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Possible Locations for the New The Pirate Bay HQ …

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Danzig

The Pirate Bay has made its intentions of purchasing a country quite clear. Apparently, negotiations with Sealand are still under way. But they aren't just looking at Sealand, but a number of other 'micronations' as well.

Youve heard of Sealand, and maybe even Ladonia, but what about Isla Montuosa, Ile de Caille, Geraldo-Pedro & Ronde Island? Those are all candidates for the next Pirate Island. Check out descriptions of a few potential pirate havens below.

SealandThe one country most likely to be bought by The Pirate Bay is Sealand. The micronation is currently owned by the Bates family, who claimed the 5920 sq. ft. platform as their own in 1967. The so-called country is located only 10 kilometres off the coast of Suffolk, England, accessible only by boat and helicopter.

LadoniaThe country second in line is Ladonia, another micronation. Located southwest of Sweden, Ladonia seems to be the most convenient option for the TPB guys, as their current HQ is in Sweden. Ladonia is basically a tiny patch of land on which a few sculptures stand. The story behind it is a long and confusing one. In 1996, Lars Vilks, the artist who owns Ladonia proclaimed it a sovereign nation after a long-drawn court battle to safeguard his supposedly illegally built sculptures.

Isla MontuosaAccording to the BuySealand wiki, Isla Montuosa is a remote island located near Panama in Central America. It is another possible location for The Pirate Bays server farm, and also the largest of the top three. Isla Montuosa spans a whooping 227 acres. Unfortunately, most of the island is covered in trees, and it would be a shame if TPB would have to indulge in mass-deforestation. Also, it seems the island has no infrastructure at all at this point. That would make setting up an server farm extremely difficult. Theyd need electricity and water first!

Other possible countries or islands The Pirate Bay might buy include Chris Pinnacle Island in the Philippines, Ernst-Thlmann Island in Germany, Ronde Island in the Caribbean, the Geraldo and Pedro Islands in Brazil, Great Hans Lollik & Little Hans Lollik, part of the US Virgin Islands and Ile de Caille in Grenada.

What do you think? Which of the various micronations and islands is most suitable for The Pirate Bay to buy? In my opinion, Sealand seems perfect since it already has high-speed Internet access. And what better place for a bunch of pirates than on the high seas?

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Possible Locations for the New The Pirate Bay HQ ...

Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Breaks Down, Turned Sell on …

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Danzig

Ethereum price made a sharp bearish turn against the US Dollar and bitcoin. ETH/USD is now trading in a bearish zone and it could continue to move down towards $104.

In the weekly analysis, we discussed the next possible break in ETH price either above $120 or below $114 against the US Dollar. The ETH/USD pair failed to gain momentum above the $116 and $118 resistance levels. As a result, there was a bearish reaction below the $114 support. The pair even broke the $112 support and traded well below the 100 hourly simple moving average. The decline was such that the price even traded below the $110 level and formed a new low near $109.

At the moment, the price is consolidating losses near $110, with a bearish angle. An initial resistance is near the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $117 high to $109 low. More importantly, there is a major bearish trend line formed with resistance at $112 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. It wont be easy for buyers to clear the trend line resistance and $112. The next hurdle is near the $113 level. It coincides with the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent decline from the $117 high to $109 low.

Looking at the chart, ETH price is clearly trading in a bearish zone below the $114 and $112 levels. If there is an upside correction, the price is likely to face a lot of sellers near $112, $113 and $114.

Hourly MACD The MACD for ETH/USD is now placed heavily in the bearish zone.

Hourly RSI The RSI for ETH/USD is currently placed in the oversold area, but with no major sign of a recovery.

Major Support Level $104

Major Resistance Level $112

Ethereum Price Analysis: ETH Breaks Down, Turned Sell on ...

