No this isn't Martin Campbell's grungy 1994 sci-fi survival flick starring Ray Liotta. You remember, the one with the prison island and the two warring prisoner factions? Okay you probably don't and it's completely irrelevant anyway. This is the serious and stunningly intense "No Escape" starring (of all people) Owen Wilson and Lake Bell. I know, which idea sounds more outlandish, right?
Well actually this "No Escape" is quite the surprise – a tense and effective action thriller featuring two unexpectedly solid dramatic lead performances. It's having to endure an almost fashionable smearing from some critics armed with absurd accusations of xenophobia and exploitation. But the movie is far from that. It doesn't connect all of its dots and there are a couple of narrative hiccups, but to call this movie "xenophobic" is doing it a disservice.
Wilson and Bell play Jack and Annie Dwyer, a loving and committed couple (somewhat of a rarity in modern movie depictions) and parents of two lovely young daughters. Jack's new corporate position has him moving his family to Southeast Asia. The move comes with its share of concern especially from Annie. But Jack remains optimistic, feeling this is the best way to provide for his family. The first person they meet is a crusty and scar-faced Pierce Brosnan. He plays Hammonds, a lush of the fellow who we immediately suspect isn't who he says he is.
Things quickly go south when a violent coup erupts in the city. A Khmer Rouge-like army of rebels begin tearing the intentionally unnamed city apart killing innocent citizens and targeting foreigners. Jack sets out on a frantic and desperate attempt to keep his family safe and get them out of the bloody and chaotic political pressure cooker.
The film is written and directed by brothers John Erick and Drew Dowdle. John Erick is known for dabbling in the horror genre and we get subtle reflections of that in "No Escape". He spends a lot of time playing with tension and finding ways to move his audience to the edges of their seats. And that's essentially what this movie is – a terrified family moving from one harrowing situation to another. This linear approach does leave you wanting at times especially when the film tries to cram so much contextual and moral meaning into brief conversations. But in terms of exciting escapist entertainment, the approach works nicely.
Now to the controversy. Labeling the Dowdle's movie as "xenophobic", "morally repugnant", "reprehensible", or any of the other similar adjectives I've read doesn't accurately represent this film. Neither the Dowdle's vision nor their approach is that simplistic. In fact, the film's greater message touches on spoiled and privileged Western perspectives as well as Western political intervention. You could easily argue that the handling of this messaging is clunky, but at the same time the messages are there and they are very clear.
To go a bit further, the filmmakers took their inspirations from an actual uprising and the movie attempts to maintain a sensitivity to that. This isn't a film about international meanness towards wholesome, white, middle-class Americans. The murder and brutality is mostly carried out against the people of the city. It's true, none of citizens are fleshed-out, personal characters, but that doesn't automatically relegate them to window dressing either and it doesn't automatically equal exploitation. Instead they serve to highlight the indiscriminate brutality of the uprising while also clearly distinguishing the innocent victims from the perpetrators.
And I have to go back to Owen Wilson and Lake Bell, two solid performers who aren't normally associated with this kind of emotionally and physically demanding material. They both give intensely committed performances and you never doubt their characters despite the situations they are in. They each highlight a much greater range than I knew they possessed.
"No Escape" could have done a better job of giving context and defining the setting behind the violent turmoil that rages through most of the film. And it does spend more time showing Owen Wilson running than developing any character outside of the central family. But it sets its sights on being tightly focused thriller and it sticks to it. Thankfully it does what it does very well. It is a film loaded with thrilling moments and sequences sure to get your heart pounding and frazzle your nerves. "No Escape" makes it easy to overlook its shortcomings because you'll be so fiercely absorbed in the next stressful encounter. That's certainly how it was for me.
This entry was posted in Movie Reviews - N and tagged Drew Dowdle, John Erick Dowdle, Lake Bell, No Escape review, owen wilson, Pierce Brosnan. Bookmark the permalink.
I must admit I had zero interest in this movie mainly because I simply did not buy Owen Wilson leading an action movie, but hearing that Wilson is good and that the film is thrilling has got me somewhat interested.
Give it a shot. Owen Wilson is surprisingly good here. He shows good dramatic chops. But it also works because he doesn't become the prototypical macho 'action hero'. He's simply a scared and desperate father. That makes a difference.
Good to hear Wilson is doing something out of his comfort zone for once. I think he plays the same character too much.
YES! Glad you saw this and enjoyed this Keith. Ahah, thankfully I haven't seen the Ray Liotta one so I didn't immediately think of that one. But yeah, it definitely wasn't about the natives vs. foreigners like some reviewers unfairly accused this film to be. I think the casting of Wilson & Bell were unusual but ended up working very well for the film. If it had been say, Bruce Willis or that Brosnan had been the lead, it would be more run-of-the-mill I think.
I'll be honest with you Ruth, I was pretty annoyed at some of the shots critics took at it. It was almost as if they were anxious to heave these accusations at the movie. That viewpoint simply doesn't hold water.
Can't wait to read your interview. I'll be looking out for it.
Great read, I too was surprised by several factors that worked in No Escape's favor. Wilson and Bell together are great, I finally have confidence again in Wilson's ability to shift between at least 2 genres. 🙂 And i thought Brosnan was good in a definitely darker shade of James Bond.
Tension was def the main sell with this one. From the half-hour mark on, this is a pretty crazy ride!
It really surprised me. Wilson showed me something. As you said, its nice to see him able to work an entirely different genre and do it really well.
I'd been hearing middling reports on this one; glad to hear it passes muster. I think I'll give it a watch! Cheers Keith!
It's not bad at all. Quite the surprise actually. It really surpassed my expectations in a number of areas including Wilson and Bell's performances. Very solid work. Give it a look.


AMSTERDAM APARTMENT is located at 6 GREENLEAF WALK in district 10 (Bukit Timah, Grange, Holland) of Singapore. AMSTERDAM APARTMENT is a Condo development.
Educational institutions like NEXUS INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, THE EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING CENTRE, INTEGRATED INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL (IIS), HENRY PARK PRIMARY SCHOOL, METHODIST GIRLS' SCHOOL (PRIMARY) and PEI TONG PRIMARY SCHOOL are near to AMSTERDAM APARTMENT.
AMSTERDAM APARTMENT is accessible via nearby DOVER, KING ALBERT PARK and HOLLAND VILLAGE MRT Stations.


