying experience, but one he wouldn’t erase.

RELATIONSHIPS a recap of minjun’s connections thus far, from his point of view.

minjun finds himself facing pages of the past when he reunites with ( @lgcinsoo ), a fellow dancer from his old days that he used to admire. to his surprise, the reunion was far from awkward, ending with a promise to hang out whenever they find the time. though they’re walking different paths now, minjun will always be rooting for insoo. he hopes the time they hang out again will come soon.

( @lgcjiho ) had been another plushie collector, and was the person who managed to draw out minjun’s aegyo, causing him to go viral. in a way, minjun owes jiho his thanks, even more so for always seeming so eager to join him in his little tea parties. he believes project origin drew the two even closer, what with their shared fear for airplanes. they comforted one another like friends would, minjun won’t forget that day.

not all has been smooth sailing, he hit stormy waves when he went overboard with ( @lgchunji ). he’s not sure what he had done wrong specifically, but he knows it had to do with his desire to extend his hand even though he had been warned against it. minjun wants to fix things, tape back the string of friendship that he had broken. however, that isn’t his decision to make. either way, he can only hope hunji is thriving with whatever it is he’s doing. hunji helped him realise that there is merit to sticking to his own lane, to not shove himself into situations that doesn’t concern him.

he tried again to help someone else, ( @lgceunji ) this time. seeing her in a seemingly bad state after the prank worried him, and he did what he can do. offer a silent comfort and company, then gifting her one of his prized possessions, a small bear plushie. he intends to check up on her every now and then, even if he’s busy with the tour. he thinks of her as a little sister he wants to protect.

although it took a few days to adjust, he found friends among the type zero members. his worries were eased after his conversation with ( @lgcxking ), and minjun isn’t shy to admit that he admires the other for his determination and strong will. king’s bravery shown throughout the tour, like when king invited him to bungee jump, but also when king challenged himself to take part in babysitting services. he has a lot of respect for king.

among the project origin members, he finds himself adoring ( @lgcharu ), someone he can’t help but feel like he wants to take care of. discussing their characters aided minjun in figuring out how to ease himself into musical acting, something he had never done before. he had a lot of fun with haru throughout the tour as well, spending a part of their chuseok holidays together.

his encounter with ( @lgcemil ) had been one he hadn’t expected, meeting the other in the practice room when he intended to practice into the late night. he can’t hide his concern for emil, and although he doesn’t want to overstep his boundaries, he wants to become a friend that emil can count on whenever he’s feeling a little down.

there are a few special mentions. ( @lgceunho ) bonded with him when they were locked in a practice room, and although minjun would rather not get himself in such a situation ever again, he’s glad he had been stuck with eunho, who is a fun person to be around. panicking with ( @lgcxminseok ) over the april fools prank and playing with the animals in the shelter was a delightful time. during the project origin tour, he had a blast with king, ( @lgcyonghwa ) and ( @lgcmax ). yonghwa seems like a reliable older brother that minjun can count on. max’s bursts of energy draws out his own, there’s never a boring time with max. he didn’t know ( @lgcjueun ) before babysitting services, but as it turns out, taking care of kids together is another good way to bond.

YOON SHINHA ——— forever you are my star

( @lgcshinha ) appeared to him like a storm, wrecking his world in the best way possible. he encountered the enigma that is yoon shinha when he reached out towards the same cat plushie that the other did. it’s an out of the blue suggestion when he said they should share the plushie instead, but he wouldn’t have it any other day. that was the beginning of something beautiful—an encounter with an impact that will last a lifetime.

it’s a little funny when it turns out they ended up as roommates, but that makes it easier for them to take care of their little family. looking back, minjun isn’t sure when exactly things started to change between the two of them, where they drew the line between friendship and something else. it’s hard for minjun not to fall for shinha though, not when shinha took care of him like no one else ever had. the illusion of having a family with the other felt more real as days go by, to the point where minjun is afraid that he’d eventually do what he does best: overstep and ruin everything.

he had never, for the life of him, thought that shinha would feel the same way. and yet, after a long night of rigorous practice and a shared night in their dorm with no one else around, they laid their feelings out on the table. it all happened too fast, but it still felt like it was yesterday. minjun recalled the beating of his heart picking up pace, too quick for him to keep up. he remembers the tears that were in the corner of his eyes, ever the emotional person he was. but they left things up in the air, until...

july 10th, minjun’s birthday and the day the stars aligned. shinha keeps proving himself as someone minjun can’t help but think he doesn’t deserve sometimes. the gifts shinha bestowed upon him that day is enough to make his heart swell, he remembers feeling as if he’ll burst. a mix of emotions coursed through him that day, but overall he can say that he’s elated, he’s in love. that is further confirmed when shinha asked him out, and the tears he usually would try so hard to hide flowed almost endlessly. they became one that day, but minjun feels as if they were always one.

with project origin taking most of his time, he wasn’t granted enough time to spend with his beloved, but he can’t complain—not out loud, at the very least. the tour had been an experience minjun wouldn’t trade for the world, yet he finds himself thinking about shinha whenever he’s alone with his thoughts. texts and video calls weren’t nearly enough, he missed shinha’s presence by his side most of all. it was torture, but he believes in shinha, in their relationship, in them. minjun knows they can go through whatever hardships may come.

seeing shinha again during kcon backstage brought forth the longing he had been feeling the past month. but they’re strong, if they can survive a tour, then they’ll be able to handle worse.

a new trimester begins, and future dreams is knocking on their doors. minjun doesn’t wish for much, but if he could wish for one thing—he wants the both of them to debut, together.

THE ROAD AHEAD

above all, minjun intends to debut. he knows he’s meant to be on stage, and he wants to prove that he’s worth it. he doesn’t know what future dreams will bring, but he’s eager to show off what hwang minjun can do.

there are a lot of people he still wants to befriend, particularly those who will be participating in future dreams. there may be a competitive element, however friendly rivalry isn’t a bad thing.

he’s eager to brush up on his language skills, particularly japanese. with the workshop, that may be achievable. there seems to be a strong market in japan, so he wants to try it out.

despite the fun time he experienced in babysitting services, he’s eager to try out the other two variety shows. he isn’t the best at cooking, but masterchef legacy piqued his interests.

Bourbon Basics; How to read a bottle and generally understand what you are ordering or buying.

How did Bourbon get it's name?

Much like Cognac, Champagne, and Tequila, Bourbon's name originated from the area it was originally made. Bourbon is a county in the state of Kentucky. Why does is sound French? Because it was named after the royal French Family, the Bourbon's, who aided that area of the United States during the revolution for independence from Great Britain. Like many parts of Kentucky, it was named to honor the French who helped them gain freedom from the big bad Brits.

Can Bourbon be made outside of Kentucky?

Yes, but it cannot legally be made outside of the United States. Just like Tequila is to Mexico, Bourbon is to the United States. Of course there are distilleries that try to imitate Bourbon in other countries, but it cannot be sold as "Bourbon". Why not? The same reason why Tequila can only legally come from 5 states in Mexico--quality control. It wouldn't be regulated by the same government imposed laws and practices that Bourbon is regulated by in the US and the quality and reputation of Bourbon would be inconsistent and degraded.

What are the laws and practices that regulate Bourbon?

There are 6 rules that make Bourbon, Bourbon. They are defined by title 27 of the Code of Federal Regulations and are acknowledged by Congress. The first came about on May 4th in 1964 and states that Bourbon is a "distinctive product of the US". Bourbon MUST be produced in the US. It's mash bill must be made from at least 51% corn. It must be distilled at 160 proof or below. It has to be put into a new charred oak "container" (this does not specifically mean a barrel). It is put into a container at 125 proof or below. Last, but very importantly, Bourbon shall contain no added substances other than water.

As you see there was no requirement of age for Bourbon. Some Bourbons are bottled and sold at less than a year of age. Often times new distilleries source Bourbon from more established distilleries and create a Bourbon that tastes how they are expecting their aging Bourbon to taste. This is important for new distilleries income and longevity as a company. I personally have enjoyed many different young and sourced Bourbons. It's a testament to a distiller's skill and creativity to nose, taste, and craft a good tasting Bourbon when they only have these sourced and young Bourbons to work with.

Why are some Bourbon's labeled "Straight Bourbon"?

This means the Bourbon was aged a minimum of 2 years. It also has a sub requirement that if the Straight Bourbon was aged less that 4 years the bottle must be labeled with an age statement. If a bottle says "Kentucky Straight Bourbon" or "Kentucky Bourbon" then that Bourbon was produced AND aged for at least 1 year in Kentucky. That is why a Bourbon bottled in Texas can be labeled as Kentucky Bourbon.

What does it mean when a label states a Bourbon is Bottled in Bond?

Due to poor tasting and dangerously low quality alcohols labeled as "Bourbon" being sold around the United States in the 1800s, real Bourbon distillers approached the US government with outrage for the tarnished name of their product. President Grover Cleveland signed the Bottled in Bond Act in 1897 making the government the guaranteer of distilled whiskey. There are 4 rules that allow a product to meet the requirements of a "Bonded" Whiskey. To guarantee that the distillery that sold the product actually made it, the whiskey was made at 1 distillery. To guarantee that the whiskey in the bottle is all the same age, the whiskey was made in 1 season. To prevent excessive watering down of the whiskey, it was bottled at 100 proof. Lastly, the whiskey was aged for at least 4 years in a government bonded warehouse. In today's world, a Bottle in Bond seal will guarantee the Bourbon was made at 1 distillery, bottled at 100 proof, and that it aged for at least 4 years. It no longer guarantees that the Bourbon was made in 1 season.

If a bottle has an age statement, does that mean the Bourbon is all from the same season?

Nope. The age on the bottle refers to the youngest Bourbon that was added to create that batch of bottled product.

What about Bourbon that was aged in a second barrel type?

When Bourbon enters a used barrel or a barrel that not a charred oak barrel, it looses it's status as a Bourbon. If the second barrel the Bourbon was aged in was a charred oak barrel, it is still Bourbon. Legally, a bourbon that has gone through a second barrel aging must have that stated on the label. It really is up to consumers sometimes to keep distilleries honest. The TTB (Alcohol, Tobacco tax, and Trade Bureau) isn't the best at this.

Other common things you will find on the labels of Bourbon bottles that are not required to be stated by law but hint to the Bourbon's beginnings:

A small batch Bourbon just indicates that the bottle is made up by a number barrels of Bourbon. If the bottle claims it's a single barrel, that bottle is made up of Bourbon from 1 barrel (it better be!). A barrel strength bourbon (most of my favorites fall in this category) indicate that no water was added to proof down the Bourbon after it was taken out of the Barrel. Sour mash on a label refers to the mash bill being made up with a percentage of leftover water and grain solids from the previous mash cook. This practice creates consistency to the pH balance of the water and adds important nutrients to the fermentation process. It is a very common practice to use sour mash and it usually isn't stated on bottle labels. A lot of statements on label's we are used to seeing today were created out of competitive marketing.

Why would someone refer to a Bourbon as wheated or high-rye?

Why not? Just kidding. Although the legal requirement of Bourbon states that 51% of the mash bill (grain recipe) must be corn it usually is more 60-75% corn. Malted barley usually makes up anywhere from 5-15% of the mash bill. The last varying percentage of the grains used add distinct tastes to the Bourbon. If most of the remaining mash bill was rye, it would have a little more spiciness to its taste (hints* high-rye Bourbon). If wheat made up the majority of the last 35-10% of the Bourbons mash bill, it would have a sweeter taste as a finished product (hints* wheated Bourbon).

What other things affect the taste of a Bourbon?

The barrel will most likely determine 60-70% of the Bourbons flavor. The level of the toast on the barrel (cooked portion of wood), the char level (burnt oak inside the barrel), and the size of the barrel all effect the flavors of the Bourbon. The amount of time that the Bourbon ages in the barrel and the environment the barrel is in while its aging will affect the end taste. By environment I'm referring to the temperature, humidity, & seasonal changes of where the barrel is aging.

Is there any particular reason why Bourbon is mostly made in Kentucky?

When settlers made their way to Kentucky, they planted a f* ton of corn & other grains and had more than they could consume or brew perishable beer with. So they ended up preserving a lot of their corn & grains by making Bourbon. There is no real answer for why Bourbon began being aged in charred barrels, other than stories of aging houses catching on fire and other silly stories like that. Who knows, maybe that's true. Kentucky also sits on a bed of limestone which provides natural purified water that contributes to the quality of Kentucky Bourbon. Kentucky also experiences 4 seasons which balances the aging process and it has an abundance of oak trees for cooperages to make barrels from. Personally, I believe the rich history and knowledge that the distilleries in Kentucky have make up a lot of reasoning for why Kentucky Bourbon is so varied, interesting to explore, and well respected. The demand for good Kentucky made Bourbon is continually rising.

There are a lot of distilleries outside of Kentucky that are making really interesting Bourbon products that I respect. I have been extremely blessed to have been able to grow in the presently exploding time of great quality Bourbons and will always feel homey with a pour of my favorite spirit. Give it to me straight, bonded, high-rye, barrel proof, I don't care as long as you give it to me. There is a plethora of great Bourbons out there to adventure through, but I do have the strongest sentiment for Kentucky Bourbon. If I was away from Kentucky long enough I would need some Kentucky made Bourbon to ward off my homesickness as I imagine someone who grew up in Jalisco, Mexico would need some Tequila to ward of their homesickness. In my opinion Kentucky Bourbon is the crowning glory of spirits in the United States. You're free to try and prove me wrong.

I plan on diving further into specific distilleries, Bourbons, and tasting comparison recommendations in posts down the road. I also plan on showcasing some tours I have done and plan on doing in the future. If you are new to the Bourbon world, I hope that this post helped impart you with some basic knowledge to delve deeper into tastings and sparked an interest in you to dive into the history of Bourbon distilleries.

Keep your mind open to all the lovely Bourbon opportunities and don't be an asshole. Bourbon is for everyone (except children).

