mike walters loves to look you directly in the eyes and open episode 1 by lying in the first sentence. he's not here to document the game as an impartial observer, he's here because the post that lead him to w.bg had some kind of clue about the prize.

of course he was so desperate to believe that he was in first place. of course he was willing to cut his own hands off for bonus points. he "started playing WOE.BEGONE because [he] needed [matt] back", and anything that mike can do to increase his standing with the gamerunners increases the chance that mike gets to keep him.

by the time mike hits the fourth challenge, he's convinced that if he plays well enough he can get his hands on the tech. choosing not to play would kill them both. completing the challenge brings him closer to winning the game and having matt back.

the only way to still save matt is to lose him all over again.

I didn't see anything from somerton until about a month ago when he popped up in my recs and I ended up binging his content for about 2 days, but something kept being off and I noticed some of the lies/ignorance, and there was something really dismissive and weird about how he talked about aspecs and women in particular... I stopped watching him cause I watched one of you guys' podcast and realized I also just felt like crap after his videos.

I did end up getting his rwrb video in my recs when it came out cause of the binge and I just remember leaving a comment about the way he talked about aces in it. It was especially upsetting seeing people in the comments who were simply happy he mentioned aspecs at all. He replied to me just saying his cowriter was ace. I don't reply to youtube comments but I just remember wanting to point out that same co-writer he was using as a shield said aces don't face discrimination or conversion therapy, and in that video wrote that aces have to have sex to find out they don't like it. Being something doesn't make you instantly know everything about it, as somerton himself demonstrates with his ignorant comments about gay history.

I'm not really one of his victims since I avoided him as soon as I found him, but I feel bad for all the people he tricked and/or guilted into believing him. I hope some other creators make videos exposing the weird way he manipulated the queer community, cause I think a lot of young folks could use a breakdown of it.

Anyways I just wanted to finish by saying I love you guys' work and learning from you. You helped me understand why certain phrases make me upset, and that and watching your podcast back to back with his videos helped me figure out what I didn't like about Somerton, so you helped protect me from him and not convince myself I was just being Weird as I often do when I get Bad Vibes from someone.

Thank you so much for reaching out <3

It's so fascinating that you stopped watching Somerton after finding us. We've tried to keep things as professional as possible these last 2 years by only citing directly harmful things he's done to us and direct members of our community, and even then it was sparingly and as kind as possible.

When we first spoke with him about including Asexual representation in his future Telos endeavors, he assured us that not only was there already an Ace in the writers' room, but that two real, fully-fleshed out Ace characters were already being written. This was encouraging! After all, we had no way of knowing if he was the kind of cis gay man who loathes Aces or doesn't view us as queer. Since this didn't seem to be the case and rep is important, we supported him. We now deeply regret not doing our research on him first.

Even before his video "The Queer Erasure of Asexuality", we started watching a few of his YouTube videos for the first time and some of the subtext was NOT kind to our community. Subtle things that we'd see get repeated by his fans over and over again, like how queer art is bad these days because all the "artists" and the "exciting queers" who "really lived" died in the AIDS crisis. Or the implication that the Interview with the Vampire reboot was *more queer* because the vampires actually had gay sex on screen, despite this being a complete departure from the source material and neglecting the fact that Anne Rice's vampires have always been undeniably queer *and also* sexless. In fact, we didn't say his name, but we did mention some vague "bad takes" we saw about the series in our podcast episodes 75 & 76 The Triumphs and Failures of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Part 1 and Part 2...At least some of those came from James.

We did not see his rwrb video, because we had long given up on him by that point, but it is not at all surprising to hear that he had bad takes and also hid behind Nick once again to shield himself from any criticism. It was very much his MO, and yet we're also certain we've heard him chastise straight women for using the "I have a gay friend" defense.

It is so good to hear that our podcast has been helpful to you. There are FAR too many Aces who are willing to let bad behavior or ill-informed takes slide just because someone with a decent following noticed us. We deserve so much better.

Lewisohn vs. Wenner Pt. 2 of 2

Part 1 // More Tune In analysis

You probably know the drill by now: I'm looking at the quotes from Tune In against the source Mark Lewisohn gives for them, and seeing if they're faithfully reproduced. This post deals with the multi-source Frankenquotes that are partly attributed to Jann Wenner's interviews. Five of the quotes here are from the infamous Lennon Remembers interview, with a sixth from a separate interview for Rolling Stone. Lewisohn combines John's words from these interviews with a myriad of other sources: a televised interview of John by Jean-François Vallée (1975), Hunter Davies’ The Beatles (1968), an interview/cohosting spot on The Mike Douglas Show (1972), and an interview with Lisa Robinson for Hit Parader (1975).

Before I get into it, I wanted to take a moment to discuss how I ‘grade’ Lewisohn’s quotes based on the type of source he cites. If Lewisohn is using a recorded interview, there’s some wiggle room in things like punctuation and word stress. When transcribing the same interview, two people might listen to the same phrase and come away with slightly different versions, e.g. “My favorite color was blue, but that changed after the accident in the paint factory,” vs. “My favorite color was blue. But that changed after the accident in the paint factory.” Both of those could be correct interpretations of the same recorded audio, so I can’t fault Lewisohn for changes along those lines when he’s working from an audio source.

There isn’t the same wiggle room when working from text. If I pull a quote from a book, and the book reads, “Now, I love green. It’s so lush,” I can’t change that to, “Now I love green; it’s so lush.” I’m not actually quoting the person who said those words originally—I’m quoting the transcribed and published version of what that person said.

I've taken this into account with these Frankenquotes. If there are punctuation differences between Tune In and the printed version of Lennon Remembers pictured here, I haven’t made note of them. Those same differences in a quote pulled from Davies’ The Beatles will be noted, since Lewisohn is quoting the printed source and not an original audio tape. This becomes a bit confusing when a single “quote” is compiled from different sources, and the bits from one source are graded on a different rubric than the other, but such is the thrill of fact-checking Mark Lewisohn!

Citations at the end. Time stamps refer to this upload of the Lennon Remembers interview.

Tune In 4-12 vs. Wenner p.76 (2:14:41), 18 (36:24)  + Vallée Interview

I haven't been able to track down the source for the middle section of this Frankenquote (it’s from an interview by Jean-François Vallée for the French TV Series Un jour futur, in the episode “Il était une fois: John Lennon.”), nor did I find the first sentence of the third part of the quote. It isn’t in the printed version of Lennon Remembers, and it doesn’t appear before the final sentence in the audio, though perhaps it’s elsewhere on the tape.

This has several classic Lewisohn offenses: stitching together multiple sources, combining distinct sections of a single source into one quote, and phrases omitted without ellipses. I've noted these on the images above.

What I'd like to bang on about is Lewisohn's choice not to clarify who John is referencing at the start of the quote--the "somebody" discussing black music and white bodies. In the original interview, John credits it to either "Michael X or Eldridge Cleaver" (Lennon Remembers gives this as Malcolm X, but it's clearly Michael X on the tape--see end of post for some background on Michael X and Lennon). It's common practice by many authors to clarify ambiguous references like this; Mark Lewisohn even does it in Tune In. He mostly does this in the endnotes (e.g. P-4, 2-22), but he uses a footnote to clarify a song lyric he himself uses in the prose of Chapter 4 (see footnote 4-c). Lewisohn not only fails to clarify who John is referencing here, he does not quote John's attempted attribution.

But maybe this falls under Lewisohn's inconsistent policy of not referencing the future. Still, even without naming the black activist who John references here, this quote is not a reflection of John's mindset in his adolescence: he wasn't sitting at a Quarry Bank chum's house in 1956, thinking "gee, thank goodness this black music has reconnected me with my middle-class white body!" The use of the above quote is foresight in and of itself, so why not credit the person who originated that line of thinking? Are Lewisohn's footnotes only for pronunciation guides and details of how demonstrably effeminate certain Beatles' relations were? For someone proclaiming their book a "social history", it's a bit of an oversight.