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Partners agree on initial funding to kick off waste-to-chemistry project in Rotterdam
Project to be first of its kind in Europe to provide a sustainable alternative solution for non-recyclable plastics and other mixed wastes.
MONTREAL, Feb. 16, 2018 /CNW Telbec/ - A consortium of companies comprising Air Liquide, AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals, Enerkem and the Port of Rotterdam has signed a project development agreement covering initial investments in an advanced waste-to-chemistry facility in Rotterdam. The facility will be the first of its kind in Europe to provide a sustainable alternative solution for non-recyclable wastes, converting waste plastics and other mixed wastes into new raw materials.
The initial investments, which cover detailed engineering, the setup up of a dedicated joint venture and completing the permitting process, will be worth €9 million. The consortium aims to take the final investment decision (FID) for the estimated €200-million project later in 2018 and has appointed Dutch Rabobank as the lead advisor for the financing process.
Realization of the project is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate policy, which have agreed to develop mechanisms and regulation that will help bring this new technology to full scale to support the low-carbon transition of the Dutch economy. The waste-to-chemistry project is also supported by the City of Rotterdam, the Province of Zuid-Holland and InnovationQuarter, the regional development agency.
The facility will convert up to 360,000 tons of waste into 220,000 tons (270 million litres) of 'green' methanol. As an equivalent, this represents the total annual waste of more than 700,000 households and represents a CO2 emission savings of about 300,000 tonnes.
"This is an important milestone for the project and a significant step toward implementing a sustainable and circular chemical industry," says Marco Waas, Director RD&I at AkzoNobel Specialty Chemicals, who leads the consortium's Steering Committee. "The agreement comes at a very appropriate time given the current challenges in plastics recycling in Europe. We can convert non-recyclable waste, into methanol, an essential raw material for many everyday products, including low carbon transportation fuel. Not only can this be used in the existing supply chains and replace fossil sources, but it also avoids CO2 emissions otherwise produced by burning waste."
The facility will be built within the Botlek area of the Port of Rotterdam using Enerkem's proprietary technology, and will convert non-recyclable mixed waste, including plastics, into syngas and then into clean methanol for use in the chemical industry and for the transportation sector. Today, methanol is generally produced from natural gas or coal. The plant will have two production lines, or twice the input capacity of Enerkem's commercial-scale plant in Edmonton, Canada. It will benefit from the state-of-the-art infrastructure available within the Port of Rotterdam, as well as synergies with Air Liquide (large industries) for supplying the required oxygen and together with AkzoNobel, the raw material hydrogen. AkzoNobel also acts as a customer for the methanol.
"This is another exciting and important step getting us closer to launching the construction of our very first advanced biorefinery facility in Europe in 2018," says Vincent Chornet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Enerkem. "As part of this innovative consortium, Enerkem will be the technology provider, lead contractor as well as an equity partner in the project."
Enerkem produces advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals from waste. Its disruptive proprietary technology converts non-recyclable, non-compostable municipal solid waste into methanol, ethanol and other widely-used chemicals. Headquartered in Montreal (QC), Canada, Enerkem operates a full-scale commercial facility in Alberta as well as an innovation centre in Quebec. Enerkem's facilities are built as prefabricated systems based on the company's modular manufacturing infrastructure that can be deployed globally. Enerkem's technology is a prime example of how a true circular economy can be achieved by diversifying the energy mix and by making everyday products greener while offering a smart, sustainable alternative to landfilling and incineration.
www.enerkemweb.wpengine.com
SOURCE Enerkem Inc.
Media Relations : Pierre Boisseau, Senior Director, Communications and Marketing, Enerkem inc., 514 875-0284, pboisseau@enerkem.com
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Scott Peterson's fine piece at CSM on Iranian reactions to the Wikileaks cables is given further credence by yet another document that surfaced Tuesday. Peterson says that the Iranians took the documents to suggest that President Obama was all along plotting against them even while pursuing a diplomatic track in public, and that a breakthrough through negotiations is now very unlikely.
It is an account of conversations between the US undersecretary for arms control and British officials in early September, 2009. It shows that the then British Labor Government supported President Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran but was very much prepared for it to fail, and fail quickly, and so was already focused on ratcheting up further economic sanctions on Tehran. Simon McDonald said that the prime minister did not think Obama's diplomatic efforts should be "open-ended," and seemed to have a 30-day deadline in mind for Iran to respond. That sort of impatience does not comport with genuine diplomacy, and it seems clear that the British were eager to impose further sanctions as soon as possible.
Reading between the lines, it seems clear that London and Washington intended to get hold of Amano as soon as Elbaradei had departed, and twist his arm to be more alarmist in his reports on Iran. Surely from Washington's hawkish point of view, any "success" of the IAEA would be in demonstrating an Iranian weapons program and giving evidence that could be used to ratchet up sanctions at the UN Security Council. Ironically, the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran had supported Elbaradei's careful approach. Amano may have been predisposed to be suspicious of Iran because of his own country's experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and his consequent personal commitment to non-proliferation.
It was improper for Miliband to have spoken of putting steel in Amano's spine, with the obvious meaning that the UK wanted the IAEA to put out reports on Iran's nuclear activities that mirrored Whitehall's suspicions– suspicions for which there is no known proof. (Iran has a civilian nuclear enrichment program; no one has found any dispositive evidence that it has a nuclear weapons program, and there is much evidence to the contrary).
There is also a passage about tying Iran's nuclear program to that of North Korea, said to be urged by then National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones. That strategy is shot through with propaganda, since North Korea went for broke to get a nuclear warhead and has a handful of them now. North Korea conducted underground nuclear detonations in 2006 and 2009, as confirmed by seismic activity. In contrast, Iran has no bomb. All Iran can be shown to have done is to whirl radioactive material around to produce about two tons of uranium enriched to 3.5% and a very small amount enriched to 19.75%, intended for use in Iran's small medical reactor, given it by the US in 1969. Both these levels of enrichment are considered Low-Enriched Uranium (LEU) and are irrelevant to bomb-making unless they are further processed to 95%– something there is no evidence of the Iranians trying to do or even being able to do. Remember, their facility at Natanz is being inspected. So, Iran is just not like North Korea. The latter is a known violator (like Israel, Pakistan and India) of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nothing Iran has done since 2003 violates the NPT, which it signed– unlike Israel.
' Fars News Agency: An expert on Iran and the region emphasized with the new atmosphere of controversy the Zionists are creating they are trying to show that Iran's peaceful nuclear program is connected to North Korea's nuclear program. Fars reports Amir Musavi in an interview with this week's program The Israeli Eye on the Al-Alam News Network mentioned the creation of controversy by the Zionists against Iran's nuclear program and said the Zionists are trying to divert world public opinion away from their own nuclear armory towards other directions, and to portray Iran's peaceful nuclear program as a threat they are connecting North Korea's nuclear program to Iran's peaceful nuclear program. This expert on Iran and regional affairs added: However unlike North Korea the Islamic Republic of Iran consistently cooperates with the IAEA.' Musavi added: If the Islamic Republic of Iran were seeking to conceal its peaceful nuclear program it could have done this but Iran has always sought mutual cooperation with the IAEA.
¶11. (S/NF) Tauscher made clear that Iran needed to respond to the P5 1 offer prior to the UNGA, at which point there would be a stock-taking; absent progress, attention would turn to substantially stronger sanctions. FS Milband opined that U.S. Administration is "rightly trying to overcome a deficit of prejudice and mistrust in a relatively short time" by diplomatic outreach to Iran. He continued that the Iranian elections were a "bad outcome" — an outcome that had given extremists the upper hand and resulted in a "culling of reformists." Miliband said that, in his opinion, Iran's extremist government would not make concessions in a short time. Nonetheless, the U.S. "Administration's support for a diplomatic solution is very wise." He praised the impact of financial sanctions spearheaded by Treasury U/S Levey. Leslie asserted that the Iranian administration is "in a state of flux" and "not focused," so probably unable to respond to overtures.