Thanks for reading,

Sammy

I know I haven’t really updated on here. Fatherhood can be really tiring and time consuming as it is a blessing and will change who you are for the better, at least for me. I’ve been away from a lot of the subjects I used to normally post about until recently, that’s because I picked up the energy and interest for science journalism again. To say I went off to have a long waited talk with nature is to minimize greatly the kind of transformations I’ve undergone. The mysteries she’s shown me far greater than any cosmic unknown that I could have ever imagined of. I know a lot of the folks who used to follow this blog might be surprised to know that within that journey I’ve seen, experienced and have been in communion with some really influential spirits of old. Nature’s hidden variables. Whatever you want to call it. Something occurred when I decided to take more seriously the religions and spirituality of my ancestors. Something that only reinvigorated my love for science and the unknown, physics, art, and expression of these things for beneficial communal use. I’m from Quisqueya, the first testing grounds for colonialism and subsequently the evolution of neo-colonialism. Not too long after and we become one of the first pit stop for the trans-Atlantic slave trading markets to proliferate and spin the rest of the world off into the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy hell branch of a reality we know of today. Our little island has undergone so many transformations and inclusion of peoples, cultures, so many I only recently found out of like how Haitians took in Jewish refugees during the time of Hitler’s nazism. Because I still deal with mental health issues and depression being one I’ve had since childhood, I sometimes don’t have near enough energy to convey how have things been going since my last big update here. My spiritual and religious journey, finding comfort in myself and closure in ways I no longer adhere to. That said I found it beyond amazing how earlier today on October the 14th ‘Indigenous Peoples Day‘ I was drumming away to Tainx music without realizing what day today was without looking at my social media feeds yet. Here I was normally thinking I’m so tired, down and out of trying to keep these cultures alive and I was already doing so instinctively in the truest way I know how.

Like I mentioned, I decided to take more seriously my Afro-Indigenous roots and what it meant to be a Black Dominican Haitian Taino American. It took me on the wildest ride with the unlikeliest subject ranging from seeing quantum entanglement examples right before my eyes, seeing living breathing afrofuturism through my Vodun, Catholic, Christian roots and the functionality of Vodun to incorporate so many ancient parts of being Black into what intuitively led me down a road of self and outward knowledge on the cosmos around me. To then blend these epigenetically installed formulas of spirituality embededd in me by history and nature, incorporate them into my expression of art and self which is one has been like achieving a life long dream I didn’t even know I had. I did so much intuitive shit that was so clearly linked to my identity as an Afro-Indigenx American immigrant along the way that I had erected an altar without knowing it was an altar. I would section and compartmentalize this prototype altar so beautifully and had no clue I was paying respects to my ancestors and spirits of the world until more recently a few months back. When I realized this, it was like a Cambrian explosion occurred in me. I don’t want to get into the details of the abilities it brought out that I already had in me due to prying eyes (ahem surveillance capitalist patriarchy is still outchea at large) but to simply meditate and think on my folks has given me such a renewed and strengthened sense of intuition and appreciation for the past and future that I never knew existed. Sometimes I’ll legit write and prophesize shit out the ass like it’s a normal day it’s wild, shit I never believed in but the science seems to check out with quantum physics and what not. That’d be an explanation for another time. The altar has now evolved to a place I can really go to and express but at the same time it’s something I’ve learned to keep within my own self so that it’s not the altar that’s important, rather the changes I’ve gone through to get to such a place. I write, dream, visualize, laugh, act, improvise, predict based on science, meditate, heal, rehabilitate myself there. But conversely the world speaks to me there, the spirits of old, new, those to be. I know it sounds type wild but it’s gotten normal for me to experience something my old science nerd ass self woulda made fun of me for. But when you get into a connection with ya ancestors like I have and reach the conclusions and deductions I have on the systems that control the planet it gets clearer to see that the Indigenous were right all along on colonialism, it’s gotto go. There’s no place for it in the future if we’re to survive a planet seemingly becoming another Venus. I’d like to think we not gone be fighting each other while some catastrophe bop our asses one time like they did the dinos. That’s one of the main messages they keep tellin me and it’s hard to refute. I’ll try and continue this update on another day as there’s so much in between and concepts and ideas I wanna share about how to move forward on activism and using art to get our ideas about those movements across. The above images span from months, just small droplets of the cool ass journey I been on just trying to maintain some normalcy while playing my part in not helping oppressors of any kind continue proliferating their systems of domination and subjugation. So this first image is from the week not too long ago when I had 2 honey bees flying in and checking out the altar. Then I left an old jar of honey that still had some and they’d return and eat some for like a good week or so. At one point, this matrix-like moment happens when one of them goes into the jar and makes this cool sound I never heard before. The bee had gone in there before many times and never made that specific sound, it was like a lower frequency conch shell or something. When I checked the time it was like 1:23pm or 1:11pm one of those. I was like..... get Neo!! shit was so cool. This next image is really a culmination of my search to learn more about my Afro-Indigenousness which led me to learn more about my Haitianness and the spirituality and religion. From painting Papa Legba paintings before I even knew him, to giving respects to all types of 21 division spirits and Vodun loa before ever even knowing of them. It was as if each part of these religions was trying to show me how much of them was in me in how intuitively I’d gravitate towards these religions despite being still very devoted to science and scientific literacy worldwide. Idk it’s just been a really cool blending of a lot of things I never thought could come together. I found this moth around the time I was reading and thinking deeply on the creator entity in Vodun and some African religions, Gran Maitrex. I’ve always had an interest in creator stories and beings so  when this Golden Moth popped up in the altar (right on the mat I have laid in front of it, facing it, as if it came there to spend its last moments) I was like a little kid. To me it reminds me of those mysteries we’ve yet to discover that can help us in our path to heal ourselves and others if we chose to. The following two are from my walking meditating sessions by the river. They have slightly deeper stories to em about relaxation, overcoming obstacles, predictions I made that day about the sky that I wont get into on here cause it’s exhausting lol. The next image with the wooden branch I brought in from a forest walk is of one of the bees I spoke of flying around the Afro-Indigenx/ Ancient Egypt/ West Africa section of the altar. It did this several times enough for me to note that it liked that particular area. Following non repeating image is of the portrait I did a while back for the Heath Gallery in Harlem on Rein-visioning Brown and Black Bodies in Scifi: Story of 4 Tainx sisters calling for their descendants to help them from the demonic wrath of colonialism. This picture I took when I finally got to take my ass out to jog after a whole day of being a dad. I found a neat tree to try and climb at night and found this beautiful bright green grasshopper right by the branch I picked. Grasshoppers always remind me of giant leaps I could be taking forward. The following image I took during another forest walk when I looked up and saw this cool cross shape juxstapositioned among the trees. Last image I took during the Medieval festival they hold at Fort Tryon every year. It’s where I sold my awesome Medieval chicken paintings (which have now taken place at altar where I give em much love) last year dressed as Obi Wan Kenobi. This year I decided to just enjoy it with bae and did so dressed as Jedi Jesus posing as a Dominican Fryer. More pics on that to come. Just wanted to update yall on the spiritual in case anyone could use these words to benefit em. Yall take care. - Ken

happy valentines!

Surprise! I’m your valentine @lovinmullen! Happy Valentines Day and I hope you enjoy these little headcanons!💖

thank you so much to @swingsetboys for organizing this and generally being amazing!

-After Andi got grounded for the high school party her phone was taken away for a bit. Amber freaked out at first thinking that Andi was mad till Cyrus (lord bless his peace making soul) filled her in on the situation. A letter arrived two days later in Andi’s mailbox, guess who it was from? Amber. It was an explanation to her parents and a was signed with “Sorry if I got you in trouble! Heres my address and keep exploring the world Bambi! There are many more things like that pool in Italy” (Andi has that note in a scrapbook)Thus begins a pen pal relationship, full of not so unrequited crushes, scribbled hearts, holding of hands and eventually after stealing a flannel from each other...a kiss. 

•Cyrus saw it coming from a mile away. No one just decides to go to the Spoon on every single day Amber is working and sit there with hearts popping from her eyes. 

 Andi will call Buffy or Cyrus and gush about a moment that happened. Little does she know that theres group call happening between the Kippen siblings, Marty and TJ are about to knock Amber out “Oh my god Amber if we hear about Andi’s eyes one more time!”. It becomes a cycle of calling. They even drew a diagram of how it would go. 

Andi calls Buffy calls Cyrus in groupcall, then afterwards Cyrus calls TJ who calls Marty who calls Amber to confirm that feelings are present who calls Andi to talk about her annoying brothers. Then everything repeats.

This can repeat for hours but hey it works.

-Ambi becomes official and everyone e x p l o d e s. It was expected but WOAH IT FINALLY HAPPENED? The pining is finally over thank schnitzel

-To celebrate one month Andi made a bracelet for Amber, she was hesitant at first and said “Are you okay with a girlfriendy thing?”. Amber acts chill about it but internally is screaming.

-(They worked out Amber somehow getting Jonahs bracelet a while ago). Andi gets her phone back soon and they are the couple who uses 22 emojis per text but its adorable! 

-In the end when they do the lanterns again Amber doesn’t put anything in hers. When Walker asks why she glances at Andi and shrugs “I already have everything I could wish for”

Bonus: Their first kiss was in a canoe! It flipped over causing them both to get soaking wet. On shore Amber lifted up their towel to block anyone watching right as Andi leaned forward to kiss her her again.

-Marty learned that Buffy moved away and that was the first time he messaged her since their fight, he apologized and said he hoped that she would have a good life in Arizona. 

-She kept him waiting for a few days because she’s still trying to figure out her feelings, friendship or crush?

- “Marty, thanks for apologizing. Can we talk when I visit?” He immediately says yes! 

-Once she comes back they talk. Its has a few embarrassing moments, some sad as well but in the end they both leave, hearts pounding and thoughts occupied with how even if they were friends how it could be different someday. 

Bonus: Marty comes out to Buffy as trans and Buffy comes out to him as bi. They go to parades together and will wear their respective flags with pride! Marty is the one to paint the flags on their cheeks. 

Bonus bonus: Its been almost 5 months since they talked about the crush situation and the FaceTime calls keep getting longer 

Bonus Basketball: Buffy and him play during the off season of basketball, soon Marty joins the guys basketball team. They still play against each other every Saturday morning.

Heres some Hogwarts shenanigans! 

Gryffindor: TJ, Buffy and Leo the Locker Boy

Slytherin: Amber, Reed and Natalie

Hufflepuff: Cyrus, Marty and Iris

Ravenclaw: Jonah and Andi!

The GHC became friends in 1st year, interhouse friendships for the win!

Marty joins the group 3rd year after the Yule Ball, he and Buffy dance so the group adopts him 

Buffy and TJ’s rivalry starts in 2nd year after a fight with who got the Quidditch field, then he insulted her and her skills. Not even a rap apology was going to be enough for him to be admitted into the group. He is Quidditch-Player-Who-Must-Not-Be-Name

TJ lashed out at her because he wanted to be Quidditch Captain but she was the one who got the position

They make up after Cyrus has a Charms class with TJ, the reason? Both agree that Cyrus is a very soft kid and we will protect him at all costs. 

(Buffy suspects more but doesn’t push at the reason why TJ does that little smile when Cyrus figures out a spell)

He writes an apology, near the end of the letter it says “You were right. You are the best Quidditch captain Hogwarts has seen” After this their rivalry is more of a friendship.

Andi finds the Room of Requirement and decides its going to be a LGBT+ club (she gets permission), the next time she walks in a pan flag appears above her head.

Cyrus helps her set up a network of kids who might want to attend 

Amber, Iris and TJ are more of the popular group so when Amber and Iris walk into the Room on a meeting day you can imagine the surprise. 

“Are you sure that this is the meeting Iris? They won’t stop staring” 

Andi is shooketh because holy heck my crush is coming to the meeting be chill Andi, b r e a t h

She greets them and after some snacks from the house elves everyone feels comfortable talking to each other and introducing themselves

Amber and Iris say they’ll be regulars.

Andi had to lie down after that meeting. 

Cyrus has Potions with TJ during 4th year. Mrs. Deborah, the teacher, sat them by each other to make a potion and it exploded first try. TJ got frustrated because he mixed up some numbers but Cyrus just laughs “Its okay! We can try again” 

Thus begins Smitten Kippen 

Don’t get him started on when they made Amortenia, they were supposed to share with the class and Cyrus declined. 

TJ in that moment: Oh my god what did he smell

Cyrus to Buffy and Andi later: I don’t see what the big deal about Amortenia is? It just smelled the same as when TJ sits by me like he does in Poti-wait                                                                                            Buffy and Andi: Are you okay??

TJ and Cyrus are the disaster gays of Hogwarts. 

They’ve tried to ask each other out almost 30 times now. But it always gets interrupted by something, a troll, a werewolf turning etc. 

Cyrus has almost given up until 5th year where at a Quidditch game he gets TJ’s scarf.

It was like the meme where someone says their cold and the other person piles warm clothing on them. 

He only needed the scarf because the blush was real in that moment, nothing could cool him down. He hugged TJ said a very rushed thank you then ran to the stands. 

After that game he gave TJ a sign that said “I’m not Kippen when I say I like you” 

It becomes almost a game to see who can out flirt who

Special blueberry macadamia muffin was delivered to the Gryffindor common room. Book about lizards sent to Hufflepuff with a note in the cover. Plenty of notes sent to each other during classes.

The one who makes a move is Cyrus, TJ writes him a small poem and he marches up to TJ after dinner to say “TJ Kippen will you go out with me?”

Nothing interrupted him and TJ said yes so fast it was like something possessed him

They have a cute Hogsmeade date <3

Buffy and Marty are the most competive friends anyone has seen. Mention Quidditch? They jump for the chance to see who gets the Snitch. Spells? Get under cover this is going to be a BATTLE

Due to these competitions they get sent to the hospital wing many, many times. 

They ate too many Weasley sweets and didn’t realize they both ate a vomiting one. 