It's Eldridge Cleaver, by the way, in his prison memoir Soul on Ice (1968). It's in the chapter titled "Convalescence," in a discussion about the Beatles and white rock 'n' roll. Be forewarned if you seek it out, that section is also heavily homophobic.

Tune In 6-7 vs. Wenner p.133 (3:53:54) + Davies p.33

Hunter Davies did not record his interviews with the Beatles, as described in the introduction to the 2009 edition (p.lxiii): “I also wish now that I’d used a tape recorder. I never have done, which is silly.” Since we know Lewisohn was working with Davies’ written word, he was not at liberty to make changes like the one we see here: Davies starts a new sentence at the word “But”, which Lewisohn combines with the preceding sentence. There are changes like this throughout the quotes pulled from Davies’ work, but that’s a matter for a later post.

The other change Lewisohn makes here is more consequential. When discussing how Paul came to join the Quarrymen, John says, “That decision was to let Paul in.” Lewisohn gives the quote as “[my] decision was to let Paul in.”

Perhaps you’re thinking, “He’s used brackets! It’s fine!”, but I disagree. Brackets can be used when changing the tense of a quote, or when changing a word to clarify the meaning of a quote, so long as doing so doesn’t change the meaning. Clarification isn’t necessary here: the quote, as stated by Lennon, would make sense in the context Lewisohn provides. There’s no confusion about what decision John is discussing here.

But this change isn’t simply superfluous—it actually changes the meaning of the quote in a way that’s only clear if we look at the source. Here’s what immediately precedes the quote:

“I met Paul, and I made a decision whether to—and he made a decision too—whether to have him in the group or not.” Emphasis mine.

So John is not talking strictly about his decision, he’s talking about Paul and his mutual decision to work together. Without this context, even without the change from “that” to “my”, John seems to be discussing his own decision. Lewisohn’s change is completely unnecessary to get across his point. It’s as if he made this change specifically to push back against John Lennon’s assertion that a young Paul McCartney had autonomy and didn’t simply exist to satisfy John’s whims.

Tune In 8-4 vs. Wenner p.133-4 (3:54:42) + Davies p.44-5

Color-coded to show the absolute chopped salad Lewisohn made of these two sources.

Also of note is Lewisohn’s follow-up to this quote, “Despite this frank if uncharitable purge of his feelings….” Lewisohn does this elsewhere (notably with John’s quote about hitting women): he follows up a self-critical quote from John with an authorial “Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself, buddy!” It’s unnecessary.

Tune In 8-28 vs. Wenner p.140 + The Mike Douglas Show

Lennon: He’s the greatest rock ‘n’ roll poet, and I really admire him. Douglas: Do you feel the same today as you did years ago in Liverpool about rock? Lennon: When I hear rock, good rock, of the caliber of Chuck Berry, I just fall apart and I have no other interest in life. Y’know, the world could be ending if rock ‘n’ roll’s playing, y’know. It’s a disease of mine.

I wasn’t able to find this quote in the interview audio, but I’m sure its there somewhere. I used Lennon Remembers as a guide to find the correct location of a certain segment in the 4+ hour audio, and it is apparent that certain parts of Lennon Remembers have been reordered.

I transcribed this section of the Mike Douglas Show from a video posted on the Shanghai-based streaming app BiliBili - see link in my source list.

Lewisohn uses an ellipsis to indicate a transition between two totally different sources here but does not use an ellipsis to indicate the phrases he left out of the Wenner interview. There are several small changes to the quote from the Mike Douglas show as well, but the meaning is retained.

Tune In 22-78 vs. Robinson 1975 + Wenner p.122 (1:33:20)

The first source here is Lisa Robinson’s 1975 interview with John for Hit Parader. You can find a version of this interview here. Note the lack of ellipsis between the purple and pink sections, despite the lengthy omission between them.

Lewisohn does use an ellipsis in the Wenner-derived portion of this quote, but he doesn’t place it correctly. The omission occurs between “and” and “Brian”, not between the rest of the quote and “and Brian.”

It wouldn’t make sense to include Allen Klein and Yoko Ono in this quote as it appears in Tune In, since they won’t appear until much later in the series, but I do wonder if presenting the quote without their names truly preserves the quote’s meaning. However you feel about them personally, Allen Klein and Yoko Ono are two of the most controversial figures in Beatles’ history. Within a few years of this interview, John would be on the outs with Allen Klein. John describes himself as someone who “make[s] a lot of mistakes character-wise”, and goes on to list three examples of his good judgments. Two of those are Allen and Yoko. Is it intellectually honest to delete those two names from the list and present Brian as the one example of John’s character judgment?

And our final Wenner Frankenquote. This one isn’t from Lennon Remembers, but from a 1970 Rolling Stone article titled “The Beatles: One Guy Standing There, Shouting ‘I’m Leaving’.”

Tune In 22-72 vs. Wenner 1970 + Robinson 1975

This one is audacious enough to warrant its own post—and we’re in luck! I defer to @mythserene's post for proper analysis. You can also find this one discussed in @anotherkindofmindpod's "Fine Tuning: Ep 7 Spanner in the Works."

In brief, in the ‘quote’ lifted from Wenner’s interview, John is using “Epstein” as a stand-in for Klein. John’s not saying “Three of us chose Epstein”—he’s saying “Three of us chose Klein, throw aside your assumptions about him for a minute.” It’s not the sort of quote you can divorce from its context if you have any credibility.

Some Context on Michael X and John Lennon:

Michael X (a.k.a. Michael Abdul Malik, born Michael de Freitas) was born in Trinidad and became a prominent member of the black Power movement in 1960s London. Lennon met Michael X early in 1970 and became a devoted supporter and advocate until Malik’s death in 1975 (Wiener 1991, p.115-123). Here’s a brief rundown of their involvement:

Since you’re the sort of person who reads citation-by-citation analyses of Beatles books, you have probably seen pictures from early 1970 of John and Yoko sporting matching pixie cuts. In January 1970, John and Yoko shaved their heads (as a publicity stunt, I assume?), and kept their shorn hair in a bag. This bag of hair was the centerpiece for their first public interaction with Michael X: in February 1970, Lennon and Ono gave Malik their bag of hair, and he gave them a pair of Muhammad Ali’s shorts. The press was very much present, but they failed to make headlines (Doggett 118). The hair was supposed to be auctioned off at Sotheby’s to support Malik’s Black House, but this fell through (see Lennon on The Dick Cavett show here.) Pictures of the event can be seen at The Beatles Bible.

Malik fled London for his native Trinidad when legal issues loomed in 1971. He started a commune there, which John visited in April of the same year. In 1972, the bodies of Joseph Skerritt and Gale Benson were found on the commune (Weiner 1991, p.118). Malik was convicted of ordering the killing of Skerritt and would be hanged for that crime in 1975 (NYT 1975 May 17).

Malik may or may not have ordered Skerritt’s murder, but regardless, he did not have a fair trial. John and Yoko campaigned from the time of his conviction up until his death for clemency, without result (Weiner 1991, p.119-123).

Sources:

Cavett D [host]. 1971 Sept 11. Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The Dick Cavett Show. Accessed online on 2024 Feb 23. Available from: https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/7kXCnKfdGOY.

Cleaver E. 1968. Soul on Ice. New York (NY): Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 210p. Accessed online. Available from: https://archive.org/details/soul-on-ice-by-eldridge-cleaver/

Davies H. 1968. 2009 Edition. The Beatles. New York (NY): W.W. Norton & Company. 408p.

Doggett P. 2009. You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup. New York (NY): HarperCollins. 390p.