What is Ethereum? | The Ultimate Beginners’ Guide – CoinCentral

Posted on January 30, 2019 by Danzig

Ethereum is an open-source blockchain-based platform that essentially enables hundreds of decentralized cryptocurrencies and projects to be built and deployed without having to build their own blockchains.

With the second largest market cap in the cryptocurrency world, Ethereum has drawn a lot of attention from investors and crypto enthusiasts alike.

Ethereum not only presents a significant change to the status quo, it also allows for the quick development and deployment of new applications presenting niche solutions for various industries.

While Ethereums utility is obvious to programmers and the tech world at large, many people who are less tech-savvy have trouble understanding it. Weve designed this guide to appeal to both crowds and expose anyone from complete crypto beginners and intermediates to this potentially world-changing cryptocurrency.

If youre interested in Ethereum, chances are you have some sort of foundational knowledge of Bitcoin.

All cryptocurrencies inevitably get compared to Bitcoin, and it frankly makes understanding them much easier.

Bitcoin launched in 2009 as the worlds first cryptocurrency, with the single goal of creating a decentralized universal currency. This currency would not require any intermediary financial institutions, but would still ensure safe and valid transactions. This was made possible by a revolutionary technology called the blockchain.

The blockchain is a digital ledger, continuously recording and verifying records. Its used to track and verify Bitcoin transactions. Since the global network of communicating nodes maintains the blockchain, its pretty much incorruptible. As new blocks are added to the network, they are constantly validated.

Similar to Bitcoin, Ethereum is a distributed public blockchain network. While both Ethereum and Bitcoin are cryptocurrencies that can be traded among users, there are many substantial differences between the two.

Bitcoin, for example, utilizes blockchain to track ownership of the digital currency, making it an extremely effective peer to peer electronic cash system. Ethereum, on the other hand, focuses on running the programming code of an application. Application developers largely use it to pay for services and transaction fees on the Ethereum network.

Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are decentralized, meaning they have no central control or issuing authority. Respective miners run each network by validating transactions to earn either bitcoin (for Bitcoin) or ether (for Ethereum).

If youre still having trouble making the distinction, the words of Dr. Gavin Woodone of Ethereums Co-Foundersmight help:

Bitcoin is first and foremost a currency; this is one particular application of a blockchain. However, it is far from the only application. To take a past example of a similar situation, e-mail is one particular use of the internet, and for sure helped popularise it, but there are many others.

Ethereum is simply the application of blockchain technology for a completely different purpose.

Simply put, Ethereum is a blockchain-based decentralized platform on which decentralized applications (Dapps) can be built.

Ethereums appeal is that its built in a way that enables developers to create smart contracts. Smart contracts are scripts that automatically execute tasks when certain conditions are met. For example, a smart contract could technically say, pay Jane $10 if she submits a 1000 word article on goats by September 15, 2018, and it would pay Jane once the conditions are met.

These smart contracts are executed by the Turing-complete Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), run by an international public network of nodes.

The cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network is called ether. Ether serves two different functions:

If youre still a little confused, dont worry. The underlying technology is complicated even at a surface level.

By the end of this guide, youll have a better understanding of Ethereum than 99.999% of people out there and thats a pretty good start!

Well go over things such as how Ethereum functions, Ethereums history, and some of the exciting dapps running on the Ethereum platform.

In 2011, a 17-year-old Russian-Canadian boy named Vitalik Buterin learned about Bitcoin from his father.Buterin became a co-founder of Bitcoin Magazine and a leading writer for the publication.Buterin currently serves on the Editorial Board of Ledger. As a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, Ledger publishes original research articles on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. The publication shows interest in any topics relating blockchain to mathematics, computer science, engineering, law, and economics.

In 2013, after visiting developers across the world who shared an enthusiasm for programming, Buterin published a white-paper proposing Ethereum.

In 2014, Buterin dropped out of the University of Waterloo after receiving the Thiel Fellowship of $100,000 to work on Ethereum full-time.

In 2015, the Ethereum system went live.