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home » The Changing Shape of Trade Secret Trials: An Increasing Shift to Juries and What that Means for Trade Secret Owners and their Lawyers (Part I)
By John Marsh on December 28, 2022
Posted in Trial and Evidentiary Issues
There is a subtle but important shift that is taking place in the way that many trade secret cases are being litigated and going to trial. In the not-too-distant past, the vast majority of trade secret owners focused primarily on getting an injunction–generally in the form of a TRO or preliminary injunction–against a former employee. However, some trade secret owners are increasingly pursuing a different path–namely, a claim for damages–usually against a large partner, vendor, customer or competitor with substantially deeper pockets. Because these claims for damages are generally determined by a jury, unlike an injunction which is decided by a judge, this development presents a potentially seismic shift in how some trade secret cases are litigated. As I explain below, several of these cases have resulted in substantial verdicts in recent months and they more closely resemble the path taken in many patent damages cases. This post analyzes this development, offers some theories on why these changes are now taking place, and provides some thoughts on what clients and lawyers long accustomed to seeking injunctions need to do to adapt to these changes.
Employee misappropriation and restrictive covenants. It has long been conventional wisdom that a trade secret owner's workforce poses the greatest threat to its trade secrets. This is based on empirical evidence (see David Almeling's seminal research for the Gonzaga Law Journal finding that 85% of federal trade secret cases arose from the employment relationship or relationships where the parties knew each other well) and the collective and practical experience of commentators and thought leaders in this area (see the Sedona Working Group on Trade Secrets' recent Commentary on the Employment Life Cycle.)
In these trade secret cases brought against employees, employers also frequently asserted a companion claim for the enforcement of a restrictive covenant, such as a noncompete or non-solicitation agreement. As a result, lawyers and law firms who traditionally represented employers and were well versed in labor and employment litigation tended to dominate this space.
In many restrictive covenant cases, information—the focus of most trade secret cases—was only one of an aggrieved former employer's guiding concerns. Rather, the employer's relationships with customers, employees and vendors were often an even more important focus. Acting immediately to protect those relationships from further disruption by a trusted former employee could frequently restore the relationships and resolve the dispute before significant damage occurred. If the departing employee was ordered to exit the field for a period of time, focusing on the details of particular information that might have been at risk could be unnecessary. Familiarity with restrictive covenant case law and the ruses used by departing employees to evade them (such as soliciting key customers to move to a new business before telling the soon-to-be former employer the salesperson was resigning) enabled experienced lawyers to obtain an efficient early victory for their clients often without needing to delve into the details of technical information which the departing employee may have used or retained.
Simply put, injunctions–most frequently a TRO or preliminary injunction–were the most efficient vehicle for achieving these goals of preventing further damage, stabilizing those relationships and bringing the dispute to a quick conclusion.
Sometimes damages were essential. That is not to say that there have not long been damages cases arising out of the misappropriation of trade secrets. There have been. Some have been mammoth—in the hundreds of millions of dollars or even more (see DuPont v. Kolon for example).
Some of the biggest verdict cases arose in situations where the trade secret owner found out well after the fact that the trade secrets had been misappropriated and were already incorporated into a commercially available product, which meant that the horse had left the barn and it was too late to secure a meaningful injunction. Some involved situations in which at the outset of the case plaintiff had reason to believe that misappropriation was likely occurring but lacked hard evidence that it was underway. The threat of a damages claim might serve as a "Sword of Damocles" discouraging further violations but also as a safety net to protect the trade secret owner when damages occurred. Others involved international disputes in which the course of the litigation was protracted. But at the end of the day, virtually all included a former employee somewhere in the link that had disclosed or used information of a previous employer.
A growing reassessment of the need to establish evidence of irreparable harm. To obtain an injunction, whether at a preliminary stage or after trial, the trade secret owner must establish that absent relief, it will suffer "irreparable harm" and that money damages will not make it whole. It has long been an article of faith in the trade secret community that the loss of a trade secret was very difficult, if not impossible, to monetize. This view fit squarely into the concept of irreparable injury, which as all litigators know, is the critical element for any injunction and is, by definition, present when a money damages remedy is either unavailable or inadequate. Trade secret owners seeking injunctive relief have often argued that the need for an injunction is obvious once the owner shows a likelihood of success in establishing that it possesses a trade secret and that the trade secret is at risk of further use or disclosure. After all, "[a] trade secret once lost is, of course, lost forever." This seminal statement by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in FMC Corp. v. Taiwan Tainan Giant Industrial Co., became the trade secret owner's mantra and it was the centerpiece of so many injunction briefs that it was almost a cliche.
Yet that mantra has undergone increasing scrutiny by the courts and the Second Circuit has clarified its earlier language that it noted had been misconstrued. Yes, if a trade secret is lost, it is lost forever. But in a particular case, is the trade secret really at risk of loss at all? Will it be used absent intervention? And if it is, can the value of that use be readily calculated? A host of decisions throughout the country have begun demanding evidence of that ongoing risk to the trade secret absent relief and demanding facts, not simply mantras. See, e.g., the detailed discussion in the Sedona Working Group on Trade Secret's Recent Commentary on Equitable Relief, The Sedona Commentary J. Vol 23, Commentary on Equitable Relief in Trade Secret Cases Section V. B (2022).
Misappropriation of trade secrets was and is still frequently found to give rise to harm that cannot be readily quantified or repaired—"irreparable" harm—and to preliminary and post-trial injunctive relief. But as the authorities discussed in the Sedona Commentary on Equitable Relief demonstrate, injunctive relief is no longer automatic.
To recap, suing an employee for money damages rarely made economic sense, since an award might not be collectible and render any money judgment worthless. A new employer, the deep pocket, might be able to establish that it had no reason to know of the misappropriation, and that it therefore was not liable for damages. In many cases, it may have been better to rely on a quick injunction than throw away money at a long and costly damages battle that would not bear any fruit. But that paradigm may now be changing.
"Show me the money!!!!!!" Let's fast forward to the past 6 months to see how things have changed. On May 9, 2022, software company Appian Corp. persuaded a Fairfax County, Virginia jury to award it $2 billion for the theft of its trade secrets by its competitor Pegasystems Inc. Pegasystems was found to have obtained access to the details of Appian's computer code through compromising Appian's consultant and by falsifying the identities of its own management team members to obtain access to portions of a commercially licensed program. On September 19, 2022, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was hit with a $65 million verdict by an Akron, Ohio jury for the misappropriation of information the jury found to be trade secrets that third party CODA disclosed to Goodyear concerning a new approach to manufacturing self-inflating in the hope of forging a long-term marketing relationship. On October 25, 2022, a Detroit jury awarded software company Versata $105 million for the theft of its trade secrets and breach of a software licensing agreement by Ford Motor Company.
These types of awards are no longer anomalies or outliers. One need only look back to verdicts in 2020 and 2021. Motorola persuaded a jury to award it $745 million in its dispute with Hytera in February 2020 (this was scaled back by the district court to $554 million and another $65 million as ongoing royalty damages in lieu of an injunction). Later that year, Trizetto secured an $845 million verdict against Syntel Inc. courtesy of a New York jury (that amount was scaled back, to $570 million, by the district court to reduce exemplary damages). In 2021, a Wisconsin jury returned a $140 million damages award on behalf of Epic Systems Corp. against Tata Consultancy Services, an amount that was doubled to include punitive damages. For further support, look at Stout's 2020 trade secrets report and Lex Machina's report in 2021 that describe these and other large trade secret verdicts.
Stay Tuned: So what forces are causing this shift for some trade secret cases from injunctions to jury trials? And what does it mean for trade secret owners and their lawyers? Stay tuned for Part II of this post that discusses these and other development which will be out shortly.
Monthly Wrap Up (August 2, 2022): Noteworthy Trade Secret and Restrictive Covenant Cases, Developments and Posts