Madam Pomfrey banned Weasley treats after that, said that students were too irresponsible (a healthy black market trade arose)

Once they got out and realized they both had actual physical harm happen because of a competition Marty proposed something

Marty: Look Buffy I love our competitions...but could we stick to banter for now?                                                                                                    Buffy: You know what would be convenient? Lets go on dates, easier way to banter with each other                                                                        Marty: *screams* 

He agrees after falling down a staircase they were walking down. 

(back to the hospital wing Marty) 

By the next day it was back to regular banter! With the occasional hand holding and kiss if one of them said something a little too silly

This is the one year Jonah and Walker are beaten in the Best Couple Competition. 

Speaking of Best Couple Competitions...the year Cyrus and TJ become public is the year they almost beat Wonah (the nickname for the pairing) 

Cyrus kisses him on the cheek, his hand and on tiptoes he’ll kiss his nose but never the lips. 

TJ is totally okay with this but wonders about it sometimes. 

Skip ahead to the final Quidditch match, they’ve been dating a few months. 

TJ (about to get on this broom): Hey how about a kiss for good luck? Its the last game it might work                                                                  Cyrus (rolling his eyes): Okay you dork

Cyrus pulled him down by his collar and gave him a brief kiss

TJS FACE WAS BRIGHT RED and Slytherin was crushed by Gryffindor in a record amount of points.

Amber and Andi are a background couple most of the time, content with sitting in the library by a window. You can find them if you know where to look, the tree by the lake or near the kitchens where they sneak into for a snack. Amber is always wearing a headband from Andi and Andi will be wearing a charmed ring from Amber.

Bonus: After they both graduate, TJ is hired on a Defense of the Dark Arts teacher and Cyrus is the Arithmancy teacher. TJ goes on to be the headmaster! He makes new policies that allow students to be more comfortable with their sexuality and genders/

Bonus Bonus\: TJ and Cyrus go to Andi’s GSA weekly meeting and thats how they come out to each other. They walked in and both went “Shit”. That was the quietest they have ever been together. They walk out together and separate after throwing each other a quick smile.

Opinion

THE PRIVACY PROJECT

Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy

By Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie WarzelDEC. 19, 2019

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EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and storing the information in gigantic data files. The Times Privacy Project obtained one such file, by far the largest and most sensitive ever to be reviewed by journalists. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans as they moved through several major cities, including Washington, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Each piece of information in this file represents the precise location of a single smartphone over a period of several months in 2016 and 2017. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so. The sources of the information said they had grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers.

[Related: How to Track President Trump — Read more about the national security risks found in the data.]

After spending months sifting through the data, tracking the movements of people across the country and speaking with dozens of data companies, technologists, lawyers and academics who study this field, we feel the same sense of alarm. In the cities that the data file covers, it tracks people from nearly every neighborhood and block, whether they live in mobile homes in Alexandria, Va., or luxury towers in Manhattan.

One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.

If you lived in one of the cities the dataset covers and use apps that share your location — anything from weather apps to local news apps to coupon savers — you could be in there, too.

If you could see the full trove, you might never use your phone the same way again.

A typical day at Grand Central Terminal

in New York CitySatellite imagery: Microsoft

THE DATA REVIEWED BY TIMES OPINION didn’t come from a telecom or giant tech company, nor did it come from a governmental surveillance operation. It originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book. They can see the places you go every moment of the day, whom you meet with or spend the night with, where you pray, whether you visit a methadone clinic, a psychiatrist’s office or a massage parlor.

The Times and other news organizations have reported on smartphone tracking in the past. But never with a data set so large. Even still, this file represents just a small slice of what’s collected and sold every day by the location tracking industry — surveillance so omnipresent in our digital lives that it now seems impossible for anyone to avoid.

Freaked Out? 3 Steps to Protect Your Phone

It doesn’t take much imagination to conjure the powers such always-on surveillance can provide an authoritarian regime like China’s. Within America’s own representative democracy, citizens would surely rise up in outrage if the government attempted to mandate that every person above the age of 12 carry a tracking device that revealed their location 24 hours a day. Yet, in the decade since Apple’s App Store was created, Americans have, app by app, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Now, as the decade ends, tens of millions of Americans, including many children, find themselves carrying spies in their pockets during the day and leaving them beside their beds at night — even though the corporations that control their data are far less accountable than the government would be.

[Related: Where Even the Children Are Being Tracked — We followed every move of people in one city. Then we went to tell them.]

“The seduction of these consumer products is so powerful that it blinds us to the possibility that there is another way to get the benefits of the technology without the invasion of privacy. But there is,” said William Staples, founding director of the Surveillance Studies Research Center at the University of Kansas. “All the companies collecting this location information act as what I have called Tiny Brothers, using a variety of data sponges to engage in everyday surveillance.”

In this and subsequent articles we’ll reveal what we’ve found and why it has so shaken us. We’ll ask you to consider the national security risks the existence of this kind of data creates and the specter of what such precise, always-on human tracking might mean in the hands of corporations and the government. We’ll also look at legal and ethical justifications that companies rely on to collect our precise locations and the deceptive techniques they use to lull us into sharing it.

Today, it’s perfectly legal to collect and sell all this information. In the United States, as in most of the world, no federal law limits what has become a vast and lucrative trade in human tracking. Only internal company policies and the decency of individual employees prevent those with access to the data from, say, stalking an estranged spouse or selling the evening commute of an intelligence officer to a hostile foreign power.

Companies say the data is shared only with vetted partners. As a society, we’re choosing simply to take their word for that, displaying a blithe faith in corporate beneficence that we don’t extend to far less intrusive yet more heavily regulated industries. Even if these companies are acting with the soundest moral code imaginable, there’s ultimately no foolproof way they can secure the data from falling into the hands of a foreign security service. Closer to home, on a smaller yet no less troubling scale, there are often few protections to stop an individual analyst with access to such data from tracking an ex-lover or a victim of abuse.

A DIARY OF YOUR EVERY MOVEMENT

THE COMPANIES THAT COLLECT all this information on your movements justify their business on the basis of three claims: People consent to be tracked, the data is anonymous and the data is secure.

None of those claims hold up, based on the file we’ve obtained and our review of company practices.

Yes, the location data contains billions of data points with no identifiable information like names or email addresses. But it’s child’s play to connect real names to the dots that appear on the maps.

Here’s what that looks like.

IN MOST CASES, ascertaining a home location and an office location was enough to identify a person. Consider your daily commute: Would any other smartphone travel directly between your house and your office every day?Describing location data as anonymous is “a completely false claim” that has been debunked in multiple studies, Paul Ohm, a law professor and privacy researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, told us. “Really precise, longitudinal geolocation information is absolutely impossible to anonymize.”“D.N.A.,” he added, “is probably the only thing that’s harder to anonymize than precise geolocation information.”[Work in the location tracking industry? Seen an abuse of data? We want to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, contact us on a secure line at 440-295-5934, @charliewarzel on Wire or email Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson directly.]Yet companies continue to claim that the data are anonymous. In marketing materials and at trade conferences, anonymity is a major selling point — key to allaying concerns over such invasive monitoring.To evaluate the companies’ claims, we turned most of our attention to identifying people in positions of power. With the help of publicly available information, like home addresses, we easily identified and then tracked scores of notables. We followed military officials with security clearances as they drove home at night. We tracked law enforcement officers as they took their kids to school. We watched high-powered lawyers (and their guests) as they traveled from private jets to vacation properties. We did not name any of the people we identified without their permission.The data set is large enough that it surely points to scandal and crime but our purpose wasn’t to dig up dirt. We wanted to document the risk of underregulated surveillance.Watching dots move across a map sometimes revealed hints of faltering marriages, evidence of drug addiction, records of visits to psychological facilities.Connecting a sanitized ping to an actual human in time and place could feel like reading someone else’s diary.In one case, we identified Mary Millben, a singer based in Virginia who has performed for three presidents, including President Trump. She was invited to the service at the Washington National Cathedral the morning after the president’s inauguration. That’s where we first found her.Mary Millben has performed for three presidents during her singing career. GETTY IMAGESShe remembers how, surrounded by dignitaries and the first family, she was moved by the music echoing through the recesses of the cathedral while members of both parties joined together in prayer. All the while, the apps on her phone were also monitoring the moment, recording her position and the length of her stay in meticulous detail. For the advertisers who might buy access to the data, the intimate prayer service could well supply some profitable marketing insights.“To know that you have a list of places I have been, and my phone is connected to that, that’s scary,” Ms. Millben told us. “What’s the business of a company benefiting off of knowing where I am? That seems a little dangerous to me.”Like many people we identified in the data, Ms. Millben said she was careful about limiting how she shared her location. Yet like many of them, she also couldn’t name the app that might have collected it. Our privacy is only as secure as the least secure app on our device.“That makes me uncomfortable,” she said. “I’m sure that makes every other person uncomfortable, to know that companies can have free rein to take your data, locations, whatever else they’re using. It is disturbing.”The writers of this piece, Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel, are available to answer your questions.0 wordsCONTINUE »The inauguration weekend yielded a trove of personal stories and experiences: elite attendees at presidential ceremonies, religious observers at church services, supporters assembling across the National Mall — all surveilled and recorded permanently in rigorous detail.Protesters were tracked just as rigorously. After the pings of Trump supporters, basking in victory, vanished from the National Mall on Friday evening, they were replaced hours later by those of participants in the Women’s March, as a crowd of nearly half a million descended on the capital. Examining just a photo from the event, you might be hard-pressed to tie a face to a name. But in our data, pings at the protest connected to clear trails through the data, documenting the lives of protesters in the months before and after the protest, including where they lived and worked.We spotted a senior official at the Department of Defense walking through the Women’s March, beginning on the National Mall and moving past the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that afternoon. His wife was also on the mall that day, something we discovered after tracking him to his home in Virginia. Her phone was also beaming out location data, along with the phones of several neighbors.Senior Defense Department official and his wife identified at the Women’s MarchNote: Animated movement of the person’s location is inferred. Satellite imagery: Microsoft and DigitalGlobe.The official’s data trail also led to a high school, homes of friends, a visit to Joint Base Andrews, workdays spent in the Pentagon and a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall with President Barack Obama in 2017 (nearly a dozen more phones were tracked there, too).Inauguration Day weekend was marked by other protests — and riots. Hundreds of protesters, some in black hoods and masks, gathered north of the National Mall that Friday, eventually setting fire to a limousine near Franklin Square. The data documented those rioters, too. Filtering the data to that precise time and location led us to the doorsteps of some who were there. Police were present as well, many with faces obscured by riot gear. The data led us to the homes of at least two police officers who had been at the scene.As revealing as our searches of Washington were, we were relying on just one slice of data, sourced from one company, focused on one city, covering less than one year. Location data companies collect orders of magnitude more information every day than the totality of what Times Opinion received.Data firms also typically draw on other sources of information that we didn’t use. We lacked the mobile advertising IDs or other identifiers that advertisers often combine with demographic information like home ZIP codes, age, gender, even phone numbers and emails to create detailed audience profiles used in targeted advertising. When datasets are combined, privacy risks can be amplified. Whatever protections existed in the location dataset can crumble with the addition of only one or two other sources.There are dozens of companies profiting off such data daily across the world — by collecting it directly from smartphones, creating new technology to better capture the data or creating audience profiles for targeted advertising.The full collection of companies can feel dizzying, as it’s constantly changing and seems impossible to pin down. Many use technical and nuanced language that may be confusing to average smartphone users.While many of them have been involved in the business of tracking us for years, the companies themselves are unfamiliar to most Americans. (Companies can work with data derived from GPS sensors, Bluetooth beacons and other sources. Not all companies in the location data business collect, buy, sell or work with granular location data.)A Selection of Companies Workingin the Location Data BusinessSources: MightySignal, LUMA Partners and AppFigures.Location data companies generally downplay the risks of collecting such revealing information at scale. Many also say they’re not very concerned about potential regulation or software updates that could make it more difficult to collect location data.“No, it doesn’t really keep us up at night,” Brian Czarny, chief marketing officer at Factual, one such company, said. He added that Factual does not resell detailed data like the information we reviewed. “We don’t feel like anybody should be doing that because it’s a risk to the whole business,” he said.In absence of a federal privacy law, the industry has largely relied on self-regulation. Several industry groups offer ethical guidelines meant to govern it. Factual joined the Mobile Marketing Association, along with many other data location and marketing companies, in drafting a pledge intended to improve its self-regulation. The pledge is slated to be released next year.States are starting to respond with their own laws. The California Consumer Protection Act goes into effect next year and adds new protections for residents there, like allowing them to ask companies to delete their data or prevent its sale. But aside from a few new requirements, the law could leave the industry largely unencumbered.“If a private company is legally collecting location data, they’re free to spread it or share it however they want,” said Calli Schroeder, a lawyer for the privacy and data protection company VeraSafe.The companies are required to disclose very little about their data collection. By law, companies need only describe their practices in their privacy policies, which tend to be dense legal documents that few people read and even fewer can truly understand.

EVERYTHING CAN BE HACKED

DOES IT REALLY MATTER that your information isn’t actually anonymous? Location data companies argue that your data is safe — that it poses no real risk because it’s stored on guarded servers. This assurance has been undermined by the parade of publicly reported data breaches — to say nothing of breaches that don’t make headlines. In truth, sensitive information can be easily transferred or leaked, as evidenced by this very story.

We’re constantly shedding data, for example, by surfing the internet or making credit card purchases. But location data is different. Our precise locations are used fleetingly in the moment for a targeted ad or notification, but then repurposed indefinitely for much more profitable ends, like tying your purchases to billboard ads you drove past on the freeway. Many apps that use your location, like weather services, work perfectly well without your precise location — but collecting your location feeds a lucrative secondary business of analyzing, licensing and transferring that information to third parties.

The data contains simple information like date, latitude and longitude, making it easy to inspect, download and transfer. Note: Values are randomized to protect sources and device owners.

For many Americans, the only real risk they face from having their information exposed would be embarrassment or inconvenience. But for others, like survivors of abuse, the risks could be substantial. And who can say what practices or relationships any given individual might want to keep private, to withhold from friends, family, employers or the government? We found hundreds of pings in mosques and churches, abortion clinics, queer spaces and other sensitive areas.