Douglas M [host]. 1972 Feb 16. Season 11 Episode 123. The Mike Douglas Show with John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Accessed online 2024 Feb 23. Available from: https://b23.tv/mQMUDg9

Militant Is Hanged by Trinidad After Long Fight for Clemency. 1975 May 17. New York Times.[Internet] [cited 2024 Feb 24]. Available from: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/17/archives/militant-is-hanged-by-trinidad-after-long-fight-for-clemency.html

Robinson L. 1975 Dec. Interview with John Lennon. Hit Parader. Accessed Online from www.beatlesinterviews.org. Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20230409044146/https://www.beatlesinterviews.org/db1975.1200.beatles.html

Wenner JS. 1970 May 14. The Beatles: One Guy Standing There, Shouting ‘I’m Leaving’. Rolling Stone. Accessed online. Available from: https://web.archive.org/web/20231017203039/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-beatles-one-guy-standing-there-shouting-im-leaving-43403/2/

Wenner JS. 1970. 1970 12 08 John Lennon Interview, Rolling STones Lennon Remembers, Complete Unedited [video]. Youtube. 2022 Apr 18, 4:26:50. Accessed 2024 Feb 18. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YelhzUbrCE

Wenner JS. 1971. 2000 ed. Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Lennon Remembers. London: Verso. 151p. Accessed online. Available from: https://archive.org/details/lennonremembers00lenn_0/

Wiener J. 1984. 1991 Illini Books ed. Come Together: John Lennon In His Time. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 379 p. Accessed online. Available from: https://archive.org/details/cometogetherjohn00jonw/

Trivializing FFWPU mass weddings and underestimating the Christian Right

an extract from Chapter 8 of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy by Frederick Clarkson (1997) pages 181-185

… Similarly, the analysis by Stephen Carter, [who teaches at Yale Law School and wrote The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion] of how mainstream press reporting trivializes religion often misses the mark. He cites, for example, the “general cultural amusement” over the mass weddings presided over by Rev. & Mrs. Sun Myung Moon.72 Carter is correct that some bemused reporting may trivialize the faith of those who subordinate themselves to clerical authority in this way. However, Carter ignores the serious issues raised by the theocratic goals and practices of the Unification Church and how the mass weddings figure into the church’s larger plans to eliminate democracy, pluralism, and religious freedom.

As was discussed in Chapter 3 [of Eternal Hostility], Sun Myung Moon has declared that he and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, “are the True Parents of all humanity... we are the Savior, the Lord of the Second Advent, the Messiah.”73 And that “when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world.” He has further explained that his aim is the “subjugation of the American government and population.”74 There is copious literature on Moon’s record of predatory recruiting and indoctrination practices, his 30-year record of antidemocratic pronouncements and activities,75 the billions of dollars of assets of mysterious origin, the central role this small church plays in American life through its media, and on its business and political empire. In this light, Carter’s focus on the trivialization of the Unification Church by the superficial reporting on Moon’s mass weddings is breathtakingly shallow and fundamentally misguided.

Carter also fails to distinguish between oppressive attacks on religion aimed at curtailing religious expression, on the one hand, and critical debate about religion generally, and specifically religion in politics, on the other. Debating the latter issues is healthy in a country where active theocratic movements are working to undermine the principles of the enlightenment vital to meaningful democracy.

The Christian Right: Weak and Divided? Carter extends his concern from the supposed excesses of secular society to how society should view the Christian Right. However, this discussion is hampered by his apparent lack of knowledge of the history, ideology and players of the Christian Right. Although Carter was shocked by the Christian Right’s performance at the 1992 Republican national convention in Houston, he was unable to explain either how this came about or what it really meant. In the first chapter of The Culture of Disbelief he derided the “expression of some loud fears about the influence of the weak and divided Christian Right.”76 Oddly, the final chapter’s discussion of the new-found political strength of the Christian Right is titled “Religious Fascism.” Unfortunately, Carter failed to define what he meant by religious fascism, let alone its relevance to his discussion.

Still, Carter’s concern for religious expression is rooted in the best of American contributions to advancing this principle. He calls not for “mere tolerance,” but for religious “equality,” because tolerance is extended at the whim of the majority and can be withdrawn. “[I]n a nation where 85 percent of adults identify themselves as Christians,” he explains, “it may seem easier to speak of toleration of Jews and other non-Christians than to speak of equality of any practical sort. But the language of tolerance is the language of power.”77 Non-Christians, he points out, “rightly object to language suggesting that Christians (or anyone else) should ‘tolerate’ them. The fundamental message of the First Amendment is one of religious equality—a message to which the idea of majority and minority religions should be bitter anathema.”78

One glaring example of Carter’s good intentions thwarted by his superficial approach is a too-brief discussion of the 1992 flap over Mississippi Republican governor Kirk Fordice’s public claim that the U.S. is a Christian Nation.79 Carter summarizes the episode as it appeared in the media, but makes no mention of the Christian Nationalist authors, leaders and constituencies that give the term its contemporary meaning. Senior politicians rarely make declarations about such things unless they are speaking to and for a significant constituency. There was much that could have been said in this context, for example, about the role of the Christian Coalition in Fordice’s election, or the significance of such Christian historical revisionists as David Barton and Gary DeMar.80

Nevertheless, “It is painful to me as a Christian,” Carter concluded, “to watch the perversion of [Christ’s message of love and inclusion]... by the far right wing of my own faith, into a call for holy war—a call which even if metaphorical, can only raise the terrifying imagery of the wholesale slaughter of the crusades.”81 While the specter of religious warfare is painful for everyone. Carter does not address the role of Christian Nationalism as an integral and animating doctrine of the Christian Right, and thus much more than a metaphor, that could lead to just such a ‘holy war.’ Indeed, it was precisely the grim history of religious nationalism, religious warfare and Christian persecution, of not only minority religions but fellow Christians, that led the framers of the Constitution to seek to create a constitutional structure for, and national ethos of, religious equality.

It is the cultivation (if not always successful implementation) of this ethos of religious equality over the past 200 years that has been one of the most extraordinary cultural projects in the history of the world. The Christian Nationalists of the 18th century didn’t like the Constitution when it was written, and their political and theological descendants don’t like it today.

The Defeat of the Christian Right? Carter correctly concludes that the “defeat of the Christian Right— if indeed defeat is to be” will be a matter of alerting “a sufficiency of one’s fellow citizens of the danger, creating a democratic counter insurgency. And then, harder still, one must get this majority to the polls on election day.”82 However, political victory over the formidable Christian Right requires knowledge and accurate assessments of its positions and prospects—something Carter does not much provide. For example, early in The Culture of Disbelief, he argues that “one must be wary of attributing too much influence to the emergent religious right. The Reverend Pat Robertson’s efforts to gain the 1988 Republican presidential nomination was of interest mainly to the mass media...”83

As argued in the chapter “Neither Juggernaught nor Joke,” he is correct that it is important not to unwarily “attribute too much influence” to the religious right. But it is just as important not to naively— and inaccurately—dismiss their actual strength and potential.

Indicative of a larger problem in Carter’s reporting is his use of the word “Reverend” in reference to Pat Robertson. Robertson resigned his Baptist ministry to run for president in 1988, and does not, nor is he entitled to, use the honorific, “Reverend.” More importantly, it is well known that Robertson has for many years been positioning himself to exert political power in the U.S. The run for president was integral to the building of a political movement, and thus was of far more than passing interest to those who follow religion and politics, especially in the GOP. Robertson actually beat George Bush in the Iowa Republican caucuses in 1988, and did well in the disputed Michigan precinct caucuses. Although the campaign unraveled after Robertson’s poor showing in the “Super Tuesday” primaries in the South, Iowa and Michigan provided clues about Robertson’s long-term political significance.

The Robertson campaign served as an experiment and a building block in much the same way that Barry Goldwater’s unsuccessful 1964 campaign for president served as the cornerstone of the modem conservative movement. In light of Carter’s claim that Robertson’s 1988 campaign was a creature of the media, it is important to note that the same media generally missed the story of the rise of the Christian Coalition until well into the 1992 campaign season. Carter’s lack of knowledge of the on-the-ground history of this and related political phenomena undermines his media criticism and misdirects his “attitude” about religion in public life—which he says is the main subject of the book.84

The problem with Hunter’s and Carter’s books is not that they don’t have useful thoughts and information in them. These influential books pose special challenges to those who are committed to democracy, pluralism and religious freedom. Hunter is a partisan scholar from the Christian Right who is generally committed to civility, but who uses a facade of neutrality to mask that he’s stacking the deck of his argument. Carter is a legal scholar who disagrees with the Christian Right on most things,85 but hasn’t really studied it, and thus fails to locate the original and current threats to religious freedom from theocratic movements.

