#you may still control them but they’re no longer in that state of compliance

[vesper-the-great]

I think the evacuation route is neat, actually

… this is how it went, right?

#spoilers for TS!underswap evacuation route ahead #okay no but seriously #I love the fact chars starts off with fake acts.. #but as the fight progresses #they’re no longer autonomous #a robot you lead anymore #you may still control them but they’re no longer in that state of compliance #they have hope #and I love that chara learns to love things again #assuming you didn’t just continuously attacks sans in the fight lol #but sans too.. he’s just confused #like what are your motives? why suddenly stop you know #love that sans acknowledges that crossbones isnt the person to talk to chara #I need to get my thoughts organized I swear #doodles #ts!underswap #Ts!us sans #Ts!us chara #god damn my sans looks so different from a month ago ;-;

[adzapiers]

Busting the Top 5 Cookie Consent Myths 

There can be a lot of confusion surrounding cookie consent and what it entails. That’s because there are so many laws, both new and old that vary by geolocation.  

For instance, there’s the General Data Privacy Act (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA), and many more.  

What’s even more confusing is that many of these laws are new or changing. Especially as 2023 begins, and even more states and countries are following suit in implementing regulations.  

With so much information flying around, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing common myths about cookie consent. Don’t worry – we’re here to help! It’s time to roll up our sleeves, pull out our data privacy boxing gloves and bust some myths. Are you ready? 

Myth #1: My business only has to follow cookie consent laws where it’s located.  

Myth busted! If you collect or handle consumer data online, your business must follow laws from where your users are accessing the site.  

For instance, one example of cookie consent is if your business is located in Idaho, but you have customers in the EU, you must follow the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) rules. 

In the age of digital consumerism, it’s not possible to stop users from accessing your site, no matter where they reside. Cookie consent laws in the US may be different than in other regions. That’s why it’s so important to be compliant with local, national and global laws.  

Myth #2: Getting rid of third-party cookies will ruin my marketing strategy.  

Not a chance, buddy. In fact, your marketing strategy can be even stronger when you give your users a choice about whether or not to opt-in or opt-out of third-party cookies. Did you know that third-party cookies can be used, sold, and re-sold without you or your users’ knowledge?  

Once that data has been shared, it can go anywhere – and that’s a very scary thought for your users. When they have more control and information, they’re more likely to share selectively with companies they’re truly passionate about. We want your company to be one of those.  

A marketing strategy built on the idea of first-party or session cookies is a respectful way to approach data privacy and stay compliant without compromising your users’ data. It’ll still give you plenty of insights into what your users want and need, so you can tailor products and services to them individually.  

Myth #3: A cookie banner will ruin the customer experience on my website.  

In the past, cookie consent banners were clunky and blocked a lot of text. Oftentimes, they weren’t optimized for mobile, and their policies were unclear. Even now, some cookie banners that haven’t been updated still have the same propensity for those flaws.  

But, good news! It doesn’t have to be that way. Cookie banners are becoming more intuitive. They no longer have to obstruct your page or shut users out of viewing content. They can be customized to seamlessly blend with the design of your website. Users will have the luxury of choice and your business will be in compliance and stay out of trouble with the law.  

Myth #4: If customers don’t use the cookie banner, my business can collect all of the cookies. 

No! That’s simply not true. You can’t guarantee that a user will interact with your cookie banner, but you can take measures to ensure that your business is still in compliance. That’s where automated cookie blocking comes in.  

Automated cookie blocking means that if a user does not interact with your cookie banner, all but essential cookies will be blocked until the user accepts or declines cookies.  

Some of the reasons why people choose not to interact with a cookie banner might be:  

The Privacy Policy is too long or confusing 

They’re visiting the site quickly and don’t want to set preferences 

The cookie banner isn’t visible enough and/or has confusing CTAs 

Making a cookie banner an integral part of your site experience comes down to good UX, design, and common sense. The more your customers know, and the simpler a cookie banner is to understand, the more likely they are to use it.  

Myth #5: Declining all cookies will block access to my website.   

Just like accepting all cookies doesn’t give users special privileges on your website, declining all cookies shouldn’t block them from browsing. In fact, it’s against the law to block users from accessing your site simply because they declined cookies. Yes, their experience will be less personalized – but that’s their choice!  

Remember, obtaining consent from a clear, easy-to-read cookie banner is a fantastic way to earn customer trust and stay within the law.  

Final take:  

There are a lot of myths surrounding cookie consent, but by educating yourself about them, you can take advantage of the many ways that data privacy laws around the world can benefit your users, and your business.  

At Adzapier, we offer a robust cookie management solution that will give you all the tools you need to stay within compliance, both locally and globally, and respect your end users’ privacy.  

Schedule a free demo with one of our privacy experts today to see just how easy it is! Then, sign up for a 14-day free trial.  

Schedule a demo  

#cookie consent examples #cookie consent by country #cookie consent in the us #cookie consent

[scripttorture]

You mention in posts how torture doesn’t make people obedient and usually makes them spiteful (which obviously makes sense), but isn’t it realistic for someone to comply out of fear rather than loyalty? Whether that was giving up information or obeying orders or something else entirely. I imagine it depends on the person, and they would probably still be willing to turn on their torturers if given the chance, but would it be possible for them to obey orders in hopes of avoiding more pain?

This is a much more nuanced and complicated topic then we’re taught to assume.

 When it comes to giving up information it’s pretty clear cut. No, torture can’t lead to accurate information for a lot of interconnected reasons. I have about six separate masterposts covering the reasons for this.

 One of those is the antagonism torture produces. Another is the memory problems torture causes. Another is the effect that the use of torture has on organisations and the chain of command. Another is the effect torture has on torturers.

 Torture drastically increases the chances of memory loss and it also increases the chances of inaccurate memories. So not only is a torture victim less likely to talk, they’re more likely to be wrong if they do talk.

 But the effects on victims aren’t the main reason torture doesn’t work as a way of getting information. You’re assuming that torturers have access to people who have information.

 The reality is that torture destroys an organisation’s ability to gather accurate information. Most information comes from volunteers: when torture comes into play less people volunteer information. This means that an organisation which tortures is more likely to be questioning someone who knows nothing. That person is then abused until they start making things up.

 Because there’s less access to volunteered information and because humans are very bad at telling when someone is lying, a lot of these made up stories are believed. And this then effects who else the organisation arrests and tortures. This creates a sort of spiral, with lies leading to more lies.

 Additionally the torturers themselves make things worse. There’s less quality research on them, but the research and anecdotal accounts create a pretty clear picture of their behaviour. They undermine the chain of command, they lose the skills the originally had as they turn to torture, they’re aggressive, incredibly competitive and they have a… fracturing effect on their organisation.

 Basically they’re incredibly difficult to work with and totally convinced of their own importance. And this effects their colleagues. It totally divides organisations. The worst case I’ve read about involved members of the same organisation killing each other over access to prisoners.

 That’s a short run through of the main factors. Torture, in the legally defined sense, means all of these factors are in play. Plus a few more I’ve omitted to keep this shorter.

 With all of that together you just can’t get accurate information.

 If you want longer posts I’ve made on the subject I suggest looking for the ‘torture doesn’t work’ tag and the ‘torture as interrogation’ tag. You can also read the masterposts. If you want a much more in depth look at why torture consistently fails as a way of getting information I recommend O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work and Rejali’s Torture and Democracy.

 O’Mara is a neuroscientist and goes through the effects torture has on the brain in a way that’s accessible, explaining the damage torture causes and how that destroys the evidence torturers claim to be seeking. Rejali’s book is a breeze block but it’s really a must, it is the textbook on torture in a broad sense. He ties together information from across the globe creating a broader picture of what torture does, not just to victims but to societies.

 The question of compliance under threat and pain… is more complicated.

 People can be forced to do some things. That much is obvious from a brief glance at human history and things like slavery. But it’s important to listen to what people in these scenarios say.

 And my opinion, based on what I’ve read, is that what these people say doesn’t support the idea that humans will easily obey instructions when they’re hurt or threatened. I think instead these people are making hard headed, rational choices in absolutely awful situations. I think when we don’t have these experiences of torture or slavery, it’s easy to look at the surface of the situation and assume that pain alone assures obedience. I think that happens because it’s hard for use to understand the rationale when we don’t have that lived experience.

 Let me give some examples. So it probably goes without saying that slavery goes hand in hand with physical abuse. One of the major researchers on slavery, whose data I quote pretty regularly, assumes throughout his writings that pain is the deciding factor which ‘makes’ people obey.

 But he also describes a couple of very obvious consistent patterns in the ways slavers behave. Slavers almost universally do the following things as well as using physical abuse:

Separate enslaved people from their community

Bar enslaved people from other forms of support

Make enslaved people financially/materially reliant on the slavers

Tell enslaved people that going to the police/authorities will lead to the enslaved person being arrested

Try to convince enslaved people that they will be better off if they comply, usually by framing it as a debt to be worked off with promises of riches after a period of time

 Now here’s the thing: we know from studies on cults and studies on ICURE techniques that a lot of these strategies will result in obedience when there is no violence or physical abuse.

 Given that I don’t think we can assume that violence is the deciding factor. In fact I think the evidence we have from forced confessions under torture suggests the violence may lead to less obedience and a lower ‘success’ rate then a set up that used emotional abuse or other exploitative techniques without violence.

 We have two sources of historical data that are used for statistical studies on forced confessions. One is from historical France. We think that this data set only involved torture to force a confession; no other method of coercion just violence. The rate of forced confessions varied a little in different areas but over all it’s about 10%. The second data set is from the ‘London Cage’ a British prison during the second world war. Here we know that torture was combined with blackmail, bribery and other kinds of coercion. The rate of forced confessions there was about 30%.

 And while this is just two studies, while the data is lacking… That is one hell of a jump.

 Let’s circle back to ICURE. ICURE stands for Isolation, Control information, create Uncertainty, Repetition and Emotive responses. It’s a set of techniques which can, sometimes, change someone’s beliefs when it’s applied consistently over a long time.

 Notice the effort slavers put in to isolating their victims. Notice that the behaviour pattern I’m describing means the slavers are creating uncertainty over seeking help and repeating those messages as well as messages that the victims will be better off if they just go along with it.

 Slavers will generally also try to control the information their victims have access to, taking phones and blocking access to news sources and other resources. Now a lot of slavers will transport their victims to other states or countries putting a language barrier in place. They sometimes also use emotive responses in attempts to persuade victims to comply.

 I’ve read multiple accounts where survivors of modern slavery described slavers telling them that the money they were making was being sent to the victim’s family and without it the family would not survive. (Sometimes the slavers do send small amounts to the families of their victims, sometimes they pocket everything.) I’ve also read accounts where gangs of slavers used religion and oaths taken in a religious setting to persuade their victims they’d be punished by God for not complying.

 Even with all of this, all these techniques we know can sometimes ‘work’- lots of people refuse. Lots of people disobey. Lots of people escape. Lots of people actively sabotage the operations the slavers put together.

 And if you look at that same history of slavery, that shows us people can sometimes be forced to work, you’ll see that this has always been true.

 We have records of historic enslaved people attacking slavers, forming organised militias, forming parallel societies, sacking towns, taking over an entire Caribbean island and beating off four European armies in the process. We also have records of smaller acts. Sabotage, worship of banned deities, speaking banned languages, destruction of property, aiding in the escape of others.

 What I’m saying is: this isn’t black and white. The evidence, modern and historical does not paint a clear picture of violence leading to obedience.

 Instead I believe that it shows humans are resilient, stubborn, adaptable creatures. People can survive all kinds of horrible situations. It is more accurate, more human, to assume that people make rational choices.

 Sometimes those choices involve short term compliance while looking for a better option or a way out. But we tend to hear less stories about the people who completely refuse to comply. We tend to treat that as an impossible fiction when it is a recorded historical and modern reality.

 Bringing this back to writing as a general rule the more complicated the act the less likely you can force someone to do it. Because the more complicated it is the more opportunities they’ll have to sabotage it or use it against their abuser.

 I recommend reading up on the history of Haiti pet. Then Brazil via Palmares.

 I’ll end this by bringing it back to those statistics on forced confessions in historical France. Imagine the conditions with me for a moment. Unsanitary, cramped cells. Dehydration, starvation and disease. Plus the kinds of scarring torture that are conjured up in the minds of most Western people when the word ‘torture’ comes up; thumb screws, leg irons that tighten until the bone snaps, whips.

 Picture it. Try to imagine the pain those people went through.

 And remember that 90% of them did not comply long enough to sign their name.

Available on Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw slavery #tw racism #torture apologia #torture does not work #torture as interrogation #ways torture fails #resistance to torture #resistance to slavery #slavery #historical slavery #forced confessions #ICURE #coercion #compliance under threat #compliance under torture #writing victims #writing slavery #writing torture #writing responsibly

[greenwaterskeeter]

I took fairly complete notes from an informational session held by local organizers and lawyers with relevant experience from the National Lawyers’ Guild. I learned a lot! At the beginning, it also includes some notes on how to approach going to actions regardless of outcome. Some portion of the information is Chicago-specific, but not all, and most of it translates within the US, I think. It’s at the link above, and also under the read more:

[missed first 5 minutes]

At Actions:

-wear nondescript, practical clothes. pants that allow motion: close to skin so as not to get caught. Jeans are better than sweats. Shorts are great, except that they don't protect you from sprayed chemicals. Wear pants that stay on, unless leaving them behind is something you're willing to do in a pinch (a strategy that Has Worked). Try not to have holes in clothes (they get caught on things). no jewelry, layer up. Ok to wear belts, although [presenter] doesn't like to need to wear one. Best to have as little as possible on you in case of arrest.

-if you have long hair, put it up out of your face. Hats are good: they can be taken off to change your identity if need be. Never ever wear sandals to an action. They will be lost and either way your feet are vulnerable. Wear shoes you're able to run in: shoes that tie. Broken-in tennis shoes are good. Boots, especially steel-toe boots, are very good, but only wear them to actions if you're used to wearing them (and running in them).

-Helmet: for batons and thrown objects. Bike helmets have limited usefulness bc they only take one hit. Skateboarding and skiing helmets take multiple hits. Construction helmets can work ok but don't stay on well usually. Spin is giving away helmets right now, all you have to pay is shipping.

-always bring goggles: not swimming goggles, not construction glasses. Goggles that 1. seal to keep out gases and 2. can handle high impact. Don't wear contacts either, and try to bring glasses that can break and not leave you without a pair.

-Gloves: go a size down from normal so they fit snugly. Welder's gloves are good for protection, including for picking up tear gas canisters. Any gloves are good for keeping your fingerprints to yourself.

-Multitools are useful, you never know when you'll need it. Umbrellas can be useful too.

-Backpack contains: snacks, water bottle with nozzle for washing out tear gas, gauze and bandaids, little towel (like a tea towel), extra N95 masks/respirators (which can be found at hardware stores and paint stores-- it's hard to keep moving when you can't breathe!), anything else you want.

-Tell people before actions that you're going, and make sure someone else at the action knows your full legal name and birthday so you can be gotten out more quickly in case of arrest

Social media: don't post videos or photos of yourself or others at actions, especially ones in which people are identifiable. This amounts to snitching. Don't wear logos or other identifiable clothing (see Etsy arrest and conviction). Also, don't post pictures of yourself or others NOT at actions but showing off stuff taken from cops etc.