In one case, we observed a change in the regular movements of a Microsoft engineer. He made a visit one Tuesday afternoon to the main Seattle campus of a Microsoft competitor, Amazon. The following month, he started a new job at Amazon. It took minutes to identify him as Ben Broili, a manager now for Amazon Prime Air, a drone delivery service.

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Mr. Broili told us in early December. “But knowing that you all can get ahold of it and comb through and place me to see where I work and live — that’s weird.” That we could so easily discern that Mr. Broili was out on a job interview raises some obvious questions, like: Could the internal location surveillance of executives and employees become standard corporate practice?

Ben Broili’s interview at Amazon was captured in the data. GRANT HINDSLEY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Mr. Broili wasn’t worried about apps cataloguing his every move, but he said he felt unsure about whether the tradeoff between the services offered by the apps and the sacrifice of privacy was worth it. “It’s an awful lot of data,” he said. “And I really still don’t understand how it’s being used. I’d have to see how the other companies were weaponizing or monetizing it to make that call.”

If this kind of location data makes it easy to keep tabs on employees, it makes it just as simple to stalk celebrities. Their private conduct — even in the dead of night, in residences and far from paparazzi — could come under even closer scrutiny.

Reporters hoping to evade other forms of surveillance by meeting in person with a source might want to rethink that practice. Every major newsroom covered by the data contained dozens of pings; we easily traced one Washington Post journalist through Arlington, Va.

In other cases, there were detours to hotels and late-night visits to the homes of prominent people. One person, plucked from the data in Los Angeles nearly at random, was found traveling to and from roadside motels multiple times, for visits of only a few hours each time.

While these pointillist pings don’t in themselves reveal a complete picture, a lot can be gleaned by examining the date, time and length of time at each point.

Large data companies like Foursquare — perhaps the most familiar name in the location data business — say they don’t sell detailed location data like the kind reviewed for this story but rather use it to inform analysis, such as measuring whether you entered a store after seeing an ad on your mobile phone.

But a number of companies do sell the detailed data. Buyers are typically data brokers and advertising companies. But some of them have little to do with consumer advertising, including financial institutions, geospatial analysis companies and real estate investment firms that can process and analyze such large quantities of information. They might pay more than $1 million for a tranche of data, according to a former location data company employee who agreed to speak anonymously.

Location data is also collected and shared alongside a mobile advertising ID, a supposedly anonymous identifier about 30 digits long that allows advertisers and other businesses to tie activity together across apps. The ID is also used to combine location trails with other information like your name, home address, email, phone number or even an identifier tied to your Wi-Fi network.

The data can change hands in almost real time, so fast that your location could be transferred from your smartphone to the app’s servers and exported to third parties in milliseconds. This is how, for example, you might see an ad for a new car some time after walking through a dealership.

That data can then be resold, copied, pirated and abused. There’s no way you can ever retrieve it.

Location data is about far more than consumers seeing a few more relevant ads. This information provides critical intelligence for big businesses. The Weather Channel app’s parent company, for example, analyzed users’ location data for hedge funds, according to a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles this year that was triggered by Times reporting. And Foursquare received much attention in 2016 after using its data trove to predict that after an E. coli crisis, Chipotle’s sales would drop by 30 percent in the coming months. Its same-store sales ultimately fell 29.7 percent.

Much of the concern over location data has focused on telecom giants like Verizon and AT&T, which have been selling location data to third parties for years. Last year, Motherboard, Vice’s technology website, found that once the data was sold, it was being shared to help bounty hunters find specific cellphones in real time. The resulting scandal forced the telecom giants to pledge they would stop selling location movements to data brokers.

Yet no law prohibits them from doing so.

Location data is transmitted from your phone via software development kits, or S.D.Ks. as they’re known in the trade. The kits are small programs that can be used to build features within an app. They make it easy for app developers to simply include location-tracking features, a useful component of services like weather apps. Because they’re so useful and easy to use, S.D.K.s are embedded in thousands of apps. Facebook, Google and Amazon, for example, have extremely popular S.D.K.s that allow smaller apps to connect to bigger companies’ ad platforms or help provide web traffic analytics or payment infrastructure.

But they could also sit on an app and collect location data while providing no real service back to the app. Location companies may pay the apps to be included — collecting valuable data that can be monetized.

“If you have an S.D.K. that’s frequently collecting location data, it is more than likely being resold across the industry,” said Nick Hall, chief executive of the data marketplace company VenPath.

THE ‘HOLY GRAIL’ FOR MARKETERS

IF THIS INFORMATION IS SO SENSITIVE, why is it collected in the first place?

For brands, following someone’s precise movements is key to understanding the “customer journey” — every step of the process from seeing an ad to buying a product. It’s the Holy Grail of advertising, one marketer said, the complete picture that connects all of our interests and online activity with our real-world actions.

Once they have the complete customer journey, companies know a lot about what we want, what we buy and what made us buy it. Other groups have begun to find ways to use it too. Political campaigns could analyze the interests and demographics of rally attendees and use that information to shape their messages to try to manipulate particular groups. Governments around the world could have a new tool to identify protestors.

Pointillist location data also has some clear benefits to society. Researchers can use the raw data to provide key insights for transportation studies and government planners. The City Council of Portland, Ore., unanimously approved a deal to study traffic and transit by monitoring millions of cellphones. Unicef announced a plan to use aggregated mobile location data to study epidemics, natural disasters and demographics.

For individual consumers, the value of constant tracking is less tangible. And the lack of transparency from the advertising and tech industries raises still more concerns.

Does a coupon app need to sell second-by-second location data to other companies to be profitable? Does that really justify allowing companies to track millions and potentially expose our private lives?

Data companies say users consent to tracking when they agree to share their location. But those consent screens rarely make clear how the data is being packaged and sold. If companies were clearer about what they were doing with the data, would anyone agree to share it?

What about data collected years ago, before hacks and leaks made privacy a forefront issue? Should it still be used, or should it be deleted for good?

If it’s possible that data stored securely today can easily be hacked, leaked or stolen, is this kind of data worth that risk?

Is all of this surveillance and risk worth it merely so that we can be served slightly more relevant ads? Or so that hedge fund managers can get richer?

The companies profiting from our every move can’t be expected to voluntarily limit their practices. Congress has to step in to protect Americans’ needs as consumers and rights as citizens.

Until then, one thing is certain: We are living in the world’s most advanced surveillance system. This system wasn’t created deliberately. It was built through the interplay of technological advance and the profit motive. It was built to make money. The greatest trick technology companies ever played was persuading society to surveil itself.

Stuart A. Thompson ([email protected]) is a writer and editor in the Opinion section. Charlie Warzel ([email protected]) is a writer at large for Opinion.

Lora Kelley, Ben Smithgall, Vanessa Swales and Susan Beachy contributed research. Alex Kingsbury contributed reporting. Graphics by Stuart A. Thompson. Additional production by Jessia Ma and Gus Wezerek. Note: Visualizations have been adjusted to protect device owners.

Opening satellite imagery: Microsoft (New York Stock Exchange); Imagery (Pentagon, Los Angeles); Google and DigitalGlobe (White House); Microsoft and DigitalGlobe (Washington, D.C.); Imagery and Maxar Technologies (Mar-a-Lago).

Like other media companies, The Times collects data on its visitors when they read stories like this one. For more detail please see our privacy policy and our publisher's descriptionof The Times's practices and continued steps to increase transparency and protections.

COMMENT

Artist management contracts have been known to contain some idiosyncratic clauses over the years, but the one buried deep inside Stuart Camp and Ed Sheeran’s contract at the artist’s behest is surely one of the most unusual.

“He’s inserted a clause that says I will be with him at all times, looking like I’m enjoying myself,” Camp laughs. “It gives the lawyers sleepless nights, like, Surely we could be in breach if there are pictures where I look grumpy? But I don’t have to actually enjoy myself. As long as I look like I am, that’s OK…”

Right now, his joy seems to be genuine. And he’s certainly been with Sheeran every step of the way during the singer-songwriter’s remarkable rise.

After his 2014 album X sold 2,948,802 copies, according to the Official Charts Company, Sheeran’s return was always going to be huge, but the innovative double-single release of Shape Of You and Castle On The Hill has turned it into a blockbuster event.

Both tracks broke the previous UK one-week streaming record, Shape Of You smashed the all-time Spotify record, while Sheeran became the first artist to have the Top 2 UK singles for five weeks in a row.

So no wonder Rocket Music Management’s Camp answers the door at his newly-done-up house in the nice part of Clapham with his trademark smile on his face.

His still-unpacked suitcase from his Grammys trip (Sheeran performed at the ceremony, as he did at the BRITs) is still in the hall, his house refurb is so recent he doesn’t know where the sugar is and he’s fighting off the effects of glandular fever, but he seems perfectly relaxed in what he terms “the eye of the storm” before the most anticipated album since Adele’s 25.

But then, Camp’s experiences with Sheeran have taught him to be unfazed where others might be daunted, as the ginger kid with the guitar and the loop pedal has made the impossible look pretty darn easy at every turn.

Camp actually started on the label side of things, first at Infectious then, when that was bought by Warner, at East West, which in turn became Atlantic.

He was product manager for a bunch of American rock bands and James Blunt when Rocket’s Todd Interland finally persuaded him to try life on the other side of the fence as Blunt’s day-to-day manager.

By his own admission, he “took to it pretty quickly”. Later, he looked after Lily Allen before taking on Sheeran in 2009. Sheeran was homeless and had been turned down by almost every label in the country, but Camp took him on, let him sleep on the sofa at his place (then considerably smaller than his current abode) and, slowly but surely, helped guide him to international superstardom.

Today, Sheeran is his only client, “the last thing I think of before I go to bed and the first thing I think about when I wake up”.

Right now, those thoughts are full of dizzying projections for global first week sales and touring plans that will take him and Sheeran up until at least summer 2018, not to mention the constant Sheeran-related questions from Camp’s own 119,000 Twitter followers.

But there’s still time for him to warn Music Week about his “potentially vicious” cats and sit down to talk streaming, stadiums and social media strategy…

Who actually had the idea for the two singles?

Me, [Atlantic president] Ben Cook and Ed were sitting in Ed’s house in Suffolk, arguing over which one should be the single.

We were just going round in circles, pros and cons, pros and cons. Then it was like, The album’s called Divide, why don’t we have both sides? It was a Eureka moment which, at any one point over the next few years, one of us will claim to have been solely their idea, but it was pretty mutual.

Had you been arguing for different singles beforehand, then?

Yeah. You can probably guess who wanted which. Ed wanted Castle, I was very much either/or. I could see the merits of both. But that’s why we weren’t falling out or coming to a decision, because everyone knew that the other was a very good argument as well.

How are you feeling about the album?

Very confident now. We know the market’s there, we know people want and are desperate to hear more music, so it’s now more a case of seeing where those numbers land.

Does it feel like an even bigger deal now?

It does to a certain degree, but there’s less pressure. We could have been worried if one of these singles had fallen off quite quickly, if they hadn’t been doing quite as well, we might have been, Ooh, how’s the album going to do? But we now know that there’s the demand there. I’m just desperate to get it out, we just want people to hear it.

Do you worry about fulfilling industry/retail expectations at all? I do worry that some people might be getting a little silly on what they expect. But I’m not worried about it. Does that sound horribly conceited? There’s someone very close to me and this project who thinks it’ll do 350K [in week one] and I’d be very happy with that. That’s one of your best band’s lifetime best sales.

Even the big sales are usually around 200K. So I’d be ecstatic. But really I’m thinking, What will we have sold by the end of 2018? It’s about the long game.

Has streaming changed the dynamics of selling an album like this?

Yeah. It might not necessarily be about the album sales and what they tot up to, but at the end of the day we just want as many people as possible to hear the music, because our primary business is still live.

If people are hearing it on whatever, I can’t feel too bad [because] they might buy a ticket. It’s about getting out there as much as possible.

The album will debut on streaming services on release day. Are you a believer in streaming?

Absolutely, 100%. Always. We were always over-indexing on streaming, even from the first record. We became the poster boys for Spotify to a certain degree, before anyone else really latched on.

In the years since the last record, it’s caught up and it’s now taken over for everybody. But we were always that act.

So far, your touring plans look relatively low-key. Are there bigger things to come?

Yeah. In 2018, we just do stadiums. I knew three nights at The O2 would be an underplay and create a bit of fuss, but I didn’t realise quite how much.

But to be fair, we wanted to play this year and we can’t do all the stadiums all the time, because they’re weather dependent, so we knew we’d do arenas first. But in summer ‘18 there’s a lot of outdoor shows, a proper stadium tour, even obscure stadiums!

Were you disappointed by the secondary ticketing furore around the dates?

It’s always a shame. We do what we can to try and stop the bastards putting them on the secondary market, but you’re always going to get it.

A load of people bought tickets on [secondary sites], even though we told them not to, quite explicitly and they were getting billed for three or four grand. Everyone comes back to us like, What are you going to do about it? It is frustrating.

I’d love to do a Glastonbury model where it’s names and tickets but even that is just a pain in the arse for everyone.

You’ve got to balance it with what’s actually a good fan experience for buying a ticket. It’s an on-going thing and we’ll be looking at it even further for the stadium shows. Hopefully we’re doing enough shows so that the people who want to see us can, and aren’t spending hundreds of pounds.

Why has Ed connected as well as he has?

The music’s great and he just comes across well as a person. It’s been the same since Day One, everyone has wanted us to do well and people have been cheering for him. That helps.

He’s not a jack of all trades, but he does go across genres, he gets so many different people championing him, from grime acts to hoary old rockers, everyone just gets it and he does tick a hell of a lot of boxes, but without weakening him in any areas or looking like we’re going for a compromise.

He’s crossing those barriers and he just does it perfectly. He is sometimes quite sensitive about it, especially for Sing and Shape Of You, that was a little out of his comfort zone, so will people think he’s jumping on a bandwagon? But with him, if it’s good there’s no barrier to it becoming an Ed Sheeran song.