As long as such books are major sources of intellectual guidance to which people turn for insight into the Christian Right, misdirection, misinformation, misreporting and political mistakes will be the norm for every segment of society that follows them.86 James Davison Hunter offers some sound advice in this regard in Culture Wars. “As with military campaigns, cultural warfare is always decided over the pragmatic problems of strategy, organization and resources... The factions with the best strategies, most efficient organization, and access to resources will plainly have the advantage and very possibly, the ultimate victory.”87

Thus great care must be taken when reading material that will inform the strategy of a movement. ___________________________________ Notes 

72. Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, Ninth Edition, 1990. Abingdon Press, pp. 25-26.

73. Sun Myung Moon, “Leaders Building World Peace,” Unification News, September 1992.

74. John Judis, “Rev. Moon’s Rising Political Influence: His Empire Is Spending Big Money To Try To Win Favor With Conservatives,” U.S. News and World Report, March 21, 1989.

75. See for example, Steve Hassan, Combating Cult Mind Control, Park Street Press, 1988; see also Flo Conway and Jim Seigelman, Snapping: America’s Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change, Second Edition, Stillpoint Press, 1995.

76. Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, Basic Books, 1993, p. 11.

77. Carter, op. cit., p. 96.

78. Carter, op. cit., p. 93.

79. Carter, op. cit., pp. 86-89.

80. See for example, Barton’s book To Pray or Not to Pray, (1988) and The Myth of Separation, (1992), WallBuilder Press, Aledo, TX. Both books were in wide circulation in Christian Right circles prior to the publication of The Culture of Disbelief.

81. Carter, op. cit., p. 90.

82. Carter, op. cit., p. 267.

83. Carter, op. cit., p. 19.

84. Carter, p. 15. “And through all of this trivializing rhetoric runs the subtle but unmistakable message: pray if you like; worship if you must, but whatever you do, do not on any account take your religion seriously. That rhetoric, and that message, are the subjects of this book. This book is not about law, but about attitudes—the attitude that we as a political society hold toward religion.”

85. Carter, p. 15. He agrees, with the Christian Right on “broad parental rights to exempt children from educational programs on religious grounds and participation by parochial schools in private school voucher programs...”

86. I hope that this essay will encourage people to seek out better information and analysis about the Christian Right — and to demand better than they usually get from the media. Personally I recommend the books and articles of knowledgeable writers like Russ Bellant, Chip Berlet, Robert Boston, Joe Conn, Sara Diamond, Jean Hardisty, Skipp Porteous, and Lenny Zeskind, among others who have studied this and related movements for many years. Their work is cited throughout the text, notes and resources section of this book. The Christian Right would be far less powerful today, if writers like these had received half of the media and scholarly attention accorded Hunter and Carter.

87. James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America, Basic Books, 1991, p. 64.

________________________________________

Sun Myung Moon: “church and the state must become one”

U.S. Presidents Endorse Sun Myung Moon From ‘Spirit World’

The CIG constitution is the paperwork for what Fraser and every Moon org critic has warned was the Moon org’s goal all along

Hak Ja Han’s Cheon Il Guk Constitution is troubling

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson

Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon by Frederick Clarkson

Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy

Local leaders promote COVID-19 vaccines for communities of color

The latest state data says less than 3% of African-Americans have taken COVID-19 vaccines in Kern County. Health experts say vaccines will play a leading role in wiping out the pandemic, and the Pew Research Center says African-Americans are less likely than anyone else to take the shots. Today two elected officials joined several local groups to urge Kern residents to get the facts about vaccines.

Supervisor Leticia Perez and Bakersfield City Councilman Eric Arias joined the MLK CommUNITY initiative and the United Against COVID Coalition to bring information about vaccines straight to Kern residents’ doorsteps. The groups deployed over three-dozen canvassers to knock on doors and hand out flyers about vaccines. Event organizers hope the campaign will bring Kern residents to a vaccine clinic at the People’s Missionary Baptist Church.

https://events.eventgroove.com/full-watch-queen-of-the-south-season-5-episode-1-online-full-episodes

https://events.eventgroove.com/queen-of-the-south-season-5-episode-1-online-full-episodes

https://events.eventgroove.com/queen-of-the-south-season-5-episode-1

https://events.eventgroove.com/watch-greys-anatomy-season-17-episode-11-online-full-episodes

https://events.eventgroove.com/full-watch-greys-anatomy-season-17-episode-11-online-full-episodes

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“On Sunday, April 11th, from 10 o’clock until about 3 o’clock p.m., we will be having a pop-up vaccination site,” said Dr. V.K. Jones, Senior Pastor for The People’s Missionary Baptist Church.

Arleana Waller: “We have partnered with the governor’s office to put 1,000 Johnson and Johnson ‘one shot, get it done’ vaccines into the southeast community,” said Arleana Waller, CEO of the MLK CommUNITY Initiative. “We’re excited to partner with all the people you see here to canvas and reach the community and get them registered to receive this vaccine.”

Event organizers say the campaign targets the African-American community, but everyone is welcome at Sunday’s clinic. Doctors say getting vaccinated is the best way to end the pandemic.

“We’re one community here,” said Kern County Fifth District Supervisor Leticia Perez. “COVID has shown us how interconnected we are, even through the air we breathe. And this is an opportunity for us to come out here and say ‘you matter. You do matter.'”

Event organizers say you can either walk up for a vaccine or drive through to this weekend’s vaccination pop-up clinic. Again that’s on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the People’s Missionary Baptist Church in Southeast Bakersfield.

The first hurdle was getting on the bus. Seventy-four year old Linda Busby hesitated outside a community center where older people were loading up to go get the coronavirus vaccine.

“I was scared, I’m not afraid to say that,” she said Wednesday after getting her shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after encouragement from a staff member and her brother. “I thought I wasn’t going to get it at first. Nobody likes getting shots.”

Busby’s hesitance is just what the Biden administration and its allies in the states are combating, one person at a time, as the White House steps up appeals to seniors to get inoculated. The vaccination rate for this top-priority group is reaching a plateau even as supplies have expanded.

About 76% of Americans aged 65 and older have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccines since authorization in December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the rate of new vaccinations among the group most vulnerable to adverse virus outcomes has dramatically slowed.

It’s a growing source of concern, not only because of the potential for preventable deaths and serious illness among seniors in coming months but also for what it could portend for America’s broader population.

“I want to make a direct appeal to our seniors and everyone who cares about them,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday, citing “incredible progress” but declaring it’s still not enough.

“It’s simple: Seniors, it’s time for you to get vaccinated now. Get vaccinated now.”

By government estimates, about 12.9 million American seniors have yet to receive their first shot. Even though they were the first age group prioritized for shots, more than 23% of those 75 and older have yet to be vaccinated.

Supply constraints initially slowed the pace of senior vaccinations, but not for months for those in high-priority age groups. Instead, officials say, the slowdown is caused by a mix of issues, from people having difficulty finding and getting to inoculation sitesto vaccine hesitancy.

Closing the gap will require taking into account all the obstacles for seniors, be they technological, transportation or personal hesitance, said Sandy Markwood, CEO of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging, who acknowledged the vaccination rates “for older adults has somewhat plateaued.”

It’s a potential harbinger of the challenges to come with other demographic groups. All adult Americans will become eligible for vaccination in the next two weeks, although the process of administering enough shots to begin returning to “normal” will take months longer. Many states, even as they throw open the doors on eligibility, are still maintaining priority vaccination systems, or dedicated distribution channels, to keep seniors who want the vaccine at the front of the line.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, has predicted that between 75% and 85% of the population may need to be vaccinated to reach “herd immunity” and bring an end to the outbreak in the U.S.

That’s one reason the White House and states have moved to step up assistance programs for seniors and public education campaigns.

Markwood credited the administration’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan for providing funding necessary “to go out there and do that more intensive, sometimes one-on-one outreach” with seniors, saying, “It’s that last mile, the last group who need the extra support, that’s going to take that extra outreach and time.”

Even more help is on the way.