In 2017, Ethereum hit a cap rate of $36 billion dollars.

Whether youre looking at this from an investment standpoint, tech perspective, or witness to history; Ethereum is extremely exciting.

Buterins goal was to bring the same decentralization from Bitcoin to more than just currency. This could be accomplished by building a fully-fledged Turing-complete programming language into the Ethereum blockchain.

The Ethereum white paper goes into detail for some of the potential use cases, all of which could be built through decentralized apps on the Ethereum network. The list goes on and on:

By building these apps on the Ethereum network, these dapps can utilize Ethereums blockchain instead of having to create their own.

The core Ethereum founding team in 2014 consisted of Vitalik Buterin, Mihai Alisie, Anthony Di Iorio, and Charles Hoskinson, additionally attracting the attention of Joseph Lubin to join the team. Lubin moved on to found the now near 1,000-employee Brooklyn-based venture production studio ConsenSys.

Rumored to be one of the top buyers in the Ethereum crowdsale, Lubin, who had been funding ConsenSys with his stash of Bitcoins, says he began selling some of his Ethers last year to fund the firms development

Early blockchain applications like Bitcoin only allowed users a set of predefined operations. For example, Bitcoin was created exclusively to operate as a cryptocurrency.

Unlike these early blockchain projects, Ethereum allows users to create their own operations. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) makes this possible. As Ethereums runtime environment, the EVM executes smart contracts. Since every Ethereum node runs the EVM, applications built on it reap the benefits of being decentralized without having to build their own blockchain.

Smart contracts are strings of computer code capable of automatically executing when certain predetermined conditions are met.

Instead of requiring a single central authority to say yay or nay, these contracts are self-operated. This not only makes the entire process more effective, it also makes it more fair and objective.

For example, a simple smart contract use case would be:

Using the smart contract, theres no need for Jim and Sarah to trust each other. They just have to trust the data feed.

Keep in mind that this is only a very simple example. Many smart contracts are extremely complex and can work wonders.

The takeaway: Smart contracts can automate a variety of tasks, without requiring intermediaries. All a smart contract needs is the arbitrary rules written into it.

Handling financial transactions alone presents hugely complex problems in terms of reliability and security. And since the Ethereum network comprises a general purpose blockchain that handles assets other than money, more complex challenges arise beyond mere financial transactions. Moving into the future, Ethereum confronts issues of scalability, energy consumption, security, privacy, and decentralization.

As a general purpose blockchain, Ethereum needs a mechanism to represent assets other than money. The ERC-721 standard has been created to transact unique items of value. The ERC acronym stands for Ethereum Request for Comment and provides a formal process for the Ethereum Foundation to improve its product. The ERC-721 standard originally drove the development of the highly successful CryptoKitties collectibles, but it allows for the representation of any digital asset.

Any blockchain relies on a trustworthy, fair, secure, and reliable consensus protocol for placing transactions onto the system. Like Bitcoin, Ethereum uses a Proof of Work (PoW) approach, but the Ethereum blockchain plans to implement a Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithm.

The Casper finality gadget implements PoS as an independent module. As an independent module, Casper lives on top of the current PoW system, making the Ethereum network a hybrid system of both PoW and PoS. Also as an independent module, this allows the PoW portion of the network to be removed at a later date.

The Casper PoS protocol utilized game theory incentives to maintain the integrity of the system. It also provides benefits of greater security and reduces the massive energy consumption required by PoW mining.

Scaling presents a great challenge for Ethereum, as it does for other blockchains. Scaling defines a systems ability to handle a large and growing workload without showing strain or stress to the system. Think of this both as a systems power and efficiency to complete tasks and also as a user experience challenge. If a user waits too long for a response after clicking a button, frustration results, and users give up on the system.

The web confronted this problem in the early days as well. In the first web applications, every action a user took on a web page resulted in the entire page having to be reloaded from the server and rendered again on the clients browser. Web 2.0 came along, introduced the ability to refresh only the relevant part of the page, and responsive user interfaces became the norm on the internet.