Save on your Ski Vacation! Click on one of our online lodging and lift ticket deals on the right or call one of our Mountain Vacation Specialists to learn about our many ski vacation package deals.
En 2018, Lindsey Phillips a juntado con Ski.com.


Waves, together with three of today's top producer/engineers, has developed the super-cool NLS (Non-Linear Summer): in a nutshell, it's three legendary consoles, all in one powerful plugin.
These three boards include the 'magical' solid state console belonging to Mark ´Spike´ Stent (Björk, Muse, Maroon 5, Madonna), the classic console owned by Mike Hedges (The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Dido, Faithless, Manic Street Preachers, U2), heard on such timeless recordings as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon; and the vintage British console customised for Yoad Nevo (Bryan Adams, Pet Shop Boys, Sugababes, Goldfrapp, Air).
Waves modeled over 100 individual channels in all, capturing the unique colour, character, and behaviour of each and every input and summing bus amp. As a result, NLS manages to deliver the richness, depth, and harmonic complexity that only analogue gear could deliver – until now, of course.
We at Headliner have had a good listen to NLS, and we have to say, it's pretty staggering what can be achieved - we will be bringing you a more detailed breakdown of our findings in the next issue of the mag, but in the meantime, check out Joe West's video below.
"NLS is a great tool. When you put it on, you immediately feel like something is happening."


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Лунский — фамилия; имеет женскую форму Лунская.
 Лунский, Владимир Иванович (1862—1920) — русский прибалтийский архитектор, в основном известный как церковный зодчий, но также работавший в светской гражданской архитектуре.
 Лунский, Евгений — псевдоним писательницы Софьи Васильевны Кёлер (1829 — ?).
 Лунский, Хайкл (1881—1942) — еврейский публицист, литературовед, библиограф.
 См. также
 Лунский залив — памятник природы регионального значения Сахалинской области.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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What Makes SEO So Difficult to Do?
Level343 » Search Engine Marketing Strategies » What Makes SEO So Difficult to Do?
SEO doesn't seem like it should be difficult. Add a little keyword here, some alt text there, some quality content over here, and voila! Optimized, ranking websites. Right? Wrong, and here are 7 reasons why.
SEO – it seems like it'd be easy, right? Add a little keyword here, some alt text there, some quality content over here, and voila! Optimized, ranking websites. It hardly ever works out like that, though, and people tend to think, "Oh, that SEO stuff doesn't work!" It's harder than it looks, but why?
SEO can be difficult to say the least. Understanding how people shop, search the Internet, or engage in social media is immensely challenging and convoluting. Understanding search engine optimization requires a massive amount of knowledge, and relentless dedication to keep up with an industry that shows absolutely no signs of slowing down.
7 Reasons SEO is Difficult
Success takes what might be best described as a ruthless addiction to analytics and testing. The following is a short list of reasons why SEO is so difficult.
1. Search engines are constantly refining ranking parameters.
First, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing constantly refine the parameters for ranking, allowable display properties, and acceptable practices. It's never ending. Google for one, is always out to provide the best user experience possible—without allowing anyone to game the system. Web designers must take into consideration how a website will perform across a whole array of hand-held devices. Your job, should you chose to accept it, is to optimize your website in as many future-focused ways as possible.
On top of that, business owners must optimize for local search, and that's a whole new animal within itself. Then there's the challenge of Schema markup. Do you have enough information for algorithms to rank your site as one of the most informative results for a particular search query?
2. Keyword research is always a huge headache.
There's an endless supply of tools on the market made available to conduct research—some free and some that requirement payment. What's the right criteria for determining the best methods of research for your Website or company's keywords? Can you trust the estimates given from your chosen tool? What are the parameters for running a successful test campaign? How long a list is adequate for your long-tail keywords?
3. Duplicate content can ruin your efforts.
Are you keeping up with possible duplicate content on your own site? Are you keeping up with other sites that might be duplicating your content? How do you monitor if someone else publishes your work? And if you find out, what will you do? Is anyone sharing your content? Yes, content is still king. However, it's a whole world within itself.
4. Search engine algorithms change often.
Are you up on the latest algorithm changes from the big three search engines? In recent years past, advanced webmasters might have been able to keep one or two steps ahead of search engine algorithms and ranking factors. Today, it's about fast-forwarding and thinking ahead to what search engines will require two years out from the present.
5. Inbound links still matter.
Yes! Inbound links are still a critical element of how well your site will rank. Is your website aged enough, or relevant enough, for people of authority to want to link to it?
There's a deep need for knowledge. Here's some technical verbiage: code level work, Javascript, cross-platform marketing, social media marketing, project management, viral marketing, conversion optimization, and product marketing. These terms wouldn't fill up the first paragraph of the optimization dictionary.
6. There's a lot involved and years to master.
Another thing that makes SEO so difficult is that it takes years to understand—which means that it's never really going to be fully understood because the parameters to rank are constantly changing. The moment you understand it is the moment that you might have the ability to game the system—so thinks Google! And keep in mind that SEO isn't taught as a degree-level course. As such, most SEO experts are self-taught.
7. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.
When you think about it, there's not even a Google certification for SEO. SEO takes time to realize the results. The best results are usually far out, and this is counter-intuitive with respect to platforms like Facebook where the results are immediately good, bad, or indifferent. What makes such results valuable is that they're in real time. We have something to measure our definition of success, or failure, against.
The best approach to SEO and your company is to hire the professionals who live it and breathe it on a 24/7 basis. They're in the know because their livelihood requires them to continually be at the top of their game. SEO is immensely valuable because it forces site owners to stick to the basics of providing products, information, and services that are needed, informative, and relevant for today's consumer.


