What specific emotions are you trying to amplify in every communication with stakeholders?
A few examples:
Excited. The community is taking off. Activity is rising. The results are coming in. They can’t wait to see what happens next.
Worried. The community isn’t taking off. They’re going to have to explain to their boss why it’s not working unless they invest in more resources.
Confident/Safe. Things are going as planned. No surprises. Steady results. They feel smart they made a good decision to invest. They feel safe and secure.
Jealous. Other communities are doing better in their field. They need to explain to their boss why it’s not working.
The kind of emotion you want to amplify has a big impact on what you measure and how you communicate the outcomes of the community.
If you want the stakeholder to be excited, then be excited. Randomly send through updates with exciting news/milestones achieved. Highlight the new top influencers that joined. Embrace the variable reward mechanism here. Send through unexpected surprises and benefits.
If you want the stakeholder to feel confident or safe, then show how things are going as planned. Provide the facts with context. Be consistent and showcase consistent results.
You will find communicating with any stakeholder becomes much easier once you identify what emotion you need to amplify.
A year ago, I accepted that I will never actually do an epic charity bike ride such as the Ride to Conquer Cancer. But recently, all that has changed, and I have now resolved that I will do next year's BC Ride to Conquer Cancer. Here's how I came to be inspired to do this. I hope this post will inspire you too. Also includes links to useful training advice and other inspirational cycling posts.
We’re introducing a new feature on Context.IO that allows developers to set webhooks at the application level, meaning you can set one webhook for your whole userbase, and we take care of the rest.
Currently, if you need to monitor certain folders for your users, you have to set a webhook for each one of your users. Another way to look at this is — webhooks are set at the user level.
So, for example, if you wanted to monitor a user’s Inbox and Sent folders, each one of your users would need to have 2 webhooks: 1 webhook set on “Inbox”, and another one set on “Sent”. This model can be difficult to manage the larger your user base gets. For 50,000 users, that means 100,000 individual webhooks to manage.
One webhook to rule them all
With application level webhooks, you do not have to POST a new webhook for each new user you acquire. If you set application level webhooks on your userbase, each new user you get will automatically be monitored under that application webhook.
This is how it works—
For user level webhooks, each user you have needs to have a webhook set on their account.
With application level webhooks, one webhook rule applies to your entire user base.
When to leverage application level webhooks
Application level webhooks are best for handling cases that will apply to all — or most — of your userbase. For example, 99% of mailboxes have an INBOX (if not all).
If your application would need to set webhooks for each user to monitor the INBOX folder, then this is a great use case for userbase webhooks.
Simply POST to “lite/webhooks” or “2.0/webhooks” with “filter_folder_added=INBOX” and this will add an application level webhook that will monitor the INBOX folder for your entire userbase!
Processing callbacks
With application level webhooks, you cannot set a different callback url for each user. You will need to use one callback url for all your users and parse the data on your end.
The webhook response for userbase callbacks includes account / user id data, so it should be fairly easy for you to route the callbacks to the appropriate user.
Here are some sample callbacks for application level webhooks in Lite and 2.0 (they are essentially the same as user level callbacks).
Some developers need to have a different callback url for each user. If this is your use case, then userbase webhooks are likely not a fit for your use case.
Modifying a webhook
If you ever need to modify an existing application level webhook, you can easily do so via a POST request to “lite/webhooks/:id” or “2.0/webhooks/:id”. This makes it easy to make changes to existing application level webhooks when a small tweak is required.
For example:
Say you were monitoring emails from a retailer for orders received, and you had a webhook set to trigger on the subject line “your order was received”. If the retailer changes the emails they are sending out to users to “we received your order”, you can easily modify your existing application level webhook by doing a POST to the webhook id as shown above.
Handling edge cases
It is likely you may run into an edge case that can’t be covered by application level webhooks.
For example:
Some developers have a use case that requires them to monitor a user’s Sent folder.
Most Sent folders are “Sent” or “\Sent”, but some are “Sent Items” or “INBOX.Sent”.
You could still user application level webhooks to monitor “Sent” or “\Sent”, which will likely catch 90% of your users. You could then set user level webhooks on edge cases for users whose Sent folder is “Sent Items” or “INBOX.Sent”.
We recommend you leverage application level webhooks for use cases that will work for the majority of your user base, and choose user level webhooks when the use case is specific to a subset of your customer accounts.
It has been previously reported that Google will be dropping the Nexus moniker from its upcoming HTC-made Sailfish and Marlin handsets. Today, Android Police have revealed what Google plans on calling its upcoming smartphones.
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It’s that time of the year when the rumor mill surrounding the new Nexus Pixel smartphones is reaching its peak and everyone is eagerly awaiting for a potential unveiling date of the devices. As per the ever reliable Android Police, Google plans on officially announcing its new Pixel smartphones at an event that will be held on October 4th.
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Samsung is now officially recalling Galaxy Note 7 units sold worldwide due to fears of its battery exploding. The company has halted the sales of the phone globally, and it plans on offering replacement units to all affected customers.
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According to a recent report by the research firm IDC, smartphone sales may soon veer into a decline.
Worldwide smartphone sales are poised to reach $1.46 billion by in 2016, facilitating a year over year growth of 1.6 percent based on the latest research from the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.
While these numbers still represent positive growth, this is down significantly from the 2015 annual growth levels of 10.4 percent. Much of the decline in 2016 is expected to come from developed regions, while developing countries still maintain positive growth rates.
On average, wealthy markets, such as the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia, are expected to report a compound growth rate of 0.2 percent in 2016, while emerging markets such as the Asia/Pacific and Central Europe, are expected to grow 5.4 percent year between 2015 and 2020.
“Growth in the smartphone market is quickly becoming reliant on replacing existing handsets rather than seeking new users. From a technological standpoint, smartphone innovation seems to be in a lull as consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with ‘good enough’ smartphones.,” aid Jitesh Ubrani, a senior research analyst with IDC.
The report goes on to break down the market share by smartphone platform. Phones running Android comprise 85.3 percent of the marketshare and are forecasted to have a shipment volume of 1.2 billion, making Android the most widely utilized platform by a long shot. Phones running iOS will likely produce a shipping volume of 203 million devices, granting it a marketshare of 13.7 percent.
Unlike Android however, which is poised to experience a year on year growth of 6.7 percent, iOS devices will likely experience a scale back of 12 percent in 2016. Windows phones and other platforms together currently account for less than one percent of the total smartphone market.
The report goes on to state that the consumer desire for larger phones is set to continue, as interest in augmented reality and virtual reality continue to increase. Phablets, as a result, will grow from roughly one quarter of the smartphone market in 2016 to one third in 2020.
“As phablets gain in popularity, we expect to see a myriad of vendors further expanding their portfolio of large-screened devices but at more affordable price points compared to market leaders Samsung and Apple,” said Anthony Scarsella, research manager, Mobile Phones in a statement.
“Over the past two years, high-priced flagship phablets from the likes of Apple, Samsung, and LG have set the bar for power, performance, and design within the phablet category. Looking ahead, we anticipate many new ‘flagship type’ phablets to hit the market from both aspiring and traditional vendors that deliver similar features at considerably lower prices in both developed and emerging markets.