-National Lawyers' Guild > National Bar Association

If Arrested (in Chicago):

The result of being stopped by police is only likely to result in a ticket and immediate release at actions organized with the input and approval of police: scripted demonstrations. At other actions, if they arrest you, they take you into custody and then to the station. The point is to intimidate you and your comrades. There are things you can control about the situation.

What you should do depends on what your goal is. If you want to get out asap, that's one track. If you want to make a point of being arrested, that's a different track.

Sometimes they use metal and sometimes they use plastic cuffs.

When you get to the station they'll take your address, name, and fingerprints-- these are the only demands you should grant. They are not covered by your constitutional right to refuse to answer (that only covers information that could be used as evidence to incriminate you, not information used to identify you). Speaking of: they will not read your Miranda rights right away, if at all. They only are supposed to do that right before asking incriminating questions.

Being arrested typically leads to lots of waiting. People who have been arrested more times usually get out quicker (their fingerprints are already in the system, and they can check for warrants easily). This is largely what they are making you wait for: checking to see how high to set your bond based on any warrants you may have.

They will put you in a cell and not give you food or medicine, typically. If you get food it will not be tasty, so eat right before the action and bring food with you.

If they've arrested a bunch of people at once, it might be 12-14 hours before you're released.

I-bond: they release you without you having to pay money for it. The bond consists of a promise to attend court later. The bond slip may not be legible (it should have the court date, place, and maybe the charge on it), but don't worry about that. It can be figured out.

D-bond: They make you pay to leave as a punitive measure. Still trying to intimidate you. The Chicago Bond Fund has covered all such bonds resulting from arrests at actions so far.

Don't count on getting a phone call, especially in case of mass arrest. If you get it, call a trusted person or the National Lawyers Guild, who can take care of getting you out. Tell whoever you call: where you are, if there is anyone with you who is injured, names of any other people you know who have been arrested.

Even though they won't offer it, if you need medical care, request it. They might tell you getting treated will make releasing you take longer or some other reason you shouldn't get treated: they are probably lying, and in any case, it's worth it to A. get the care you need, B. get it on record that they hurt you, and/or C. get it on record how long they put you off/that they refused to get you care. These records can be used in civil cases.

When you're released, they give you your stuff back that they confiscated, unless they're keeping it as evidence in charges (cellphone, shoelaces, belt. They take the laces and belt in an attempt to prevent suicide)

Would not advise taking cellphone to demonstration. Take a burner phone if you must. If you're arrested, the police will definitely take it and will try to get into it. They technically need a warrant to do that, and they may get one. In general, don't bring anything you'd be sad to lose or can't replace.

Charges: most common ones put on protestors are misdemeanors. The difference between a misdemeanor and a felony is that the maximum sentence on a misdemeanor is 364 days, and the minimum sentence on a felony is 365 days. It's very unusual as of now for a protestor to actually go to jail. The common misdemeanors applied to protestors are disorderly conduct, mob action, and destruction of property. They require different kinds of evidence but result in the same punishment. Earlier this year they charged more people with disorderly conduct, but the sentences weren't harsh enough/ too many people's charges were dismissed, so now they're charging people with mob action, since "mob" has a violent connotation.

Felonies: include theft, criminal damage to property, aggravated battery, resisting arrest. What defines felony theft and felony property damage is how much money is "lost" (more than $300 for a felony. Might have been increased to $500 or $800 recently). No matter what you do to a cop, if they are injured at all or perceive or can suggest that you tried to hurt them, that will be aggravated battery. Resisting arrest is rarely made a felony but it can be if the cop is particularly offended.

Resisting arrest carries more weight than other misdemeanors because police take everything personally. The punishment is harsher than for other misdemeanors. Technically the arrest has to be legal for resistance to count as resisting arrest. In practice, they will not respect any refusal to be arrested. The best thing to hope for if they do arrest you while you're resisting is that you'll be declared innocent later due to unlawful arrest. Resisting arrest can be a lot of things: jerking away, refusing to stand up to be arrested, taking too long to stand up... They can definitely charge you with resisting when you're not resisting. If you are resisting (by the legal definition), you'll know you are because you'll be doing it on purpose. If they order you to move and then push you and you fall over, that can't lawfully be considered resisting, but it has.

Grand juries: have been called for actions around [George] Floyd. Whatever they may once have been, they are now used to repress and that's about it. The city can't call one, but the feds and state can. Technically, must be composed of fellow citizens called to evaluate evidence for felony charges. In practice, the people they put together listen to the state's attorney, who tells them what to do. If you're subpoenaed to a grand jury, they're not trying to get you personally (or at least not only trying to get you personally), they're after information. They want you to give people up. Police want to know who's organizing. Compliance is snitching. No matter how clever you are, trying to act compliant but keep information back, if you answer at all they will get more information out of you than you want them to have.

If you do comply, they'll get what they can out of you. If you refuse, they can charge you with contempt and imprison you up to the length of the grand jury or 18 months (or until you snitch). They can charge you with either civil or criminal contempt.

Information security: Police put a lot of effort into tracking data. They also make attempts to infiltrate and get informants. Sensitive information can't be said over the phone or texted, not even on Signal. Meet in person to plan.

Nothing you say to police will help. They are only looking for evidence against you, and will do everything they can to use what you say as evidence. There have been many cases of people thinking they can explain and show that they're innocent, only to have their own words used as the evidence that puts them in prison.

When they confiscate your things, police can also confiscate any protective gear (and of course weapons) you have as evidence that you came to start a fight. (they did this at Standing Rock).

When police give you an order to leave, they lawfully must 1. give an order to disperse 2. that everyone can hear and then 3. wait a reasonable amount of time for you to follow the order. If you don't have the ability to leave, they legally cannot arrest you. This doesn't mean they won't.

While filing a complaint against police with COPA is an option that gives lawyers evidence they can use in your favor, there are problems. 1. it will ensure that your charges won't be dropped, because police take these claims personally and 2. COPA requires people who file complaints to come and give evidence under oath (which they will make you do under unfavorable conditions and mess you up). Don't file a complaint with COPA in criminal cases, they will use it against you. Don't do it for civil cases except for very specific circumstances, since they will try to use it against you there too.

If you are not a citizen / do not have a green card, being arrested can be a longer-term problem even if they don't charge you. There are ways around it (ask an immigration attorney).

If you have a previous misdemeanor or arrest, this will not increase your chances of being arrested again, since they almost certainly won't recognize you. It won't increase your chances of being charged again either, since they decide whether or not to charge you before they look up your record. However, once they do look up your record, it may increase the chances of them deciding to increase your charge from civil to criminal.

Typically, they will put more charges on you the more you do to get away (if you are not successful or they get your identity). Any struggling will likely be construed as "aggravated battery on a police officer" (a felony). Attempts at dearrest, when not successful, are charged as aggravated battery on a police officer. For this reason, practice dearresting ahead of time, run, drill, drill, drill.

What you bring can be seized as evidence, yes, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't bring it. The point of all this is that you can go into it with your eyes open, making informed choices. Practical advice and legal advice do not always agree.

Dearrests: person initially being arrested may be charged extra if the dearrest is unsuccessful or if their identity is known/found out. Police will definitely charge them if possible, as they are easily offended.

Court: don't worry about finding or paying for representation. The National Lawyers' Guild has plenty of volunteer attorneys working pro bono representing activists. You can talk to an attorney and go over your options over zoom before court. Court is also on zoom these days. Lots of waiting involved in this. One person is known to have mown their lawn while in court over zoom.

You can refuse an attorney to go to trial; there is empowerment in this option. May be most prudent to do this only if you've been to court several times.

You can talk to the corporation [illegible] (who covers city law) or the state's attorney (covers state law) and see whether they're going ahead with your case. 1/2 of cases involving protestors have been thrown out so far. If they throw it out, there's nothing else you need to do to prevent being convicted.

You can request discovery (access to evidence) which will tell you how likely you are to win. It will also tell you how bad police records are. Another thing that can make you more likely to win is if a different cop arrested you than wrote the report about it.

There's no one right answer to how to approach this, whether to prioritize getting it over with or making a point. That depends on your goals. If you're going for quick, that will usually involve a plea deal. They may assign you 3 months to a year of "supervision." This means that if you don't make trouble in that time (specifically, if you're not convicted of breaking the law in that time), they'll clear the present conviction from your record in 2 years.

State cases are supposed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Smaller cases can be decided by "a preponderance of evidence."

necessity defense- "I did it, but I felt that I needed to do it to prevent further harm or illegality from ocurring." This is a common defense for activists, and can be a good strategy.

Even if your case is thrown out, arrests stay on your record unless expunged. If your case is thrown out, if you undergo supervision, or if you are found not guilty, you can get the arrest expunged. It's something you have to do on your own initiative. Cabrini Green Legal Aid will help you do this for free. It's easy, it's a form you fill out, but processing can take a year or two (backlog).

If you're arrested during a protest, you can contact the National Lawyers' Guild as soon as you can, or have someone do it for you, and they'll help you get out. hotline [phone]

Before an action, if you're putting one together, you can contact the National Lawyers' Guild and they'll help with jail support (it helps to specify whether you expect arrest).

Don't use 1800 law rep 4 anymore

If you're arrested NOT at an action, the Cook County Public Defender hotline is 844-817-4448

They gave personal contact info for the people who presented all this information, but I'm not going to share that here. They were local organizers and lawyers from the National Lawyers' Guild (with experience defending activists and being arrested themselves).

#police #very information dense #not news to many of you i'm sure! #but super helpful for me #how to #resources #and i trust the organizer who hosted if that is helpful to you #i liked the lawyers but don't know them or anything #idk what to tag this to make sure people see it #blm #black lives matter #activism #?? would love suggestions for what to tag tbh

[mnetruinedmylife]

MJ3 Clones

Based upon a tumblr post that I can no longer find (the link is dead)

https://callmeawota.tumblr.com/post/85499142124/what-if-prison-hope-was-just-a-prison-full-of

What if in Majisuka Gakuen 3, Prison Hope is just a dumping ground for out-of-control government clones of the MG1-5 cast?

__________________________________________________________

The story begins the way it ends – in a dreary ramshackle pub sandwiched between two concrete buildings.

Two people sit on opposite sides of the tattered booth couches, a middle aged man with peppered hair in a grey suit, and a young woman with in bob haircut and a pair of wiry spectacles. The man appears friendly, fingers strumming on the splintered wooden tables, sipping on piss-poor beer in a questionably murky mug, while the woman eyes the stack of papers in front of her dubiously.

“That’s it?” she asks, skimming through the sheet in front of her, “You’ll give me thirty million yen for some skin and blood samples?”

“That’s all there is to it Maeda-san,” the man replies smoothly, “Just sign the contract and we’ll have a team come to collect the samples at your convenience, and the money will be deposited in your account on that very day.”

Now Maeda Atsuko may be a former yankee-delinquent, and she might not have been the most studious student in her schooling career, but she definitely isn’t stupid. There has got to be more to this than what they’re telling her, and that’s not even counting what they could possibly be planning to do with her DNA samples. News articles about scientific research looking at what caused all of the random abilities that started popping up in people about thirty or so years ago flash through her mind. Abilities like Black’s super speed, Gekikara’s endurance and Torigoya’s psychic hypnosis.

Atsuko never thought she had an ability, because in her mind, super strength has always been associated with lifting trucks and buildings, and she definitely cannot do that. Then that news article came out about some big scandal where a medical company was found to be experimenting on people with abilities, trying to replicate them. In particular the story was focused on a girl who had augmented strength, nothing flashy like the movies and TV shows, just strong enough to have a weird discrepancy between her muscle-mass and the amount of power she could exert. The realisation hits Atsuko like a train – a girl her size probably shouldn’t be able to hit as hard, or get up after taking so many hits like she does. She cuts back on the cage fighting, and the bodyguard jobs after that. No need to be flashing ‘I’m a powered person!’ sign with neon lights over her head. Apparently that didn’t work out too well because there’s a supposed government agent sitting across from her trying to get her DNA samples.

“And what exactly are you going to do with the samples?”

“I’m afraid that’s classified Maeda-san. You needn’t worry yourself over trivialities like that. Rest assured that whatever happens won’t be your responsibility at all.”

Long story short, there isn’t a single good thing that can come from giving this shady (potentially non-government, because who is this cheap-beer-drinking guy think he’s fooling?) organisation her DNA.

But it’s not like she has much of a choice.

As it turns out, being arrested and charged for assault doesn’t do much for job prospects. Particularly when there’s been a colourful history of violence and delinquency before that. So no matter how hard she studied, Atsuko never quite managed to land that job as a nurse. Casual retail work, and odd cash-in-hand jobs barely manage to keep her afloat all these years, but now…a hand subconsciously ghosts down to her stomach…she’s not feeding one anymore.

The choice isn’t difficult to make.

________________________________________________________________

Atsuko assumes that they’re using her DNA to study and replicate abilities.

She’s dead wrong.

This company has decidedly bigger aspirations.

________________________________________________________________

Project Beginnings and Subject MA#071091 Alias: Atsuko| Parent DNA: Maeda Atsuko |

Time Stamp Nineteen Hundred Hours. Subject MA#071091 is a success.

“Congratulations everyone!”

Time Stamp Zero Eight Fifteen Hours. Subject MA#071091 is refusing to cooperate. Possible solutions:

a. immediate termination (not recommended, last resort only)

b. behavioural observation and adjustment (recommended, more funding required)

c. obedience training* see service dog manual for more details (recommendation pending)

d. memory implantation (theoretical only, much more funding required)

Time Stamp Zero Zero Zero Five Hours. Subject MA#071091 has escaped facility.

“This program is an abomination! Human cloning is illegal!”

Time Stamp Zero Zero Thirty-Nine Hours. Subject MA#071091 retrieved with mild damage. Losses include: five injured personnel, and two casualties.  

“Senator think of what we can do with a project like this! We could remove all personnel from the field, drop war casualties to zero. These girls are good-for-nothing delinquents, but they’ve shown they could do one thing: fight. So why not use that for the good of the country?”

Time Stamp Fifteen Twenty-Six. Petition to the senate is a success. Funding for project expansion acquired.

“There’s an eccentric millionaire willing to work with us. She owns a private prison on some remote mountain. It’d be the perfect place for that behavioural observation and adjustment facility we’ve been discussing.”

Time Stamp Seventeen Thirty-Three Hours. Memory Alteration Project is a success.

“We finally got our hands on those samples from that warehouse massacre a few years back. Begin working on all viable subjects.”

Time Stamp Zero Five Hundred Hours. Subject MA#071091 has escaped Prison Facility.

“Try adding sunshine and rainbows. Happy thoughts. Make it happy to be here.”

Time Stamp Ten Zero Fifty-Seven Hours. Subject MA#071091 retrieved with major damage. Losses include three injured personnel, and zero casualties.

“Get rid of the guns, we’ve been allocated a portion of the budget for Tasers. The clones are expensive, don’t damage them!”

Time Stamp Sixteen Thirty Hours. Non-fatal toxin-releasing braces are a success. Implementing security device on all subjects.

“According to the psychologists’ report the bracelets appear to be having a negative effect on the subjects’ overall morale.”

Time Stamp Thirteen Eighteen. Multiple riots in the last three days. Damages still to be calculated.

“It’s chaos out there sir. We had to activate nearly two dozen bracelets to stop them from killing each other. They just get violent when we throw them together for too long.”