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Another big budget, with a big hole
The most noteworthy thing about Yukon's budget for the coming year may not be what's in it. It's what's missing. As expected, the territory will run up its third consecutive deficit for 2010-11, to a tune of $20.2 million.
John Thompson
The most noteworthy thing about Yukon's budget for the coming year may not be what's in it. It's what's missing.
As expected, the territory will run up its third consecutive deficit for 2010-11, to a tune of $20.2 million.
Also as expected, Premier Dennis Fentie released another $1-billion budget for the coming year, packed with goodies to please voters before the next election, to be called by this autumn.
But there's no money identified for a new homeless shelter for Whitehorse. Nor is there any money for a new medical detox facility.
The Yukon Party government endorsed the idea of building a homeless shelter in late 2010, but it refused to offer any specifics until it received a report prepared by Dr. Bruce Beaton and James Allen, chief of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations on how to help homeless alcoholics.
The report, released in January, proposes a new shelter for Whitehorse, with an attached medical detox facility.
The territory responded by announcing plans to build a better drunk tank attached to the new Whitehorse Correctional Centre, for $4 million. Beaton called the move a "good first step," but no substitute for a new shelter and detox.
Stuart Whitley, deputy minister of Health, told reporters in January that plans to build a sobering centre would be unveiled "in the next couple of months."
Beaton remained upbeat. He believed there was political will to make his plans a reality.
It appears he was wrong.
Health Minister Glenn Hart acknowledged during question period yesterday that the new drunk tank, which will be staffed by nurses and correctional staff, is "not ideal" to help get homeless alcoholics back on their feet, but it would "meet the requirements" of Beaton's report.
Not true, said Beaton. "I'm disappointed," he said. "If it ends there, they've stumbled."
Fentie used his budget speech to underline the accomplishments of his government. He boasted how, since his reign began in 2002, the territory's budget has nearly doubled to almost $1.1 billion from $550 million.
Once again, this year's budget is the biggest ever.
It projects a surplus for the coming year of $38.5 million. Opposition leaders find this hard to swallow. After all, Fentie promised surpluses for the past two years. He delivered deficits.
"It's completely unrealistic," said Liberal Leader Arthur Mitchell. "Why should we trust this government, and these numbers?"
New Democrat Leader Liz Hanson warned in a release that "the next government will be left with a depleted savings account, a large and growing debt and an economy that is overly dependent on a single sector with a history of going from boom to bust."
Over the past year, the territory spent $15 million in savings, leaving $18.2 million in the piggybank. That's down from $33.4 million one year ago, and $165 million in 2008.
The biggest cost overruns occurred at the Department of Health and Social Services. It spent $17.7 million more than budgeted, largely on social assistance and physician and hospital claims.
The Department of Environment went over budget by more than $5 million. That's largely thanks to new costs to clean up the old Klondike Highway camp and the Marwell tar pit in Whitehorse.
Fentie defended his deficit-spending ways as necessary during the economic downturn. "What is the point of having a savings account if you can't use it in a time of need?" he asked.
But Fentie insists this year will be different. Financial documents project the replenishment of Yukon's savings as the government racks up surpluses over the next four years. This is expected to happen largely thanks to a tsunami of federal cash, which will wash up an additional $50 million in revenues this year.
Fentie claims he can balance the books without raising taxes or cutting government services. And he'll also maintain Yukoners' energy rebate for another year, at a cost of $3 million.
The budget forecasts, improbably, that the cost of government services will decline this year by $10 million, when they've consistently grown each year in recent memory.
Health spending has consistently overshot the territory's budget in previous years, requiring the government to top-up the department's coffers in mid-year. Fentie insists, this time, the forecast will be closer to the mark: the department's budget has swollen by 14 per cent, to $262.6 million.
Fentie's budget speech may as well have been an election speech, in many respects, as he rattled off figures to show how much Yukon has grown with him at the helm.
Yukon's grown from being one of the weakest economies in Canada to one of the strongest. Its population has grown by 4,500 people. Unemployment has moved from double digits to 4.4 per cent in December.
We're in the midst of a major mining boom, with development and exploration costs hitting $410 million in 2010. And Yukon is one of two jurisdictions with a savings account – the other is Alberta.
In Whitehorse, the territory will spend $31.5 million developing Whistle Bend, the capital's next big, new subdivision. That work can't come soon enough, as the city's in the midst of an acute housing shortage.
Another $4.8 million will go to develop the waterfront and $1.5 million towards building the new Kwanlin Dun Cultural Centre.
Work on the new Whitehorse Correctional Centre should wrap up this year, for $7.4 million. Planning a new FH Collins high school will continue, for $2.7 million.
Another $3.3 million will go toward completing renovations at the Thomson Centre, where 19 extended care beds will open this year. And $2.6 million will help build the new Abbeyfield seniors' complex in Whitehorse and new social housing units for Dawson City.
Spending on roadwork will decline to $47.8 million, from $58 million.
Yukon's budget doesn't capture the full scope of the government's infrastructure splurge, since many of the projects are being managed by Crown corporations. Yukon Energy is expanding Mayo's hydroelectric dam, and the Yukon Hospital Corporation is building new hospitals in Watson Lake and Dawson City.
This work pushes $162.2 million in debt off the government's books, by the NDP's reckoning.
But this spending comes at a cost: it must be repaid, with interest, over the next three decades.
Contact John Thompson at
johnt@yukon-news.com.
Residents respond to the city's branding exercise
City changes the numbers game