Last month I reviewed an e-bike for the first time: The Elby. (Short for “electric bicycle,” get it?) It was my first introduction to the world of pedal-assist electric bikes, and I was instantly smitten. I described this product category like this:
The electric motor on an e-bike basically amplifies the power of each pedal stroke, making easy work of hills and headwinds, getting you going faster, and giving you the chance to rest occasionally without slowing down.
Legally, an e-bike is a bicycle. So unlike a motorcycle, you don’t need a license, don’t have to be 16, don’t have to register it, don’t have to fuss with a bunch of laws. (Also unlike a motorcycle, you’re supposed to pedal most of the time.)
The good e-bikes seem surprisingly expensive—in the $3,500 range—until you consider how often you can commute or do errands on these things. Plenty of people can get away with an e-bike instead of a car (or instead of two $2.75 bus rides every day).
And, of course, you never have to pay for gas. You sail past traffic jams, and you never have to hunt for (or pay for) parking.
An e-bike makes biking cities and suburbs more practical, more desirable, more pleasant. As many e-bike owners can attest, an e-bike means that you can commute to work and arrive not sweaty.
I love the Elby. For many people, it could easily replace a car, or at least a second car.
But there are enough e-bike models to fill a transport ship, so I vowed that, before summer’s end, I would review a broader batch. And now, meet the broader batch!
Turns out that $3,500 is a sweet spot of pricing for the really great e-bikes, the ones that are equipped with high-end bike parts and built to last, warrantied for 2 or 3 years. (You can, of course, get cheaper, uglier, and slower e-bikes. You can even get kits that retro-fit your existing bike to give it an electric boost.)
What distinguishes the bikes in this class are power, battery range, and, above all, design. These four bikes—from Trek, Faraday, Pedego, and Elby—could have been built by companies on four different planets.
Faraday Porteur
You’d swear that the Faraday Porteur is some European-designed import: Light and small, and with minimal clutter, no visible motor, bamboo fenders, classic steel frame, leather handgrips and seat. Wow, is this thing gorgeous.
Behold: The Faraday
They’ve actually hidden the battery inside the tube of the bike, so there’s really no visible sign that this thing is electric at all. The only giveaway might be the enclosed panel between the two horizontal tubes, where the circuit board (and power switch) reside.
Faraday from the back
Unlike the other bikes here, this one doesn’t even have a full-blown screen (only a battery gauge). There’s a thumb switch on the left handlebar that lets you choose one of two levels of power boost (plus Off).
There’s no throttle. The motor kicks in only when you’re actually pedaling. At that point, the boost is silent, gentle, solid, and incredibly smooth.
The Porteur has a Shimano internal 8-speed derailleur, which hides all of the sprockets and grease inside a cylinder on the rear wheel. Instead of a chain, your pedaling drives a greaseless, clean carbon belt that won’t mark up your pants.
There’s also a scissoring kickstand with two angled posts that hold the bike straight upright, but requires you to lift the back wheel each time you use it.
The Ideo-designed Porteur comes in white or green—in your choice of three frame sizes—and goes for $3,500. The $2,700 Porteur S costs less but loses some really nice features—like the internal derailleur, the leather, and the bamboo.
No wonder this bike was a Kickstarter success story. This is the bike for people who don’t want their bikes to scream, “Look at me! I’m electric!” Instead, it’s subtle. It’s a normal bike with a totally silent boost that kicks in gently when you pedal.
At 40 pounds, this bike is not nearly as heavy as its rivals. Shipping (fully assembled) is free, and there’s a two-year warranty.
There is, of course, a downside to all of this Spartan elegance: Minimal design means minimal performance. That thin tubular battery provides only 20 miles of assistance, with pedaling, which isn’t very much in the big picture. (Of course, you can always ride it without power once the battery is dead.) Top speed of the assistance system is 20 miles per hour. (On any e-bike, if you try to push beyond the top motor speed, the bike suddenly feels sluggish, like it wants to pull back.)
Meanwhile, the Porteur’s motor packs only 250 watts, with 350 watts at peak bursts. Worst of all, you can’t remove the battery to charge at your desk during the day; it charges only in the bike.
Trek XM700+
If the Faraday’s design is sweet and subtle, theTrek XM700+’s design is aggressive and militaristic. With its matte-black paint job, it looks like Batman’s e-bike.
Behold: The Trek
The big news here is the top speed: 28 miles an hour, which Trek says is the fastest e-bike you can buy. That, in part, is because the Trek is a mid-drive bike, meaning the motor’s in the middle by the pedals, not on the wheel.
That design has advantages in torque, weight distribution, and, of course, speed—and it means that on the Trek, you can pop off either wheel with a quick-release lever. The disadvantages of mid-drive are noise and wear-and-tear, both on the gearbox and the chain.
The Trek ($3,500) comes with a cool, self-closing kickstand—just angle the leaning bike upright to make the kickstand snap up. There’s a nice chain guard to keep the smudges off your pants, and a shock absorber in the front fork.
The battery is removable, lockable, and chargeable at your desk, which is great. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s just been hot-glued to the bike, a really clumsy-looking design.
The screen is big and bright and clear. It can prompt you when it’s time to shift for best efficiency, and it shows you the remaining range of the battery, based on which of the four power levels you’ve chosen. Oh, and there’s a micro USB charging jack on that screen—so you can recharge your phone as you ride to work!
The Bosch motor offers 350 watts, and the battery offers 40 miles of range, with pedaling. Once again, there’s no throttle—you get electric boost only when you’re pedaling.
More details: Two-year warranty, reflective sidewalls, puncture-resistant tires, 10 gears, no rear light.
Pedego Classic Interceptor
When I assembled this bike ($3,500) on Facebook Live, commenters kept chiming in about how much they love their own Pedegos.
But I’ll come right out and say it: I was baffled by this bike. The beach-cruiser design feels huge and unwieldy. The handlebars are roughly 50 light-years apart, the shock-absorbent seat is wide and puffy, the balloon tires are fat, the weight is a vein-popping 60 pounds … all of this makes the Interceptor the 1977 Lincoln Continental of e-bikes.
Here again, the battery pack looks like an afterthought, shoved in the rat trap at the back, where its high, rear position isn’t great for weight balance.
The Pedego battery pack
Then again, it’s part of a great power system. You get 500 watts, top speed 20 miles an hour, with five assist levels, a big clear screen (with a phone charger!), and even a throttle, so you can get power without pedaling. Oh—and a three-year warranty.
I expect the squishy comfort and broad beam of this bike would make it great for long rides, cruising along the ocean or something. But it feels too ungainly for city use—especially if you have to haul that 60 pounds up to your third-floor walkup apartment.
Elby
You can read my full review here, but the gist is this: The Elby costs more than the others ($3,700), but it has everything. Much greater range than its rivals (90 miles with pedaling), more power (500 watts), a throttle and pedaling boost, a color screen (removable), USB jack for phone charging, front and back LED lights, an integrated battery that’s nonetheless lockable and removable (and chargeable at your desk), a step-through design without a top bar.