Time Stamp Thirteen Forty-Two. Subject MA#071091 missing from head count. Last accounted for before the riots started.

“If they like fighting so much, give them an enemy to focus on.”

Time Stamp Twenty Hundred Hours. Subject MA#071091 retrieved with poison damage by subjects SM#110386, KY#150791, and OY#171088. Cannibal Initiative is a success.

“I want a tracker put on this one and someone get the psychologists in here now! It’s the tenth riot this week!”

Time Stamp Eleven Twenty-One. Teamwork Initiative implemented. All subjects divided into multiple teams to encourage cooperation and reduce rioting. Observations pending.

“Sir it’s that Maeda clone—

“—if you tell me it’s escaped again, so help me…”

“…uh…It’s escaped again.”

Time Stamp Zero One Hundred Hours. Subject MA#71091 terminated.

________________________________________________________________

Subject MJ#080397 Alias: Nobunaga | Parent DNA: Matsui Jurina [Center] |

Verdict: Great Success* | Sentience: Self-Aware | Status: Locked-down, constant visual monitoring required, termination pending|

Subject MJ#080397 was originally the most successful cloning experiment completed to date. The fighting prowess had been greatly improved compared to the original, and attitude adjustments were able to successfully stamp out all of the unwanted aspects of the original’s personality, such as arrogance and impatience. However, as time went by and re-evaluations have been completed, it’s revealed that the subject retains the original’s stubbornness and noble streak, and will not be cowed into compliance. The subject is supremely dangerous and must be kept separate from the general population to prevent it from organising the rest of the clones into a resistance.

The Mind-Wipe protocol has been deemed a failure, as the subject continues to be non-compliant even when confused and disorientated from the lack of memories, which exponentially quickens in its recall after each mind-wipe.  

*Note: Great Success was the initial verdict after the subject proved to be superior to original in combat, however the status was revoked after the subject’s repeated disobedience and failure to comply with orders.

_______________________________________________________

Subject KY#110296 Alias: Peace | Parent DNA: Kizaki Yuria [Magic]|

Verdict: Success | Sentience: Almost-Aware| Status: Closely monitored, bi-weekly check-in|

Subject KY#110296, self-named Peace, is one of the more successful clones created in the project. The original’s fighting prowess has been replicated successfully, reports do indicate that it may even be slightly improved, barring the preference for trickery, which seems to have been a trait nurtured by the original’s environment and upbringing. After several failures, it was discovered that the clone responds positively to parental encouragement. After negotiating with the contractor, several memories were implanted into Peace to create the illusion that she is the daughter of the prison warden. The results were an extreme success with exponential improvement in emotional, mental and physical states. 

Notes: Due to the subject’s psychological requirements, it needs to be kept partially aware under false pretenses of being the prison warden’s daughter. If the truth, or simply the falsehood of being the prison warden’s daughter is revealed, it may have detrimental affects on the clone’s effectiveness.

 ____________________________________________________________

Subject IA#031295 Alias: Annin | Parent DNA: Iriyama Anna [Yoga]|

Verdict: Great Success | Sentience: Semi-Aware | Status: Closely monitored, fortnightly check-in|

Subject IA#031295 has been deemed an extreme success. Its fighting prowess has been recorded as a vast improvement upon the originals. However, the special ability that the original possesses has not been able to be successfully replicated in any clone. Researchers speculate that Yoga’s so-called distraction ability was nothing more than exaggerated tales.

The subject is generally compliant and well behaved, however it has been noted to be asking certain questions in recent weeks. Close monitoring must be kept upon the subject to ensure that it does not become aware.

Notes: The subject has developed a sadistic streak, monitor to ensure that it does not become a liability.

 ________________________________________________________

Subject SH#300394 Alias: Paru | Parents DNA: Shimazaki Haruka [Salt] & Maeda Atsuko [Maeda]|

Verdict: Moderate Success |Sentience: Completely Unaware* |Status: Constant monitor, visual confirmation at all times |

With the failure of Subject MA#71091 attributed to mostly too much willpower inherited from the original (Maeda), researches have decided to create a clone using the spliced DNA of Maeda and a more apathetic parent. This resulted in the creation of Subject SHMA#300394.

Subject SHMA#300394 must be kept under the Mind-Wipe protocol at all times. While replicating Salt’s fighting prowess is still a work in progress, the subject has been deemed a considerable success, and is the most powerful clone created to date. The subject is however, not deemed a complete success, as it is wilful, and has developed all of Maeda’s passion, and none of Salt’s apathy, and thus far had been kept sedated, or mind-wiped in order to be kept pliant.  

*Note: Ensure that subject remains UNAWARE. Subject is impossible to control when approaching any status beyond ‘unaware’.

 _________________________________________________________)

Subject KR#120295 Alias: Nanashi | Parent DNA: Kawaei Rina [Bakamono] |

Verdict: Failure | Sentience: Unaware | Status: Monitored remotely, annual check-in |

Subject KR#120295 or ‘Nanashi’ is a complete failure in every way, barring physical health. Replication of the original’s fighting prowess and super strength ability could not be achieved. It’s been deduced that the parent’s fighting capability was likely due to environmental factors, such as trauma in her life that is thus far mostly unknown.  Trial and error of introducing trauma to the subject early in its life cycle resulted in a clone that is too anxious and frail to be of any use in combat.  

#majisuka gakuen 3 #majisuka gakuen 5 #majisuka gakuen fanfic

[dailybuglenow]

TUESDAY, 13 AUGUST 2023. EDITED BY J. JONAH JAMESON.

THE TRAGEDY IN TIMES SQUARE: MUTANTS & TERRORISM

TW: The article contains anti-mutant rhetoric that could be considered offensive

Some things are never meant to be. In the last week since I wrote my piece on the decimation of mutants Post-Cleanse ( see our august 7th issue for full coverage ) I’ve received a fair share of negative comments that I was not giving mutants a chance or my words were generalizing and hateful. I, personally, was not offensive. It’s my job to report the news and if that gets people talking it’s good. It’s on this side of a terrible tragedy though that I see I am now justified in my beliefs. Yesterday at approximately 1700 hours energy spikes were reported in Times Square. A popular New York tourist trap, the few blocks that it encompasses statistics show an average of 330,000 - 460, 000 visitors daily. News of this energy spike should have been reported to the Avengers instantly due to the high number of civilians, but it was instead the mutant X-Men who arrived at the scene to handle the situation internally. Recognized among the group was not one but two Cyclops (Scott Summers), the Wolverine (James ‘Logan’ Howlett) and two Icemen (Robert Drake). Also in the group was an unidentified man with Wolverine like claws, a telepathic man with a golden energy beam, a silver haired speedster, an unidentified who looked surprisingly like the deceased Pietro Maximoff and a woman in a baseball cap that some onlookers said looked like the Avenger Wanda Maximoff. Please see page two for elaboration on the potential presence of Maximoff.

Leading this merry band of mutant terrorists was Erik Lehnsherr, a man known as Magneto who has often been painted as the bad guy in your history books. Lehnsherr has, as of late, been residing on the mutant island nation of Krakoa and is believed to be in the Hellfire Club, headed by one Emma Frost. Next to him was Jean Grey, an original founding member of the X-Men who passed in the late 1980′s for reasons undisclosed but has been present in the last five years. All of these mutants stood against the 21 year old mutant Jean Grey ( not the one who was deceased ). Before going into the conflict, I have to ask my readers: how are the X-Men duplicating themselves? Are they clones? There’s no one worse to clone than a mutant, that’s for sure. The double appearance of Iceman, Cyclops and Grey raise some valid questions but the doppelgängers are surprisingly not the worst part of this situation. It was the younger Ms. Grey who seemed to be the problem. Early reports from the tragedy state that Ms. Grey arrived shortly before the other mutants did and seemed to be talking to herself and agitated. When the X-squad or whatever they like to be called these days arrived they attempted to talk to Ms. Grey before she lashed out and attacked. After that it appeared to be an all-out brawl with some civilians being escorted to safety and others being left behind and in danger. Photos and videos taken on site show something beautiful, terrible and disgusting. The pretty colors and swooping mutants may look like something out of an action movie but they were not superheroes. They were abominations with very little regard to human life.

Within the course of 45 minutes Ms. Grey managed to incapacitate most of the group and nearly killed a good deal of them, including the elder Ms. Grey. The conflict was only ended when Mr. Howlett managed to stab Ms. Grey through the chest, effectively stopping her attack. There was then an explosion that caused tremors and shattered windows as far down as the West Village. The explosion manifested itself in the shape of a giant bird made of fire, with reports stating it was picked up by satellites globally. In an exclusive video taken by an onlooker Grey’s body can be seen prone on the ground at the center of the blast radius. This video contains graphic imagery but can be found on the Daily Bugle webpage. Grey was later confirmed to be deceased, but Lehnsherr had fled the scene with her body before ambulances or reporters arrived. All of the mutants conveniently left, actually, before they had to answer for their actions to the public. Though it came as a surprise to this humble supporter, Mr. Lehnsherr responded to our requests for a statement. He advised the Bugle, “What happened in Times Square can only be described as a tragedy, as I am sure you have all already concluded on your own. Jean Grey lost control and it was our job to help her and control the damage to the best of our ability. It was never her intention to cause harm to either our kind or yours. In the end a decision was made, one that ended not with us helping her but with us taking her down. These were the decisions and actions of a small group who took the situation into their own hands. We will never know if the situation could have ended differently, but the city is safe now as it stands. Even though Jean paid for it with her life. Her body was immediately taken to the Island of Krakao after the incident and will remain there until a proper ceremony is planned in her honor. She will be missed.”

It wasn’t her intention. A rather weak excuse considering the irreparable damage that has been done. Hate is the last thing that we need to promote in a world like this one, one rocked by prejudice and both literal and figurative monsters. What happened in Times Square last night is, by all means, an act of terror against those who couldn’t defend themselves in a gross disregard. Property damage around the area has yet to be assessed by damage control services, but several theaters in the area and other restaurants and museums have been shut down for the foreseeable future with companies promising to get them up and running again as soon as possible. Some onlookers spoke of a voice in their ear forcing them to fight one another, but that ended as soon as Grey was fatally attacked. As many as two dozen civilians have been confirmed as deceased with up to a hundred injured and currently being checked at Mt. Sinai hospitals around the island. If you have a loved one who has not been accounted for yet, please call the Bugle Hotline to connect with others and authorities. 

Regarded as a leader on the island of Krakoa - which is a whole subject of suspicion all together - Ms. Emma Frost also released an official statement for the Hellfire Club and the mutants of the nation. Ms. Frost went on record saying, “We hate to see history repeat itself, but sometimes it does. The world has never been kind to mutants but we aren’t prone to pity ourselves or perceived injustices. Instead we plan and we protect our own, which we attempted to do here. The Hellfire Club was not made aware of the plan to subdue Miss Grey due to the urgency of the situation, but we will not persecute our friends and family where no persecution is due. An action of a man is not limited to one finite moment in time and while Logan Howlett has chosen to not speak with the media for obvious reasons and a general lack of interest in a witch hunt, his actions were understandable. The same goes for still living Jean Grey, long a staple member of the community. Both are acting as Co-Headmasters of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning and would not take the loss of a student lightly. Tragedy is tragedy and we would never deny that. We will, however, remain thankful that the blast radius was not as deadly as it could have been. At this time we ask that the general public leave Krakoa to process this and the loss of one so young. As stated, her body will remain on the island until buried and there is no intent to turn it over to the United States government. We are mutants and we will do as we must. Any further questions or concerns can be direct to Briar Raleigh and we will respond at our discretion and convenience.”

After all we know about Frost and Lehnsherr it’s hard to take either of them at their word. Magneto has often been seen going against the X-Men, so his supposed grief at the loss of one seems to be a cheap act. Frost is held in higher regards due to her work with children, but her ascension to the throne in the long rumored and formerly secret Hellfire Club has swayed public perception away from her favor. Regardless, it is the ever steady former acting president Senator Robert Kelly who has weighed in on the incident. “We need to call things as the are,” he told a solemn crowd at the site of the incident this morning. “We’ve always needed to call things what they were but we never wanted to. We got caught up in mutant rights when there should be no such things. Mutants are not human. They don’t pretend to be. Mutants are as much human as Thanos was. Their bodies do not belong and they are a danger to others and clearly themselves as well. Had they truly cared about the American people a problem of this magnitude would have been reported so inhibitor collars and Sentinel Services could have been present to deescalate the situation. If an animal attacks a human they’re put down. Ms. Grey should have been put down long before she was able to do as much harm as she was. The innocent people who died today won’t get brought back, so  I truly hope Jean Grey feels the weight of those souls wherever she is. I’ll be speaking directly to President Ellis about the incident and reaching out to the Avengers for their compliance in helping to control this dilemma that is haunting the American people. In the meantime, hold your loved ones close. Watch your back when you’re on the street. America is no longer safe as long as mutants run free.”

What happened is a tragedy. No one can deny that. It doesn’t matter if you side with the mutants or the humans. Lives were lost and people were  fractured. Once again we have to rebuild from an incident that never should have occurred. Today I wrote this article with a heavy heart. I pray I don’t have to write another tomorrow. 

—- Gayle Rogers, Daily Bugle News

A FAMILY AFFAIR:

As mentioned above, photos from the incident in Time Square place a woman who looks remarkably like Wanda Maximoff was spotted on site. Maximoff, an Avenger since 2015, has had a rather rocky career in the limelight due to her attack on Lagos and later status as a war criminal along with Steve Rogers. A confirmed victim of the Cleanse, Maximoff returned and was soon associated again with the Avengers after being pardoned for her international crimes. Interestingly enough, another figure at the scene was a silver haired speedster who resembled Maximoff’s deceased twin brother Pietro, who was a casualty of the Ultron attack in Sokovia also in 2015. The presence of the Maximoff twins lines up only when you remember the fact that they are the children of Erik Lehnsherr, a fact known by the public despite a lack of official acknowledgement by any of the three. The Maximoff involvement would be another strike against the Scarlet Witch as the Avengers have purposefully remained out of mutant affairs so far. A representative for Maximoff or the Avengers could not be reached.

IN OTHER NEWS:

Public opinion polls have shown that reception to our new Captain American, Sam Wilson, is currently lower than that of Steve Rogers before he put down the shield. People have cited that they lack the familiarity with Wilson that they had with Rogers while others could not list a specific reasons. Some have wondered if the lack of interest is due to the turbulent history of the shield as of late or due to more racially charged matters. There’s been no word from Wilson on the matter.

Everyone’s favorite Champions were spotted in Libya recently as shown by the news and social media posts. They continue to take the world by storm with their modern way of reaching their audience and social justice causes. Ms. Marvel and Spider-man ( not the red and blue one )  were recently seen in Manhattan along with a few other members of the team taking selfies before having to leave on a mission. We’re rooting for you, Champions!

What is Krakoa? There will be an academic lecture at New York University on Thursday with Dr. Kate Peterson and Dr. Edward Busha to discuss the political implications of a mutant nation on a social and economic level. Tickets are being sold in advance and at the door.

General Thaddeus Ross is currently traveling to Latveria to meet with their leader, Victor Von Doom. This coincides with meetings the United States Government are scheduled to have with Wakanda this week following the return of the perviously snapped King T’Challa.