Vitalik Buterin identifies scaling as a primary concern that needs to be addressed in blockchain technology. He made the following comments in September 2017 in an interview with Naval Ravikant at the Disrupt SF 2017 conference.

Bitcoin is currently processing a bit less than three transactions a second; and if it goes close to four, its already at peak capacity. Ethereum over the last few days, its been doing five a second. And if it goes above six, then its also at peak capacity. On the other hand, Uber on average 12 rides a second, PayPal several hundred, Visa several thousand, major stock exchanges tens of thousands. And if you want to go up to IoT, then youre talking hundreds of thousands

What the Lightning Network brings to Bitcoin, Plasma brings to Ethereum. Joseph Poon (the creator of the Lightning Network protocol) and Vitalik Buterin jointly design and architect Plasma.

Efforts like Lightning and Plasma ease stress on the network by taking work offline to a side chain. Users engage in multiple transactions over time on a channel on the side chain without utilizing the main blockchain at this point. After a number of transactions complete, the final state of these transactions moves over to the main blockchain as a single transaction with a single fee. Multiple interactions to process thereby reduce to a single action on the blockchain, consequently reducing strain on resources and improving scalability.

Computer science boils down to the art of putting something somewhere, then retrieving it when you want it. Storing only what you require in a manner that makes retrieval simple and elegant, and retrieving only what you need, and doing it all as quickly as possible defines efficiency. Sharding presents a technique for storing data in an efficient manner to improve retrieval. And efficiency determines scalability.

Sharding basically defines ways to break data into separate pieces and store them separately. Consequently, you only have to deal with the small piece containing the data you are interested in and not wade through every piece of data contained in the entire system. Database technology has long utilized sharding to increase scalability, and now the Ethereum Foundation researches how sharding can improve blockchain technology.

Similarly, Raiden also presents side chain capability similar to Lighting and Plasma. Raiden is not a project of the Ethereum Foundation but a product of an independent company.

Most of us have a pretty good understanding of what an application (app) is. An application is formally defined as a program or piece of software designed and written to fulfill a particular purpose of the user. We use apps every day: Apps allow us to check our bank balance, scroll through a live feed of pictures, or even launch a Flappy Bird into oblivion.

Now take this definition and ~*~decentralize~*~ it. Dapps serve similar functions, but run on an entire network of nodes rather than a central source. The fact that they are decentralized gives dapps an enormous advantage over traditional apps.

You know when Instagram is down because the server is down? This doesnt happen with dapps. How about when Zomato got hacked and exposed the information of 17 million people? This doesnt happen either.

Moreover, Dapps are:

In many cases, front-end users cant even distinguish dapps from regular apps. Dapps typically use HTML/JavaScript web applications to communicate with the blockchain, appearing the same to users as many applications youre already using today.

While Bitcoin provides a network for financial transactions, Ethereum aspires to provide a platform for decentralized application development. Ultimately, a programming platform requires good applications built on it to be taken seriously. CryptoKitties gained popularity for a while, but we continue to wait and see how well Ethereum serves as a foundation for application development.

Quartz asked Vitalik Buterin What decentralized apps do you find interesting? on September 14, 2017. He answered as follows:

There are a few categories that are flourishing already. Some of them are various financial applications, financial contracts, derivatives, things like Maker. Games are another one. In the non-financial space, identity verification is getting to be a big one. With prediction markets, Augur and Gnosis are going to be fairly successful. Also in the not-quite financial space theres an interesting thing called Akasha. Its an Ethereum-based forum that uses ether-based cryptocurrency mechanisms to manage things like upvote and downvote and spam prevention.

Fasten your seatbelts and get your Twitter-fingers ready, its finally time for the most exciting part of this guide.

Ethereums intersection with the real world is paved with innovation and disruption. There are already a huge number of projects, both live and in development, built on the Ethereum network. Here are just some of the most successful and promising of these dapps.