The Elby e-bike
Oh, and regenerative braking, like a hybrid car: When you’re coasting, you can actually recharge your battery!
The Elby battery
The downsides: The design looks more like something you’d ride to market than in the Tour de France. And the weight, 50 pounds, is daunting.
There’s a one-year warranty, although the motor/electronics system is covered for three years, and the frame and fork are covered for life.
Pedaling to the metal
Honestly, if you gave me any of these bikes for my birthday, I’d write you a 30-page thank-you letter. (Well, OK, if you gave me the Pedego, the letter would be about 6 pages long.)
But three of them in particular, designed for different uses, are truly spectacular.
The handsome Faraday Porteur, in size, weight, looks, and handling, is the most bike-like e-bike you can buy. Nobody will even suspect you’re getting a modest electric push, if only for 20 miles.
At the opposite extreme is the Elby, with more power and range than anything else on the market. It’s a brilliantly designed hybrid vehicle that’s a joy to ride, if not to carry upstairs.
In the middle, there’s the Trek XM700+, with its glowering looks and its nearly car-like speed—a dream machine for young commuters.
The main thing is to notice the arrival of truly useful e-bikes. If you’re not a fan of everything that makes today’s commuting and errand-running unpleasant—traffic, gasoline, pollution, parking, fees—then you should try an e-bike on for size, if only in your head.
David Pogue is the founder of Yahoo Tech;here’s how to get his columns by email. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. He welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below.
Authenticity is real. It is a repair process within the order of symbols, within the hyperreal, in which efforts to destroy the order of symbols are channeled into acts that strengthen and expand it.
What is authenticity? Once upon a time things seemed pretty real. Then, gradually, things started seeming totally phony. People asked “how are you,” but they didn’t really care what the answer was. People said, in a professional capacity, “I’m sorry for your loss.” People wore t-shirts made in factories with the word “AUTHENTIC” printed on them.
Some people were more sensitive to the phoniness than others. It was a lonely time for a special snowflake. The good news is that now, you, you yourself, the only one who sees through the facade, must go and find the real. It’s probably far away, in another place, if not in another time. It’s exotic and bizarre. It demands a great deal from you. There won’t be a Starbucks there.
Authenticity is the object of the quest defined above. It may be an illusion, like the Fountain of Youth or pirate’s gold, but the search for authenticity has real effects upon the world.
The above is my summary of the tale told by Jean Baudrillard: a golden age of reality, recently corrupted by the hyperreal, the order of symbols that no longer has any connection with reality and masks its absence.
Authenticity and Money
The mundane senses of authenticity are relevant. Counterfeit money and forged paintings are not authentic (unless some coincidence of history gives particular value to a bill from D. B. Cooper’s haul or a forgery owned by Alfred Hitchcock). In the case of money, indications of authority (even skeuomorphisms) lend the physical objects cues of authenticity; Nick Szabo says:
Initial forms of innovative artifacts, of a kind the value of which was based at least in part on their authority, often borrowed authority from what they were replacing by physical resemblance. Mimicry of or semblance to pre-existing authoritative forms in a new medium was and is a very common feature of innovations: examples range from Gutenberg’s printing press mimicking scribal script to the private overnight parcel service Federal Express alluding by name and color scheme to the United States Postal Service. The ritualistic airstrips, offices, military drills, etc. of cargo cults were an extreme example of authority resemblance, and it predominates in the design of national flags and many other symbols (such as commercial brands) that invoke reputation or authority. Where not tabooed or banned as counterfeiting or trademark violation, authority resemblance was and is a common feature of innovative collectibles, their form invoking a traditional authoritative form while pioneering a new media.
The histories of art and architecture in religion, politics, finance, and business are replete with examples of authority resemblance. The designs of many of the very earliest coins, which differ greatly from the standard and presumably optimal form they soon converged on and have retained ever since, highlights what existing objects they were inspired by and suggests a similarity in intended role and function between the novel object and the old object whose form it has taken on…the earliest coins borrowed their form from shells, beads, and the metal blades of tools.
Money and authenticity are inextricably linked, as we will see, even as one of the most common forms of authenticity-seeking is an attempted flight from the contamination of money.
The Order of the Symbol
Behavior can be authentic, or not. It can be a genuine expression of emotion within a context of paying a lot of attention, or it can be a phony routine. It can be a reliable signal of what it purports to mean, or it can be a fake gesture or a fraud. Jean Baudrillard (in Simulation and Simulacrum, 1981) is tired of the phoniness is California:
Disneyland: a space of the regeneration of the imaginary as waste-treatment plants are elsewhere, and even here. Everywhere today one must recycle waste, and the dreams, the phantasms, the historical, fairylike, legendary imaginary of children and adults is a waste product, the first great toxic excrement of a hyperreal civilization. On a mental level, Disneyland is the prototype of this new function. But all the sexual, psychic, somatic recycling institutes, which proliferate in California, belong to the same order. People no longer look at each other, but there are institutes for that. They no longer touch each other, but there is contactotherapy. They no longer walk, but they go jogging, etc. Everywhere one recycles lost faculties, or lost bodies, or lost sociality, or the lost taste for food. One reinvents penury, asceticism, vanished savage naturalness: natural food, health food, yoga.
People are just signaling to each other. Food isn’t about food. Health care isn’t about health. You have to wear particular clothes that have particular meanings, and there are all these societal conventions that inhibit naturalness. You can’t poop on the sidewalk.
He is pretty sure that there used to be a base reality, and that not being attached to it is very dangerous:
Nevertheless, maybe a mental catastrophe, a mental implosion and involution without precedent lies in wait for a system of this kind, whose visible signs would be those of this strange obesity, or the incredible coexistence of the most bizarre theories and practices, which correspond to the improbable coalition of luxury, heaven, and money, to the improbable luxurious materialization of life and to undiscoverable contradictions.
Money, luxury, and heaven make an “improbable coalition” – in Baudrillard’s view, they don’t belong together.
Authenticity Tourism
Then there is authenticity in the sense of tourism. Is the food, the culture, the puppet you bought, authentic? Do tourism markets corrupt their destination cultures and make them less authentic?
Erik Cohen (Authenticity and Commodification in Tourism, 1988) notes that not all travelers are the same. Some travelers care a lot about authenticity; they are generally the most “alienated” travelers, seeking a lost reality centered on people in alien cultures. Other travelers are just there to hang out, and don’t care if the tequila shots and llama rides are not part of some ancient and uncorrupted order. Not every traveler seeks authenticity.
Authenticity travelers are pickier about the objects they acquire. Cohen provides two definitions (from authoritative museum sources) of “authentic” items:
Any piece made from traditional materials by a native craftsman for acquisition and use by members of local society (though not necessarily by members of his own group) that is made and used with no thought that it ultimately may be disposed of for gain to Europeans or other aliens
Any object created for a traditional purpose and by a traditional artist, but only if it conforms to traditional form. [I]n order to be acceptable as authentic, the product should not be manufactured specifically for the market.