#daily bugle news #all #mutants #daily buzz #gayle rodgers

[your-dietician]

It’s the party’s business, too

New Post has been published on https://tattlepress.com/business/its-the-partys-business-too/

It’s the party’s business, too

Jun 26th 2021

IF IT EVER was Shanghai’s tallest building, the 40-metre-high headquarters of the North China Daily News did not remain so for long. Skyscrapers became fashionable before the Communists took over in 1949 and turned China into a world leader for them. In 2015 the tallest building in China (and second-highest in the world) opened in Lujiazui, Shanghai’s Wall Street, on the far side of the Huangpu river. Chinese officials call the 632-metre edifice Shanghai Tower, a symbol of the financial capital’s might.

The sinuous, 128-storey structure, designed by an American firm, purports to evoke a dragon’s twisting form. It is home to Chinese and foreign financial firms betting on China’s rise. JPMorgan, an American bank, occupies four floors. But the Communist Party is there as well. It has taken a large, airy space high up to run a political operation about which it is open and proud. Its focus is on companies in Shanghai Tower and other skyscrapers. For private firms in China, there is an echo of 1921, when industrialists wondered what the Bolsheviks were up to. Once again, Communists are eager to establish themselves in the workplace. There are worrisome implications.

Before his inspection of the big brain in 2018, Xi Jinping visited Shanghai Tower. On his way up in the world’s fastest lift to its observation deck, he stopped at the party-building service centre on the 22nd floor (a separate lift goes directly to it). One room displayed his slogan calling on party members to cleave to the ideals that inspired activists a century ago: “Don’t forget the original intent, keep the mission firmly in mind, struggle forever.”

Those words appear on billboards across China. The “original intent” phrase is from a Tang-dynasty poem. Mr Xi says it means working for people’s well-being and China’s rejuvenation. The aim is not to whip up a Maoist frenzy or encourage workers to rise up. The strike-fomenting Bolshevik menace which worried industrialists in Shanghai in the 1920s is of no concern now, since the party abhors labour unrest. “Stability is paramount” is its mantra. Today the worry is different: that a more assertive party will muscle into boardrooms and keep them on a tighter leash.

It has always been the case that, in a workplace with three or more party members, they should, with approval from a higher level, form a branch or, with 100 or more members, a committee. But some businesses were cool to the idea and the party did not always insist on it. Mr Xi wants complete coverage, with no excuses for non-compliance. “Party organisations must extend wherever party members work and live,” he said on the 22nd floor. They should be “strongholds for combat”. There are now 40 party-building centres covering the 280-plus towers in the financial district. Work began last year to set up yet another layer of control, with a party-led building-affairs committee in each multi-occupant commercial property. These committees include party chiefs of tenant firms, as well as police. State media call this injecting a “red gene” into property management.

Within private firms, efforts to install a party presence have been ramped up. Since Mr Xi took over, the proportion that have embedded party organisations has risen from just over 50% to more than 70%. As an academic at the Central Party School, Cai Xia conducted research into party-building efforts in private firms. In those pre-Xi days, she says, the aim was mainly to give scattered party members a greater sense of belonging and encourage them to be model workers. Now, says Ms Cai (who has lived in America since 2019), the purpose is to help the party maintain social stability and “supervise and control” their firms.

Some foreign firms are anxious. Those operating in sectors that China considers vital to its economy, including financial services, must often form joint ventures with state-owned companies. In 2017 party bosses in some state enterprises began pressing their foreign partners to agree to wording in the charters of their businesses that guaranteed a management role for the party. Companies are required to have officially approved charters. Failure to abide by them could be deemed a crime.

A rare retreat

Remarkably, amid an outcry from foreign investors, party officials backed down. No longer are they arm-twisting foreign firms to specify a role for the party in the running of joint ventures, says Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China. As for wholly foreign-owned businesses, the chamber says it has not heard of the party having a business-management function in any of them. Indeed, among nearly 585 European firms it recently polled, nearly 65% said they were unaware of any party presence in their firms. Of those with branches, only just over 1% said the party could veto business plans.

Foreign companies have always had to be mindful of the party’s wishes. But it may be that the party does not see strengthening its presence in foreign firms as a political priority. Mr Wuttke says that in foreign businesses party branches often operate “like Rotary Clubs”. But even if most of them keep out of business decision-making, there may be an anaconda effect among staff. Chinese often say they like to work in foreign firms because of their freer atmosphere. Lester Ross, the Beijing representative of WilmerHale, an international law firm, says expatriate bosses, who seldom have a strong command of Chinese, may not easily spot changes in the mood of local employees.

It is a different story with private Chinese businesses, which provide 80% of urban jobs. They are the titans of online and high-tech industries. To ensure control over Chinese society, the party wants to boost its influence among such firms both at board level and among ordinary employees. It wants to ensure that China’s influential tycoons, and their staff, toe the party line. A directive in 2017 called for measures to “strengthen the sense of loyalty” among entrepreneurs and party leadership over them.

A widely touted model is Hodo Group, a family-run manufacturer of garments and textiles with 30,000 employees in Jiangsu province. Mr Xi has praised its party-building efforts. Zhou Haijiang, the chief executive, is also the party secretary. Other senior managers hold corresponding roles within the group’s party committee (which oversees Hodo’s more than 100 party branches and their membership of around 1,000). The head of the human-resources department is in charge of the party’s organisational affairs, the person responsible for brand development is the party’s propaganda chief, and the chairman of the firm’s board of supervisors is the party’s head of discipline.

In 2018 foreign business grandees attending the China Development Forum, an annual get-together with Chinese counterparts and government leaders, were surprised by their hosts’ decision to flaunt the party’s role in economic matters. Hodo’s Mr Zhou was among those wheeled out to make the point. He regaled the audience with his party-building exploits and sang the praises of what officials now call a “modern enterprise system with Chinese characteristics”—meaning one with the party very much involved.

It is easy to see why the party likes the Hodo model. In about 50% of private firms with party branches, the boss is already a party member. For such a person, taking on the additional role of party secretary is not difficult. The bosses may even accept the idea as the least bad option: better to manage the company’s party affairs oneself than allow someone else to take the job. And there may be benefits. Being a party secretary can open doors with officialdom. Businessmen prize such access. Privately, some Chinese entrepreneurs describe their party-building efforts as a box-ticking exercise. Party members in their companies know to whom they must be loyal in order to keep their jobs: the firm.

In the Shanghai Tower, state media say Mr Xi’s visit has been a boon (as has support from the state-owned company that owns the building). Every month, on average, one company pays a visit to ask for help setting up a branch. It has also boosted demand for party membership. The service centre offers enticements: a place to relax and enjoy the view. There is a gym on the same floor.

But party-building in Lujiazui is also about controlling members. The 22nd floor is pioneering a new way of making them stay on their toes. It involves an app that shows members how many points they have scored for volunteer work, for taking part in political study sessions or for submitting “thought reports” (a device much-loved by the party for ensuring discipline, as it forces members to expose their own weaknesses). Score less than 60 points in a year and you could be summoned for a chat with a party official, or sent for retraining at a party school.

That may sound scary, but well-educated Chinese still flock to join the party. Even on campuses, where curbs on free speech have become tighter under Mr Xi than at any time since Tiananmen, many students are keen to sign up. That is because membership can confer lifelong benefits.■

Full contents of this special report China’s Communist Party’s 100th birthday: The Chinese Communist Party is 100 years old on July 1st The party’s internal rifts: Trying to heal the wounds China’s methods of surveillance: They’re always looking at you China’s corporate sector: It’s the party’s business, too* How to join the party: Getting into the vanguard of the Chinese elite The Communist Party abroad: Flying the Chinese flag The party’s next century?: A future, but with Chinese characteristics

This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “It’s our business, too”

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[advancedconsciousness]

Bulldoze Or Redesign? Is Ignorance Truly Bliss? Q&A (Part 8) (Episode 79) from Franco DeNicola on Vimeo.

Music from Tunetank.com @3782-beautiful-mind

In episode 79, we are looking at making changes within our lives and collectively. Do we bulldoze everything or take the process of redesigning things? The second part is a look at the statement and perceived idea that ignorance is bliss. How does that fit in today?

You can certainly go in like a bull in a china shop, or you can go in and rearrange the china shop and get the people in the shop to help you rearrange things. You can fight the system or infiltrate the system and adjust the system while getting others to assist you in adjusting the system. It is not about compliance or non-compliance or making anyone wrong. It is about seeing how it serves and may no longer serve and make adjustments to continue serving while realizing we are to change progressively.

Any form of compliance or non-compliance is a choice; each choice serves in one way or another. There is no wrong or right choice. It is about expanding the viewpoint. When you fight things, you enhance polarity instead of seeing the grander view and shifting things. Fighting is not cooperation; it is resistance. We can fight our way in or strategize a clean entry and exit without carnage.

We all have free will, no matter what it may look like on the surface or how it is projected. Every choice we make affects our field of creation and what seems to be our external world which is only the aftermath. We are to use our free will to rewrite our operating system.

Taking a secret agent approach. Some of us are deconstructors, and some are redesigners.

No one is truly ignorant, just a role played out while isolating higher consciousness. It is selected attention, approach and intention for a specific purpose.

In the second part of the episode, we continued addressing questions.

1:15:20 Can you tell me about how the vaccine might affect perception/ascension?

1:20:40 Is there an update on a plan by the Galactics, e.g., the Arcturians, to help the thousands that have chosen to take the jab etc. Is it out of control?

1:25:55 What does the vaccine affect in terms of consciousness?/attention/openness?

1:28:10 Here in India, ITPCR tests are mandatory for travel. Are they as toxic as the jabs?

1:30:28 What about the health challenging effects they say the vaccinated have on the non-vaccinated..?

1:33:43 I just learned that because I am not vaccinated, I am not welcomed to be with family (Father's day) - is there an ideal response when most are double vaccinated? Of course, I see that it's perfect?

1:35:38 I listened to the last one where Franco says those who took the vax are not a lost cause, especially the kids. He mentioned something about a new rollout about this but said it has not yet been launched. Does he know the timeline for launching that plug-in for the children to negate its effects? (Months, years, etc.?)

1:40:32 Would there still be an opportunity to inform those who've already taken the vax what we know about it, or will they be in a state not to "absorb" it, especially once it's in them? Or can we still plant the seed, and can it play a role in the opportunity of awareness? If our children took the jab, is it still possible to live amongst one another when they're clearly on a different timeline or does that not matter since our awakened timeline has more to do with our experience within?

1:45:48 When will it be time when we will be living in a city of Light that we will build and create ourselves, like people buying land and building communities growing organic food and Light living?

1:49:20 What is a divinity path (and or divinity path being)? What does this consist of, and how can someone live in becoming a Divinity path being? It was mentioned to me recently, and I cannot find anything on the internet about it, is it such a thing.)

1:52:16 Is there a difference between God, Prime Creator, and Source? There was a time when these terms and the soul and higher-self together were being interchanged. To be honest, I feel intent is all that matters when communicating. But how important is that, though, intent? Is it important to still get the right wording?

1:58:48 Concerning Pure Love and wanting things to change. If I want something to change, then there is an inherent judgment or resistance to that thing that is not Pure Love. So how does one embody and approach things with Pure Love while still having the freedom to create/experience something new (i.e. a change in circumstances)?

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[orbemnews]