Golem: The Golem project aims to make a global supercomputer easily accessible to anyone. Its essentially the first decentralized sharing economy of computing power. As a global market, users would be able to make money by renting out their idle computing power, or spend money to have access to a supercomputer. Hold up, have you ever used a supercomputer? Supercomputers cost between a million dollars and a good fraction of a billion dollars. The modern Tianhe-2 Supercomputer has the power of roughly 18,400 Playstation 4s. Golems goal is to make this sort of power easily accessible anywhere in the world at an infinitesimal cost.

Check out our Golem Beginners Guide.

Augur: Augurs goal is to utilize a decentralized network to create a powerful forecasting tool using prediction markets. Augur would reward users for correctly predicting future events. While at a surface level it may just seem like a decentralized betting platform (which is still worth a lot), Augur could potentially provide powerful predictive data for virtually any industry. Prediction markets are more accurate at forecasting than individual experts, traditional opinion polling, and surveys.

Check out our Augur Beginners Guide.

Civic: Civic aims to protect users identities and provide blockchain-based, secure, low-cost, on-demand access to identity verification. This would not only prevent and provide users with assistance for identity fraud, but it would also remove the need for constant personal information and background verification checks. Think about how many times youve left your social security number with someones assistant and you can see the benefits of Civic.

Check out our Civic Beginners Guide.

OmiseGO: OmiseGO vision is to solve the problems and inefficiencies of financial institutions, processors, and gateways by enabling decentralized exchange on a public blockchain at a lower cost and high volume. This means anyone will be able to conduct financial transactions such as payments, payroll deposits, B2B commerce, supply-chain finance, asset management, and loyalty programs without having to rely on a single server and without exorbitant fees! The system is built in a way that allows the best currency (whether fiat or decentralized) to win.

Check out our OmiseGO Beginners Guide.

Storj: Storjs aim is to make it possible for users to rent out their excess hard drive space in exchange for the crypto STORJ. Users could therefore also use Storj to rent additional hard drive space.

These are only a handful of different dapps all running on the Ethereum platform. What really stands out with dapps is how their founder are able to raise real capital by selling tokens. Whereas traditional apps have to seek outside investment or IPO, a dapp can simply ICO and raise the capital they need to build their company. While this removes friction from the financing processes, it has unfortunately also made it possible for many sub-par dapps to ICO and take advantage of eager speculators.

Check out our Storj Beginners Guide.

For more dapps, check out the State of the Dapps.

Now that you have a decent understanding of what Ethereum is and how it functions, its useful to revisit how it compares to Bitcoin at a technical level.

While the two cryptocurrencies serve different purposes, Ethereum provides a number of benefits over Bitcoin:

Ethereum arguably currently functions better than Bitcoin as a currency. With Ethereum, you can reliably send transactions faster, pay lower transaction fees, and mine at a more profitable rate (although it still has its downfalls for miners).

Read: Is Ethereum Mining Profitable?

However, Bitcoin does have a relatively more stable priceand therefore functions as a better value storage optionfrom a trading and value storage perspective. Ethereum is much younger but has covered a substantial amount of ground in recent years. Although Ethereum certainly shows promise as a currency, its true potential lies in features nonexistent in Bitcoins code.

The most famous DAO was simply known as The DAO. The nearly identical name causes a lot of confusion for people and gives DAOs a bad reputation.

The DAO was a decentralized autonomous organization primarily functioning as its own investor-directed venture capital fund. It didnt have the conventional management structure or board of directors, was not tied to any particular government, and instead ran on open source code. The DAO was set up to give funders the power to vote for which dapps deserved investment through DAO tokens.

Dapps had somewhat of an approval process:

The DAO is most famous for the largest crowdfunding campaign in history, raising over $150 million in ether from more than 11,000 investors. The DAO is also most infamous for getting hacked for $50 million. This hack inevitably caused a split in the Ethereum community, creating what we now know as Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC).