These definitions are concerned with money and corruption. Markets, especially markets with European or “alien” buyers, are seen as corrupting of authenticity. Cohen quotes a crankypants on the level of Baudrillard: “The ritual has become a performance for money. The meaning is gone.”
While money is constructed as corrupting by the alienated seekers after authenticity, those refugees from the ubiquitous order of symbol and signal, money is itself ubiquitous beyond the realm of European and other “alien” cultures. The meaning of many undeniably authentic objects (blankets, baskets) is in its native culturea form of money.
Local markets are exempt from pollution in these definitions, but markets with ritually impure buyers are contaminated. A basket is authentic if it was made to sell to the village over the mountain, but if it was made to sell to Europeans, it is fake.
The logic of authenticity works to ensure value by limiting supply, as with every form of money. Authentic goods must be hard to forge and limited in supply, exactly the factors that make money a store of value. But sharing the logic of money does not diminish authenticity as a source of sacred value, except by its own logic.
Provenance
All decisions on the authenticity of objects (money, baskets, food, paintings) are centered around deciding how they fit within the order of symbols. Rather than establishing a place in the solid order of the real, authenticity in the sense of provenance establishes the social meaning of the object. John Lennon’s toothbrush is indistinguishable from other toothbrushes on the level of the physical and real; it is only special on the level of signal and representation. It has magical energy from proximity to a famous person (a common form of human magical thinking), and in establishing this proximity through documents and testimony, the toothbrush acquires authenticity.
The obsession with provenance appears to be a recent western innovation; Gail Feigenbaum (Provenance: An Alternate History of Art, 2012) dates it to the 1970s. While Feigenbaum attributes this to the necessity of dealing with Nazi hoards and other conflict art, there was also a demand shock: 1973 marked a watershed in art auction prices, immediately following a monetary policy change (in 1971) that made “hard money” harder to find. Oil absorbed some of the demand for money-like investments, and so, to some degree, did art. In its new role as money, it is stored in climate-controlled warehouses rather than displayed on walls. As art became money, the institutions that supplied it developed rituals for establishing its money-like properties: alienability, authenticity.
Provenance in objects refers not only to their origin, but to their history of ownership. Conflict diamonds are ritually polluted; perhaps more importantly, a stolen painting cannot be sold. Authenticity here means that the object is an alienable asset, the center of a bundle of property rights established by document and ritual. Again, authenticity and the market are best friends.
Authenticity Is Real
We all know that authenticity is fake. But what my essay presupposes is, what if it isn’t? In seeking out the authentic, fleeing from their native symbolic order, the authenticity travelers have tended not to stay fled. They come back, they send back their paintings and words (think of Gaugin and Thoreau), and they open up new symbolic territories. A few hundred years ago, nobody climbed up a mountain for fun, beauty, and spiritual edification; it took an authenticity traveler to discover mountains as social objects. These travelers go in search of the authentic, and they sometimes come back with successful, satisfying symbols to repair the previous order. Cohen (1988) even rehabilitates Disneyland as emergent authentic:
In principle it is possible for any new-fangled gimmick, which at one point appeared to be nothing but a staged “tourist trap,” to become over time, and under appropriate conditions, widely recognized as an “authentic” manifestation of local culture. One can learn about this process of gradual “authentication” from the manner in which the American Disneylands, once seen as the supreme example of contrived popular entertainment, became over time a vital component of contemporary American culture.
Authenticity travelers need not be literal travelers. Their belief in the real sometimes draws them to science. Sometimes they search for authenticity on Mars or Proxima Centauri. Some authenticity travelers seek the real in the future, in fiction, or in drugs. Sometimes they come up with actually new things that nobody has ever heard of. That is pretty authentic.
Robert Hass spins in the emptiness outside the symbolic order, and brings back Meditation at Lagunitas:
All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.
We talked about it late last night and in the voice
of my friend, there was a thin wire of grief, a tone
almost querulous. After a while I understood that,
talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I.
Dril says:
boy oh boy do i love purchasing large amounnts of Fool's Gold. wait a minute… fools gold fucking sucks. this stuff is no good..!! Fuck !!!
The modern obsession with provenance has extended to ideas – did Shakespeare really write the plays? did Darwin really innovate the theory of natural selection? This is one kind of search for authenticity in idea space. Another is rejecting existing categories and attempting to break down orders of abstraction. Yet another is creating new orders of abstraction and signal.
Authenticity tourists in idea space attempt to see reality as it really is, uncontaminated by failings of human cognition, bias, and sensory limitations. It is not so bad to imagine that there is really such a reality. The search for authenticity motivates the exploration of new territory, bringing new frontiers and points of contact. The result may not be beautiful; just as coins bear the markers of authority of past regimes, the new authentic is often bizarre and self-consciously exotic. But we know that 90% of everything is crap. Only 90% of authenticity travelers are smug dickwads.
While there is no “real” golden age of pure authenticity, it is worthwhile to look at differences between cultures that determine whether everything feels real. Rituals, objects, and architecture that work to create a satisfying sense of reality might have secret characteristics that don’t show up in unsatisfying cultures. Finding out what there are is a great little corner of idea space; you probably haven’t heard of it. You have to take a donkey train and eat scorpions.
The messaging wars continue! Today Facebook Messenger added "Instant Video" to it's iOS and Android app, allowing you to easily share live video while still in a text chat. Facebook has had "video calling" since back in May 2015, but that requires both parties to answer the video call in the same way that Facetime, Wire and every other video app does it.
"Instant Video" is different:
VIDEO STARTS OUT ONE-WAY - Only the video of the person initiating "Instant Video" is shown. The recipient sees the video of the sender, but their video connection is NOT enabled. Now, the recipient can start sending video, but they don't have to.
AUDIO IS OFF INITIALLY - When the sender starts their video, the recipient receives the video without any sound. They can easily start getting sound by tapping on the speaker icon on the video, but this is great because often you are having a text conversation precisely because you don't want to use audio.
YOU CAN STILL SEE THE CHAT - The video overlays the upper right corner of the chat window, but that's it. You can still see the chat messages and continue having your chat.
This last point is quite important and useful. This "Instant Video" lets you add video to a chat, while still allowing chat to be the primary communication medium.
Regardless, I immediately saw a personal use case. Occasionally I will go to a local coffee shop to pick up muffins for my wife and I. The flavors are always changing. If I don't see one I think she'll like, I often wind up calling - or texting her with the flavors. But it would be actually a bit easier and faster if I texted her "which one do you want?" and then sent her a live video stream where I panned back and forth across the choices. Sure, that may seem a silly use case... but it immediately sprang to my mind.
For "Instant Video" to work, a couple of conditions need to be true:
YOU BOTH NEED THE LATEST MESSENGER APP - You need to have the latest version for either iOS or Android.
YOU BOTH NEED TO BE *IN* THE CHAT - This is key. You can't just open up Messenger and start sending video to someone who is listed in your contacts. You need to actually be in communication with the other person.
Once this second item is true the video icon on the top of the screen starts pulsating - at which point you can start sending "Instant Video".