Big Candy Is Angry At first glance, the Skittles package appears to be just like the one sold in the candy aisle of a supermarket: It has block letters filled in with white, a flowing rainbow and a red candy that replaces the dot above the letter “i.” A closer look reveals some small differences: a background pattern of small, stylized marijuana leaves; a warning label; and numbers that reveal the amount of THC, the intoxicating substance in cannabis, in each piece of candy. The images are included in a lawsuit that the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, owned by the candy behemoth Mars Inc., filed in May against five companies for selling cannabis-infused edibles that look like our old friends Skittles, Starburst and Life Savers. Though the suit focuses on intellectual property rights, the plaintiffs also argue that the copycat products could lead people, particularly children, to mistakenly ingest drugs. A spokeswoman for Mars Inc. wrote in an email that the company is “deeply disturbed” by the products. America is at an interesting crossroads: one where Big Candy, vilified in the wellness era as a primary source of refined sugar, has become an unlikely sheriff in the Wild West of recreational marijuana consumption roamed by pandemic-stressed adults. In recent years, lawsuits similar to the one filed by Wrigley have been brought by the Hershey Company (against TinctureBelle for products resembling Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Heath bars, Almond Joy bars and York peppermint patties), Mondelez International (against a company hawking Stoney Patch Kids) and Ferrara Candy Company (against a store selling Medicated Nerds Rope). These lawsuits have all been settled, with the smaller companies agreeing to halt production and sales of the offending products. Many public health officials fret that without proper regulation, accidental ingestion cases will continue to rise among children as the availability of edibles grows. Some poison control centers have already observed this trend in their data. For example, there were 122 cases of exposure to THC for children under 5 in Washington State in the first nine months of 2020, compared to 85 for the same time period in 2019. The most common side effects reported included vomiting, lethargy and chest pain. While many edible companies operating in states where medical or recreational cannabis is legal strive to comply with their local regulations, the illegal market is still thriving. “When companies like these create headlines for doing what we’ve purposely avoided at Wana, I feel anger and frustration,” said Joe Hodas, the chief marketing officer at Wana Brands, a Colorado company that sells cannabis-infused products. A recent review of the websites belonging to defendants in the Wrigley suit turned up cannabis-infused offerings like Stoner Patch Dummies, the Worlds Dankest Gushers, Gasheads Xtremes Sourfuls, Trips Ahoy, Buttafingazzz and Caribo Happy Cola. “The situation has become more and more egregious,” said Christopher Gindlesperger, a spokesman for the National Confectioners Association, a trade organization in D.C. with 350 members, including Mars Inc., Hershey’s, Ferrara and Mondelez. “The cannabis companies cannot and should not be allowed to tarnish existing brands at will. It creates consumer confusion.” Discreet Little Treats A majority of states now allow the use of medical marijuana (Alabama just joined the list), and 18 of them, including New York, have legalized recreational marijuana as well. Though sales in New York are not expected to begin until 2022 at the earliest, businesses are rushing to grab real estate and prepare for the market’s opening. Some are already selling Delta-8-THC, derived from hemp, in candy form. The spread of legalization has brought more players and consumers into the edibles market. “Edibles are easy. They’re portable. You don’t have to find a space to step aside and smoke,” said Sean Arnold, a founder of Terradigm Consulting, which advises cannabis companies on licensing, infrastructure and product development. Edibles have come a long way from the days of pot brownies, when half a pastry could lead to hours of debilitated function or to nothing at all. “Ten years ago it was the luck of the draw if you bought a brownie,” said Henry Wykowski, a lawyer who has focused on cannabis law for 17 years. “You didn’t know where you would wind up.” Today, licensed manufacturers are required by states to test their products for potency and to label packages with the amount of THC in each dose, and in the entire package. Some edibles companies make products with small amounts of THC, allowing the inexperienced to experiment with dosages. The accessibility of edibles and the discretion they afford has made them the fastest-growing category in cannabis, according to Surfside, a cannabis data-analytics company in New York. Surfside estimates that edibles have outpaced the growth of the rest of the cannabis market by 29 percent in the last three months compared with the same period in 2020. Mr. Wykowski said that transgressions that may have escaped the notice of large corporations like Mars or Hershey’s in the past are on their radar today “because cannabis is big business now.” He teaches a course on cannabis law at University of California’s Hastings College of the Law, and one of the sessions deals with laws around likenesses of other products. “Five or 10 years ago when cannabis was starting to take off, it was a joke to have something like Cap’n Punch, a cereal that’s infused,” Mr. Wykowski said. “But the industry has matured, and the people who know what they’re doing no longer engage in that kind of conduct.” Nonetheless, he regularly works with edibles companies that receive cease-and-desist letters from candy corporations. Most of these cases do not reach the courts. “Ninety percent of the time people will look at the letter and stop,” Mr. Wykowski said. Most legal cannabis companies strive to follow regulations closely. Lightshade, which runs nine dispensaries in the Denver area, has an eight-person compliance and auditing team led by Charisse Harris. Ms. Harris said that there are four checkpoints at which a product is assessed, and that every week, her auditors do random checks in the stores. Some red flags include products that feature any iteration of the word “candy” (for example, “kandy” or “candie”), and ones that do not come in packaging that meets state requirements around child safety, Ms. Harris said. “I say no a lot,” she added. Compliance becomes more complicated for companies operating in different states, since there are no federal regulations around cannabis. “In Florida, our packaging is black-and-white, and there are no images,” Mr. Hodas said of Wana, which operates in 11 states and in Canada. The gummies are a plain off-white color. In Colorado, on the other hand, the Wana container has a picture of pink watermelon slices and the gummies are a rich coral hue. There are three main aspects of a candy that can be protected by trademark and copyright laws, said Nancy J. Mertzel, a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law. Take Hershey’s Kisses. “You have the name Kisses, which is a trademark, the shape of the candy itself, which is both a trademark and trade dress, and the packaging, which is protected by copyright,” Ms. Mertzel said. Ms. Mertzel said other possible intellectual property protections include patents — for example, Mars has sought patents for its chocolate, which is more resistant to melting than other formulations — and trade-secret laws. The most famous example of a trade secret is the Coca-Cola formula; another is Hellmann’s mayonnaise. The case Wrigley has brought against the cannabis copycats, Ms. Mertzel said, is straightforward. “I certainly understand Wrigley’s concerns about having its intellectual property used by a third party, and those concerns are exacerbated when it’s for a product that children really shouldn’t be getting,” Ms. Mertzel said. She compared the public health concerns at stake to those that were widely discussed when the tobacco industry used cartoons to target children in the 1960s. Even the Flintstones were in on it, with Fred and Barney promoting Winston cigarettes in an infamous commercial spot. Child-Proofing Cannabis Andrew Brisbo, the executive director of the Marijuana Regulatory Agency in Michigan, said that preventing youth access to cannabis is one of the primary functions of the program he oversees. And edibles are top of mind. “When we look at accidental consumption, edibles are a primary issue,” Mr. Brisbo said. “A young person won’t accidentally smoke a marijuana cigarette.” Gillian Schauer, a public health and policy consultant who has worked with a number of states on cannabis policy issues, said there are two potential concerns with edibles from a public health policy perspective: overconsumption and accidental consumption. Because edibles can take a while to kick in, people sometimes rush to eat more without waiting for the first effects. Some inexperienced users do not know what amount of THC they should consume and are not educated on the potential effects of cannabis. A low-dose amount is considered 1 to 2 milligrams of THC, but effects vary based on many factors, like body weight and how much food the consumer ate that day. Accidental consumption can affect anyone, but, Dr. Schauer said, “it has primarily impacted children because they can confuse cannabis edible products with other edible products, because most edibles look like candy or cookies or cake.” She pointed to reports compiled by poison control centers in Colorado and Washington, the two earliest states to legalize recreational cannabis use, in 2012. Between 2014 and 2018, annual calls to the Washington Poison Center about children under 5 being unintentionally exposed to cannabis nearly tripled, rising from 34 to 94. In 2017, Washington State began requiring that all edibles have a logo stating “Not for Kids” (not that this will mean much to a 2-year-old). In Colorado, edibles are the leading method by which children under 5 accidentally consume cannabis. In 2019, in Colorado, 108 people under the age of 19 were accidentally exposed to cannabis. In 2011, the year before the state legalized recreational use, that number was 16. Like Washington, Colorado now requires packaging of edibles to include a warning symbol. The state also bans the use of the word “candy” on any marijuana packaging, and the sale of edibles that look like people, animals or fruit. Dr. Schauer said other ways to reduce the risks of accidental ingestion include mandating childproof packaging, requiring that each edible item in a package is individually wrapped, limiting the potency of each individual edible, and educating consumers who live with children on how to store their cannabis products. Making packages that will not catch the eye of a child is important, she said. In Canada, for example, where cannabis is legal, federal law requires packaging to have a uniform color and a smooth texture, and not to have cutout windows, scents, sounds or inserts (among other requirements). Despite the stringency of Canada’s laws, as recently as mid-May, a child was hospitalized in the province of New Brunswick after eating Stoneo cookies that were made to look like Oreos, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In America, state laws are far less strict; for the most part, they prohibit the inclusion of cartoon characters and make general statements about how the packaging should not appeal to a child. “The risks can be much more limited than we’ve seen them be so far,” Dr. Schauer said. Mr. Hodas has three children, aged 12, 17 and 19. He has been in the cannabis industry for more than seven years. When he has products at home, he keeps them secure in bags made by StashLogix. It may not slow down a motivated 15-year-old, but it will stop a toddler, he said. “If you have it locked up, and you keep in a place where they can’t reach it or see it, that’s the best way to prevent ingestion,” Mr. Hodas said. To parents of a certain age, the situation may bring to mind the 1983 public service announcement “We’re Not Candy,” in which a barbershop quartet of singing pills on television advises children “to have a healthy fear of us.” That the products now under scrutiny are a form of candy, just enhanced — and that no one is watching the same screen anymore — makes it difficult to imagine a marijuana meme so memorable. Source link Orbem News #angry #Big #Candy

[wickedbananas]

GDPR: What it Means for Google Analytics & Online Marketing

Posted by Angela_Petteys

If you’ve been on the Internet at all in the past few months, you’ve probably seen plenty of notices about privacy policy updates from one service or another. As a marketer, a few of those notices have most likely come from Google.

With the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) set to go into effect on May 25th, 2018, many Internet services have been scrambling to get in compliance with the new standards — and Google is no exception. Given the nature of the services Google provides to marketers, GDPR absolutely made some significant changes in how they conduct business. And, in turn, some marketers may have to take steps to make sure their use of Google Analytics is allowable under the new rules. But a lot of marketers aren’t entirely sure what exactly GDPR is, what it means for their jobs, and what they need to do to follow the rules.

What is GDPR?

GDPR is a very broad reform that gives citizens who live in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland more control over how their personal data is collected and used online. GDPR introduces a lot of new rules and if you’re up for a little light reading, you can check out the full text of the regulation online. But here are a few of the most significant changes:

Companies and other organizations have to be more transparent and clearly state what information they’re collecting, what it will be used for, how they’re collecting it, and if that information will be shared with anyone else. They can also only collect information that is directly relevant for its intended use. If the organization collecting that information later decides to use it for a different purpose, they must get permission again from each individual.

GDPR also spells out how that information needs to be given to consumers. That information can no longer be hidden in long privacy policies filled with legal jargon. The information in disclosures needs to be written in plain language and “freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous.” Individuals also have to take an action which clearly gives their consent to their information being collected. Pre-checked boxes and notices that rely on inaction as a way of giving consent will no longer be allowed. If a user does not agree to have their information collected, you cannot block them from accessing content based on that fact.

Consumers also have the right to see what information a company has about them, request that incorrect information be corrected, revoke permission for their data to be saved, and have their data exported so they can switch to another service. If someone decides to revoke their permission, the organization needs to not only remove that information from their systems in a timely manner, they also need to have it removed from anywhere else they’ve shared that information.

Organizations must also be able to give proof of the steps they’re taking to be in compliance. This can include keeping records of how people opt in to being on marketing lists and documentation regarding how customer information is being protected.

Once an individual’s information has been collected, GDPR sets out requirements for how that information is stored and protected. If a data breach occurs, consumers must be notified within 72 hours. Failing to comply with GDPR can come with some very steep consequences. If a data breach occurs because of non-compliance, a company can be hit with fines as high as €20 million or 4% of the company’s annual global revenue, whichever amount is greater.

Do US-based businesses need to worry about GDPR?

Just because a business isn’t based in Europe doesn’t necessarily mean they’re off the hook as far as GDPR goes. If a company is based in the United States (or elsewhere outside the EEA), but conducts business in Europe, collects data about users from Europe, markets themselves in Europe, or has employees who work in Europe, GDPR applies to them, too.

Even if you’re working with a company that only conducts business in a very specific geographic area, you might occasionally get some visitors to your site from people outside of that region. For example, let’s say a pizza restaurant in Detroit publishes a blog post about the history of pizza on their site. It’s a pretty informative post and as a result, it brings in some traffic from pizza enthusiasts outside the Detroit area, including a few visitors from Spain. Would GDPR still apply in that sort of situation?

As long as it’s clear that a company’s goods or services are only available to consumers in the United States (or another country outside the EEA), GDPR does not apply. Going back to the pizza restaurant example, the other content on their site is written in English, emphasizes their Detroit location, and definitely doesn’t make any references to delivery to Spain, so those few page views from Spain wouldn’t be anything to worry about.

However, let’s say another US-based company has a site with the option to view German and French language versions of pages, lets customers pay with Euros, and uses marketing language that refers to European customers. In that situation, GDPR would apply since they are more clearly soliciting business from people in Europe.

Google Analytics & GDPR

If you use Google Analytics, Google is your data processor and since they handle data from people all over the world, they’ve had to take steps to become compliant with GDPR standards. However, you/your company are considered the data controller in this relationship and you will also need to take steps to make sure your Google Analytics account is set up to meet the new requirements.

Google has been rolling out some new features to help make this happen. In Analytics, you will now have the ability to delete the information of individual users if they request it. They’ve also introduced data retention settings which allow you to control how long individual user data is saved before being automatically deleted. Google has set this to be 26 months as the default setting, but if you are working with a US-based company that strictly conducts business in the United States, you can set it to never expire if you want to — at least until data protection laws change here, too. It’s important to note that this only applies to data about individual users and events, so aggregate data about high-level information like page views won’t be impacted by this.

To make sure you’re using Analytics in compliance with GDPR, a good place to start is by auditing all the data you collect to make sure it’s all relevant to its intended purpose and that you aren’t accidentally sending any personally identifiable information (PII) to Google Analytics. Sending PII to Google Analytics was already against its Terms of Service, but very often, it happens by accident when information is pushed through in a page URL. If it turns out you are sending PII to Analytics, you’ll need to talk to your web development team about how to fix it because using filters in Analytics to block it isn’t enough — you need to make sure it’s never sent to Google Analytics in the first place.

PII includes anything that can potentially be used to identify a specific person, either on its own or when combined with another piece of information, like an email address, a home address, a birthdate, a zip code, or an IP address. IP addresses weren’t always considered PII, but GDPR classifies them as an online identifier. Don’t worry, though — you can still get geographical insights about the visitors to your site. All you have to do is turn on IP anonymization and the last portion of an IP address will be replaced with a zero, so you can still get a general idea of where your traffic is coming from, although it will be a little less precise.

If you use Google Tag Manager, IP anonymization is pretty easy. Just open your Google Analytics tag or its settings variable, choose “More Settings,” and select “Fields to Set.” Then, choose “anonymizeip” in the “Field Name” box, enter “true” in the “Value” box,” and save your changes.

If you don’t use GTM, talk to your web development team about editing the Google Analytics code to anonymize IP addresses.

Pseudonymous information like user IDs and transaction IDs are still acceptable under GDPR, but it needs to be protected. User and transaction IDs need to be alphanumeric database identifiers, not written out in plain text.

Also, if you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to take the steps Google has mentioned in some of those emails they’ve sent out. If you’re based outside the EEA and GDPR applies to you, go into your Google Analytics account settings and accept the updated terms of processing. If you’re based in the EEA, the updated terms have already been included in your data processing terms. If GDPR applies to you, you’ll also need to go into your organization settings and provide contact information for your organization.

Privacy policies, forms, & cookie notices

Now that you’ve gone through your data and checked your settings in Google Analytics, you need to update your site’s privacy policy, forms, and cookie notices. If your company has a legal department, it may be best to involve them in this process to make sure you’re fully compliant.

Under GDPR, a site’s privacy policy needs to be clearly written in plain language and answer basic questions like what information is being collected, why it’s being collected, how it’s being collected, who is collecting it, how it will be used, and if it will be shared with anyone else. If your site is likely to be visited by children, this information needs to be written simply enough for a child to be able to understand it.

Forms and cookie notices also need to provide that kind of information. Cookie consent forms with really vague, generic messages like, “We use cookies to give you a better experience and by using this site, you agree to our policy,” are not GDPR compliant.

GDPR & other types of marketing

The impact GDPR will have on marketers isn’t just limited to how you use Google Analytics. If you use some particular types of marketing in the course of your job, you may have to make a few other changes, too.

Referral deals

If you work with a company that does “refer a friend”-type promotions where a customer has to enter information for a friend to receive a discount, GDPR is going to make a difference for you. Giving consent for data to be collected is a key part of GDPR and in these sorts of promotions, the person being referred can’t clearly consent to their information being collected. Under GDPR, it is possible to continue this practice, but it all depends on how that information is being used. If you store the information of the person being referred and use it for marketing purposes, it would be a violation of GDPR standards. However, if you don’t store that information or process it, you’re OK.

Email marketing

If you’re an email marketer and already follow best industry standards by doing things like only sending messages to those who clearly opt in to your list and making it easy for people to unsubscribe, the good news is that you’re probably in pretty good shape. As far as email marketing goes, GDPR is going to have the biggest impact on those who do things that have already been considered sketchy, like buying lists of contacts or not making it clear when someone is signing up to receive emails from you.

Even if you think you’re good to go, it’s still a good time to review your contacts and double check that your European contacts have indeed opted into being on your list and that it was clear what they were signing up for. If any of your contacts don’t have their country listed or you’re not sure how they opted in, you may want to either remove them from your list or put them on a separate segment so they don’t get any messages from you until you can get that figured out. Even if you’re confident your European contacts have opted in, there’s no harm in sending out an email asking them to confirm that they would like to continue receiving messages from you.

Creating a double opt-in process isn’t mandatory, but it would be a good idea since it helps remove any doubt over whether or not a person has agreed to being on your list. While you’re at it, take a look at the forms people use to sign up to be on your list and make sure they’re in line with GDPR standards, with no pre-checked boxes and the fact that they’re agreeing to receive emails from you is very clear.

For example, here’s a non-GDPR compliant email signup option I recently saw on a checkout page. They tell you what they’re planning to send to you, but the fact that it’s a pre-checked box placed underneath the more prominent “Place Order” button makes it very easy for people to unintentionally sign up for emails they might not actually want.

Jimmy Choo, on the other hand, also gives you the chance to sign up for emails while making a purchase, but since the box isn’t pre-checked, it’s good to go under GDPR.

Marketing automation

As is the case with standard email marketing, marketing automation specialists will need to make sure they have clear consent from everyone who has agreed to be part of their lists. Check your European contacts to make sure you know how they’ve opted in. Also review the ways people can opt into your list to make sure it’s clear what, exactly, they’re signing up for so that your existing contacts would be considered valid.