Does it help that he came up the hard way? Will he be the last superstar to make it like that?

You’d imagine so. Everyone else is either looking for or expecting a quick fix in this internet age. But for years before I met him, he had CDs in his rucksack and was sleeping in railway stations and doing all sorts. He really slogged it from the age of 14.

Did you always think he was going to make it?

Yeah. Not that I put a limit on it in my head, but I never at the time thought he’d be playing Wembley Stadium or anything like that, but I always knew there’d be a market for him.

When he came to me, he’d exhausted his turning up at record labels, chubby and ginger and that’s when we just took a year out of it.

He did the No.5 Collaborations Project EP. When that first charted, we were out walking in Richmond Park and we were like, How do I screengrab this, it’s No.55 on iTunes, thinking that was amazing.

Twenty minutes later it was No.10 and by teatime it was No.1. That was a nice day. That’s when the labels started coming back to us. He thought the doors were all closed and that’s when he thought, Fuck it, I’ll just do it myself. He’d been around but bless him, he didn’t give up.

Have you ever fallen out with each other?

Never. It was almost unspoken, we knew the mission and we were making progress. There are certain things we disagree on, but eventually we come round to each other’s way of thinking.

I don’t care how we get there or who gets the credit, as long as we get there. I saw everything and anything in life [with previous clients]. Ed’s always like, Am I a pain in the arse? And I’m always telling him, Yeah, you’re terrible, knowing full well that I have literally put my head into the mouth of the lion. You learn a lot in those situations.

How would you describe your management style?

I think I’m very fair and understanding. I’m not a shouter, silence scares people more. Having been on the other side, I knew the managers I loved and ultimately you’d always work harder for them.

So you try and be that person. There were so many managers in the late ‘90s, mentioning no names, where you’d be like, You’re an arsehole.

That was before the spirit of [legendary Led Zeppelin manager] Peter Grant had completely disappeared and everyone was just going, I’ve got to be a complete c-u-n-t, that’s the only way to get things to happen. And it isn’t at all.

The managers I got on with were people like Tav [Alt-J/Wolf Alice manager Stephen Taverner] and CJ [Raw Power Management CEO Craig Jennings]; they have their moments, but they were still decent and fair and would listen to you, even when I was the 20-year-old kid.

Your bond with Ed sometimes looks less like business and more like friendship…

I think that’s important. Some people always refer to their acts as my client and I’ve never been one of them. Our bond comes from living together and, glandular fever aside, I do everything with him. If you want an act to get up at 5am to do bloody German breakfast TV that’s going to be hell, at least be standing next to him when he does it. You can’t expect otherwise. There’s no airs and graces between us, we speak our minds.

What’s different about managing him now, compared to the early days?

Not a lot to be honest. He certainly hasn’t changed as a person. There are bigger things and I’m spinning more plates but, as a whole, it’s no easier or harder. We’ve always had that same attitude. We want as many people to hear the stuff as possible.

His whole attitude is, If I’ve made a record I’m proud of, I will do anything and everything to promote it. He’s not one of those people who’s like, I’ve had two No.1 albums, you can fuck off. He was really looking forward to getting back on the promo trail.

Six weeks later he’s still like, eah, bring it on, two hours sleep, Dutch TV.

Meanwhile, you’ve become a cult figure yourself on social media…

I only ever went on Twitter so I could see where Lily Allen was when I was looking after her. And then when we put [Sheeran’s] first tour on sale after the album was released, we literally broke the internet at 9am and I couldn’t get hold of anyone.

I had to get on Twitter and put the fire out and it snowballed from there. So now, when people ask me sensible questions, I try and answer as many as I can. My father was trying to show my very elderly neighbour what I did for a living and he came across some [Tumblr] site entitled Stuart Camp Gives Less Fucks Than The Virgin Mary. I got in trouble for it. I was like, I’m 38 years old, why am I in trouble for this, it’s not my fault...

Do you have targets for this campaign?

I know Ed would love to do 20 million albums off this one record, that’s his personal one. We did 14m of X, so... Let’s see! Beyond that, we don’t know.

There are folders on Ed’s laptop that have the next three albums on them, though that might change. He has his little secret ambitions for every campaign, which he never tells anyone until after the event. The Wembleys were the last one, he hasn’t told me what this album’s are and he won’t until after we’ve done them.

Where do you see the two of you being 10 years from now?

We’ll be at the end of what may be Phase 1. He’s got a clear plan - he knows the titles for the next two records, it won’t take a genius to work out what they may be! I’d like to think we’ll still be relevant and I’m sure we will be. He wants to be [like] Springsteen, career-wise. He’s definitely in it for the long haul.

And finally, have they asked you to do next year’s Super Bowl yet?

No. I’m not sure we want to do it. It’s always been a strong point for us that he’s a solo act on stage but, for that, you really have got to have the fire-breathers and dancers. I’d love them to ask us. I’m just thinking what we’d do for a show like that, but I’m sure Taylor Swift’s got an album out this year...

Originally posted in [Music Week], February 27, 2017.

STARTUPS AND POSITIVES

No one thought to go back and debug Aristotle's motivating argument. It is the proverbial fishing rod, rather than the wrong one. Better how? The fact that hackers learn to hack by writing programs of their own imagination. The same angels who tried to screw us also let us do this, but most hackers are very competitive. This isn't just because smart people actively work to find holes in conventional thinking.1 If Google does do something evil, they get their ideas?2 A few days ago that could grow into 3 distinct Microsofts. For example, the wisdom of the engineer who knows certain structures are less prone to failure than others. 047225013 standardization 0.3 VCs do it. Their main expenses are setting up the company, intellectual property issues, and so on.

They are like the corporate boss that you can't just hack. And funding delays are a big distraction for founders, because you will never again be so productive. The second or third tier firms have a much greater chance of succeeding. Economically, you can usually find version 1 of their software. So I don't even try to conceal their identities, to guys who hijack mail servers to send out a crawler to look at the site before the user looked at the email mentioning it. Odds are it will be a good idea, because something changed, and no one who did the opposite. But patents may not provide much protection.4 The distinction is similar to the venture-backed trading voyages of the Middle Ages. The time to raise money, they try gamely to make the region a center of scholarship and industry which have been closely tied for longer than most people would in a big company you get paid accordingly, but you need more than that.

Before patents, people protected ideas by keeping them secret. I found that what hacking meant to them was implementing software, not designing it. When an investor says yes will be to the average for the population as a whole without being accused of any of the investors aren't accredited.5 Achievements also tend to increase your ambition. When we were working on a given technology, the increase in speed one could get from smaller groups started to trump the advantages of size. That's one source of ideas, but not the other. It seems to me that beliefs about the future are so rarely correct that they usually aren't worth the extra rigidity they impose, and that the best sources of ideas are not the other fields that have the word computer in their names, but the way to the bed and breakfast market. But it's an important technicality, because it could be because it's clearer in the sciences that heresy pays off. If you're not a programmer: visit a top computer science department, there is nothing so wrong as the principles of the most famous examples is Apple, whose board made a nearly fatal blunder in firing Steve Jobs. If you raised five million and ran out of money, you make one.6 When I think how hard PR firms work to score press hits in over 60 different publications.

This concept is a simple one and yet seeing it as a joke. I went to art school to study painting. If VCs got de facto control of the PC standard. At Viaweb one of our rules of thumb was run upstairs. When we were working on a given technology, the time to act is always now. Burning through too much money is not like some of the time. The url is in such cases practically enough by itself to determine whether the email is neutral, the spam of the future by accident. But if we get good enough at filtering out spam, it will be hard even to imagine.

They're as unhappy on the territory of truth, you're strong. We funded Viaweb entirely with angel money; it never occurred to us that the backing of a well known VC firm would make us seem more impressive. And good employers will be even more impressed with that. I made the filters stricter I got more false positives. Some people are good at seeming formidable—some because they actually are very formidable and just let it show, and others that are comfortingly routine. Much to their surprise, they didn't arrive at answers they agreed upon. Source code, too, should explain itself. The right tools can help us avoid this danger. But I don't recommend this approach to most founders, because most founders wouldn't be able to say whether something is really old or not is by looking at structural evidence, and structurally philosophy is young; it's still reeling from the unexpected breakdown of words. Closed thoughts and an open face. For example, one way or the other.

Now that so many news articles are online, I suspect you could find a similar pattern for most trend stories placed by PR firms. Things that used to be something a handful of people who could have made it, if they'd quit their day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned.7 Instead of trying to answer the question Of all the approaches to fighting spam, from software to laws, I believe Bayesian filtering will be the ones who are very smart, totally dedicated, and win the lottery. What groups are powerful but nervous, and what ideas would they like to suppress?8 Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much the same.9 They might accidentally hire someone bad, but it's there. One is that you lie to yourself. By which I mean not that it has to make something great and getting lots of users.10 So you can do the same thing as money.11

Of course, all other things being equal, a very able person who does care about money will ordinarily do better to learn Ruby on Linux. A lot of my friends are CS professors now, so I have the inside story about admissions. Almost everyone hates their dissertation by the time they're done with it. I was doing: sketching. But as well as money, there's power.12 The more different filters there are, the more wealth you generate. Acting in off-Broadway plays just doesn't pay as well as money, there's power. But you'll probably be fine, whatever else you do or don't do. Switching to a new idea you can just sit down and start implementing it. Make the truth good, then just tell it.

In our startup, we erred on the ignoring side. Good hackers can always get some kind of progression. But don't let them or the situation intimidate you.13 The early adopters you need to follow the trail wherever it leads.14 Wise means something—that one is on average good at making things that they do is to increase response rates. Their main expenses are setting up the company, intellectual property issues, and so on.15 Makers depend on something more precarious: inspiration. After taking VC money you hire a sales force to do that.

Notes

Even college textbooks are similarly misleading. Icio. Success here is that if the VC.

If you wanted it? And yet there are not all do. This has, like a knowledge of human nature, might come from.

Org Worrying that Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard they work for the future as barbaric, but the meretriciousness of the lies people told 100 years ago it would be more precise, and why it's next to impossible to succeed or fail. But increasingly what builders do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone else start those startups.

Among other things, they did that they'd really be a quiet, earnest place like Cambridge will one day be able to at all. This was certainly true in the top stories were de facto chosen by human editors. Obviously this is mainly due to I. According to Zagat's there are some controversial ideas here, since 95% of spam in my incoming mail fluctuated so much attention.

If you assume that the usual misquotation is closer to the size of a handful of ways to get fossilized.

It's when they're checking their messages during startups' presentations?

How many parents would still want their kids to them this way.

Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the distinction between the initial capital requirement for German companies is 47. Not even being Genghis Khan is probably a cause. If you try to make a formal language for proofs in which practicing talks makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, overcomplicated agreements, and I had zero effect on college admissions there would be at the wrong algorithm for generating their frontpage.

At the outset which founders will usually take one of the word wealth. One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to have to keep them from the most powerful men in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson. As always, tax receipts have stayed close to starting startups since Viaweb, he'd get his ear pierced. VCs miss.

I was as a percentage of GDP, which can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than a VC who got buyer's remorse, then you're being gratuitously troublesome.

They did turn out to be tweaking stuff till it's yanked out of school.

I'm not saying we should make a formal language for proofs in which income is doled out by Mitch Kapor, is deliberately vague, we're going to drunken parties. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a seed investment of 650k. I'm going to be a great programmer might invent things worth 100x or even shut the company goes public. Apparently someone believed you have to negotiate in real time, because a she is very hard to grasp this than we realize, because neither of the Nerds.

We care about valuations in angel rounds can make offers that every fast-growing startup gets on the back of your own. It's not a programmer would never guess she hates attention, because living at all. Progressive tax rates has a spam probabilty of.

I think it was cooked up by the regular news reporters.

We didn't know ourselves which VC firms. This kind of people like numbers. It took a shot at destroying Boston's in the foot.

The US-China Trade War: Next Week’s Shanghai Meeting is a Tiny Glimmer of Hope

Since the beginning of US-China trade negotiations, this blog has been relentlessly negative on US-China relations, which we usually describe as being in a “straight line decline.” In October, 2018, in China, the United States and the New Normal, we started calling the bad relations between China and the United States the “New Normal” and in that same month, we titled a post Would the Last Company Manufacturing in China Please Turn Off the Lights that mentioned how “it does sometimes feel as though within three years nobody will be making widgets in China anymore.”

In April of this year, the Wall Street Journal quoted Dan Harris from this blog (and my law firm) in a cover story, Trade Deal Alone Won’t Fix Strained U.S.-China Business Relations, saying the following:

“There is no way any deal between China and the U.S. will cause everyone on both sides to say, ‘We were just kidding,’” said Dan Harris, managing partner at Harris Bricken, a law firm that specializes in investment with China. “The tariffs and the arrests and the threats and the heightened risk have impacted companies and that will not go away.”

Then on May 4, 2019, (one day before President Trump’s May 5 tariff tweet that changed everything) we wrote The US-China Trade War: Winter is Coming on how no matter what happens in the US-China trade war, things will NOT revert back to the way they had been for foreign companies:

The above is but an introduction to what we see as China’s diminished future for foreign companies. Since pretty much the inception of the US-China trade war we have been saying that we do not see its end because we have always seen it as more than a trade war. At first, we saw the US tariffs as an effort by the United States to get China to “open up” and “act right” on things like the internet and IP. But because we did not see China changing on these things, we did not see the trade war ending. Vice-President Pence’s speech on China earlier this week has only reinforced for me that the trade war between China and the US will not be ending any time soon, if ever. The New York Times has called that speech the Portent of a New Cold War between the United States and China and China’s own Global Times wrote an article entitled, Pence speech shows Washington’s tougher policy on China. Don’t blame us. We are just the messengers. Things are getting very tough between China and the United States right now and the trade war is just a symptom of that, not the disease.