I'd note that this is the same icon used to initiate a "regular" video call. However, when you are in a chat with someone else the pulsating icon means you can do this new "Instant Video" style of chat.
I found I really liked the overlay aspect. Here's the view I saw on my end:
It worked very well to continue the text conversation while having the video right there, too.
It's an interesting addition as Facebook continues to try to make Messenger be THE tool that people use for messaging. Facebook has this advantage of having an absolutely massive "directory" of users (see "the Directory Dilemma") and so we may see this helping with keep people inside of Facebook's shiny walls.
What do you think? Do you see yourself using this "Instant Video"?
Back in its heyday, the trading floor in UBS' Stamford office, once the largest in the world and big enough to hold 23 basketball courts, was a symbol of everything that went right on Wall Street. Packed with traders, it was a non-stop cacophony of screaming, constant motion and furious energy - to an outsider sheer chaos, which somehow ended up generating millions in profits for the bank every day. Some time around 2008, just before the financial crisis hit, it looked like this.
Fast forward 8 years later, when all that's left of the UBS trading floor, and the legacy of that version of Wall Street, is this.
Reuters reports that Google’s has shelved its plans to launch a modular smartphone under Project Ara. Under the project, Google wanted to create a smartphone a modular design that allowed for key components to be easily replaced.
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Back in 1666, between the 2nd to the 5th of September, the Great Fire of London razed much of the city to the ground. Now, the 17th century skyline that the flames engulfed has been commemorated in an artwork by US "burn" artist and sculptor David Best and creative company Artichoke. The model isn't an exact recreation but is instead an interpretation of Restoration-era London. Best drew some designs which were then interpreted into 3D timber models encompassing around 190 buildings including churches, towers, and factories. The slender, very combustible-looking structures were built over several months by young Londoners and volunteers to create a 395' long sculpture mounted on barges.
A huge reason why the Great Fire was so devastating was that many of London's buildings in 1666 were composed of wood, so it tore through the city relentlessly, taking it with it the old St. Paul's Cathedral which had stood for over 500 years. It also made thousands of people homeless. Deduced from a melted piece of pottery found where the fire started in Pudding Lane—now on display at the Museum of London—it's thought that temperatures reached around 1,250°C.
To mark the catastrophe (and the new London that rose from the smoldering ruins), Best's sculpture will set sail down the Thames and be set ablaze on September 4, 2016 at 8:30 PM BST to mark 350 years since the event. You can watch it from the banks of the Thames between Blackfriars Bridge and Waterloo Bridge and also livestreamed online by The Space.
"Back at the beginning of mankind when we were frightened by animals we lit a fire and huddled around it. I use fire as a healing. It's not used as a weapon," explains Best. London 1666 is part of a serious of events marking the Great Fire and its impact on London's architecture, character, and cityscape.
Community Land Trusts: The Solution to Our Affordable Housing Crisis?
Are CLTs the vehicle to retain much needed affordable housing and finance future sustainable and locally guided development on publicly owned land in Metro Vancouver?
Join Brenda Torpy, CEO of the Champlain Housing Trust, to learn about her approach to stewarding land for the benefit of the community and how it created long-term affordability impacts. Based in Vermont, the Champlain Housing Trust is one of the oldest and most widely known Community Land Trusts in North America. She will share how Burlington, Vermont, benefited from the low-risk, high-impact creation of a Community Land Trust. Gordon Price, director of the SFU City Program, will moderate a discussion with the audience following the presentation.
This event is sponsored by the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association.
Thursday, September 8
7:00 pm
Room 1400, SFU Vancouver (Harbour Centre), 515 West Hastings Street
Remarkably, the commercial building on this East Georgia lot is less than a decade old. It was only completed in 2007; with a permit issued to Young Engineering, although we think veteran Chinatown architect Joe Wai was also involved with the design.
Before the new commercial and residential building there was a small house. We’re not completely sure when it was demolished, but the site sat empty for at least ten years. The house (which started life as 234 Harris Street) was built before 1900. In 1891, James Foley was living here, which seems to be when the house was built. He was listed as a driver, and briefly shared the house with Patrick Foley, a fisherman. The 1891 Census shows that James had a new job: he was Brakeman on the railway. Like his younger brother Patrick he was born in Ireland, and he wasn’t in the house for much more than a year. He seems to have gone back to being a teamster, and had Room 11 in the Dunn Miller block in 1892. L G Dodge, a carpenter, moved in to replace him. He stayed a few years, and then left the city, replaced by William Martin, an expressman, in 1898. By 1901 he had also moved on, with John McEachern, a builder living here. He was 42, and his wife Addie was 35, both born in Ontario, and both showing ‘Spiritualist’ in the census column that noted their religion. Their 11-year-old daughter Mildred had been born in the US, (they were married in Minneapolis in 1887), but Kenneth, who was four, was born in BC.
There were several John McEacherns born in Ontario in 1859, but noting the significant number of Simcoe residents who ended up living in Vancouver, it would not surprise us if he was born in Nottawasaga, a small town that saw an apparent exodus to Vancouver at the end of the 19th Century. We haven’t tried to trace all John’s movements, but we know that in 1920 they were living in San Francisco with Addie’s sister, Mary Tomlinson. In 1940 John and Addie were still living there, aged 81 and 73, and Kenneth was aged 43 and living with them.
Today it’s home to three apartments and China Housewares Discount Centre Ltd. “For all ceramic and porcelain figurines, kitchen wares, gifts and housewares”.
Image source: City of Vancouver Archives CVA 780-358
After reports of exploding batteries in the newly launched Galaxy Note 7 came in from South Korea, Samsung was forced to delay shipments of the smartphone until further testing could take place.
Once it became apparent that shipments of Samsung’s newest flagship devices were delayed, investors drove the company’s stock down to a two-week low, in the process knocking $7 billion off its market value.
The company was apparently counting on the Note 7 to maintain strong sales through the launch of Apple’s iPhone 7 this September.
Samsung’s sister company, Samsung SDI Co Ltd., the supplier of batteries for the Galaxy Note 7, told Reuters that it had received no indicator that the batteries were faulty.
Furthermore, several customers have uploaded videos and images online claiming that their phones had caught on fire. Several outlets are reporting Samsung plans to recall the phones to replace the batteries rather than providing complainants with entirely new phones.
This isn’t the first time Samsung has faced production problems with a newly released phone. Last year, the South Korean company underestimated demand for the Galaxy S6 Edge, resulting in disappointing sales.
The company’s mobile division is reportedly likely to post a profit for the first time in three years, thanks to the popularity of the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.
While the Note 7 was received with enthusiasm, Samsung is likely rushing to contain this quickly before it can significantly impact the Note 7’s competitiveness with Apple’s soon-to-launch iPhone 7.
Did you ever wonder why you spend so much of your day wading through bullshit? Every worker must consume masses of information, but most of it is poorly written, impenetrable, and frustrating to consume. How did we get here? I’ve actually studied this question. In fact, Chapter 2 of my book explains it in detail. Basically: Reading … Continued
To make it easier for customers to find great apps that fit their needs, we want to ensure that apps available on the App Store are functional and up-to-date. We are implementing an ongoing process of evaluating apps, removing apps that no longer function as intended, don’t follow current review guidelines, or are outdated.