If you use marketing automation to re-engage customers who have been inactive for a while, you may need to get permission to contact them again, depending on how long it has been since they last interacted with you.

Some marketing automation platforms have functionality which will be impacted by GDPR. Lead scoring, for example, is now considered a form of profiling and you will need to get permission from individuals to have their information used in that way. Reverse IP tracking also needs consent.

It’s also important to make sure your marketing automation platform and CRM system are set to sync automatically. If a person on your list unsubscribes and continues receiving emails because of a lapse between the two, you could get in trouble for not being GDPR compliant.

Gated content

A lot of companies use gated content, like free reports, whitepapers, or webinars, as a way to generate leads. The way they see it, the person’s information serves as the price of admission. But since GDPR prohibits blocking access to content if a person doesn’t consent to their information being collected, is gated content effectively useless now?

GDPR doesn’t completely eliminate the possibility of gated content, but there are now higher standards for collecting user information. Basically, if you’re going to have gated content, you need to be able to prove that the information you collect is necessary for you to provide the deliverable. For example, if you were organizing a webinar, you’d be justified in collecting email addresses since attendees need to be sent a link to join in. You’d have a harder time claiming an email address was required for something like a whitepaper since that doesn’t necessarily have to be delivered via email. And of course, as with any other form on a site, forms for gated content need to clearly state all the necessary information about how the information being collected will be used.

If you don’t get a lot of leads from European users anyway, you may want to just block all gated content from European visitors. Another option would be to go ahead and make that information freely available to visitors from Europe.

Google AdWords

If you use Google AdWords to advertise to European residents, Google already required publishers and advertisers to get permission from end users by putting disclaimers on the landing page, but GDPR will be making some changes to these requirements. Google will now be requiring publishers to get clear consent from individuals to have their information collected. Not only does this mean you have to give more information about how a person’s information will be used, you’ll also need to keep records of consent and tell users how they can opt out later on if they want to do so. If a person doesn’t give consent to having their information collected, Google will be making it possible to serve them non-personalized ads.

In the end

GDPR is a significant change and trying to grasp the full scope of its changes is pretty daunting. This is far from being a comprehensive guide, so if you have any questions about how GDPR applies to a particular client you’re working with, it may be best to get in touch with their legal department or team. GDPR will impact some industries more than others, so it’s best to get some input from someone who truly understands the law and how it applies to that specific business.

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[zaner210]

Currently reading Burroughs my Education a Book of Dreams. Through reading it, I thought I’ll jot mine down for the duration. parts of the first 2 will be more incomplete because I just thought of the idea today (midday dream 2), but will try to thoroughly keep track while reading this book. I’ve been reading books pretty fast. I finished this one in less than a week. This is the 5th book I’ve read this year. Hope I can keep this reading kick alive.

1. I remember being stuck in a room that was a pink fleshy material (like lungs or some type of organ in the body). The only way out was climbing the high walls and as I was climbing the interior was changing to a computer circuit board as opposed to the flesh. The circuit board was rough and it cut you and dropped you to the bottom. It was impossible to climb the wall in circuit board state. Woke up shortly after falling. Went back to sleep. Had a sexual encounter. I always hate these dreams! as they’re out of your control. I’ve been trying to walk righteously pleasing the Lord not giving into lust and sexual immorality. I see these dreams as spiritual warfare attacks. The after effects linger and will cause you to stumble in your real life, sometimes days after. Can’t remember the specifics of the encounter, but had slight ejac and strong lustful desires for sexual immorality upon awaking! Didn’t stumble during the day or give into it. Still strongly walking with the Most High! Apr 22 2021

2. Was at a school. There was a cop or security guard walking around. I had a coughing fit and started coughing up blood and my nose start bleeding. Cop gets on radio and says we have a 10-3. Must be some sort of situation or sickness. Remember walking through the school and seeing an old vice principal... Mr. Clasen (could never stand this guy). I will keep better track from here on! Apr 23 2021

Inference: Going on a stretch here. Were these 2 dreams connected? Was I coughing up blood and profusely bleeding from my nose due to the computerized AI infection spreading through my body? Which caused a 10-3 incident.

3. Political demonstration of some sort with huge pictures/billboards and some of them were about wearing masks (yes! this social engineering horror has made it into my dreams!). Couldn’t make out the other ones but im sure it was about some agenda being pushed. The billboards were thin but at least 10-15’ high and 3’ wide. This was in the middle of the town and the ground there was all dirt. Outside the area was fenced and had a bunch of small paper sized notices about wearing your mask and that it’s not required, yet we all still had to. I made a comment about why do we still have to wear them if it’s lifted! Remember something about snowy skateboarding at what looked like the Orange Curb in Poop City and talking about or reading a book of some sort. Ran into an unfamiliar old work acquaintance who’s now a contractor and they mentioned Jack E was fired for non compliance because some legal figure told on him. This caused him to have to get rid of tickets to something they were going to attend together but didn’t want to go anymore since Jack no longer could attend. Woke up for a little. Next dream... went into an arcade which I initially thought was a porn store with some console video games too. The worker was a dude named Mason M I knew from school. My nose was running, think I was getting a cold (or maybe convid). There were 2 unidentifiable shady characters hanging out with me. I didn’t know them but they seemed like people I wouldn’t usually keep around me. We looked around played some arcade games. We were the only ones there this time. We came back a few days later and upon entering one of the rules was you can’t have a runny nose/sniffles and was asked if I had that. He remembered me and I told him no, although I did. The whole time in there I felt my nose dripping. I was with the 2 rando characters again. They entered later and dunno if they were asked the same thing. Walked around other parts of the building. Got lost had to use the bathroom and found out the bathrooms stored bowling balls. Not sure if there was a bowling alley there. Saw more people there. Workers, kids playing at the arcade. Real weird dream. Apr 24 2021

4. Drove straight through To Poop City NM yesterday. Didn’t sleep good but vaguely remember a dream about karate. Think I didn’t reach a dream state cause of exhaustion. Apr 25 2021

5. I went into a bank. There was a bald(ing) mustached man that seemed to be running it although there were other people there. He turned me away when it was finally my turn. Saw him grope/touch a female worker. Not sure if he robbed it or was just wanting to control it. Later he was arrested for a long list of charges, one that stood out was “period touching.” Woke up as I’ve had trouble sleeping again. Next dream I was hanging out with a Poop City skate homie (whom I’m currently staying with). who I used to party down with. He was doing coke and decided I wanted to join the party. Cut a fat line out in the open at a desk area. Looked like the desk area in my parents kitchen. The room became a bar but the desk was still there and the room became crowded with lots of people. None of them noticed the fat line of coke sitting there and it went untouched. I was hesitant to do it as it was out in the opened and people may see. I kept looking at it. Finally didn’t care about the repercussions and ended up doing it. Nose felt runny afterwards. Walked to the pissoir and then awoke from the dream. Apr 26 2021 Drug dreams are better than sex dreams and give you a more refreshed feeling upon awakening! I’m over one year sober and sometimes awakening I feel dread but then come to my senses that it was just a dream!

6. Finished reading the book so this will be the last entry. Slept horribly. Can’t recall much from any of my dreams, although I know I had some. The only thing that stuck out was this weird 1950s Rockabilly tune. It was stuck in my head upon waking. I forgot it as I’m writing this later in the day.

[dipulb3]

Analysis: Why you won't find Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson on British TV

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-why-you-wont-find-sean-hannity-and-tucker-carlson-on-british-tv/

Analysis: Why you won't find Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson on British TV

“The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol … could not have existed in a country that hadn’t been radicalized by the likes of [Fox News hosts] Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and swayed by biased news coverage,” wrote Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan.

But are the airwaves of any democracy free of this kind of harmful propaganda and downright fiction? The United Kingdom, for one, comes pretty close.

Though the UK media scene is defined in part by a freewheeling and often partisan tabloid press with its own share of conspiracy theories, its TV news channels largely frame their coverage down the middle, with broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV maintaining high levels of public trust. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News is no longer on air in the country after failing to generate a significant viewer base.

A big factor in this is media regulator Ofcom, which enforces rules on impartiality and accuracy for all news broadcasters. Those who breach the rules can be censured or fined — putting pressure on TV channels to play stories fairly straight.

Russian state-funded news channel RT, for example, was slapped with a £200,000 ($272,000) penalty for repeatedly breaking impartiality rules in its 2018 coverage of the poisonings of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, as well as the conflict in Syria. It has not been fined since.

“What the impartiality rules do is ensure you cannot have the kind of shock jock culture — [a] far right, or indeed far left, one-sided interpretation of events,” said Steven Barnett, a professor of media and communication at the University of Westminster.

The UK system isn’t perfect. A review of BBC coverage ahead of the 2016 Brexit referendum found that its main news program was more negative on the European Union than Russian President Vladimir Putin. And two new media ventures expected to launch shortly could again push the limits of what’s allowed. But according to experts, the framework has protected against the kind of disinformation peddled by Fox News in the United States.

No Fox News

Ofcom, which was established in 2003, has two important standards that the news broadcasters it licenses must abide by — “due impartiality” and “due accuracy.”

This does not mean that equal time needs to be given on television and radio to both sides of an issue. But broadcasters do have a responsibility at least to acknowledge opposing viewpoints, and to quickly correct “significant mistakes.”

When Fox News was on the air in the United Kingdom, its top stars were found to have violated the regulator’s rules.

Ofcom said that a Hannity program about President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries didn’t do enough to surface the viewpoints of those who opposed the order. Ofcom also said that a separate Carlson broadcast following the 2017 Manchester terror attack — which included claims that UK authorities had done nothing to stop terrorism or to protect “thousands of underage girls” from rape and abuse — did not adequately reflect alternate perspectives.

Fox News was pulled off air in the United Kingdom later in 2017 when Murdoch, the billionaire chairman of News Corp and Fox News’ parent company, was seeking government approval to purchase the shares he didn’t own of European pay TV network Sky. (He ended up selling his Sky holdings to Comcast.)

21st Century Fox, the network’s parent company at the time, said it made the decision because Fox News had attracted “only a few thousand viewers across the day” in the United Kingdom, and it didn’t make commercial sense to continue broadcasting. But the move also came amid scrutiny from Ofcom, which had previously slammed Fox’s handling of sexual harassment allegations against former network boss Roger Ailes and former star host Bill O’Reilly, calling their alleged conduct “deeply disturbing.”

Such warnings hint at the trouble Fox News could have faced had it stuck it out during the Trump era.

Hefty penalties awarded to other channels, such as RT, have effectively communicated the consequences of slipping up to media executives, said Trevor Barnes, a TV and radio compliance consultant and former Ofcom official.

“They’re aware that if they misbehave, they’ll be hit with a fine,” he said.

The United States, meanwhile, doesn’t have these kinds of rules — and hasn’t since the Reagan era, when the Federal Communications Commission stopped enforcing the so-called Fairness Doctrine for TV and radio stations. Historians believe the demise of this rule, which required broadcasters to present a variety of views on issues of public importance, paved the way for the explosion of conservative talk radio in the late 1980s and 1990s, which later served as a model for Fox. Those talk radio shows continue to be popular today.

As a cable network, Fox News wouldn’t have been bound by the doctrine, which only applied to broadcast channels. But Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University and Appradab contributor, said its removal changed the rules of the game.

“It served as a kind of check,” Zelizer said. “It was always on the mind of everyone who was in the news business.”

Now, even members of the Murdoch family are reckoning with the role Fox News has played. James Murdoch, who made a dramatic break from his family last year when he resigned from the board of News Corp, said in a statement on Friday that “spreading disinformation” has “real world consequences.” While he did not mention Fox News by name, it was clear his focus was on the network controlled by his father and brother.

“Many media property owners have as much responsibility for this as the elected officials who know the truth but choose instead to propagate lies. We hope the awful scenes we have all been seeing will finally convince those enablers to repudiate the toxic politics they have promoted once and forever,” James Murdoch and his wife, Kathryn Murdoch, said in a joint statement to the Financial Times.

New networks may test the system

The United Kingdom has largely watched the Capitol riot and its aftermath in horror.

“The events … have been the ultimate demonstration of what can happen when those fundamental pillars of democracy break down: accurate information [and] fair information,” Barnett said.

But two outlets expected to debut shortly in the United Kingdom could test the bounds of the regulatory system, including Ofcom’s appetite for enforcement.

Murdoch’s UK operation, which still controls three big British newspapers — The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times — is working on a new video venture, having recently received a license under the name News UK TV. Details haven’t been announced.

Meanwhile, upstart competitor GB News, which recently secured £60 million ($81 million) from investors, is hiring journalists as it prepares to launch a 24-hour news channel.

“Many British people are crying out for a news service that is more diverse and more representative of their values and concerns,” former BBC host Andrew Neil, who will serve as the chairman of GB News, said in a statement last week. Neil was previously the editor of Murdoch’s Sunday Times and executive chairman of Sky TV.

Critics fear the News UK TV venture and GB News could move to take on the BBC and fill a perceived gap in right-wing broadcasting, sparking concerns about whether UK regulators are up to the task of maintaining due impartiality, or whether Britain could soon have its own Fox News-type problem.

Both outlets may play things fairly safe at first, and Barnes noted that the rules will give them some latitude.

“There’s no requirement under due impartiality for a channel not to have a bias,” he said. “All it requires is you reflect, to a pretty small degree, what the opposing viewpoint is.”

But Barnett is worried that over time, there could be a slow erosion of norms — combined with an anti-Ofcom push from Murdoch’s powerful papers, who may level criticisms of a “nanny state regulator telling us what we can and can’t say.” News Corp declined to comment.

“I will make a prediction that within a year we will see a concerted attack within the Murdoch press on Ofcom,” he said. And if support for the regulator fades, all bets will be off.

[scripttorture]

Hi! Not sure how to phrase this. I have a character who was tortured, physically and otherwise, for a long time starting from say 16. The torture was a way of training and conditioning this character to be a certain way, punishing "wrong" behaviour. Kinda like brainwashing. At some point this character gives in. My question is 3-part. 1, is this scenario possible? 2, can this "programming" be broken? 3, if so, would there be times where it "snaps back" ?

This scenario isn’t possible. Or rather- it wouldn’t ‘work’ the way the people doing the ‘training’ think it should. You should really start by reading this post on torture apologia present in fiction and how to avoid it.

 Before I go any further I’d advise you not to use the term ‘psychological torture’ in your writing. It’s a term that torture apologists tend to use to refer to practices that are physically harmful (sometimes fatal) but don’t leave obvious scars. These ‘clean’ tortures, like stress positions, solitary confinement and starvation are not ‘psychological’.

 Torture is physically harmful. Downplaying or ignoring that belittles what survivors go through.

 This does not mean that emotional abuse, coercion and manipulation are not harmful. They are. But they do not, to my knowledge, cause kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes or any of the other possible causes of death by clean tortures.

 Brainwashing doesn’t work. Not in the sense of beating someone until they think the way the abuser wants anyway, and that’s the impression I’m getting from this ask.

 If the abuser characters want the victim to perform tasks then this kind of abuse is probably going to make the victim much worse at those task then they would have been otherwise.

 I mention that because a lot of asks with this scenario are using it as ‘training’ for being a soldier, assassin or thief. And working under the assumption that a torture survivor would be ‘better’ at it as a result. Often what the author describes in the ask would be fatal.