Beginning next week, the administration is launching a $100 million effort to fund community organizations providing “high-intensity” support to at-risk seniors and those with disabilities through the Department of Health and Human Services. That includes assistance with booking appointments, traveling to vaccination sites and other support through the vaccination process.

Similar programs are already underway at the state level.

In Clarksdale, Mississippi, the state hosted its first-ever mobile vaccinations for homebound older adults on Wednesday. That’s where a bus picked up Busby outside a senior daycare and community center located next door to a low-income housing complex for the elderly.

As Busby balked, a staff member encouraged her to join the group waiting to get on board. She said later a main motivating factor for her to get the shot was the support of her brother, who called her up to encourage her to get vaccinated.

“I’m going to call him as soon as I get home, and let him know I did it,” she said, as she got back on the bus to return to the community center.

Older folks are actually less hesitant than many. According to an AP-NORC poll in late March, 11% of Americans aged 65 or older say they probably or definitely won’t get vaccinated. That compares with 25% of all adults.

The White House has repeatedly pointed to family members and community leaders as the best validators to overcome hesitance. It is also moving to create more vaccination sites closer to homes, recognizing that access concerns span demographic groups. On Wednesday, the White House announced that all of the more than 1,400 federally qualified community health centers will be able to begin administering vaccines. It also is aiming to expand mobile vaccine clinics.

A disproportionate number of unvaccinated seniors are from Black or Latino communities, or from people without easy access to health care, said Kathleen Cameron, senior director of the National Council on Aging’s Center for Healthy Aging, mirroring disparities in the broader population. And about 6% of seniors are homebound.

“Those are the hardest to reach people, and those are the ones we need to work hardest to get to, either to bring them to vaccination centers or to bring the vaccines to them,” she said.

Aurelia Jones-Taylor, CEO of Aaron E. Henry Community Health Services Center, Inc. in Clarksdale, said one of the major helps — but sometimes barriers — to getting older adults vaccinated is family members. Some encourage their relatives, helping them with rides to clinics and making sure they get their shots.

But in many cases, younger family members are misinformed about the vaccine and discourage older relatives from getting it. Aside from that, older adults can be harder to reach because they aren’t savvy on social media and live alone.

“They are stuck in the house, and they are fearful,” Jones-Taylor said. “We have to overcome the fear.”

According to the CDC, seniors, depending on their age, are between 1,300 and 8,700 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than 5-17 year-olds, and they make up more than 80% of the 559,000 U.S. fatalities due to the virus.

One major help in Mississippi – especially among older adults – is the encouragement of pastors and church communities, Jones-Taylor said.

“It’s paramount,” she said. “That’s who they listen to.”

Julia Ford, 71, spends most days at the Rev. S.L.A Jones Activity Center. She said her faith was a major motivating factor for her getting the vaccine.

“I wasn’t sure what I would do – ‘Will I get it or will I not?’ I talked to the Lord to give me understanding about it,” said Ford, whose brother died of the virus. “I thought about the verse, ‘Everything that was made was made by him.’ There was nothing made that was not made by him. He made the virus and he made the antidote.”

A huge ship is blocking a vital trade artery. It could get costly What’s happening: Work continues to clear sand and mud away from the Ever Given, a 224,000-ton vessel that ran aground after 40-knot winds and a sandstorm caused low visibility and poor navigation. Ending the dramatic traffic jam, which has prevented dozens of ships from passing through, will not be easy. The effort could take “days to weeks,” according to the CEO of Boskalis, whose sister company SMIT Salvage is now working to dislodge the ship. Big picture: About 10% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal, according to Allianz, a top shipping insurer. Lloyd’s List, a shipping industry journal, said that nearly 19,000 vessels transited the artery last year. Allianz said ships “face costly and lengthy deviations if canal is not opened soon.” Diverting vessels via the Cape of Good Hope in the southern tip of Africa would add roughly two weeks to their journeys. Danish shipping company Maersk said that seven of its vessels have been affected. Four are already in the canal system and another three are waiting to enter. “The incident continues to create long tailbacks on the waterway, stopping vessels from passing and causing delays,” it said in a statement. The episode has also injected volatility into oil markets, which have been under pressure recently as investors weigh supply and demand heading into the next phase of the pandemic. Brent crude futures, the global benchmark for oil prices, shot up nearly 6% on Wednesday as traders raced to assess the ramifications of the blockage. Prices fell back again Thursday, and were last down 1.4% to $63.55 per barrel. In a note to clients, Commerzbank — citing analytics firm Vortexa — said that 10 oil tankers with 13 million barrels of crude on board are currently stuck in the Suez canal. “This equates roughly to the amount of oil produced in one day by Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the two largest OPEC producers,” the German bank said. Time is of the essence as the jam drags on, with the buildup poised to get worse by the day. But for now, oil traders are trying their best to look past the disruption. “The situation is likely to return to normal at the beginning of next week once the container ship has been freed, shifting the focus back onto the demand risks,” Commerzbank said. How AstraZeneca went from pandemic hero to vaccine villain After teaming up with Oxford University, AstraZeneca (AZN) produced a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine in just nine months, a huge achievement that will help end the pandemic. But a series of missteps along the way has led to scathing criticism from policymakers and health officials, tarnishing the company’s image as a hero of the coronavirus era. See here: The Anglo-Swedish drugmaker mistakenly gave some volunteers a half dose of the vaccine during clinical trials, and it has been criticized for omitting crucial information from its public statements. US regulators have questioned the accuracy of its vaccine data, and severe production delays in Europe have resulted in a political firestorm and a breakdown in relations with EU leaders. “What we have with AstraZeneca is a company that is not straightforward, that cannot be relied upon,” Philippe Lamberts, a Belgian member of the European Parliament, said in a radio interview with the BBC on Wednesday. AstraZeneca’s failure to deliver tens of millions of promised doses to the European Union, which is struggling to roll out vaccination programs, led the bloc to impose export restrictions that have already prevented at least one shipment of vaccines to Australia. Leaders could move to make the restrictions even tighter Thursday. AstraZeneca has cited “lower-than-expected output from the production process” as a major complication in Europe. “As our teams learn from each other and improve their knowledge, the yield is increasing,” CEO Pascal Soriot said in February. “Manufacturing of a vaccine is a very complex biological process.” Meanwhile, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases expressed concerns earlier this week that AstraZeneca had presented “outdated” data from a trial of the vaccine’s effectiveness. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the agency’s director, called it “an unforced error” that could erode trust in a “very good vaccine.” The latest: AstraZeneca updated its data on Thursday, reporting that the trials showed its vaccine to be 76% effective against Covid-19 symptoms. Earlier this week, it had said its shot was 79% effective. However, the rare rebuke from US regulators was a major blow to the company’s credibility. “They’ve made one mistake after the other,” said Jeffrey Lazarus, head of the health systems research group at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. How Wall Street is fighting Covid burnout To keep employees happy despite the rampant stress and exhaustion of working during a pandemic, some Wall Street banks are handing out toys, gifts and perks, my CNN Business colleague Alexis Benveniste reports. Jefferies sent a memo to its 1,129 analysts and associates, offering the option to pick between a Peloton bike, a MIRROR home workout system, or an Apple package that includes an Apple Watch, iPad and AirPods. “You have given us your all these past twelve months and these gifts are a sign of our deep appreciation for your dedication, sacrifice and contribution to our success in the face of challenging circumstances,” CEO Rich Handler wrote in a memo to employees. Earlier this week, Citi announced that it’s launching “Zoom-Free Fridays.” But it may not be much of a change: Citi said employees may still be expected to hop on internal audio-only calls as well as external Zoom calls, including with clients and regulators. Remember: Slammed by a wave of deals, some Wall Street employees are fed up. Goldman Sachs analysts spoke out earlier this year about working 95-hour weeks and enduring “inhumane” treatment. CEO David Solomon has said the bank will strengthen enforcement of its free Saturday rule and speed up the hiring of junior bankers. These days, free food and gym memberships aren’t options to boost team morale. That’s forcing banks to get creative as they try to stave off burnout. Up next Darden Restaurants (DRI) reports results before US markets open. US jobless claims for last week post at 8:30 a.m. ET. — Hanna Ziady contributed reporting. Source link Orbem News #artery #blocking #Costly #huge #investing #Premarketstocks:Ahugeshipisblockingavitaltradeartery.Itcouldgetcostly-CNN #ship #Trade #vital

Listening to this podcast is interesting in a lot of ways but it is also an exercise in frustration I listened to the episode about the Beatles and the deaths they experienced around them, and they mention at one point the suicide of peter Hamm. They then talk about Richard dilello reacting to this by writing a scathing essay about the record companies and the Beatles that was read aloud at beatlefest in 76. Which sounds super fucking interesting to me but of course they don't cite anything because it's a podcast. They mention and hint at all these things that could be tangents of their own entirely but you never know what they're going to actually delve into and what's going to be left on the hook of "didn't I hear such and so?" And then never mentioning it again I just mean it's really nice to have their perspectives but I wish they would cite their sources

Five SEO content types to power and grow your business through 2020

30-second summary:

The convergence of content and SEO has happened and digital is next.  