Beginning September 7, 2016, the same day as the event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium where Apple is expected to unveil the iPhone 7, App Review will begin evaluating all existing apps on the App Store to determine if they are functional and meet App Store guidelines. Some of the highlights:
If App Review determines that changes need to be made to an app, the developer will be contacted and given 30 days to update it, after which it will be removed from the App Store;
If an app crashes on launch, it will be removed from sale immediately; and
Existing customers will still have access to apps removed from the App Store.
In addition, Apple announced in an email to developers that going forward, app names will be limited to 50 characters. Apple explained that long app names, which developers use to try to influence search results, provide no value for customers, particularly because they are too long to display in full on the App Store.
Eight years and over two million apps later, the App Store is long overdue for a cleanup. Abandoned and broken apps create a real discovery problem for customers. We are well past the time when the number of apps served as meaningful bragging rights for Apple keynotes. The directness in tone and relatively short time frame given to developers to make changes to apps sends a clear message – Apple is serious about cleaning up the App Store. Developers with neglected apps had better pay attention if they want to remain on the App Store.
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Announcements regarding toilets and fire exits: 6.50pm
First session: 7pm - 8pm
7.00 Abbey Kos - wine tasting - with actual wine
7.10 Rachel Coldicutt - 'A close reading of Julianna Margulies' hair and make-up in The Good Wife'
7.15 Lucy Blackwell - 'The story of my life through calendars'
7.20 Mags Blackwell - 'Do you listen?'
7.25 Rujuta Teredesai - 'Agile for Social Development'
7.30 Ella Fitzsimmons - Northern Europeans and Gnomes
7.35 Sharon Dale - 'What's Next?'
7.40 Nat Buckley - "Why flyknit is the most revolutionary thing since sliced bread"
7.45 Ade Adewunmi - 'The importance of watching TV'
7.50 Tom Whitwell - (Not sure yet)
Quick break: 8.00pm - 8.15pm
Second session: 8.15pm - 9.15pm
8.15 Kim Plowright - 'What it feels like to preserve memories and talk about dementia and death on social media, whilst still occasionally making people laugh (and how her Mum would’ve had her guts for garters if she'd realised what she was up to)'
8.25 Tim Dunn - The Sierra Leone National Railway Museum
8.30 Lisa Rajan - The story behind Tara Binns
8.35 Diego Maranan - Getting "people more aware of their bodies through clothing (and will try to convince people why body awareness matters in the first place"
8.40 Alice Bartlett - Tampons and (possibly) Tampon Club.
8.45 Craig Smith - his Dad's relatives, including the first person to get convicted for football hooliganism using video evidence and an actor who played one of Papa Lazaru's henchmen in League of Gentlemen and an Ewok in Return of the Jedi
Unless you have a big expensive camera, it’s really hard to get sharp pictures in low light.
The thing is, if you have a pocket camera or a phone, the shutter has to remain open long enough to suck in enough light for a picture. And during that time, even the tiniest jiggle of your hand will blur the picture. Even the act of pushing the shutter button can jiggle camera a little bit.
The solution is to turn on the self timer and put the camera down. Now when that camera goes off it will be rock solid the whole time.
Artist Trevor Paglen’s C-print They Watch the Moon, 2010. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures
Government spying and bulk data collection are complicated and invisible topics that have been made physical by artist Trevor Paglen. Making his initial mark with landscape portraits of the US intelligence buildings and the various infrastructures that are used to conduct their mass surveillance programs, Paglen has been documenting the digital space for many years now, creating abstract photography and multimedia pieces surrounding themes of data freedom and the social issues arising from lives increasingly spent online. “One of the things that I’m continuously interested in is the material bases for culture,” Paglen tells The Creators Project. “The internet, for example, is a thing that we think about in a very mystifying way. It’s this thing that nobody can quite describe that seems like it’s nowhere but everywhere at the same time.”
In The Creators Project's documentary, Trevor Paglen's Deep Web Dive, released online earlier this week, we followed Paglen underwater of the coast of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida beaches, to examine the internet cables that channel an immeasurable flow of data and online traffic. Used by the National Security Agency to monitor and store digital information, they contain everything from posted selfies to Skype sessions.
Today, the digitization of imagery breaks into both the conceptual and impressionistic areas of fine art, where experimentation is even more pronounced, and nonconcrete subjects such as the "digital sphere" can be explored and visualized using the photographic medium. “Images are now quantified,” explains Paglen. “We usually think of images within the domain of culture where they’re open to interpretation and one image might be one thing to one person and different to somebody else. But now images are turned into data and producing data within the world.”
NSA-Tapped Undersea Cables, North Pacific Ocean, 2016. C-Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
A digital photograph with a long list of metadata attached, for example, acts as a communication tool ready to be processed. Paglen believes this is an indication that contemporary images have taken on a larger role, becoming active participants in the world, rather than a mere representation of it. He gives the example of a CCTV camera taking a picture of a vehicle running through a red light.
Bahamas Internet Cable System (BICS-1), NSA/GCHQ-Tapped Undersea Cable, Atlantic Ocean 2015. C-Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
“That image will issue a ticket to the driver automatically,” he says. “That’s the kind of thing that I mean. The image is actually doing something between you and the traffic ticket.”
This sort of digital processing, indicative of mass surveillance and tracking techniques, is where visualization and Paglen’s style of photographic documentation becomes important: using art to educate, advocate and explain the almost philosophical concepts of the online space.
Documenting unmarked satellites and drones in the sky in Untitled (Reaper Drone) 2015. Pigment Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Much like the physicality exhibited with the underwater internet cables, Paglen’s Autonomy Cube (2014), in which he worked with hacker and internet privacy activist Jacob Appelbaum, created a usable sculpture housing an internet network users can surf autonomously. His current project, How to See Like a Machine, looks at imagery’s use in both data processing and artificial intelligence.
Matterhorn (How to See Like a Machine) Brute-Force Descriptor Matcher; Scale Invariant Feature Transform, 2016. Triptych. Pigment prints mounted on aluminum. By Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
“We’re increasingly living in a world where most images are made by a machine for a machine and are not even seen by humans,” says Paglen. “What is the kind of dark matter of that visual landscape that is occurring? The project looks at all those ways that machines see images and what kind of information they extract from them and how that’s different from the ways those images are typically used. It strongly affects the way the world works.”
While images can be viewed as computed objects ready to be evaluated, the questions that Paglen poses makes them culturally significant in the new digital domain. His continued efforts to document this new dynamic garnered him this year’s Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.
“The artwork in what I try to do is very simple,” he says. “I try to learn how to read the historic moments that we live in and document this kind of changing ecosystem.”
NSA Surveillance Base, Egelsbach, Germany 2015. C-print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Paglen’s How to See Like a Machine opens at the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea on September 2, 2016. A solo show at NYC’s Metro Pictures is expected in 2017. See more of Paglen's work on his website.