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← Sociocultural Evolution: Universal Human Concerns
Sociocultural Evolution: Institutions as Survivor Machines →
The Nuts and Bolts of Evolution, IV: General Evolution
Posted on June 12, 2019 by Seth Abrutyn
Having laid out some key aspects of evolution in previous posts (here, here, and here), I want to turn to the two strategies sociologists may follow that biological evolution takes: general and specific evolution. Specific evolution is phylogenetic, or the comparative study of the evolutionary history between species. That is, the history of when one species grows out of another, usually by way of Darwinian "descent with modification." In less jargon-y terms, specific evolution focuses on how some structures of an organism become different in structure, function, and specialization in ways that make the species different from its last common ancestor. This process should be familiar to sociologists from Durkheim's theory of the division of labor. General evolution is the study of "progressive" transformations. Progress is measured less in value-laden terms like "better" or more evolved, and instead in the temporal change in size, scale, and degree of a trait or set of traits like intelligence.
So, for instance, the specific evolution of primates examines how, when, and why monkeys speciated from prosimians, and hominids (the lesser and great apes) differentiated from monkeys. The general evolutionary story would, instead, arrange all of these primates in some terms of progressive development, be it brain size, social life, cultural complexity, and/or linguistic abilities. Thus, the study of specific evolution focuses on population-level gene frequencies, while general evolution shifts to classes of organisms and their characteristics vis-a-vis other organisms. Perhaps the parallels between biological and sociocultural evolution are obvious? But first, a key caveat:
It is possible to speak of evolution without using value-laden terms. It is also possible to take off one's social science hat and critique the outcome of social evolution as it is not accidental in many cases, but brutally purposive. Conquest and colonization, for instance, can select against a group in ways we can call unjust and inhumane. Yet, this doesn't take away from the process itself. Furthermore, we can build taxonomies like Lenski's model of subsistence technologies without passing judgment as to whether society A is better than B or innovation X is superior to Y. Indeed, these judgments are always flawed. For instance, hunter-gatherer societies, on average, worked about 15 hours a week to subsist, having plenty of leisure time (but, of course, few of the leisure devices we have today) (Sahlins 1974). Agriculture tied people to the land, bolstered patriarchy in ways unimaginable, and created the first forms of slavery. More food meant more people, to be sure, but also meant more time and energy consumed, more inequality, and more conflict. Is the former "better" than the latter? This seems a moral question beyond the empirical world, and depends greatly on one's own ideology and/or their own preferences. The same can be said about innovations: iron ore can be transformed into a more efficient and productive plow, or it can be turned into a more efficient and productive killing machine. Many innovations have these, pun intended, double-edged qualities. And, the tension between material comforts, aesthetics, intellectual pursuits, and "transcendental" experiences ensure that innovations will be judged by myriad criteria as to their betterment or degradation of society. So, we leave these questions aside for philosophers and humanists to debate, and ask what does evolve generally and specifically worth noting.
General Evolution
So, the question is how can we classify societies in such a way as to constrain nineteenth century evolutionism's tendency towards supremacist progressivism? Sahlins and Service (1970) offer two possibilities: (1) the amount of energy a society captures/harnesses/consumes (see also Leslie White (1959) and (2) the amount of integration. The former makes sense in two ways that offer more substantive, concrete types of classification. The first was made most famous by Gerhard Lenski, whose typology combined economic materialism with anthropological data – something Marx failed miserably at doing. Lenski's taxonomy is as such: hunter/gatherer/fishing societies; pastoral or horticultural; agrarian; intensive agrarian; industrial; post-industrial. At each step, it is not presumed one society is better or more advanced in some value-laden way, but rather they harness energy for production, distribution, and consumption in radically different ways. What this strategy does, however, is point towards another potential "classification" system – and I use that word loosely.
General Evolution and Institutional Autonomy
What Lenski had in mind was a comparative analysis of what was and was not common across each type. One unit of social organization that is common are institutional spheres or domains. Institutions are the basic building blocks around which social action occurs (Abrutyn 2016). By this I mean all human societies organize the four dimensions of social reality – physical, temporal, social, and symbolic space – around kinship, political, economic, religious, legal, and educational behavior. [Not surprisingly, these are also some of the most important substantive areas in every intro Sociology text and major sections in the American Sociological Association cross-cutting other concerns like stratification/inequality]. What makes these institutional spheres discernible from each other are the things they do: e.g., all polities are concerned with (1) collective binding decision-making about (2) the production and distribution of resources and (3) the use of these resources to achieve one or more goals. They vary, of course, in how effective they are in doing so, as well as how well they do in balancing the ruling elite's goals with the needs of both the masses as a homogeneous whole and the various strata the masses are lumped into. But, by definition, a polity is a system that organizes who is authorized to make these decisions, how binding they are and how they are enforced, and so on. Even when we see politics occur in small groups like a fraternity or a sports team that are not polities in the macro-sense, we see the same processes.
So, what can we learn about general evolution? Well, one thing that differs across time and space in any given society is which institutional sphere or spheres has/have attained some degree of autonomy vis-a-vis the others. Any student of preliterate societies, for instance, knows kinship is the principle source of social organization (Fox 1984). Political or economic actions are inextricably linked to the basic logic of kinship (loyalty/love). And, a careful examination of the history of humanity will also see that autonomy is not random, but actually follows a general pattern. 5000 years ago, in what is now southern Iraq, northeastern Egypt, northern China, and the Indus Valley, political evolution towards autonomous polities occurred in a rare moment of parallel evolution (Abrutyn 2013). Similar selection pressures + similar environment (alluvial plains) = pressure for political organization. (The reasons for this are beyond our discussion, but you can see my work with Kirk Lawrence (2010) for a primer).
To be sure, autonomy is never total, and anyone familiar with Game of Thrones knows two things: local villages remained deeply tied to kinship logic of loyalty and love, while even the Palace itself was simply elite households, and that kinship mattered (particularly loyalty). But, the Palace was no longer just a household of conspecifics and, perhaps, a servant or slave or two; they were cities within cities, containing complex divisions of labor both horizontally and vertically. And, the political entrepreneurs in the polity were no longer interested only in, or even primarily in, kinship matters. They were suddenly pursuing distinct political goals such that political entrepreneurs and those observing them perceived these goals "as different from other types of goals or from goals of other spheres or other groups in society" in so far as their "formation, pursuit, and implementation became largely independent of other groups, and were governed mostly by political criteria and by consideration of political exigency" (Eisenstadt 1963:19). That is, all polities deal with some very basic generic (practical) problems: defense against (real or imagined) external threats; the production and distribution of resources; the reduction and suppression of conflicts between heterogeneous classes within a population; managing/centralizing risk (e.g., grain storage as a hedge against famines or floods) [Johnson and Earle 2000; Abrutyn 2013]. And, symbolically, the primary currency of political exchange, the force shaping political interaction (and calculation), and the discourse dominating political communication was power and less so loyalty and even less love (Luhmann 1982; Abrutyn 2015). Again, Game of Thrones is instructive: royal problems, though often rooted in romantic or fraternal/paternal/maternal love, are far more rooted in power relations and access to power.
In any case, the student of history can follow along and see that these epochal moments in which a different institutional sphere evolved autonomously for the first time somewhere or in several places are rare, but important. In the first millennia BCE, religious evolution took hold in China, Israel, Greece, and India (Abrutyn 2014, 2015). In the "long" twelfth century CE (c. 1075-1200), legal autonomy emerged out of the Gregorian reformation of the Catholic church and the explosion of legal entrepreneurs, law schools, and standardized western legal codes (Berman 1983; Abrutyn 2009). The Protestant Reformation Weber was so interested in was really the middle of an economic revolution that frightened Polanyi as he warned against too much economic autonomy. Finally, the enlightenment was an epoch in which first educational and then scientific autonomy emerged, followed not long after be medical autonomy.
Each epoch highlights, not necessarily an irreversible moment, but a qualitative transformation in macro structure and culture, meso-level social relationships, and the micro-level experience of social reality. It is not reversible because of continuous improvements to cultural storage. Once a polity, for instance, is autonomous, other political entrepreneurs in the same time period or in later centuries and even millennia can take ideas and practices from the initial founders of autonomy and use them wholesale or integrate new ideas and practices. That is, once autonomous an institution in any time or place can theoretically be made autonomous again. Autonomy also points to a second major advantage to thinking about general evolution as such. It throws into sharp relief the double-edged nature of evolution. On the one hand, more spheres of autonomy mean more routes to social mobility. Students of Game of Thrones knows that prestige, power, and wealth are only secured through kinship and political ties (besides the Iron Bank). In the modern US or Canada, one can pursue a legal or medical degree, as well as a career in sports or academics and make a living, secure prestige, and in terms of the former, even power. On the other hand, as Weber feared, where more autonomous systems of action emerge, the total amount of domination grows. We are increasingly subjected to new forms of power-dependence, as our daily lives are differentiated in terms of physical, temporal, social, and symbolic spaces devoted to economy, religion, law, and so forth. But, knowing that there are epochal moments of institutional evolution is not enough; we can turn towards specific evolution to examine how political or religious evolution, though the same in terms of its growth in autonomy and the consequences that often ensue, takes varied forms based on "local" historical, cultural, political, and economic contexts and unpredictable contingency.
Evolutionary Sociology's Future
To date, social scientists rarely discuss general v. specific evolution. My guess is the reader is far more aware of the former and less so of the latter. The former, of course, has a rich history in various failed stage model theories, and in the most compelling, sweeping, imaginative, and (sometimes) insightful theories of human history and social evolution (e.g., Quigley 1979; Sanderson 1997; Turner and Maryanski 2009; Nolan and Lenski 2014). But, there is something about specific evolution that seems worth considering.
Herbert Spencer, for instance, offered one theory of specific evolution – or, a set of generic processes that shaped the trajectory of a given social unit as it differentiated, dedifferentiated, specialized, or split into smaller segmented social units (see Turner 1985). The theory, simply stated, posits that there are two countervailing forces in any social organization: centralization/consolidation of regulative functions (control/coordination of social units) and decentralization. Thus, following his general theory, exigencies in the environment (or within the collective) put pressure on the group for solutions, many of which require increased centralization of, say, decision-making and resource mobilization. Once centralized, new problems emerge either because of the initial solution; or because those with less independence and autonomy have more grievances; or in the most cynical moments, those with more power seek to protect, entrench, and expand it. In any case, centralization has its benefits – large populations can be mobilized quickly to harness their social power – and drawbacks -e.g.,inequality can be easily heightened and domination lead to exploitation – with the latter creating new pressures for decentralization. This tension is obvious across so many cases, it may not even seem insightful, but it is an example of the potential of a more serious sociology of specific evolution.
To return to the example of institutional autonomy above, we see several paths of theoretical and empirical development. If political autonomy was the key process of general evolution 5,000 years ago, a specific evolutionary study would be interested in how each case diverged from the ideal type. Likewise, the evolution of sects, "speciating" from a given religion fits a specific evolutionary model. Of course, what differs from current narratives of sectarian movements is the consideration of selection, variation, and other evolutionary concepts and processes. For the sake of brevity, I'll leave a deeper dive into specific evolution for another post.
In the meantime, I will be returning to the theme of institutional evolution, as I see it as a fruitful path forward for evolutionary sociology, as it includes consideration of multiple levels of social reality, including our biological, neurological, and genetic makeup.
About Seth Abrutyn
Theorist. Institutional evolutionary teleological existentialist. Interested in emotions, social psychology, macro-historical social change, suicide, and why/how patterned thinking, feeling, and doing clusters in some collectives and not others.
View all posts by Seth Abrutyn →
This entry was posted in Evolution, Uncategorized and tagged Evolution, Sociological Theory. Bookmark the permalink.
2 Responses to The Nuts and Bolts of Evolution, IV: General Evolution
Joan E. Strassmann says:
There is a huge area of biological evolution you are leaving out. It is applying evolutionary theory to understanding natural selection and adaptation. It is what many people that study evolution actually do. There are also other areas. By the way, one of the most famous evolutionary biologists is Richard Lenski, son of the famous sociologist. Richard is famous for taking a single cell of E. coli, a bacterium, and evolving 12 lines of it through decades of time and millions of generations to see how evolution works. He is at Michigan State University.
Pingback: Sociocultural Evolution: Institutions as Survivor Machines | Seth Abrutyn, PhD