Brands that produce quality content over quantity using insights to understand intent stand to capture market share from competitors.  

Producing search friendly, optimized content out of the gate and aligned with paid media strategy gives marketers the best opportunity to dominate SERP real estate. 

In B2B combined search averages 76% of traffic. 

Content also provides value beyond SEO and across whole organizations from branding and awareness through to sales, customer service, and product marketing.

Jim Yu shares the top five content types that also serve SEO value.

The convergence of SEO and content has happened. Today, we’re experiencing the convergence of content with all things digital. That was evolution enough—then a pandemic swept through to really shake things up, accelerating digital transforming digital nearly overnight. 

As businesses look to reopening, people are hungrier than ever for content. Media consumption is spiking as so many scour their laptops, phones, and tablets for information about which businesses are open, what products and services they can access nearby, and how businesses are adjusting to the “new normal”. 

In the coming months, businesses are going to be challenged to adapt their SEO and content strategies to meet the constantly shifting needs of consumers. Now you have not only seasonal trends and personalization to contend with but different stages of business recovery and access across verticals and regions, too. 

Look to SEO now for real-time customer insights

We have never before experienced a global, all-encompassing, and near-universal experience such as this. Nearly every customer has been affected in some way. Customer journey maps must be updated but moreover, it is critical now that you are set up to monitor and analyze customer data in as near to real-time as possible.  

You can expect the rest of 2020 to bring dramatic shifts and swings in consumer behavior, and SEO insights are about as close to real-time voice-of-customer as you can get. 

Search data is rich in customer needs and intent. Now more than ever, consumers are turning to search engines for their every need. The insights gleaned from search trends and queries, local search analytics, and on-site activity will help inform the decisions your business must make going forward. Aligning SEO and PPC strategy is becoming more critical. According to BrightEdge research in B2B combined search averages 76% of traffic. 

 If you didn’t have a structured method of communicating search insights to department heads and the C-level before, now is the time. Start with the questions your organization needs answered and work backward from there: 

Are consumers remaining loyal to their usual/familiar brands, or is it a mix of usual and new brands (perhaps out of necessity and due to availability)? 

Where are your customers spending their time online right now? 

What are customers saying about your brand in social media, on review sites, and elsewhere on the web—and are you in a position to engage and respond in real-time? 

How have your customers’ needs changed due to COVID-19? 

Are you seeing any surprising or unexpected behavioral changes in how people discover and consume your content?  

Are consumers using your products or services (or others similar to yours) in new or different ways? 

These insights will help guide not only your marketing strategy but how the entire organization rebuilds and find opportunities for growth in the coming months.  

Five content types to power your content strategy now and in future

Get ready to move fast on opportunities for prime search visibility and share of voice, as there’s a distinct advantage to being the first-mover. Choose your content types wisely to ensure you’re presenting information to customers in the best format for their needs, devices, and intent, and experience. 

Make sure these five types of search-friendly content are part of your arsenal: 

1. Written word 

Text-based web content still drives the vast majority of search results. It can be made more interesting and engaging with the inclusion of other content types (which we’ll talk about in a minute), but a well-written article or webpage is still one of the most powerful tools in your content arsenal.  

This is what Google calls “Main Content” in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines—“any part of the page that directly helps the page achieve its purpose”. It can be text, imagery, video, or even user-generated content, and includes the page title. The written word is often complemented by multimedia elements but usually serves as the basis on which the content piece is built. 

Writing is a great way to establish thought leadership, to guide users through step-by-step processes, to share opinions and perspectives and expertise. Landing pages, glossaries, listicles, feature stories, media releases—there are countless ways to tell your company’s stories and share messages in writing.  

How can you make your written content stronger and maximize its SEO value?  

Understand what Google is looking for: “…unique and original content created by highly skilled and talented artists or content creators. Such artistic content requires a high degree of skill/talent, time, and effort.” 

Avoid writing mistakes that Google says detracts from the quality of a piece: grammar and punctuation errors, paraphrasing another piece of content but introducing inaccuracies, lack of adherence to E-A-T principles, poor quality writing, meaningless statements, failing to cite sources, sharing mostly commonly known information, text broken up by large ads that disrupt the user experience. 

2. Visual content types: Photos, infographics, and illustrations

Images can feature prominently in search results, depending on the query, and can really enhance the quality of a piece of written content. They can help tell the story, illustrate specific points, help a reader envision a complex idea, and more. 

We know that image alt text helps Google understand an image’s relevance to the rest of the page content (and to the query, as a result). But it serves an even more important function: improving the accessibility of your content. By now, descriptive alt texts should be best practice for all content teams. 

What else do we know about Google’s evaluation of image content? 

Images can be considered “Main Content” by Google. In section 4.2, Google states that quality evaluators are to look for “a satisfying amount of main content’ and list multiple product images as one example of achieving this. 

Evaluators are to consider the “skill/talent, time, and effort” it appears to have taken to create images. 

Shocking images that don’t match the main content, sexually suggestive or grotesque images, deceptive images that imply a celebrity endorsement where is none for example, and images that don’t fit the screen on mobile are all examples of image content that detract from the user experience and therefore their SEO value.  

Google says that a picture truly is worth a thousand words, in some cases. Using the example of a trestle bridge, the guidelines state that “a picture may be more helpful than a text description due to the unique design of the bridge.” Keep this in mind as you create written content—if you’re writing at length to explain something, could an image help? 

3. Video content types

More than 500 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube per minute and users still can’t get enough, devouring over a billion hours of YouTube content per day. If video isn’t yet a part of your content mix, this is the time to figure out how you’re going to make it so. 

Videos can also count as the main content, and they’re great for augmenting written text. Explainers, how-to guides, product or service demos, behind-the-scenes looks, expert interviews, and more are all great material for a high-quality video. 

And what is Google looking for when it comes to video? Increase its SEO value by keeping in mind that: 

Google considers “a satisfying or comprehensive amount of very high-quality main content” and “High E-A-T for the purpose of the page” indicators of quality in video content. 

Other characteristics of a good quality video include that it is well-produced, subject matter expertise, uniqueness and originality. 

Things that detract from your video’s SEO value include a subject matter with no clear expertise on the topic, publishing on a network with little oversight, or an attempt to deceive audiences in some way. 

Note that Google specifically instructs raters that they “must consider the reputation and E-A-T of both the website and the creators of the MC in order to assign a Page Quality rating”. Protect the reputation of your creators and your site by ensuring that these best practices are employed in every video you publish. 

4. Audio content types

The explosion in popularity of voice search and content formats such as podcasts and internet radio has made audio content a key component in the marketing mix. in optimizing audio content for voice search, you want to make sure you’re using structured data, concise headlines, and descriptions that help people understand what the content is about. Google’s main concerns about voice search as far as search quality goes have to do with mobile-friendliness. When a person uses their mobile phone for a voice query, for example, it’s not a good user experience if the page they are delivered to isn’t optimized for mobile.  