One of the best parts about Summer in Vancouver (yes, there are many) is enjoying the dry, sunny weather. Iced coffee, the ‘ole PB&J sandwich from home or a food cart treat just tastes better in a quiet, comfy seat where you can watch the world go by.
While there are lots of year-round benches, the DVBIA-led Perch program adds temporary bistro tables and chairs to publicly accessible plazas in the downtown. They’re free and available for anyone to use.
“How did people learn to do anything before the internet?” I say to myself as I peer over a recipe for cheddar zucchini muffins on my iPad. The fact that those muffins turned out terribly doesn’t negate the point though: The internet is the biggest training manual in history, and we use it to muddle through everything from broken door knobs to wine-stained pants to tough break ups. We also use it to learn how to be a particular type of person: successful, organized, sexy, friendly, assertive, and the list goes on. But one of the biggest demographics for the online-training manual market is men learning how to be men. A specific kind of man. The kind who can talk to a woman wearing headphones.
It’s impossible to find a “beginning” to the contemporary landscape of training guides on manliness; even in the 16th century texts like The Book of the Courtierand The Book of the Governor were laying the groundwork for today’s self-help discourse. At the turn of the 20th century, ideals of masculinity were become more firmly rooted in a muscular physique, and figures like Eugene Sandow, the father of modern body building, published training manuals that taught both physical exercises and a moralizing notion of man-as-body.
By the 1960s and 70s, literature on “being a man” was exploding, both as a part of and a response to feminist movement. Writers in the men’s liberation movement were arguing that patriarchal relations and “traditional masculinity” harmed men, and called on a new type of manhood that sought internal satisfaction through experiencing a fuller range of emotions. Raewyn Connell documents these early beginnings of masculinity politics over the last 50 years, noting that the “masculinity therapy” movement “was at first close to feminism” but by the 1980s became more oriented toward restoring “a masculinity thought to have been lost or damaged by recent social change” [see Connell’s Masculinities2nd ed, 204-220].
The 1980s saw the rise of the mythopoetic men’s movement, which sought to find a means of “returning” to an essential masculism that had been lost in the modern era. Factors like workplace competition, rather than masculine bonding; excessive time at home with women; the “muting” of men’s voices by feminism; the emotional damage incurred by lack of fatherly bonding; and men’s inability to freely express their feelings were tackled by the mythopoetic men’s movement. Books, workshops, gatherings, rituals, and storytelling all became devices for the expression of a new kind of man, or really the rediscovery of some presumed “deep man” who had been lost.
All of these historical elements of men’s movements and their accompanying training guides continue to influence the contemporary landscape of men’s self-help, but by the 2000s a relatively novel factor was introduced. Pick up artistry was now a booming industry, with Neil Strauss’ The Gamebecoming a best seller, and subsequent publications laying out in great detail the tools and tactics for getting laid. Today, the internet is flush with blogs, YouTube channels, and forums where young men turn to learn how to be a man. A particular type of man. A man who gets laid.
The flurry over the recent how-to guide on talking to women wearing headphones is an opportunity to historicize this phenomenon and take stock of how influential it is on the contemporary gender order. All across the internet men are seeking each other out to learn how to talk to women in all sorts of environments and under any and all conditions: in bars, on the train, in the office, at church…
These outlets take two predominant forms: profit generating and community-based. The first characterizes Modern Man, the site that published the headphone-conquering how-to guide. Pay-based models for training promise results through membership and access to videos, books, and other guides, and Modern Man even includes a testimonial page to demonstrate to customers that they too can reap the rewards of purchasing access to guides. There are also ad-based models on blogs and YouTube channels, wherein practitioners can support themselves without directly selling the product to customers.
Others are simply labors of love: free communities where the majority of the content is generated and managed by people working for free. Pick-up artistry community boards and various subreddits devoted to dating and marriage advice vary widely in terms of what tactics men might use to be successful with women. Some are fairly straightforward and applicable in all arenas of social engagement: stand up straight, dress in a way that flatters your body type, make eye contact, etc. Others are more complex, often based in popular conceptions of biological essentialism.
Why people form communities online that are often incredibly time-intensive and unpaid is an important question for contemporary internet scholarship. In Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Nancy Baym lays out a number of reasons why people find community online so satisfying and, as such, worth investing in. People find belonging online by developing shared practices, sharing resources and support, and developing common identities that, in many cases, can be difficult to cultivate in offline environments. All of these factors play an important role in the origin and development of masculist online communities, whether they be feminist-oriented man’s liberation groups or non- and anti-feminist movements that seek to subvert or, at least, take account of women’s sexual liberation and develop new strategies for convincing women to have sex with them.
One thing that all of these entities—whether communities or business enterprises—have in common is the how-to guide format. Self-help is a $10 billion industry, and has so infiltrated identity formation in neoliberal capitalist societies that its presence often goes unremarked in everyday examples like the headphone essay. At the heart of self-help is cultivating and projecting self-confidence, and this is doubly true for outlets training men to pick up women. A central tenet of contemporary masculist pedagogy is confidence.
Which begs the question: where did this come from?
Confidence is more central to today’s masculist discourse than at any point in the history given above. This suggests that confidence is understood as the key to successful romantic interactions, but also that men have lost confidence somehow, and that it must be rebuilt.
The problem of confidence isn’t limited to masculist discourse. Companies hire self-help gurus to workshop with employees to create more efficient and profitable businesses. People pay thousands of dollars to attend week-long seminars to learn how to unlock their potential by cultivating a powerful sense of self. But the forces that have led to this loss of confidence and the need to regain it are manifold.
I propose two, though countless others likely exist. The first is precarity. Author Susan Faludi has documented extensively how upheavals in the industrial workforce and the loss of traditionally “manly” jobs have led countless men to lose their sense of self and their belief that they can contribute anything of value to society. Key symbols of status and stability such as home ownership and lifelong employment at a company have greatly diminished in the last few decades. Tracing a predictable life trajectory is increasingly difficult in the new economy.
Second, the advertising industry depends on a consumer base that feels the need to purchase products that will make them more attractive, more successful, and more whole. From deodorant to whiskey to floor cleaners, advertisers promise their products will make us better mothers, better business executives, and of course, better men.
Learning to do something that, frankly, you just shouldn’t do, with the aim of getting laid is a massive element in the internet-as-self-help reality that characterizes so much of daily life. This key aspect of the internet intersects with the changing gender regime, the prominence of “confidence” discourse, community building, affective labor, and for-profit models of content generation. This short, pretty annoying essay about ignoring whether or not a woman wants to talk to you and “being confident” that you can change her mind is part of a much bigger system of discourses that needs to be peeled apart, historicized, and contextualized.
Also, maybe we need new headphones that come with big blinking signs that say “leave me alone, I’m listening to a podcast and drinking coffee and I’m not here to validate you.” Or something like that.
For a year, Stefanie Posavec and Giorgia Lupi drew data postcards and sent them to each other once a week between New York and London. Each postcard was based on data each collected during the week about their daily lives. The project is called Dear Data. Now it’s a book.
“… cities that planners thought would hollow out and become obsolete have instead become magnets for increasing concentrations of wealth. The more expensive they are, the more closed they become to everyone but those who already have money—pushing them to become more expensive still.