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Q: Gzipped js files long loading time I gzipped some of my sitewide js-files/css-files and added this to my htaccess-file:
# BEGIN Gzip Compression
AddEncoding gzip .gz
<filesmatch "\.js\.gz$">
AddType "text/javascript" .gz
</filesmatch>
<filesmatch "\.css\.gz$">
AddType "text/css" .gz
</filesmatch>
<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-encoding} gzip
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} \.(js|css)$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}.gz -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.gz [QSA,L]
</ifmodule>
# END Gzip Compression

# 1 YEAR
<FilesMatch "\.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=29030400, public"
</FilesMatch>

# 1 HOUR
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|swf)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=3600, public"
</FilesMatch>

# 1 HOUR
<FilesMatch "\.(txt|xml|js|css)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=3600"
</FilesMatch>

# NEVER CACHE - notice the extra directives
<FilesMatch "\.(html|htm|php|cgi|pl)$">
Header set Cache-Control "max-age=0, private, no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate"
</FilesMatch>

Unfortunately, the js-files need MUCH time to load now (more than 10 seconds)
What could be the problem?
//Update: And I forgot to mention: It seems like no files is cached.

A: Try this, and remove the rewrite rules
#Gzip
<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/text text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript application/javascript text/javascript
</ifmodule>
#End Gzip