 Leaving this story as it is isn’t just unrealistic; it is unrealistic in ways that excuse torture or downplay the harm it causes. It suggests that survivors are controlled by torturers. That torture can ‘force’ people to change their strongly held beliefs. It suggests that because of these two things survivors are dangerous and this is a line of thought that is used to bar real survivors from real help.

 None of that is true. This is not how torture functions.

 I think removing the apologia gives you two choices with this scenario. You can carry on with a scenario close to the current one, in which case it shouldn’t be treated like brainwashing but like slavery; so there are no ‘programmed’ behaviours or changed beliefs but there’s a lot of abuse and coercion that effects the character in a lasting way.

 Or you can change the scenario in a way which could have a chance to effect the victim character’s beliefs and feelings. They wouldn’t become a programmed automata, but they could come out of it wanting to behave the way their abusers told them to. This is unlikely to work if there is any sort of deprivation or physical abuse.

 I’ll talk a little about both possibilities. Realistic or not there’s something in the original scenario that appealed to you, that felt important to the story. I think you can find it again in one of the more realistic scenarios. But I don’t know what it was you found interesting, what you wanted to explore.

 You know that best; the choice of which scenario is best for your story is up to you.

 Let’s start with slavery.

 People who are beaten and abused in an attempt to force them to work will often chose to comply. But I don’t think it’s accurate to treat this as if they’ve done anything other then make a hard-headed conscious choice.

 These victims assess the situation they are in and generally they choose to comply because they recognise that they’re more likely to survive if they do.

 Many of them will see compliance as a short term strategy that makes successful escape more likely in the longer term.

 And there are limits to this compliance. Enslaved people resist in a huge variety of ways. Granted not all of these actions are obvious or successful, but they are intended as acts of resistance and should be understood that way.

 People enslaved during the transatlantic trade launched organised wars against the people who enslaved them. They faced guns with crude or no weapons. And sometimes, as in Haiti, they won.

 They also organised large scale escapes and founded sophisticated, separate societies. The most famous of which were in Brazil.

 They poisoned and attacked slavers. They sabotaged equipment. They destroyed property. They conducted banned religious rituals, educated themselves and others. They also committed suicide in large numbers and they stated that this was to spite the people who enslaved them.

 In short enslaved people do not stop being people.

 Torture encourages resistance. It causes an unbelievably strong feeling of opposition to the torturers and everything the survivor associates with them. This can sometimes extend to whole races, countries, religious groups, institutions and so forth.

 Enslaved people do not agree with the people who abuse them. And I do not think their actions, their decisions should be understood as long term ‘obedience’ but as short term compliance in the face of real threats and coercion.

 You are probably wondering why enslaved people feel they need to comply. You may also be connecting this compliance to the violence meted out on enslaved people.

 Based on what I’ve read about historical and modern slavery I think this is a simplistic view of a complex situation. And you come to me because it’s hard to see that complexity without dropping sixty quid and three months on reading materials.

 I don’t think violence is the whole picture in these scenarios. Focusing on the violence often means overlooking the systematic structural features which encourage enslaved people to comply.

 Escape is made physically difficult, sometimes life threatening. Slaves are generally moved far away from their family home, cutting them off from social support. They’re actively prevented from contacting friends, family or people the slaver does not approve of.

 They are repeatedly told that they can’t seek redress from any kind of authority figure. Historically even if there were laws supposed to ‘protect’ slaves courts systematically sided with slavers over the enslaved. Nowadays slaves are usually told that if they go to the police the police will just arrest them for immigration offences, or drug dealing, or prostitution.

 This is often true.

 Slavers work to cut off their victims from any form of outside support; be it material or emotional. They deliberately create an environment where slaves feel they can not leave without help while being cut off from any help.

 Something I often see described in survivor accounts is a figure I call the ‘promoted slave’.

 This is someone who says they started out at the same level the slaves did, they complied, they ‘worked hard’ and they were rewarded with wealth and a position of authority over the slaves. These people consistently present the idea that the slaves will be better off if they comply.

 Finally slaves are put in a situation where escape would leave them in a state of deprivation. The slaver tries to make sure they don’t have money, an alternative place to go or anything they could practically use.

 So successful escape could mean sleeping on the streets. It could mean starving. Or freezing. Or a dozen other deaths by deprivation. Slavers not only point this out but work to make it seem more likely then it actually is.

 All of these factors are significant. They combine to manipulate a lot of victims into thinking the only sensible choice is compliance.

 But they also don’t work on everybody and they don’t work forever. Some victims will still refuse from day one. Some victims will comply for years and then reach point where they feel the only thing left to do is actively resist.

 There is no such thing as a certain way to ‘make’ everyone obey.

 Which brings me to option two and ICURE.

 ICURE is a set of techniques that can, over time, change a person’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Again, these are not 100% effective. They are also a lot less likely to work if the victim is in any sort of pain.

 Because inflicting pain encourages disobedience.

 For ICURE to be effective the character would have to be removed from their usual social circle by the group of people attempting it. They would need to stay with this group of people for several years and the group would have to use ICURE consistently throughout that time.

 It would also be more likely to work if the targetted character sees the members of this group as their friends, as kind, caring, trustworthy people.

 ICURE stands for Isolate, Control information, create Uncertainty, use Repetition and Emotive arguments.

 The first point should be pretty obvious. The character needs to be isolated from their previous social circle and support network. When people don’t receive any information from outside of the group the group eventually becomes their most trustworthy source. When they don’t have social contact outside the group they become reliant on the group for support.

 Controlling information means that anything the character learns is first filtered through the larger group. It’s a form of censorship which means the character is only exposed to information that supports the group/ideas the group wants the character to have.

 This is combined with creating uncertainty about beliefs the group wants the character to reject. Often this means only providing information that discredits their previous belief system (whether this information is correct or not). It can also mean extended discussions about ‘why x is wrong’.

 Repetition is, what it says on the tin. It’s repeating this pattern of only giving the character information the group wants them to have, positive messages about the ideals the group wants to instil and negative messages about previous belief systems. Consistent repetition over a long period of time has an effect on our beliefs. Sometimes it even effects them when we know the information is wrong.

 Emotive arguments means- well keeping any discussion away from logic. Something like- going from ‘well I’m not sure this idea about our belief system lines up with our holy text’ to the manipulative character asking why the target hates them/God/the entire church.

 If this set of behaviours sounds like a cult or an emotional abusive relationship- well that’s because it pretty much is.

 In a slavery scenario a character is generally complying because they think they’ll die if they don’t, and they don’t judge it to be worth dying over.

 In ICURE characters obey the way someone might obey a teacher or a priest or a strict parent.

 To be clear ICURE can not make a character like someone. It creates reliance, not attachment.

 But if the attachment is there as well, if that builds up separately, then you end up with one of the strongest and most reliable motivations for a character to obey someone: they don’t want to let someone they care about down.

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#writing advice #tw torture #tw slavery #tw suicide #torture apologia #torture does not work #torture survivors are not broken #resistance to torture #resistance to slavery #ICURE #compliance under threat #torture and obedience

[silagroup]

How To Ensure Warehouse Safety?

Warehousing work activities create numerous health and safety risks. If you fail to control them, your warehouse may face a high employee turnover, underperforming staff, injuries and illnesses, lost working days, legal issues, and, at worst, fatalities.

As an employer, supervisor, or manager, you are legally required to implement and maintain safety procedures. Safety measures must protect workers from warehouse hazards and ensure that they can carry out work activities safely.

You should also focus on promoting thorough warehouse safety procedures for reasons beyond compliance. Maintaining good practices shows that you value staff wellbeing and want to do things right, which boosts motivation and increases trust in your leadership.

Warehouse Safety Tips

The sections below cover common warehouse hazards you should diligently manage.

Vehicle Safety

Whether your workers drive forklifts or lift trucks, vehicle safety is essential to prevent impact or crush injuries. In 2016/17, 31 people died due to being struck by a moving vehicle. Furthermore, nearly a quarter of all deaths involving vehicles at work occur while the driver reverses.

To maintain vehicle safety, you should:

• Only allow staff to drive vehicles if they have received practical training. No one under the age of 18 should operate a forklift.

• Ensure workers maintain speed limits – you should put up signs to remind them. Drivers of forklifts should not exceed 5mph.

• Ensure staff avoid reversing wherever possible. Set up a one-way system and plan routes so drivers can always see where they’re going. If drivers can’t avoid reversing, make sure they have someone to spot them or other visibility support.

• Maximise visibility. Set up mirrors to aid the driver’s vision when manoeuvring around corners or reversing. Make sure people working on the warehouse floor know to look both ways when they leave an aisle.

• Enforce a zero-tolerance policy for dangerous driving, such as racing.

• Keep aisles free of obstructions. Make sure staff know to follow good housekeeping practices. For example, disposing of packaging materials and clearing away equipment as soon as possible.

• Arrange for regular inspection and maintenance of vehicles. A trained professional needs to check that everything is in working order. However, staff can still look for obvious issues.

• Provide drivers with a list of daily checks. For example, warning lights on the dashboard, deflated tyres, faulty seatbelts, strange noises, etc.

• Display driver safety notices and signs. Signs should warn drivers to watch out for pedestrians, wear their seatbelt, report issues to their manager, etc.

• Maintain the floor to prevent overturning or damage to the vehicle. Make sure parts of the floor aren’t too steep, uneven, or damaged.

Slips, Trips, and Falls

Statistics from the Health and Safety Executive show that slips and trips are the single most common cause of work-related injuries in the UK. They also state that falls from height account for most workplace deaths. In 2015/16, almost 40 people died from falls from height, while around 118,000 workers suffered injuries due to slips and trips.

To prevent slips, trips, and falls, you should:

• Ensure staff know how to carry out good housekeeping. They should clean up spillages, remove obstructions from paths, keep cables tidied away, etc.

• Ensure cleaning staff display appropriate warning signs. Try to schedule cleaning outside of normal work hours so it puts fewer people at risk. Also make sure that cleaners use the correct method and detergent for your type of warehouse floor.

• Use anti-slip paint. It prevents dust from building up, reduces the slip quality of the floor surface, minimises wear and tear, and improves cleaning.

• Use anti-slip tape and shoes. Tape is useful for stairs and other areas where you can’t use anti-slip paint, while non slip soles help people remain safe even if they do encounter a slip hazard.

• Make sure floors are level – uneven flooring can cause people to lose their footing. This is especially dangerous if they’re carrying a load.

• Use heavy-duty cord covers if you must run cables across the floor. As well as preventing trips, covers also protect cables in case a vehicle runs over them.

• Train staff to work at height safely. Ladder safety is particularly important because misuse or use of an unstable ladder can lead to serious injury or even death. Make sure workers use them for no longer than 30 minutes, stay off the top 3 rungs, and maintain three points of contact at all times (e.g. two feet and one hand).

For more information, High Speed Training offers a CPD accredited and RoSPA approved online course dedicated to Slips, Trips & Falls.

Lifting

Warehouse staff may carry out both manual and machinery-assisted lifting activities, which both pose a significant risk if not performed safely. You need to implement suitable control measures to prevent musculoskeletal disorders and the risks of unsafe equipment.

To minimise lifting risks, you should:

• Ensure operators of lifting equipment know the maximum safe working load (SWL). The SWL is usually printed on equipment and/or included in the manufacturer’s instructions. Following these limits is essential to prevent strain, which could cause the load to fall off or wear down the equipment.

• Train staff in manual handling safety. They should know their manual handling weight limits (20-25kg is heavy for most people) and how to use proper handling techniques to minimise strain.

• Avoid the need for manual handling if possible – use lift trucks, pallet trucks, trolleys, etc.

• Ensure staff use and store chains properly. Improper use of chains can lead to the links experiencing metal fatigue, bending, or rusting. Check chains regularly for issues, keep them in a dry place, and prevent vehicles from running over them.

Fire Safety

Warehouses have a lot of open space and kindling, meaning that fire can spread extremely rapidly. In 2015/16, there were 2,131 fires in industrial premises (which includes warehouses) and of this number, there were 7 fatalities and 120 non-fatal casualties.

Beyond damaging your warehouse and harming people, fires lead to the loss of valuable resources and production time. In fact, many businesses never fully recover from a serious fire.

To maintain fire safety, you should:

• Carry out fire drills at least once a year. Drills help you check that your escape routes work in practice. They should demonstrate that staff know the location of fire exit routes and the assembly point.

• Test fire alarms weekly and check smoke alarms ideally on a monthly basis. Also check other equipment regularly, such as extinguishers and sprinklers.

• Create a fire evacuation and emergency plan. You should review and update it regularly.

• Designate a fire warden. Their responsibilities include minimising fire hazards in the workplace, creating evacuation plans, and taking charge during an emergency.

• Ensure you have installed emergency lighting. Fire escape routes, exits, and signs need to be well-lit so people can see them from a distance and navigate safely.

• Handle materials safely. Staff need to ensure they clear away boxes and packaging and handle hazardous substances with extreme care. Make sure you know how to store chemicals safely in a warehouse.

Pallets and Racking

Most warehouses require staff to load and unload pallets on racking, either by hand or with machinery. Your workers must carry these tasks out safely so they don’t drop pallets on people, affect the stability of racking, or damage other equipment.

To ensure pallet and racking safety, you should:

• Train staff to load pallets securely. Use shrink or stretch wrapping to support pallets and follow a suitable stacking pattern as recommended by the manufacturer.

• Make sure staff follow the safe stacking height and weight capacity recommended by the manufacturer. They should stack them evenly, with heavier pallets on the bottom.

• Instruct staff to inspect each pallet before use. Pallets should not contain loose nails, splinters, cracks, or any other issues.

• Tell staff not to climb, lean on, or walk over pallets or racking. Some staff may not recognise the damage they can do and how easily they could fall or knock something off the racking.

• Ensure staff do not use pallets or fork lift trucks to access heights. They should use a ladder or another type of suitable equipment to reach higher shelves.

• Provide staff with suitable personal protective equipment (PPE). PPE helps prevent exposure to numerous hazards.

Personal Protective Equipment

Workers may need personal protective equipment in your warehouse, but keep in mind that you should first implement other control measures. This is important because, if the PPE fails or workers don’t wear it, any uncontrolled hazards will pose a huge risk.

Training

Training workers in health and safety is a legal requirement. They must understand how to work safely with warehouse equipment and how to uphold health and safety control measures.

About SILA

Sila solutions is run by two young and successful brothers – Sahil Vora and Rishabh Vora who have made their foot in Mumbai real estate development along with their facility management business. SILA has efficiently scaled, with operations in 75+ cities, 6500+ employees and a client base of multiple Fortune 500 companies. For more information visit https://silagroup.co.in/

Read more at https://silagroup.co.in/blog/how-to-ensure-warehouse-safety

[pingou7]

A car, two cops and a stardust — a RebelCaptain road trip fic

by @pingou7 pingou  for @thestarbirdfromtheashes Starbird

(aka the Road trip fic Diego Luna’s filmography made me write)

Read and enjoy, and please consider leaving me a few words.

Summary:

As the dusty roads criss under Kes Dameron’s old car, Cassian Andor lets the wind mess with his hair through the open window. Dust, sunshine, laughter, its easy to recapture the taste of days long gone.