“In turn, imperial cities become wellsprings of resentment both for residents who can no longer afford them and for those who live outside and see the concentration of wealth mainly in the light of their television screens.”
Samsung has already been reported as delaying Galaxy Note 7 shipments in some markets across the globe, but the company could be forced to take even more drastic measures.
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The following is a Press Release that came into my inbox. I somehow doubt that the mainstream media will cut and paste the whole thing – so that’s what I am going to do.
“OUR DISAPPOINTMENT IS PROFOUND”
TERRACE, BC, September 1, 2016 – Northwest Aboriginal nations have emerged from two days of meetings with the federal government demanding that its “deeply flawed” environmental assessment of a massive LNG proposal be delayed, in light of unfair and incomplete consultation with affected First Nations.
“CEAA (the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency) has fundamentally misunderstood its fiduciary obligations to meaningfully consult the proper title holders,” said chief negotiator Glen Williams of the Gitanyow Hereditary Chiefs.
A powerful alliance of hereditary leaders from Gitanyow, Heiltsuk, Lax Kw’alaams, Gitxsan, Takla Lake, Lake Babine and Wet’suwet’en Nations made it clear to CEAA through a series of meetings in July and August that plans by Malaysia’s state oil company, Petronas, to build a $36-billion liquefied natural gas pipeline and an export facility at the mouth of the Skeena River cannot and will not proceed without their support.
CEAA is nearing the end of a review process that started under Stephen Harper and will conclude with advice to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet on whether to decide for or against the project. Williams says the agency has been biased from the outset, and still seems “more than willing to act as an advocate for the flawed research of foreign multinational corporations rather than for the interests of Canadians.”
Despite pressure that Premier Christy Clark is exerting on the Trudeau government to decide in favour of the Pacific NorthWest LNG project in the coming weeks, northern First Nations are demanding an extension of at least four months to the CEAA process so that full consultation can occur. It was a message delivered loud and clear during this week’s two-day meeting with CEAA in Terrace.
“Despite strong commitments by Prime Minister (Trudeau) to fix Canada’s broken environmental review process, the only difference so far between Harper and Trudeau is our tremendous disappointment in the lack of change,” Williams added. “We expect better from Mr. Trudeau. Our disappointment is profound.”
Murray Smith, spokesperson for the Gitwilgyoots Tribe, one of the Allied Tribes of Lax Kw’alaams, said he was shocked by the disrespectful tone CEAA brought to the meetings. He said the agency neglected to acknowledge Aboriginal territorial rights and title during its presentations, yet went out of its way to acknowledge the Prince Rupert Port Authority as having “jurisdiction over the federal lands.”
“It is appalling that an agency of the federal government could be so ignorant of Canadian law and recent court decisions. Do they seriously believe that a rogue federal agency like their so-called port authority owns our lands, that they can destroy our resources without even talking to us? Why hasn’t our new Prime Minister paid any attention to his own words about nation-to-nation building?”
Murray continued, “Trudeau offers an open door for known corrupt foreign companies like Petronas and (Chinese oil company) Sinopec, yet he says nothing is more important to him than building relationships with First Nations people, but his actions so far do not reflect that at all.”
Presentations were made to CEAA regarding scientific data collected from several studies that confirm the uniqueness of salmon habitat at the mouth of the Skeena River, which is unlike any other area on the Canadian Pacific Coast. The Skeena is the second-largest salmon producing river in the country, and the estuarine ecology of Lelu Island (the site of Petronas’ planned gas hub) and Flora Bank (where Petronas plans a shipping facility) is unique, and uniquely fragile.
Hereditary leader and Wet’suwet’en spokesperson Chief Na’Moks commented that, “science undertaken by Skeena Fishery Commission was done over many years by the leading researchers and experts in their field, and by researchers from Canada’s leading universities. The proponent’s research was conducted by hired consultants tasked with trying to come up with justifications for an incredibly foolish decision by the Prince Rupert Port Authority to site a massive industrial development on top of irreplaceable salmon habitat. The work done to date by Petronas’ consultants has been rejected by CEAA at least five times as being flawed, but now CEAA seems to be buying into the deeply flawed justifications for a project that was simply sited in the worst possible place.”
Independent science, like that of Dr. Patrick McLaren, a geologist and leading expert on sedimentation dynamics, showed that if an LNG tanker berth was placed near Flora Bank it would cause irreversible damage to one of the most productive juvenile salmon nurseries in the world. McLaren’s testimony called into question evidence provided by the proponent, which grossly understates the impacts PNW LNG would have on already stressed salmon stocks.
“The risk from losing the sand from Flora Bank is far greater than the risk of accepting that no harm will come to Flora Bank,” Dr. McLaren said in his presentation.
Gitanyow chief Glen Williams said, “CEAA heard from real scientists who have conducted comprehensive research on the issue on all the potential impacts on our food supply, the ecosystem, the air, and the place we live. The science has been peer-reviewed and published in the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. When are we going to see any honour from government? When can we find comfort in a process that is really meaningful?”
A year ago, I accepted that I will never actually do an epic charity bike ride such as the Ride to Conquer Cancer. But recently, all that has changed, and I have now resolved that I will do next year's BC Ride to Conquer Cancer. Here's how I came to be inspired to do this. I hope this post will inspire you too. Also includes links to useful training advice and other inspirational cycling posts.
It has been previously reported that Google will be dropping the Nexus moniker from its upcoming HTC-made Sailfish and Marlin handsets. Today, Android Police have revealed what Google plans on calling its upcoming smartphones.
It’s that time of the year when the rumor mill surrounding the new Nexus Pixel smartphones is reaching its peak and everyone is eagerly awaiting for a potential unveiling date of the devices. As per the ever reliable Android Police, Google plans on officially announcing its new Pixel smartphones at an event that will be held on October 4th.
Samsung is now officially recalling Galaxy Note 7 units sold worldwide due to fears of its battery exploding. The company has halted the sales of the phone globally, and it plans on offering replacement units to all affected customers.
Zero Hedge.
Reuters reports that Google’s has shelved its plans to launch a modular smartphone under Project Ara. Under the project, Google wanted to create a smartphone a modular design that allowed for key components to be easily replaced.
Artist Trevor Paglen’s C-print They Watch the Moon, 2010. Image courtesy of 
NSA-Tapped Undersea Cables, North Pacific Ocean, 2016. C-Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Bahamas Internet Cable System (BICS-1), NSA/GCHQ-Tapped Undersea Cable, Atlantic Ocean 2015. C-Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Documenting unmarked satellites and drones in the sky in Untitled (Reaper Drone) 2015. Pigment Print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Matterhorn (How to See Like a Machine) Brute-Force Descriptor Matcher; Scale Invariant Feature Transform, 2016. Triptych. Pigment prints mounted on aluminum. By Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
NSA Surveillance Base, Egelsbach, Germany 2015. C-print by Trevor Paglen. Image courtesy of Metro Pictures.
Samsung has already been reported as delaying Galaxy Note 7 shipments in some markets across the globe, but the company could be forced to take even more drastic measures.