For audio content such as podcasts, the content you create around the episode is key. In fact, you should be considering SEO implications even as you choose your topics and structure your shows, to ensure you’re talking about things people are actually looking to hear about. Optimize your podcast title and description in the same way you do other web content, around a focused keyword. Write a blog post that helps people understand what the episode is about and share a transcript, if possible. 

5. Interactive content types

Webinars, virtual events, online courses, and other similar interactive content, when put together well, offer great value for participants and therefore can be considered quality content by Google. We’re about to see an explosion in their popularity, given the potential long-term implications of the coronavirus pandemic, too. 

You can improve the SEO strength of your interactive content and virtual events by creating and optimizing supportive content for each channel in which you’ll promote the event. Create graphics to promote the speakers. Shoot a quick explainer video that tells people what they’ll learn or experience if they participate.  

And don’t just hold the event and forget it about it—share the recording, write a wrap-up blog post, create an infographic with the top takeaways, create an ebook, and more. Ask participants to share their best photos and feedback and share them on a dedicated page on your site. 

The best content isn’t just optimized for search—it starts with search

Optimizing for search isn’t an activity you tack onto the end of the writing process or something you do to an image before publishing. How and where your audience will discover and engage with your different types of content needs to be a key consideration from the very earliest planning stages of your content strategy. 

Redesigning the website? Ask how SEO needs to be involved. Writing content? Consider how it can be optimized to fit the SEO strategy. Launching a new product? Involve SEO sooner in the planning. SEO needs to be ingrained throughout every aspect of the business right now, from the very initial planning stages of any project or initiative.  

As you become more intentional in strategic content planning, your data will show you which content formats work best at each stage of your unique funnel. Work on developing these measurement and attribution systems, if you do not already have them in place. They will drive your content creation, optimization, and amplification strategy across all channels throughout your COVID-19 recovery and beyond. 

Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of leading enterprise SEO and content performance platform BrightEdge. He can be found on Twitter @jimyu.

The post Five SEO content types to power and grow your business through 2020 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2020/06/17/five-seo-content-types-to-power-and-grow-your-business-through-2020/

Your Thursday Briefing – The New York Times

Amid exodus from cruise ship, 2 removed earlier are reported dead

The Japanese broadcaster NHK reported today that two Diamond Princess passengers who had been hospitalized last week after contracting the new coronavirus had died. Both were identified as elderly Japanese citizens with underlying health issues.

The news came a day after hundreds of passengers left the cruise ship, which has been docked off Yokohama. More are to be released today as the two-week quarantine of the vessel draws to an end.

But onboard, the coronavirus outbreak is still raging, with the number of confirmed cases now up to 621. Japanese officials have been defending their decision to allow other passengers to depart.

Some 740 passengers of another cruise ship, in Cambodia, have been cleared to leave the country after testing negative for the virus.

Suspected attacker found dead after shootings in Germany

Our reporters are heading to the central German city of Hanau, where the police said at least eight people were killed and several others wounded in shootings at more than one location on Wednesday night. The suspected attacker was later found dead.

The local public broadcaster, Hessischer Rundfunk, said a person opened fire at a hookah bar in the center of the city, killing three people, then drove to a hookah bar in another neighborhood, shooting and killing five people there. Several people were wounded at each location, the broadcaster said.

The police found the suspected attacker dead at his home in Hanau on Thursday, along with the body of another person. There was no immediate information about a motive for the shootings.

From the scene: Video and images from Hanau, a city of 95,000 about 10 miles east of Frankfurt, showed darkened city streets cordoned off with red-and-white tape while police officers gathered in the background. Several ambulances, their emergency lights flashing, lined the streets.

The most brutal Democratic debate so far

Six Democratic presidential candidates scorched one another without letup in a crucial debate Wednesday night in Las Vegas.

The unrelenting attacks reflected the urgency of the moment: Bernie Sanders has been gaining strength, and those hoping to slow his candidacy are increasingly crowded out by Michael Bloomberg and his unprecedented $400 million campaign spending spree.

Recap: Elizabeth Warren landed the most telling blows against Mr. Bloomberg. “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,” Ms. Warren said. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.” Here’s a fuller look at the sparring.

If you have 12 minutes, this is worth it

The fight for Libya

In a country where warlords and militias battle for control, Islamist militants hide in the desert and migrants pack the Mediterranean coast, a 76-year-old commander, Khalifa Hifter, says he can resolve the turmoil. In his bid for national control, his forces have been attacking Tripoli, the capital, for 10 months.

Our correspondent and photographer were able to make a rare visit to his eastern stronghold, Benghazi. What “the Marshal” has created there, their report shows, is not the secular stability he promises, but “an unwieldy authoritarianism that in many ways is both more puritanical and more lawless” than that of Libya’s last dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Here’s what else is happening

Europe and tech: The European Union outlined a plan to restore what officials called “technological sovereignty,” hoping to strengthen its digital economy amid concerns that the region is overly dependent on foreign companies like Apple and Huawei.

Methane research: Fossil fuel emissions from human activity have been underestimated by 25 to 40 percent, researchers reported in the journal Nature. The findings add urgency to the need to rein in emissions from the fossil fuel industry, which routinely leaks or releases methane into the air.

Boeing: Lawmakers in Washington State introduced legislation that would eliminate tax breaks for the plane maker, a strategic move to protect Boeing from retaliatory E.U. tariffs.

Snapshot: Above, a fan waved a cutout of the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, one of 11 white-collar criminals who received clemency from President Trump, as he greeted well-wishers outside his home in Chicago on Wednesday. Our reporting shows that Mr. Trump’s pardons and commutations were driven by friendship, fame, personal empathy and a shared sense of persecution.

What we’re listening to: “Public Official A,” a podcast from WBEZ last year about Mr. Blagojevich. “This is a Robert Caro-like dissection of political corruption in the U.S., and of Rod Blagojevich, a political star who turned into a black hole,” says Adeel Hassan, on our National desk. “It still resonates.”

Now, a break from the news

Cook: A squeeze of lime brightens one-pot braised chicken with coconut milk, tomato and ginger.

Watch: In the BBC hit “This Country,” the siblings Daisy May and Charlie Cooper find comedy and pathos in rural British life. They spoke to our reporter as they prepared Season 3 of the mockumentary, which debuted this week.

Smarter Living: Our “Scam or Not” feature looks at whether coffee is good for you. (Spoiler: It can be. Yay!)

And now for the Back Story on …

The Renegade

A new dance called the Renegade is suddenly everywhere, from teenagers’ phone screens to the N.B.A. All-Star Game. Shira Ovide, a technology reporter, chatted with Taylor Lorenz, a Styles reporter, about a new generation of apps that helped the dance go viral, and how its 14-year-old creator, Jalaiah Harmon, finally found fame.

Taylor: I heard about Jalaiah Harmon from a friend in the Dubsmash community right around Christmas. People had cited her Instagram post, and it was clear she had created the dance.

No one online knew her full name or identity, and it took weeks to hunt her and her family down and get in touch with her mother directly. Her mom didn’t even fully realize what Jalaiah had created until I called her at work.

Shira: How would you explain these dance performance apps like Dubsmash to an alien new to our planet? (Or, say, a writer whose musical tastes are stuck in early-2000s ska bands?)

Taylor: Apps like Dubsmash, TikTok and Funimate let you post videos set to music or with special effects. Dance challenges, short 15-second pieces of choreography, are very popular on these apps.

Shira: How do Jalaiah and her family feel now about her very online kind of fame?

Taylor: They’re very excited and overwhelmed! Jalaiah was in Chicago this weekend to perform at halftime at the N.B.A. All-Star Game. She got to meet and collaborate with Charli D’Amelio, a TikTok star who helped popularize the dance. Jalaiah and Charli hit it off immediately. Kim Kardashian posted a video of Jalaiah doing the dance to Instagram. It’s been a whirlwind!

Shira: Taylor, can you do the Renegade? Can you show us?

Taylor: I’m so bad at the Renegade! I’m in my 30s and so I don’t think my joints can move like that anymore. For anyone interested, Jalaiah posted a slow-motion tutorial on Instagram.

(This conversation has been edited and originally appeared in “Wait…,” a Times newsletter about how technology and celebrity are changing our lives.)