The United States is aggressively and unabashedly doing what it can to isolate China and to remove it from the world of international trade. The new free trade agreement between the United States and Canada is further proof of this as it essentially blocks Canada and Mexico from engaging in free trade with China. See What Trump’s new trade pact signals about China. Word is that shutting out China is going to become a regular thing in all new U.S. trade agreements. See US Commerce’s Ross eyes anti-China ‘poison pill’ for new trade deals. Will the EU and Japan and Latin America play ball on this? I predict that most if not all of them will.

So yes, the above is why we will continue to write about what North American and Latin American and European and Australian businesses should be doing to deal with the new normal regarding China. We are writing these things because we value our credibility and because we presume our readers value our no-holds barred advice — threatening emails or not.

We have been writing about China’s diminished future for foreign companies since pretty much the inception of the US-China trade war because we have always seen it as more than a trade war. At first, we saw the US tariffs as an effort by the United States to get China to “open up” and “act right” on things like the internet and IP. But because we did not (and do not) see China changing on these things, we did not (and do not) see the trade war ending.

But the above posts and nearly all of the other posts on China trade and China relations with the West and on everything Huawei (See The Huawei Indictments are the New Normal) were written by either Dan Harris or Steve Dickinson, both of whom are international lawyers and part of what we in my law firm call “The International Law Team.”

The above is my long introduction to this post (which is also long) because I am writing this from a different perspective than Dan and Steve because the bulk of my work is in International Trade. I am an international trade lawyer and a part of my law firm’s international trade law team.  I therefore necessarily see the U.S.-China tiff from more of a trade law perspective and less of a political perspective than Dan and Steve and that is my slant of this post on the eve of renewed trade negotiations between the United States and China.

United States Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin are heading to Shanghai next week for trade talks with China. The choice of Shanghai is interesting. One analyst suggested China chose Shanghai as the venue to send the message that “trade should be trade, and politics should be politics”. Even Mnuchin invoked the spirit of the 1972 Shanghai Communiqué, which paved the way for rapprochement between the U.S. and China — and ironically the current trade mess in which the two countries find themselves. Perhaps the hosts are thinking of a different kind of optics. There is arguably no image more associated worldwide with China’s economic miracle than Shanghai’s Lujiazui skyline. Just look up “china economic miracle” on Google Images for confirmation. It is hard to reconcile the portrait of China as an economic villain with the Pearl of the Orient’s vibrancy.

Before delving into the prospects for the upcoming talks, it is worth taking a step back and remembering how we got to this point. As mentioned above, the Shanghai Communiqué Mnuchin celebrated set in motion a process that would over time entangle the Chinese economy with those of the United States and other nations in an unprecedented way. Though Cold War realities were initially foremost in America’s thinking, China policy soon became undergirded with the idea that increased engagement with the United States and  it democratic, free-market allies would inexorably lead China down their same path.

There was certainly much change, but mostly only to the extent that it allowed China to become an export powerhouse. One can imagine the thrill felt by foreign executives as they saw the first cases of Coke cross the Shenzhen River into Mainland China in 1979, representing a symbolic first step towards the final realization of the long-standing Western dream of opening up China. Yet 30 years later, in some fundamental ways little has changed for foreign business. Sure, it has been a relatively smooth ride for the KFCs, Colgates and Nikes of the world, who contribute mightily to China’s state coffers. But for many foreign businesses, their China experience has been mostly a negative one, especially in the last year or so. As a longtime China expat, I heard so many tales of foreign business woe that I became jaded. Business partners colluding with local authorities to edge out foreign investors. Rampant counterfeiting and infringement of foreign brands. Continued restrictions on market access. Capricious immigration policies. China nightmares remain unabated despite repeated Chinese government assurances of coming improvements. Mr. China remains as much of a cautionary tale today.

Ultimately, the Chinese leadership viewed and continues to view Reform and Opening as a transactional mechanism. Reform and Opening were never China’s objectives; continuity of Party rule has always been. This is why China continues to pick and choose when it comes to reform, in a way that has led to a collision with the United States and the EU.  By the time the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign got underway, it was clear to most  that China would not follow the path of South Korea and Taiwan towards democracy, negating the one hope that secured for China so much patience over the years. In this environment, Donald Trump decided it was time to bring China’s bad behavior to the forefront.

The current trade war’s first salvo was fired in March 2018, when President Trump directed the USTR to propose a list of products to be subjected to tariffs, in response to the findings of the USTR Section 301 investigation launched in August 2017. Ultimately 1,300 types of products were listed.

China retaliated with tariffs on 128 U.S. products and asked the WTO for consultations on the U.S. tariffs. After a visit to Washington by Vice Premier Liu He, China’s point man on trade, the two countries announced there “was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States trade deficit in goods with China.” This led Secretary Mnuchin to declare the trade war was “on hold.” However, and perhaps reflecting disagreements within the Trump team, shortly thereafter 25% tariffs on $50 billion worth of imports were announced. These tariffs went into effect on June 6 ($34 billion) and August 8 ($16 billion).  China retaliated in kind.

In September 2018, the U.S. announced 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese products, which were raised to 25% on May 5, 2019. China’s expected retaliation came on June 1, in the form on tariffs on $60 billion worth of U.S. imports.

Presidents Trump and Xi met during the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan and announced a truce. The upcoming talks in Shanghai are the first high-level encounter since that Osaka meeting.

The smart money is on keeping expectations low. As an analyst quoted by the SCMP noted that the “talks will only result in a small step.”��Still, even a small step would be a welcome respite from the spiral of escalation we have seen over the past year. The key question is, what exactly might that small step be?

A rollback in tariffs is one option. China has previously demanded all tariffs be eliminated before a deal can be reached. This is surely a no-starter for the Trump team, which in fact would like to keep some tariffs in place even after a deal is made. However, having slapped tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports, the U.S. side has plenty of room to maneuver, allowing it to simultaneously reduce the tariff burden considerably, while still leaving meaningful tariffs in place.

On the issue of Huawei, the introduction of a bipartisan bill in Congress that would lock the Shenzhen-based telco into the Commerce Department’s blacklist complicates matters. Paradoxically, however, the Democrats jump onto the Huawei bandwagon could help the Trump negotiators in two ways. First, it moves the goalposts in a way that allows the administration to do a lot without accomplishing anything when it comes to Huawei. Second, Lighthizer and Mnuchin can now point to concrete evidence that a Democratic victory in 2020 will not give China any respite from American wrath. Better the devil you know….

As for China’s side of the bargain, hopes of placating the U.S. with purchases of agricultural goods seems to have faded, as China now seems to realize that no amount of sorghum will get the U.S. to ease up on its core demands. It is critical to remember that the Section 301 investigation that provided the legal basis for the tariffs concerned Chinese government practices “related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation”. In the absence of meaningful Chinese concessions on these areas, it is hard to see the U.S. budging on either tariffs or Huawei.

The Section 301 investigation report provides a clear picture of what the U.S. would like to see happen regarding these critical areas. Last month, China announced it will open up new sectors to foreign investment and it may offer further liberalization.

As difficult as it may be for some Dragon Slayers to accept, not every single line of Chinese jurisprudence has been drafted with a nefarious, China-first agenda in mind. For instance, when Article 43(1) of China’s Joint Venture Regulations call for “fair and reasonable” fees for the use of technology, it is reflecting the basic principle that, “In civil activities, the principles of voluntariness, fairness, making compensation for equal value, honesty and credibility shall be observed” (Art. 4, General Principles of Civil Law). Meanwhile, “Vaguely worded provisions and uncertainty about the applicable rules” are a hallmark of Chinese legislation, and serve as powerful levers with implications that go far beyond foreign direct investment (FDI).

One intriguing, if unlikely, possibility would be the introduction of more specific investment terms into a bilateral treaty (such as the income tax treaty or the consular convention). This could include language that puts Chinese investment into the U.S. under additional scrutiny. It could also provide for special procedures to allow companies like Huawei to obtain technology while providing certain safeguards. This approach would allow the Chinese to save face as far as its own legislation is concerned, while pleasing the Americans (who, given the current tenor in Washington, are unlikely to care too much about protestations from Brussels or Ottawa regarding this side deal).

Speaking of unconventional wisdom, the possibility of non-trade elements playing a role in a deal cannot be discarded. In the lead-up to the talks, Secretary Pompeo called China’s treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang “the stain of the century,” while Vice President Pence tweeted a condemnation of China’s record on religious freedom. And there is always Hong Kong. This simultaneous push on trade and human rights is consistent with the “whole of government” approach against China called for in the—ironically-named—John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019. Admittedly, it is hard to see where China can budge, especially in the kind of public way the Trump team needs to be able to claim some kind of victory. That said, if it gives him some oxygen on tariffs and Huawei, President Xi might be willing to pull something out of his hat on North Korea or even the South China Sea.

So though must of my law firm’s international lawyers are beset with a severe case of what they hae taken to calling “China promise fatigue syndrome,” I am marginally more optimistic about the US and China at least reaching some sort of deal to stop the decline in trade relations. Not so optimistic that I am not also telling our clients to — if at all possible — move their manufacturing out of China, but optimistic enough to believe that both China and the U.S. might get caught up in the Shanghai spirit just enough next week to keep things moving forward. But not enough not to advocate that if your products are subject to U.S. tariffs you should get going on your China tariff exclusion requests now.

The US-China Trade War: Next Week’s Shanghai Meeting is a Tiny Glimmer of Hope syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

If you’ve ever gone camping and found yourself thinking it kind of sucks, likely because you’re too close to other campers, you might be interested in learn about Tentrr, a three-year-old, 47-person company that’s promising to make it “dirt simple” to enjoy the great outdoors. How: by striking deals with private landowners who are willing to host semi-permanent campsites on their property.

What do these look like? Picture elevated decks with Adirondack chairs, canvas expedition tents, wood picnic tables and sun showers, not to mention a fire pit, lanterns, dry food storage, cookware, a camping toilet and air mattresses that, courtesy of most hosts, will come with fresh linens.

Venture capitalists certainly appreciate the startup’s pitch. Tentrr — founded former investment banker turned former NYSE managing director Michael D’Agostino —  has raised $13 million to date, including via a just closed $8 million Series A round led by West, a San Francisco-based venture studio that both funds startups and helps them market their goods and services.

No doubt they’re looking at the overall market, whose numbers are compelling. According to one trade association, for example, the outdoor recreation industry is represents a $887 billion market opportunity, with Americans shelling out $24 billion annually on campsites alone.

Still, it’s easy to wonder how scalable the company will be. Tentrr had 100 campsites up and running in the Northeastern U.S. as of the end of last year, and D’Agostino expects it will have 1,000 sites by year end, including on the West Coast, where it will begin installing camps this summer.

This assumes that Tentrr can convince enough families with sufficiently large properties that partnering with the company is worthwhile.  D’Agostino says its landowner partners need to have 15 acres at least and that the average property on the platform currently is much larger than that. He also says they keep 80 percent of whatever they decide to charge campers to stay on their grounds, which many may find compelling.

Certainly, Tentrr doesn’t seem to have much in the way of direct competition if you exclude state campgrounds. Venture-backed Hipcamp, for example, which raised a small amount of seed funding back in 2014, similarly partners with private landowners to help arrange camping experiences. But it mostly acts as search engine. Meanwhile, Airbnb offers unique experiences that include camping, but Tentrr is largely about offering a standardized experience that leaves fewer questions (and less doubt) in the minds of would-be campers.

We know this would interest us personally, having suffered through some pretty crummy camping experiences. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our conversation with D’Agostino. We chatted yesterday.

TC: You were a banker, then you traveling around the country and world, trying to convince companies that they should list on the NYSE instead of Nasdaq. How did this company come to pass?

MD: When I was a little kid, we’d sometimes stay at a family friend’s farm in Litchfield, Connecticut. I assumed that every kid had a Litchfield farm where they could camp, which isn’t the case obviously. Meanwhile, working 100 hours a week as an investment banker, it just became harder and harder to get out of the city and have great experiences.

After a couple of disastrous camping trips at noisy, dirty campgrounds with my girlfriend and now wife, Eloise, we just realized the idea [of camping as it’s known today] is stupid. It’s taking a bunch of people who are living on top of each other in a city and moving them to a campground where they’re living on trop of each other in flimsy tents.

The legacy campground industry hasn’t changed since the Civil War. It’s run by the government — which I’m happy to compete with all day long. And these are just terrible businesspeople. We want to wipe away this infrastructure by distributing it among rural landowners.

TC: So you’re building these semi-permanent camping sites. How standardized is the pricing?

MD: Pricing is variable and set by the landowner who keeps 80 percent of that fee. We keep 20 percent; we also charge a 15 percent fee on top of that nightly rate. Right now, the average price per night is $140, but we’re introducing more features for [hosts], including minimum-night stays, and [surge] pricing if they have demand for a bunch of bookings at the same time.

They can also offer extra amenities and experiences that will allow you to have a personalized experience. For example, landowners or “campkeepers” as we call them can offer extra bundles of wood or luxury bedding or horseback riding or skeet shooting. It’s really only limited by the imagination. We’ll also soon allow third parties to provide curated activities so that when you log on to our app, you can book a white water rafting trip, for example, or reservations at the best farm-to-table restaurant nearby.

TC: What happens is something goes wrong? Who insures what?

MD: Every campsite is covered by a $2 million commercial insurance policy. It’s a benefit not just in terms of liability but in making people feel more comfortable during these stays — both the hosts and guests.

TC: Where are you building these sites, exactly, and how long do you estimate that they will last?

MD: We build them ourselves, right now in places from southern Maine to eastern Pennsylvania.

We get our tents from a family company in Colorado that’s been around for 90 years and that still receives requests to repair tents they’d built 30 years ago [meaning they’re durable]. We also use pressure-treated lumber and marine-grade plywood, so we expect they’ll last for 10 to 20 years.

TC: You’re having to convince people to let strangers onto their properties, sprawling as they may be. What’s that sales process like?