A: To add to the answer given, I think your Rewrite rule is causing a redirect on all requests to the static files, you should use mod_deflate instead. Apache handles gzip compression very with mod_deflate, so I don't think there's really any reason to have separate compressed version of the resources.
For the cache policy, I think you should use mod_expires which, see sample below
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 5 months"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 5 months"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 5 months"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"
  ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 1 week"
  ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 1 week"
  ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 week"
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 5 months"
</IfModule>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Reddit has banned r/The_Donald. Who it bans next matters more
wired_uk
Getty Images / Kieran Walsh
Since 2015, more than 790,000 people have congregated over at the r/The_Donald subreddit, posting memes, videos and messages in support of their hero, US then-presidential candidate and current president Donald Trump – who does not support the group but once blessed it with an Ask Me Anything – and debating head-scratchers like "is there a difference between white nationalism and white supremacy?"
On Monday, Reddit decided to take action. r/The_Donald is no more. The ban results from an update to Reddit's hate speech policies. Users must now abide by eight new rules, which prohibit, among other things, targeted harassment and revealing the identities of others. r/The_Donald, along with 2,000 other mainly dormant communities, including a subreddit for the fans of leftwing podcast Chapo Trap House, fell foul of these new standards, which require users to "remember the human" and claim that "Reddit is a place for creating community and belonging, not for attacking marginalised or vulnerable groups of people".
The ban marks a gradual but clear policy reversal. Reddit has long been criticised for hosting hate speech and other harmful content – it famously stood by users who posted stolen nudes back in 2014 – and has been sluggish to enforce the rules dealing with these offences, which it brought in over five years ago.
r/The_Donald, by far the most active of the removed groups, was a deft purveyor of the ugly online rhetoric that circles the US president. The ban will certainly have an impact on how other Reddit users behave, explains Nicolas Suzor, an associate professor at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Both online and off, it sets new, stricter limits on acceptable online speech.
Deplatforming has proven to be effective online. Even though r/The_Donald's moderators set up a mirror website where those who were still active on the subreddit are now migrating, this group can no longer congregate on a major hub with a gravitational pull like Reddit, and few among the uninitiated will find the new community.
"They end up becoming much more of an echo chamber," says Joe Mulhall, a senior researcher at the political action group Hope Not Hate. "If they do, it'll take them a long time to rebuild on that platform, but mostly they'll migrate to smaller platforms where they are less likely to engage with as many people."
Former dwellers of r/The_Donald will likely run into robust resistance if they try to colonise new subreddits. "The unique cultures of other subreddits will likely not tolerate hate speech that was reported to be rife on the banned subreddits," says Rosalie Gillett, a research associate for the Australian Research Council. "Ultimately, these are the moves we need to see platforms making in order to engender cultural change online."
The problems with the ban are well known – timing and reasoning. r/The_Donald has been around – and had periods of far greater activity – for years, yet Reddit has only acted now. The move is likely motivated by the twin upheavals of the pandemic and the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, both of which have been prompting internet companies to take unprecedented measures. Twitter has permanently banned far-right provocateur Katie Hopkins. YouTube has banned six channels for violating its policies, including far-right racists David Duke, Richard Spencer and Stefan Molyneux. (Facebook has refused to play arbiter, which resulted in its losing many of large advertisers, including Coca-Cola, Levi Strauss, and Unilever.)
"Both the street protests and the pandemic have elicited heavy doses of misinformation and conspiracy theorising online," says Paul Barrett a disinformation and content moderation expert and adjunct professor at New York University. "Taken together, all of these events apparently contributed to Reddit's motivation for cleaning up its platform."
Seen through this lens, the bans are more an exercise in reputation-management than an act of moral clarity. "I would love to think it was more thought out and based on a kind of moral conversation about what should and shouldn't be available," says Mulhall. "But generally speaking, it happens in waves when there is a moment of public pressure." This inconsistency has repercussions, he says, allowing the far right to frame their removal as a capitulation to lefty public pressure, rather than a legitimate corporate decision.
And while these policies are evolving, they still need work, as they try to apply global solutions to local, context-sensitive problems, explains Bharath Ganesh, a political geographer at the University of Groningen. "If I was running [Reddit's] policy team I would have very specific guidelines about white supremacy in specific geographies, like for instance, Hindu nationalist hate speech if I was working in India," he says. "That's one of the issues that these platforms haven't grappled with."
The size of the moderation task isn't an excuse, either – so far, social media platforms have still been pretty hands-off in regards to the kinds of moderation they will engage in. And with the US presidential election looming in November, this hands-off approach to moderation will, once again, be put to the test. How platforms respond then will be the real test – and one that, to date, they've failed.
"They are not too big to moderate, they're just not prioritising moderation" says Mulhall. "These platforms must place moderation at the very heart of their policies, meaning they are constantly vigilant for new groups that pop up, rather than waiting till there's a moment of public pressure and a conversation about advertisers."
Will Bedingfield is a staff writer for WIRED. He tweets from @WillBedingfield
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text:
Q: Trying to minify JS file, but code not working in Linux CentOS terminal NODE_ENV=production browserify -t [reactify --es6] main.js | uglify-js > compiled.min.js is not working when I run it in the Linux terminal. I've already installed NodeJS and npm. Any suggestions?
What I get in my terminal

Code I'm trying to use in terminal


Honor Flight Chicago is proud to present the sixth annual Law Enforcement Hockey Classic on Saturday, March 4, 2017 at The Edge Ice Arena in Bensenville.
The game will see the Chicago Police face off against the Chicago FBI, with proceeds benefitting Honor Flight Chicago.
How often do you get to see law enforcement on the ice? Here's your chance.
Most importantly, help Honor Flight Chicagohonor our senior war heroes with an all-expense-paid, one-of-a-kind journey to Washington, D.C.!
For more information, please call 630.566.0270.


Abstract Primary cells respond to irradiation by activation of the DNA damage response and cell cycle arrest, which eventually leads to senescence or apoptosis. It is not clear in detail which signaling pathways or networks regulate the induction of either apoptosis or senescence. Primary human fibroblasts are able to withstand high doses of irradiation and to prevent irradiation-induced apoptosis. However, the underlying regulatory basis for this phenotype is not well understood. Here, a kinetic network analysis based on reverse phase protein arrays (RPPAs) in combination with extensive western blot and cell culture analyses was employed to decipher the cytoplasmic and nuclear signaling networks and to identify possible antiapoptotic pathways. This analysis identified activation of known DNA damage response pathways (e.g., phosphorylation of MKK3/6, p38, MK2, Hsp27, p53 and Chk1) as well as of prosurvival (e.g., MEK-ERK, cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB), protein kinase C (PKC)) and antiapoptotic markers (e.g., Bad, Bcl-2). Interestingly, PKC family members were activated early upon irradiation, suggesting a regulatory function in the ionizing radiation (IR) response of these cells. Inhibition or downregulation of PKC in primary human fibroblasts caused IR-dependent downregulation of the identified prosurvival (CREB phosphorylation) and antiapoptotic (Bad phosphorylation, Bcl-2) markers and thus lead to a proliferation stop and to apoptosis. Taken together, our analysis suggests that cytoplasmic PKC signaling conditions IR-stressed MRC-5 and IMR-90 cells to prevent irradiation-induced apoptosis. These findings contribute to the understanding of the cellular and nuclear IR response and may thus eventually improve the efficacy of radiotherapy and help overcome tumor radioresistance.


Going forward for all waste management solutions please visit our new location and website www.wiswm.com.
We install, certify and support commercial and domestic bin lifters, as well as crane systems.
Enabling any driver to drive any route at any time and much more.
Handling every work process of your business seamlessly, and in the most cost efficient manner.
We sell development boards, kits and ready made industrial products.
We sell advanced vehicle camera kits, boards and complete industrial systems.
Our easy to install Android PC works off the ignition and is super fast.
Sunrise Innovations is a software and hardware development company specialising in Waste Management Solutions. Our goal is to make our cloud based WIS Software and Onboard Vehicle Kit (PC, RFID, Weighing and Cameras) cost efficient enough to be financially available for all waste collectors globally, in order to help make a significant impact on the way the world recycles.