That’s it for this briefing. See you next time.

— Andrea

Thank you To Mark Josephson and Eleanor Stanford for the break from the news. You can reach the team at [email protected].

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On Feb. 19, the former CEO of Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, gave an interview on the Youtube show “What Bitcoin Did”. In episode 76, Karpeles discussed the platform’s insolvency, Coinlab’s monstrous claim for $16 billion, and Brock Pierce’s attempt to revive the defunct exchange.

Also read: Mt Gox Restitution Process Frozen Due to One Man’s $16B Claim

Karpeles Discusses Two Important Subjects: Coinlab and the Gox Rising Plan

Mark Karpeles is well known for his role as the CEO of Mt. Gox before the trading platform was hacked and collapsed into bankruptcy. Over the last few years, Karpeles has been through a lot dealing with the bankruptcy proceedings and his own trial where he’s been accused of embezzlement. However, at the beginning of his latest interview, Karpeles emphasized that he wanted to discuss two very important subjects during the filming.

“Considering the situation with the Mt. Gox bankruptcy there are two things I want to make sure are known. One is about Brock Pierce and these claims … or rather what he’s trying to do with Mt. Gox, which I’m not sure of. And the other thing I want people to know about is the Coinlab claim,” Karpeles said during his opening statements.

The former CEO of Mt. Gox detailed that the deal between Mt. Gox and Coinlab never came to fruition because Coinlab failed to meet the contract’s requirements. Karpeles says that the deal between Mt. Gox and Sunlot Holdings is also nonbinding because it failed to meet the approval of the Tokyo court in 45 days.

Karpeles remarks that the last few years have been “very busy” since the initial bankruptcy started on Feb. 28, 2014. From there he started working with the court trustee, but in 2015 Karpeles detailed that the Japanese police thought Mt. Gox was an “inside job” and they arrested him. The former Mt. Gox CEO also said that U.S. law enforcement has been involved with Mt. Gox case, specifically the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was “the main entity.” Karpeles says he spent 11 and ½ months in detention and during that time he had no contact with the outside world. He remarked on how he followed some of the news surrounding what was happening with the bankruptcy proceedings from inside jail, but couldn’t do anything until he was released on July 14, 2016.

A few weeks later the alleged Btc-e operator Alexander Vinnik was arrested in Greece. At the time Karpeles says he was personally investigating the missing 600,000 Mt. Gox bitcoins. Karpeles believes Vinnik’s arrest is a step in the right direction toward finding them. When the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed in the fall of 2017 there was an issue with the bankruptcy as Mt. Gox had more asset value than liabilities. But by 2018, after the price crashed, “things didn’t look so good” Karpeles noted, but everything was starting to look better when the case entered civil rehabilitation. Karpeles further emphasized that after things were somewhat solved through the transformation of the civil rehabilitation, there was “no surplus” by then.

Coinlab’s Compliance Struggle Clearly Violated the US Contract With Mt. Gox

Karpeles then discussed how Mt. Gox made the initial deal with Coinlab but explained the agreement required Coinlab to meet the U.S. license requirements. According to Karpeles, the company found out Coinlab couldn’t get compliance to run Mt. Gox operations in the U.S. and the deal faltered. He said Mt. Gox representatives tried to contact Coinlab but the business did not respond to requests about the situation. Karpeles said Mt. Gox then asked Coinlab for a timeline on how they would comply with getting U.S. licensing and a few months later they filed a lawsuit against Mt. Gox. Because Coinlab couldn’t get a license “it was a clear violation of the contract and a huge risk for Mt. Gox,” the former CEO explained.

Karpeles further discussed a few of the so-called mining operations Coinlab claimed to operate at the time, and stated:

I don’t think Coinlab ever had a running business, ever.

Karpeles then detailed how Coinlab filed the firm’s initial bankruptcy claim with the trustee which was subsequently rejected. He also explained in detail on how Coinlab filed the claim again during the civil rehabilitation and this time asked the court’s trustee for a whopping $16 billion.

Coinlab has made a claim for $16 billion.

Karpeles Insists the Sunlot Deal Is Not Binding in the Eyes of the Courts

The interview then moved on to the Brock Pierce-backed Gox Rising plan and Karpeles stated that there was no binding agreement between Pierce and Karpeles over his Mt. Gox shares. Pierce disagrees and gave his opinion on the same Youtube show “What Bitcoin Did” episode 79. Furthermore, the episode before Pierce’s appearance involves a discussion with Kim Nilsson, the author of the report Cracking Mt. Gox. Karpeles described the initial Sunlot deal with Brock Pierce as nothing more than written intentions that fizzled into nothing binding after the idea failed to meet the approval of the Tokyo district court.

“We actually don’t have an agreement with Brock,” Karpeles highlighted during the discussion.

Brock Pierce believes he owns Karpeles’ portion of Mt Gox and has plans to revive the defunct exchange in order to pay back victims.

Karpeles says Pierce [Sunlot Holdings] approached Mt. Gox in late 2013 and talked about expanding the company in China and explained he could make the exchange work over there. When Mt. Gox went into bankruptcy proceedings, Karpeles says Pierce approached the company again and offered to take over the bankruptcy process and give the defunct exchange a “good ending.” The first step was to try to buy all of the Mt. Gox shares, but Karpeles said it also required the approval of the Tokyo district court. According to Karpeles, the deal between Pierce’s company Sunlot and Mt. Gox never really moved past the letter of intent (LOI) stage and ultimately failed to meet the approval of the Tokyo district court. The LOI agreement’s requirements had to be settled within 45 days on condition of approval by the court, but a settled agreement never came to fruition within that time span.

Karpeles then responded to the recent statements Pierce had made detailing that he doesn’t want to see any surplus money given to Karpeles from the civil rehabilitation proceeds. He said Pierce was very nice to him at first and wanted to revive Mt. Gox from the ashes and even told Karpeles he could take care of the Coinlab claim. However, a few weeks later Karpeles read an article which described Pierce painting Karpeles as the bad guy. Immediately it became clear to Karpeles that Pierce was making unfactual claims about owning his share of Mt. Gox. He said “he had to respond on Twitter” to tell the public that it was not true and the Sunlot deal between Mt. Gox never moved past the LOI stage. A second letter was sent to Pierce rescinding the first LOI and Karpeles cited that the Tokyo court did not approve the deal. This would make the agreement null and void and completely nonbinding. Karpeles further remarked that he didn’t see how Pierce would make the Gox Rising deal work other than using an initial coin offering (ICO).

The second letter that was sent to Pierce rescinding the first LOI agreement. This was signed by Karpeles in March 2014 but Pierce did not sign this letter.

Brock Pierce Disagrees With Karpeles’ Analysis

Pierce appeared a few days earlier on the Keiser Report on Feb. 16 with host Max Keiser and explained he didn’t like Karpeles. “The only reason Mark Karpeles should care about who owns Mt. Gox is because he cares who potentially is the beneficiary of that potential surplus,” Pierce explained. Pierce believes Karpeles looks to gain $700 million from the bankruptcy and told his Twitter followers that the former Mt. Gox CEO appears “to be the man behind the curtain controlling the bankruptcy process.” “Pretending to be a saint all the while hoping the Tibanne trustee will score you a big payout,” Pierce told Karpeles on social media.

What do you think about Mark Karpeles’ statements about Coinlab and Brock Pierce? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Scribd, What Bitcoin Did episode 78, Youtube, Goxxdoxx, and Pixabay.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH, and other coins, on our market charts at Satoshi’s Pulse, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

Tags in this story

Bankruptcy, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Core, Brock Pierce, BTC, civil rehabilitation, claims, Coinlab claim, creditors, Empty Gox, GOX Rising, ICO, Letter of Intent, LOI, Mark Karpeles, Mt Gox, Mt Gox Claims, Mt. Gox shares, N-Featured, Peter Vessenes, Sunlot Holdings, Tokyo Court, Trustee, Twitter

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open source code, and decentralized applications. Redman has written thousands of articles for news.Bitcoin.com about the disruptive protocols emerging today.

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