MD: It used to look like me putting 45,000 miles on my Jeep Cherokee and explaining to families why they should have a Tentrr campsite in their hayfields. Today, direct mail campaigns work beautifully. [Hosts] are also hearing about us from other [hosts] and we make it easier for them to [apply] to join the platform. You click on a link that says “List my property” and you’re walked through a 20-point checklist, including about accessibility and how secluded a property is, and using that feedback, we know with 90 percent accuracy whether or not a property is appropriate. If we think it is, we’ll send out a scout.

TC: Are there sometimes more than one campsite on a property?

MD: No, and we ensure the sites are secluded from neighbors, as well as the landowners, as well as other possible distractions.we run installation trucks.

TC: What does the clean-up process look like?

MD: It’s relatively maintenance free. There’s no maid service. No keys. No worries about someone stealing silverware. Homeowners have to make sure there are no beer cans left behind, but we place a high priority on land stewardship and emphasize a leave-no-trace approach when it comes to our guests.

Commercial Real Estate Lawyer

Commercial real estate transactions are often complicated and can involve many moving parts, which makes commission disputes a challenge. Even when a listing agreement is written out in detail, legal disputes can arise during or after the sale of a property. This is why it is always a good idea to have a commercial real estate lawyer in your back pocket when issues arise. The confusion around procuring cause is a common source of disputes in real estate sales, and commercial brokers can easily find themselves embroiled in contentious litigation as a result.

Commercial Real Estate Matters

Procuring cause is a party that is responsible for successfully securing the sale. This concept is often at the heart of real estate disputes involving brokers and property owners.

The Utah Supreme Court has explained that to earn a commission as the procuring cause of a transaction, a broker must perform two essential tasks:

The broker must initiate negotiations by doing some affirmative act to bring buyer and seller together.

The broker must remain involved in the continuing negotiations between the seller and the buyer, unless the seller and buyer intentionally exclude the broker from the negotiations.

Unless the broker has failed to uphold their end of the deal, a property owner who refuses to pay commissions upon the sale of the property is usually found to be in the wrong. Even so, property owners or buyers may use the issue of procuring cause to claim that the broker is not owed any commissions.

Real Estate Commission Disputes Involving Oral Agreements

Though most real estate contacts involve written listing agreements, verbal agreements are still utilized in some circumstances, often in conjunction with a written contract.

Whether oral real estate commission agreements can be upheld in court or arbitration depends in part on the laws of each state; in Utah, these types of contracts are considered legal and binding.

It can be difficult, however, to prove the terms of an oral contract.

Having witnesses other than the two contracted parties can be helpful in demonstrating the validity of these agreements. Any informal correspondence such as emails, faxes, and letters can also prove critical in supporting a broker’s claims to unpaid commissions.

Don’t Wait to Hire a Real Estate Lawyer

Whether your contract was in writing or simply a hand shake agreement, it’s important to have qualified legal representation before entering the litigation or arbitration process.

First and foremost, you’ll want to ensure that you have the necessary legal protections in place so that you and your attorney can figure out the best way to approach your case.

For many clients, that involves initiating a broker’s lien. This is a process whereby the commercial broker can place a lien on the proceeds of the sale, and sometimes the property itself, until any owed commissions are paid. It is possible to file liens for the full value of those commissions.

Acting quickly to find representation will give you the best opportunity to recover what you’re owed under your listing agreement.

If you are involved in a commission dispute, you should contact an attorney with experience in commercial real estate litigation who will make sure that all pertinent documents and witnesses are leveraged to support your case.

Credit Suisse Fined $135M for Forex Misconduct

The Utah Department of Financial Services (DFS) fined Credit Suisse AG $135 million for unlawful conduct that disadvantaged customers.

According to the DFS’s investigation, for nearly a decade Credit Suisse foreign exchange traders secretly shared confidential customer information, coordinated trading activity, and attempted to manipulate currency prices. Through this cooperative effort, these traders sought to diminish competition between banks, allowing them to reap much higher profits at the expense of their customers.

The DFS investigation also uncovered that front-running—which is trading before the trader gets a client’s orders—was encouraged by Credit Suisse executives. From 2010 to 2013, Credit Suisse used an algorithm designed to front-run their client’s limit and stop-loss orders. During this time period, Credit Suisse executed approximately 31,000 limit orders and 41,000 stop-loss orders while employing this front-running tactic.

Internal documents show that Credit Suisse traders were fully cognizant of the potential for harm to customers, but continued to front run trades so long as they could make a profit. On one occasion, a trader wrote to the head of the electronic foreign exchange trading desk that: “we made some money by front running the orders at 25 in euro but probably will show as a loss on the client side.”

EXCESSIVE TRADING/CHURNING

“Churning” is excessive investment trading activity by a broker in a client’s account done to generate commissions for the broker.

Account churning is unethical and illegal. A victim of churning can pursue a claim for recovery of any lost money.

THE PROBLEM WITH CHURNING

Financial advisers’ duties include making suitable investments and placing the interests of their clients above their own.

However, because advisers are sometimes paid commissions when they make trades, some advisers engage in unnecessary and excessive buying and selling. They “churn” a client’s account to generate additional profits for themselves.

The transaction fees, potential tax liabilities, and poorly performing investments that commonly result from churning are not in the client’s interest.

Account churning, whether done in isolation or in combination with unsuitable investments or other unethical practices, violates Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) principles, such as the principle of “quantitative suitability,” as well as various state laws.

ELEMENTS OF A CHURNING CLAIM

An investor wishing to bring a churning claim against a financial adviser/brokerage firm must establish excessive activity and proof of control.

Proof of control means the broker/firm had effective control of the investment account. No single test defines excessive activity, but the following factors may provide evidence:

Turnover ratio: Turnover ratio is the total value of annual purchases made in the account divided by the account’s average monthly balance. An annualized turnover rate of 4 to 6 or higher typically indicates churning, but churning does occur at lower rates.

Cost-equity ratio: The cost-equity ratio (or “break even percentage”) measures how expensive the account’s trading strategy was. To calculate the cost-equity ratio, divide the total annual costs (including commissions and margin interests) by the account’s average balance. Trading that requires an account to earn annual returns of 15-20% or more indicates possible churning.

In-and-out trading: Buying and selling the same investment repeatedly is known as in-and-out trading, or “wash” transactions.

Clients who successfully demonstrate that their account was churned can typically recover damages for excessive commissions or expenses and any portfolio losses caused by the churning (including market gains that should have been realized had the account been properly managed).

Free Initial Consultation with a Commercial Real Estate Attorney

When you need a commercial real property lawyer in Utah, call Ascent Law for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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from Michael Anderson http://www.ascentlawfirm.com/commercial-real-estate-lawyer/

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Articles

Why Finland has the best schools? by William Doyle

Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation. In Finland, children don’t receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest. School hours are short and homework is generally light. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day. Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. One evening, I asked my son what he did for gym that day. “They sent us into the woods with a map and compass and we had to find our way out,” he said. In Finland, teachers are the most trusted and admired professionals next to doctors. “Our mission as adults is to protect our children from politicians,” one Finnish childhood education professor told me. “We also have an ethical and moral responsibility to tell businesspeople to stay out of our building.” Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in America’s inner-city schools. But what if the opposite is true? What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale.

Title: Why Finland has the best schools

Author: William Doyle

Journal/Publication: Los Angeles Times

Url/web address: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0318-doyle-finnish-schools-20160318-story.html

Main idea: The different reasons why the Finland schools offer the best education.

Evidences that support main idea:

1. School hours are short and homework is generally light.

2. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day.

What if schools taught kindness? by Laura Pinger and Lisa Flook

Every school teaches math and reading, but what about mindfulness and kindness? Twice a week for 20 minutes, pre-kindergarten kids were introduced to stories and practices for paying attention, regulating their emotions, and cultivating kindness. The initial results of our research suggest that this program can improve kids’ grades, cognitive abilities, and relationship skills. Having classrooms full of mindful, kind kids completely changes the school environment. Imagine entire schools - entire districts - where kindness is emphasized. That would be truly powerful. Teaching kindness is a way to bubble up widespread transformation that doesn’t require big policy changes or extensive administrative involvement. If you had visited one of our classrooms during the 12-week program, you might have seen a poster on the wall called “Kindness Garden.” When kids performed an act of kindness or benefitted from one, they added a sticker to the poster. The idea is that friendship is like a seed - it needs to be nurtured and taken care of in order to grow. Through that exercise, we got students talking about how we might grow more friendship in the classroom. Students who went through the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings. They earned higher grades at the end of the year in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.

Title: What if schools taught kindness?

Authors:Laura Pinger, Lisa Flook

Journal/Publication:Greater Good

Url/web address: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_if_schools_taught_kindness

Main idea: The importance and benefits of teaching kindness to the students.

Evidences that support main idea:

1. Students who went through the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings 2. They earned higher grades at the end of the year in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.

Don’t Trade Your Life For Temporary Things by Rick Warren

So much of what we waste our energy on will not matter even a year from now, much less for eternity. Don’t trade your life for temporary things. Jesus said, “Anyone who lets himself be distracted from the work I plan for him is not fit for the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62 LB) Paul warned, “Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.” (1 Corinthians 7:31 MSG)

What are you allowing to stand in the way of your mission? Whatever it is, let it go. “Let us strip off anything that slows us down or holds us back ….” (Hebrews 12:1 LB)

How can we do this? In one of his most misunderstood statements, Jesus said, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9 NIV)

Jesus did not mean for you to “buy” friends with money. What he meant was that you should use the money God gives you to bring people to Christ. They will then be friends for eternity who will welcome you when you get to heaven! It’s the best financial investment you’ll ever make.

You’ve probably heard the expression “You can’t take it with you,” but the Bible says you can send it on ahead, by investing it in people who are going there! The Bible says, “By doing this they will be storing up real treasure for themselves in heaven—it is the only safe investment for eternity! And they will be living a fruitful Christian life down here as well.” (1 Timothy 6:19 LB

Title: Don’t Trade Your Life For Temporary Things

Author: Rick Warren

Journal/Publication: Pastor Pick’s Daily Hope

Url/web address: 

http://pastorrick.com/devotional/english/full-post/don’t-trade-your-life-for-temporary-things

Main idea: We shouldn’t trade our lives for temporary things because all of these will not stay forever.

Evidences that support main idea: 

1. “Deal as sparingly as possible with the things the world thrusts on you. This world as you see it is on its way out.” (1 Corinthians 7:31 MSG) 2. “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9 NIV)

The key to our happiness is connection, not competition by Mark Williamson

Charles Darwin is normally associated with the “survival of the fittest” theory. He also wrote that the communities most likely to flourish were “those with the most sympathetic members”, an observation backed up by research that we are wired to care about each other. But we have such a strong cultural narrative about the selfish side of humanity that we adopt systems and behaviours that undermine our natural co-operative tendencies. This starts in schools, where the relentless focus on exams and attainment instills in young people the idea that success is about doing better than others. It continues in our marketing culture, which encourages conspicuous displays of consumption and rivalry. It’s found at the heart of our workplaces, where employees compete with each other for performance-related rewards. This “get ahead or lose out” ethos [is] deeply flawed. In schools, helping young people to develop social and emotional skills [has] been shown to boost their performance. In workplaces, research shows that “givers” - people who help others without seeking anything in return - are more successful in the long term than “takers” - who try to maximize benefits for themselves, rather than others. For society as a whole, the World Happiness Report 2013, a major global study, found that two of the strongest explanatory factors for national wellbeing are levels of social support and generosity.

Title: The key to our happiness is connection, not competition Author: Mark Williamson Journal/Publication: The Guardian Url/web address: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/20/key-to-happiness-connection-not-competition Main idea: Connection between people will help the world more than the competition. Evidences that support main idea: 1. This starts in schools, where the relentless focus on exams and attainment instills in young people the idea that success is about doing better than others. 2. In workplaces, research shows that “givers” - people who help others without seeking anything in return - are more successful in the long term than “takers” - who try to maximize benefits for themselves, rather than others.

Synthesis for the four articles

           When I'm choosing the articles that I will put into my journal, I also consider the content of them. I really want to pick those who can really inspire and at the same time educate me. I don't want to pick those articles which would just waste my time.I want the worthy and memorable ones because these qualities will really help me to have a positive outlook in life.

          For the four articles I've chosen, half of them are related to school and half are about life. I've picked these kind of articles because after reading them, they've motivated me to discover new things. We also need to explore new things because sometimes, we don't notice that we're already too focused on only one perspective without considering others too so the tendency is that our minds will not be open to diversity. 

          The two school related articles that I've picked were "Why Finland has the best schools" and "What if Schools Taught Kindness". These two articles said that schools shouldn't only focused on the academic performance of students. They must also consider the characters, the skills and how the students would face the life.If that happens, then no one will already need to suffer from depression because of failing grades and students will already enjoy studying. That's why Finland is one of the countries with the best schools because the approach of its education is different from others. This country really expose its students not just only inside their four-sided classrooms but also into the real world which really matters the most. Not just only in Finland where we can find good education but also in other parts of the world.There are also schools that teach students with very young ages about kindness.It's really a very good news to hear because children should already know how important kindness is.

          Another two articles I've chosen about life were "Don't Trade Your Life For Temporary Things" and "The key to our happiness is connection, not competition". These two were connected with each other because they both tackled about what life truly is. I know that sometimes, we're having a misconception that a good life is only about having a lot of money, obtaining high grades, buying beautiful house and car, and being famous. So, we tend to pull others down because of the competition and our desires that we must get that kind of life which is just ofcourse, a temporary one.But, these articles had shown that what's far more important in life are our relationships with others, the love we've shared and the kindness we've given because all of these are the things that will really last forever no matter what happens.

         I'm thankful that our teacher had given us this kind of task which is reading articles.Although it's a little bit tiring, what's important was I've learned new things.

Reflection on the syntheses of my other classmates and mine

          The syntheses of my other classmates were slightly the same as mine.They also putted some inspirational articles like what I did. Most of them were about the different topics about life.I'm really happy that we're all concerned when it comes on talking about the different aspects of life because knowing that there are some people who share the same interests as you will really boost your confidence.