The hack happened because of The DAOs Split Function. Funders who wanted to exit The DAO could use its Split Function, which would give them back the ether they had invested. The only stipulation was that existing funders had to hold their ether for 28 days before they could withdraw them.

On June 17th 2016, an unknown person or group of people took advantage of a lapse in the Split Functions security with a simple recursive function. This frustratingly easy hack allowed the hacker(s) to repeat their request to withdraw the same DAO tokens multiple times before the system registered it as $50 million.

The news of this hack created chaos in the Ethereum community. While this hack had nothing to do with the Ethereum platform and everything to do with The DAO platform, many members of the Ethereum community were invested in The DAO. The community as a whole had 28 days to come up with a solution, which ended up being to forkstop the current blockchain entirely and create something new from scratch.

The new Ethereum (ETH) is the result of the fork, and is essentially the blockchain before the hack. The old Ethereum (Ethereum Classic ETC) is still running the original blockchain with the hack included.

The vast majority of the Ethereum community including the Ethereum founders pivoted along with ETH, with a small minority staying loyal to the original blockchain.

Software never stops changing until people stop using it. The Ethereum Foundation follows a roadmap of future modifications and enhancements to the system. No system ever runs fast enough, so scaling continues to develop. Privacy remains paramount, and research into zero-knowledge proofs continues. Decentralized systems demand constant attention to security. Many aspects of the future remain unknown. Some new and popular application not yet on the market may well demand new capabilities from the system. As the world changes, Ethereum continues to evolve.

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What is Ethereum? | The Ultimate Beginners' Guide - CoinCentral

Frankfurt School – Wikipedia

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory

The Frankfurt School (Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt. Founded in the Weimar Republic (191833), during the European interwar period (191839), the Frankfurt School comprised intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents who were ill-fitted to the contemporary socio-economic systems (capitalist, fascist, communist) of the 1930s. The Frankfurt theoreticians proposed that social theory was inadequate for explaining the turbulent political factionalism and reactionary politics occurring in ostensibly liberal capitalist societies in the 20th century. Critical of capitalism and of MarxismLeninism as philosophically inflexible systems of social organisation, the School's critical theory research indicated alternative paths to realising the social development of a society and a nation.[1]

The Frankfurt School perspective of critical investigation (open-ended and self-critical) is based upon Freudian, Marxist, and Hegelian premises of idealist philosophy.[2] To fill the omissions of 19th-century classical Marxism, which could not address 20th-century social problems, they applied the methods of antipositivist sociology, of psychoanalysis, and of existentialism.[3] The Schools sociologic works derived from syntheses of the thematically pertinent works of Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx, of Sigmund Freud and Max Weber, and of Georg Simmel and Georg Lukcs.[4][5]

Like Karl Marx, the Frankfurt School concerned themselves with the conditions (political, economic, societal) that allow for social change realised by way of rational social institutions.[6] The emphasis upon the critical component of social theory derived from surpassing the ideological limitations of positivism, materialism, and determinism, by returning to the critical philosophy of Kant, and his successors in German idealism principally the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, which emphasised dialectic and contradiction as intellectual properties inherent to the human grasp of material reality.

Since the 1960s, the critical-theory work of the Institute for Social Research has been guided by Jrgen Habermas, in the fields of communicative rationality, linguistic intersubjectivity, and "the philosophical discourse of modernity";[7] nonetheless, the critical theorists Raymond Geuss and Nikolas Kompridis opposed the propositions of Habermas, claiming he has undermined the original social-change purposes of critical-theory-problems, such as: What should reason mean?; the analysis and expansion of the conditions necessary to realise social emancipation; and critiques of contemporary capitalism.[8]