(…)

At a gas station near Corpus Chirsti, when they climb back after taking a piss, both jump out of their skins as a random brunette, eyes thunderous, hisses dangerously from the backseat:

“Just pretend I’m not here.”

Update: Part 5 is (finally) up!

(I dedicate this one to @sleepykalena because she likes this fic so much it makes me happy. This update is for you especially Char, hope it delivers...)

Read more on AO3 (or under the cut)

Part 5 — From Tijuana to Caborca, Sonora, Mexico Day 3

There’s a sense of homecoming as Cassian stares out the window, dust flying around, rocky mountains... more colorful houses, more colorful life. But of course the quiet in the car was starting to creep Kes out and he switched on the radio. He too seems happy to drive back to mother land, as a man’s soulful voice carries out from the speakers.

Only on air it’s actually Propuesta Indecente — one of the Damerons favorite bachata songs — and soon Kes is wiggling his eyebrows suggestively at him. Andor struggles not to burst out of laughter and he hopes Jyn doesn’t have so much grip on Spanish as to translate what these lyrics mean:

¿Qué dirías si esta noche

Te seduzco en mi coche?

Que se empañen los vidrios

Y la regla es que goces

Well, to be honest, the idea of seducing Jyn in the car tonight until glasses get fogged wouldn’t be so far fetched — nor unwelcome — but Kes is here. So as evocative as the song might be, the sudden fantasy of a flushed Jyn lying on the hood of his brother’s old mustang is nothing but a pretty image.

He squirms in the seat, dry throated and changes the song. His brother sniggers, but as Quiero qué me quieras starts — again — he is lost in the song and forgets to tease him. Jyn is on the back seat, rummaging through the bag Gina lent her but at Kes’ demand, she reaches behind her, stretching, to retrieve his old white cowboy hat.

Cassian avoids to look at her to put the thing on top of the driver’s head, however, the sight is slightly ridiculous — he exchanged this for a baseball cap as a teen — and like the car, Dameron kept it out of sentimentality, despite having outgrown both.

He wants to broach the subject of Jyn, but he doesn’t know how. As usual, thanks to his sunny brother there’s a relative impression of carefreeness, but while she seems to be drinking the sights, the fugitive is far from sharing any kind goofing:

Her back is upright, her shoulders squared against her seat and she looks ready to bolt, more so than she did crossing the border. He realizes he didn’t hear the sound of her voice since then and it sits ill with him: the cop in Andor wants to interrogate her and the man just wants to reach out.

They stop in Tijuana to refuel and of course, Cassian insists on putting on his matching tourist cap. He’s not really Captain Andor here, just Cass — and if Kes-adillas gets to wear his old cowboy hat, then he doesn’t get to comment on it. Jyn rolls her eyes at their antics, but agrees to get a larger head cloth than the one she has. It covers her hair, twisting safely around her neck... it looks a bit exotic to be honest, oriental almost, but she puts it on with a long acquired ease that makes him wonder.

Everything she does and doesn’t say makes him wonder, and he doesn’t like it.

Eventually, as the urgency of their reaching San Diego no longer exists — God willing — Kes decides to stretch his legs, calling his wife for a bit. Neither Cassian nor Jyn leave the car though, as he ponders on the old fashioned map that marks their spots, like a way of the cross. After all, the original plan was their yearly pilgrimage to Bernal and the brunette behind him doesn’t alter that. In any way whatsoever. Of course not.

“So, Jyn, have you ever been to Mexico?”

“No, I’ve been to Columbia for a few months, but that’s all.”

“Vacation? Work? Schooling?”

“Nope, none of that, through it was really... formative.”

Her cryptic and elusive answers are driving him madder each time. If it wasn’t leisure nor work or school, what could have been her reason for going to South America? He senses she’s not lying, but as usual she’s the opposite of forthcoming. He thinks she’s voluntarily leaving clues for him, but these pieces only serve to confuse him more.

Kes slides in again, but he’s frowning, and the car is oddly silent. Cassian keeps his mouth shut, knowing he’d better wait for Kay’s information to provide a starting point on his probing. Meanwhile, his brother asks about their next stop — Caborca, in Sonora, still around six hours of driving — in a sullen voice that intrigues Jyn.

“I thought you wanted to ease up on the gas pedal?”

“I thought you were on the run,” Kes retorts moodily.

“Not at present,” she answers nonplussed,”which was the point. I mean, don’t speed up on my account.”

Kes sighs and slides out again, ignoring their surprise. Cassian goes after him, and they settle for a chat by the road. His brother is fishing for something in his pockets, if they were younger it might have been a pack and a lighter, but both had quit years before. Whatever it is, he can’t find it however, and lets out a curse.

“Care to tell me what’s wrong, cabrón?”

“Should I make a list? Gina, the wayward cat, the crappy car. My son misses me.”

“Hey, it was all the same an hour ago, only you were not an ass then.”

“We’re not all as good as you for compartmentalizing, Captain Andor. We should have flown there.”

“To Bernal?”

“Yep. Time’s short, life’s short. The sooner we are in Bernal, the sooner we can go back to our lives. I didn’t want to leave Tia.”  

Okay, so this is Kes freaking out, that Cassian can deal with. He won’t tease him or offer him platitudes, but he’d thought a phone call to Shara would have served as damage control. Clearly he’d underestimated Kes’ helplessness. He pats his shoulder, as he states:

“We knew she wasn’t great, cursí. Gina’s old.”

“Shut up rudo, old or not, it’s not okay. We’re talking about family here. Rules don’t apply.”

It’s Cassian’s turn to sigh this time, noting his brother’s petulant tone is exactly the same as little Poe’s. For all his nephew took after Shara, whining seems to be a Dameron trait.

“They do, even, perhaps especially when we don’t wish them to. She was happy to see us though, it counts for something right? And, you know, we’re gonna see her in a few days.”

“Remind me why we thought this long ass road trip was a good idea?”

“No money to spare on plane tickets.”

“Come on, this trip isn’t cheap.”

“But we wouldn’t have Jyn with us.”

“You’re clingy for a guy that picked a stray three days ago. What makes you think she won’t ditch us, now that she’d crossed the border? She may have left the car already for all we know, or better, stole it altogether.”

“Don’t be a dick. Let’s go back now, if you’re so worried she’s gonna disappear.”

“I’m not a worrier, you are.”

“Then start acting like it!”

When they get back to the car, Jyn isn’t in the back seat and for a heartbeat or two, both cops are stunned, speechless. Cassian feels his blood rushing out of his cheeks for the first time in more than a decade — he is usually level headed, a good element — and it takes the horn honking to snap him out of it.

Jyn, mysterious runaway that she is, has passed behind the wheel. He sees it, yet his brain takes a whole second to process the information. Kes opens the door on the driver’ side, puzzlement written all over his face.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought you were tired of the rotation by now, so... I looked at the map. I can do my share, if that’s okay.”

She’s impassive, but her voice hints at a slight uncertainty and she avoids their eyes, fixing the road in front of her like she could start the car by sheer force of will. Cassian exhales loudly — out of relief or resignation, perhaps — and chooses to regain his place next to her, strapping himself in. Once he’s done, he gestures to Dameron to get in the car too, which he does after some stalling, and says to Jyn:

“I’m surprised by the fact that you waited for us. You could have fled.”

“With this piece of junk? Not likely. Plus, ditching cops with their own car wouldn’t help my case.”

“It sure wouldn’t,” Cassian agrees while he watches her starting the car and resuming their travel.

“You’re doing okay with this side of the road?”

“What, why,” she asks dubiously, eyes narrowing.

“You’re Brit, right? Didn’t you drive the other way around?”

“Relax, officer Kes-adillas, I’ll do fine, besides, when I first started to drive, there wasn’t any road to begin with.“

“No exactly reassuring,” he mumbles, but since he doesn’t ask for the keys, Jyn smiles.

“You’ll have your baby back as soon as we reach the next city, if you want.”

But they let her drive for three hours before they stop for the night. She looks heartened by their compliance, expecting the cops to reclaim the wheel anytime, yet Kes concentrates on chilling out and Cassian prefers to focus on his emails — okay, he might steal a glance at her profile from time to time, so what if he does? He’s just checking she’s not getting tired or stressed by the road, and she does cut a fine figure in the bright tones left by dusk.

The hotel staff they’re staying at were able to point the trio a serviceable phone, so Jyn made her mandatory call to wherever her brother lives in the States. Cassian has more luck though, and thanks to her passport, Kay managed to send him intel right on his phone, that he reads up greedily, with Kes frowning at his shoulder.

When she gets back with a taco, she picks up instantly the rise of tension in the room. For a whole minute nobody talks and Jyn finishes her food with both men staring at her.

“So, guys, what’s the plan tomorrow? I’d thought you’d have lots to chat about, why the long faces?”

“Anything we have to say, you don’t want to hear.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You tell us, Jyn, or is it Liana? You sure spent a few months in jail under that name, so do you prefer we use Kestrel?”

“Wait, how do you... you snooped around my stuff,” she asks furiously, pointing a accusative finger at Cassian.

She looks comically affronted for a common thief, but now isn’t the time to point it out, though the corner of Kes' lips is lifting.

“I did, and if you think it was wrong of me, then you should have been more open, so I didn’t have to.”

“Sorry I’m not the kind of girl who unloads a lifetime of anecdotes on car rides. Chirrut told me I could trust you on the phone, so I did, but it’s just… I wasn’t sure I could trust you and you already proved us wrong.”

The name doesn’t ring a bell at all, and the cops frown in sync, crossing their arms — it’s their classic bad cops pose, Shara usually mocks — but nobody here feels like joking. Yet another thing Jyn hides from them.

“Does he know us, then, this Chirrut?” Kes asks.

“No, I don’t think so, but he doesn’t need to, okay? I can’t explain it but he knows stuff. If he says you’re trustworthy then you are.”

“You’re nuts, and even so, if you or whoever else think we’re trustworthy, then why won’t you bloody tell us what’s going on with you?!”

“I don’t have to tell you shit!”

“God woman, we’re trying to help you!”

“I don’t ask for help, I’m managing on my own!”

“Scuse me,” Kes interrupts in a milder tone despite his own frustration, “but you did hide in my car, and against all odds, we’re still dragging you with us, so...”

“Right, sorry I crashed at your Charolastras party, but for the record you insisted! Anyway I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“We’ll see about that!” Kes retorts hotly, whereas Cassian’s ire runs so cold he’d fear frostbite.

His furor is leaving him thankfully tongue-tied, but he’s as furious as his brother. He’s just used to repress his angry bursts. She is too, but when nobody speaks or move for a few heavy seconds she storms out of the room and Cassian is so frustrated at her cowardice he can’t see straight, gripping the counter with sweaty hands.

Kes swears heartily, pours himself a drink. Cassian drinks too, four long gulps to settle his nerves. It does little. When they eventually decide to get to bed — the do need to resume the trip in a few hours — Kes pushes him towards the room next to  the one we reserved for him. When Cassian asks what the hell he’s thinking, his traitor of a brother replies:

“Our bromance means I have to interfere, so try to be persuasive with her. And man up, cause I’m planning to have phone sex or something.”

“TMI.”

“Don’t complain, if you play your cards correctly you might get hot, angry sex while I have to make do.”

“You left your wife only three days ago. She really has you by the balls.”

“Yep, I’m not ashamed of that, and I think it’s a feeling you’ll soon be familiar with Cass. Let’s just see how you’ll handle that then, at least my wife’s home, waiting meekly for me.”

“Fuck you Dameron.”

“You wish cabrón, but I’ll leave that to Erso, now shoo,” he exclaims in a cooing way, tapping on his own thighs for good measure.

“I’m not your puppy Kes,” Cassian grumbles a bit petulantly before the door closes behind him and he’s left to knock on Jyn’s room.

No answer, but she didn’t lock it, so he enters. If she doesn’t like that, she can suck it. She is already under the covers, doesn’t move an inch. She’s too still to be asleep — surely too riled up, if she’s anything like him — so he just foregoes all pretense and strands quickly across the room.

“Scoot over,” he says, taking off his shoes.

She turns her head sharply at the sound of his voice, but glares and remains motionless in the middle of the bed. Her facial expression clearly conveys her furious disbelief — no doubt she is a second away from telling him to get lost, at the very least, but Cassian doesn’t give her the time:

“Scoot over Jyn,” he repeats a little sterner, paying no heed of her murderous green eyes to lift up the blanket.

“Leave me alone! I don’t see why I got all the way here, honestly. You’re more ruthless than a hound...”

“I’ve been told that before, but you expect me to let you keep your secrets the entire time that you're with us?"

“I don’t have to answer you, you’re a cop, so I reckon you’re familiar with the right to silence.”

“You’re not under arrest, so it doesn’t qualify.”

“From the way you’re behaving, I wasn’t sure. I’m just going to leave and be done with it.”

Aggravated as she may be, he is as well. She won’t have him being guilty for invading her privacy. So far he’d been nothing but awfully patient with her, and respectful of the boundaries she set. Really Cassian? Kay’s dry voice interjects unexpectedly in his stormy thoughts, which makes him scowl harder.

She still has the gal to huff at him, mumbling invectives under her breath in a language he doesn’t know of, but her body language and tone make it clear that whatever she’s saying, it’s not flattering. He wants to shake some sense into her, or kiss her mouth shut. That would be more enjoyable, at least.

Yet when he’d thought about it — and in the past seventy two hours, the fleeting image came at least twice — he didn’t picture making his move in some grubby hotel room. She’s pissed, he’s frustrated in more ways than one and despite his earlier encouragement, Kes too is probably a tad wallowing. Perhaps the stuffy Poe gave him is coming handy, he thinks dryly. If she kicks him out, then at least he would have a chance to find out.

“Look Jyn, would you stay with us if I asked?”

“Why would you?”

“I don’t know, but I want to.”

I want you, he wants to stay instead. It’s not logical but it’s true nonetheless, he doesn’t want her to vanish just yet.

“I’m not used to people sticking around when things get bad,” she retorts, reluctantly.

“Let me prove you wrong, then.”

“I’m not worth the effort Cassian, really. I should have disappeared in San Diego like I planned to.”

“Let us be the judges of that, okay? I thought we were… something of friends, by now, you and me. And Kes too.”

“Friends don’t harass each other.”

“Friends trust each other, that includes confiding in each other when they need to.”

“Maybe for you, friends give me my space.”

“You’ll have all the space you want once what’s after you clears up.”

“You really have a bad case of hero complex.”

“Maybe, but I’d be easier to placate if you let us help.”

“I’m not gonna leave tomorrow,” she answers after a short silence, dropping the matter. “I wouldn’t even know where to start, and I promised Baze I’d wait until the coast is clear. So... if you want... I’ll tell you what’s necessary come morning, with Kes.”

“Splendid, we can fill the blanks from there, I’m looking forward to it. But for now let’s get to sleep.”

He expects her to send him back to Kes, maybe bidding him good night since she has cooled down, but she simply nods and turns the light off. He does not move an inch and she doesn’t breath a word. He stares blankly at the dark ceiling and he counts his blessings when she rolls to her side, her body turned towards the door.

He has a thought for who he just left in San Diego, and what awaits him in Bernal. Like he did the night before, he crosses himself, though he doesn’t feel the need to pray. He would have to count on his own merits to pull it through tomorrow.

#rebelcaptain #fanfiction #cassian andor #jyn erso #kes dameron #modern au #roadtrip #pingou writes