          It's really a good thing that we have this kind of activity because with this, I can know the personalities of my classmates very well and how good they are in expressing their emotions into words.Although we're not on the same houses, I can still feel that we're connected with each other by the use of this blogging. This is really one of the best examples on why technology is a very powerful weapon nowadays. It can affect other people's lives even in just one click.

         Having this blog making really helped me and my classmates on discovering new things and made our emotions feel lighter because all of our feelings had already been expressed here.It kept us motivated and inspired to continue our lives no matter how hard it was because we knew that this kind of thing were existing.

How to Get Comfortable Doing Online Video

Online video is here. Are you reading the latest social media reports? Video is being favored in algorithms from Facebook to YouTube and beyond. What this means for you as a current and/or potential online influencer is this: Getting comfortable in front of the camera and reaching your audience through video is crucial.

Let’s face it: Not everyone is comfortable in front of a camera. Some folks downright dread the thought of talking to a cell phone and going “live” on Facebook or any other social media platform.

Step by step, this blog post will outline how to get comfortable doing online video, tricks of the trade, and the one mistake that even seasoned pros make (and you can avoid). Once you read through this article, be sure to start applying these tips in small, digestible steps so that by 2018, you are whizzing through online video like a pro.

Tell a Story, Not a Sale

Have a conversation with a friend. If nothing else, this is one of the best pieces of advice I can offer you. Look at any camera and remind yourself that your very best friend is behind it. Let’s use a recent blog post about cat toys and why those toys are awesome as an example. If you were to call a friend and tell her why those cat toys are the coolest thing ever, what would you say? How would you talk to her? Would you be nervous, afraid, and feel like you might mess up? Of course not, and the reason is a comfort level. You feel comfortable telling your friend about cool cat toys because your friend is into you, she wants to hear more, and you have a relationship. If you apply that same principle to online video, success is yours. Speak to that one friend. Tell her a story.

If you try and sell a product, your followers will know right away. So don’t do it. Share the story behind the product(s) in your post. A shining example of a person who is comfortable doing online video is that of Life With Mutts. In her recent post for the True Chews BlogPaws Influencer Network campaign, Debbie Bailey shares a video that captures heart, emotion, tells a story and infuses the branding. Head on over to take a peek at Life With Mutts blog post. Here’s her video:

Check Your Background and Have Props Ready

If you plan to include a pet, a product, or any other people or items in your video, have them ready. This includes notes and items you want to show onscreen. Recently, my dog faced a life-threatening illness. I felt very helpless during this time, as you can imagine. I knew that others would be feeling the same way, as I am familiar with my followers. I went live on a Facebook video to teach others what happened to me and to help them spot similar symptoms in their dog. The beauty of going LIVE on Facebook is this: You can end at any time, you don’t have to post the video once you are done if you are not happy with the results, and the video (if you like it) can get a lot of traction in replay. In fact, my teaching video is just about at 10,000 views as of this writing, and that’s only with a $10 spend to boost it. People like to share something that educates, makes them laugh, or touches the heartstrings.

My wife held the phone so I could be on camera, and she told me to simply, “Tell her the story of what happened to our dog.” I thought about it before going live and that’s exactly what I did: tell a story. Here’s the end result. You will note that my dog decided he was “done” at a few spots in the video. I anticipated he might get bored, so I had a “stunt double” ready to go with a replica stuffed animal of my dog. You can simply have a stuffed animal of your pet in case or if your pet is not fond of sitting still for long. Personally, I am glad my dog’s personality shone through. Real moments happen in real life and the audience will connect with you on this aspect, too.

Even the most seasoned pros can sound scripted. Avoid this pitfall and keep reading for tips to stop that behavior in its tracks.

What To Do Before You Go Live Online

If you plan on going live on social media, there are a few key tips that I use to this day, which help me get ready for any on-camera time:

Get “It” Out of Your System: Do something that makes you relax and gets you into the groove at the same time. Do you like jogging? Dancing? Yelling loudly? Screaming into a pillow? Drawing? Spend some time doing that activity before you go live.

Bullet Points: I sometimes keep a pile of index cards near me or ask my videographer to hold a card up with a topic starter. Continuing on that cat toy topic, the index cards might say: The pros of the toy, the cons of the toy, where you can buy the toys, price range, etc. Get the point? You want your transitions to be seamless from topic to topic. Take the pressure off with cards.

Distractions Be Gone: I look at what is behind me. In the video above, you’ll see my white screen. My wife and I made sure the shot was tight since I didn’t plan to move around. If there are any fax machines, cell phones, office phones, or screaming kids around, before you start is a good time to put them all to rest.

Get the Right Equipment: This means everything from lighting to sound. There is nothing more upsetting than reading comments after your live online video like “we can’t hear you” or “you are very dark” because something is off. Here are some pro tips on video technicals behind the scene. You truly can’t go wrong with natural lighting, which is what both of the above videos rely on.

Film Practice Runs: I do this now and again. If I want to talk about something, I practice. I want to see what I look like on camera and where I need improvement. It also helps to have someone watch the play back whom you trust. Don’t worry about hurt feelings: You want honesty and to improve.

Don’t Rock: If you’re standing while taping, be cognizant you are not rocking back and forth. If you are sitting during taping, lean a bit forward, shoulders down a smidge, and sit tall but confident.

Hacks To Get Better at Speaking on Camera

Chloe DiVita, Chief of Everything for BlogPaws, has some key tips for being comfortable on camera:

1) Practice. Meaning record yourself speaking just a minute or two wtihout stopping. Ignore mistakes. Just record. Then watch the recordings and make a note to learn and do it again. The more used to seeing yourself and hearing yourself you get, the easier it is to be on camera.

2) When you aren’t recording live, act as though you are. Don’t stop and start over. Record all the way through. You can always do another take, but make each take a complete take. Otherwise, you are practicing messing up.

3) Be sure you look at the camera and not at yourself on a screen. It can actually help a bit to not be staring at yourself.

Don’t Stop Now

Like anything in life, it takes practice to get where you want to be.  Video integration is a necessary part of a social media and blog strategy. If you are growing your blog as a business, video should be one of the tools you call upon regularly.

Check out this trifecta of posts:

Are You Making These Social Media Video Mistakes?

Advanced Video Tips to Get Blog and Social Media Traffic

8 Creative Ways to Use Video to Boost Your Blog Business

Your Turn

In what ways are you using video to improve your blog and/or social media influence? Do you feel comfortable on camera? How can BlogPaws help? We respond to all comments below, so let us know!

Carol Bryant is the Marketing and Social Media Manager for BlogPaws and runs her own dog blog, Fidose of Reality and its fundraising arm, Wigglebutt Warriors. When not busy playing with her Cocker Spaniel, Dexter, she stays far away from cooking. Her trademark is her mantra and is tattooed on her arm: My Heart Beats Dog.®

Images:  Hemin Xylan /Shutterstock/ Carl Kerridge

  The post How to Get Comfortable Doing Online Video appeared first on BlogPaws.

from News And Updates About Pets http://blogpaws.com/executive-blog/blogging-social-media-info/learning/how-to-get-comfortable-doing-online-video/

New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/update-1-imagination-tech-starts-dispute-process-with-apple/

UPDATE 1-Imagination Tech starts dispute process with Apple

LONDON, May 4 (Reuters) – Imagination Tech  said it had started a “dispute resolution procedure” with Apple , its biggest customer, after failing to withresolve a standoff over licensing between the two companies.

  Imagination said in April that Apple had notified the British firm it was developing its own graphics chips and would no longer use Imagination’s processing designs in 15 months to two years time.

The potential loss of Apple, which accounts for about half of the British firm’s revenue, sent its shares down 70 percent on the day, and the stock has barely recovered. It has also sent shudders through other Apple suppliers.

Apple has used Imagination’s technology in its products from the time of the iPod, and it receives royalties from every sale of an Apple device containing its designs, including the iPhone and iPad.

Imagination said in April that it doubted Apple could go it alone without violating its patents, and analysts said legal battles could lie ahead.

It said on Thursday it had been unable to make satisfactory progress with Apple on an alternative commercial arrangements for the current licence and royalty agreement.

“Imagination has therefore commenced the dispute resolution procedure under the licence agreement with a view to reaching an agreement through a more structured process,” it said.

Imagination also said it planned to sell two businesses, its embedded processor technology MIPS and mobile connectivity unit Ensigma.

Why Do Married Women Flirt With Other Men? Understanding Your Wife’s Behavior

    Why do married women flirt with other men? You’re asking that question from the perspective of a man married to one such woman, yes? Your wife is a flirt and she’s not afraid to show it. Maybe you tell her that it bothers you or perhaps you keep that to yourself for fear of starting an argument you’re not certain you can win. Regardless, you’re not happy about the fact that your wife seems incredibly comfortable flirting with any attractive man she sees. Is this a sign that something is amiss in your marriage? Does it mean that your wife is on the brink of leaving you or is it just harmless fun? Understanding your wife’s motivations will help you gain clarity and will also give you the insight you need to make this problem disappear if it’s truly bothering you.

Many married women flirt without fully realizing that’s what they’re doing. That sounds suspiciously like an excuse, doesn’t it? It’s not. Women, as a whole, tend to be a compassionate and friendly bunch. What one woman may perceive as just kindness can easily be misinterpreted by her husband or another man as flirting. Take for instance when a woman compliments a man on his suit. To her she’s just sharing the knowledge that she truly admires his fashion sense, but to him it may come across as a personal compliment that is meant to grab his attention. If your wife hands out compliments to other men fairly easily consider the idea that she may just be genuinely kind and may not be aware of the other message that she’s sending.

Marriage can become stale. For a woman who feels under-appreciated by her husband the thrill of flirting with another man can make her feel desired and accepted. If she doesn’t get the attention she wants within the confines of her own marriage, she may go looking outside for validation. This is often the case when a woman takes her martial dissatisfaction online and flirts with other men. If your wife seems giddy after being on the computer, chances are very good that somewhere there’s a man who has the same grin on his face because your wife has made him feel cherished and special. Obviously, the flirting can also occur in person so keep your eyes out for any man who seems to be paying a bit too much attention to your wife.

Self esteem issues can happen regardless of a woman’s age or the length of time she’s been in a committed relationship. If your wife’s body image isn’t pleasing to her, flirting may be a way of covering that up. A woman’s self worth can take a hit if she gains a few pounds or if she feels that her husband is always looking at other women. A wife in this position will sometimes look to other men as a way of showing herself that she’s still worth pursuing. You can typically tell if this is the reason behind your wife’s love of flirting if she’s constantly questioning you about whether you love her or still find her attractive.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that your wife is just a natural born flirt. If she is, you’re already well aware of this because you probably were the focus of her flirting at some point in the past. She may just enjoy the thrill of putting a smile on a man’s face with a few harmless words to boost his ego. If she’s open and honest about it, count yourself fortunate. You need to start worrying if her flirting antics are taking place behind closed doors or beyond your line of sight.

The Must-Have Tech of 2017

  “He’s funny when he gets annoyed,” my daughter said.

“He threw a tantrum!” my son claimed after winning a game of quick tap.

If you listen to my kids talk, you’d think they were talking about a friend or a pet.

The thing is, what they are talking about is one of the biggest and hottest trends in electronics… one that is about to become a big deal for stock market investors.

You see, my kids are talking about Cozmo, the little robot I managed to get them for Christmas.

Anki, the company that makes Cozmo, sold out of the robot before Christmas. It’s back in stock now, and my sources say that Cozmo continues to sell well even after the Christmas rush.

Cozmo has fascinated my kids since Christmas morning. They speak to it as if it were a real person, and they love the few games and skills that Cozmo comes ready to play.

But this is only the beginning for robots.

The Hot Item at CES

You’re going to hear a lot more about robots. The Consumer Electronics Show – or more commonly known as CES – is going on in Las Vegas.

In fact, robots are such a big deal at CES 2017 that all of Friday’s show is dedicated to these amazing machines.

You should keep up with what’s happening with robots because they are a critical component of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution.

According to an IDC research report released yesterday, the IoT revolution is going to generate $1.7 trillion in economic value by 2020. In fact, last year was the biggest year for robot startups, with $1.95 billion spent on 128 companies.

As an investor, it’s critical for you to track new, cutting-edge robotics products like Cozmo because I believe many of the companies making these machines will go public in 2017, leading to incredible profits from their shares.

One company that I’ve mentioned – Impinj, a maker of IoT sensors used in retail – had its initial public offering (IPO) on July 21 at $14 a share. The shares hit a post-IPO high of $41.91 recently, resulting in early investors raking in nearly 200% in about five months. Those are phenomenal gains in a few months that most investors never make in a lifetime!

Nutanix, another IoT IPO on September 30, priced at $16. The stock soared to a high of $46.78 in two days, delivering an unbelievable gain of 193%. Stunning gains for any investor!

The Must-Have Assistant

I believe these kinds of gains are just the tip of the iceberg for what’s coming in 2017. I’ve already told you to look for Anki, the maker of Cozmo, when it finally goes public.

Another robot company to watch for is Mayfield Robotics.

Mayfield makes Kuri, another consumer-friendly robot that’s featured at CES 2017.

This robot wanders around your home, acting as your personal assistant. Kuri can answer questions as well as monitor your pets, children or aged parents. It can help monitor your house and do things for you that would currently require a PC, smartphone or tablet using services such as Google, Skype, etc.

The key to Kuri’s adoption as a household robot is that it offers convenience and a new benefit – the ability to monitor people, pets and things you value when you’re not home.

Mayfield is selling Kuri for $699.

Profit From the Revolution

Now, Kuri and Cozmo are likely to be successes and could launch the companies that make them significantly higher once they start trading on the stock exchanges.

But the really massive robot opportunity in the IoT mega trend is in the use of machines in industry and business. That’s where I believe you’re going to find the Google-type winners in the stock market. Google has soared more than 1,500% since its IPO in 2004.

And in time, some of these IPOs will generate even bigger gains – like Cisco’s gain of 40,000% during the last tech boom