The term Frankfurt School informally describes the works of scholarship and the intellectuals who were the Institute for Social Research (Institut fr Sozialforschung), an adjunct organization at Goethe University Frankfurt, founded in 1923, by Carl Grnberg, a Marxist professor of law at the University of Vienna.[9] As such, the Frankfurt School was the first Marxist research center at a German university, and originated through the largesse of the wealthy student Felix Weil (18981975).[3]

At university, Weils doctoral dissertation dealt with the practical problems of implementing socialism. In 1922, he organized the First Marxist Workweek (Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche) in effort to synthesize different trends of Marxism into a coherent, practical philosophy; the first symposium included Gyrgy Lukcs and Karl Korsch, Karl August Wittfogel and Friedrich Pollock. The success of the First Marxist Workweek prompted the formal establishment of a permanent institute for social research, and Weil negotiated with the Ministry of Education for a university professor to be director of the Institute for Social Research, thereby, formally ensuring that the Frankfurt School would be a university institution.[10]

Korsch and Lukcs participated in the Arbeitswoche, which included the study of Marxism and Philosophy (1923), by Karl Korsch, but their communist-party membership precluded their active participation in the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School); yet Korsch participated in the School's publishing venture. Moreover, the political correctness by which the Communists compelled Lukcs to repudiate his book History and Class Consciousness (1923) indicated that political, ideological, and intellectual independence from the communist party was a necessary work condition for realising the production of knowledge.[10]

The philosophical tradition of the Frankfurt School the multi-disciplinary integration of the social sciences is associated with the philosopher Max Horkheimer, who became the director in 1930, and recruited intellectuals such as Theodor W. Adorno (philosopher, sociologist, musicologist), Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst), and Herbert Marcuse (philosopher).[3]

In the Weimar Republic (191833), the continual, political turmoils of the interwar years (191839) much affected the development of the Frankfurt School philosophy of critical theory. The scholars were especially influenced by the Communists failed German Revolution of 191819 (which Marx predicted) and by the rise of Nazism (193345), a German form of fascism. To explain such reactionary politics, the Frankfurt scholars applied critical selections of Marxist philosophy to interpret, illuminate, and explain the origins and causes of reactionary socio-economics in 20th-century Europe (a type of political economy unknown to Marx in the 19th century). The Schools further intellectual development derived from the publication, in the 1930s, of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1932) and The German Ideology (1932), in which Karl Marx showed logical continuity with Hegelianism, as the basis of Marxist philosophy.

As the anti-intellectual threat of Nazism increased to political violence, the founders decided to move the Institute for Social Research out of Nazi Germany (193345).[11] Soon after Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, the Institute first moved from Frankfurt to Geneva, and then to New York City, in 1935, where the Frankfurt School joined Columbia University. In the event, the Schools journal, the Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung ("Magazine of Social Research") was renamed "Studies in Philosophy and Social Science". Thence began the period of the Schools important work in Marxist critical theory; the scholarship and the investigational method gained acceptance among the academy, in the U.S and in the U.K. By the 1950s, the paths of scholarship led Horkheimer, Adorno, and Pollock to return to West Germany, whilst Marcuse, Lwenthal, and Kirchheimer remained in the U.S. In 1953, the Institute for Social Research (Frankfurt School) was formally re-established in Frankfurt, West Germany.[12]

As a term, the Frankfurt School usually comprises the intellectuals Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, Leo Lwenthal and Friedrich Pollock.[6] Although initially of the FS's inner circle, Jrgen Habermas was the first to diverge from Horkheimer's research program, as a new generation of critical theoreticians.

Associates of the Frankfurt School:

Critical theoreticians of the Frankfurt School:

The works of the Frankfurt School are understood in the context of the intellectual and practical objectives of critical theory. In Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Max Horkheimer defined critical theory as social critique meant to effect sociologic change and realize intellectual emancipation, by way of enlightenment that is not dogmatic in its assumptions.[14][15] The purpose of critical theory is to analyze the true significance of the ruling understandings (the dominant ideology) generated in bourgeois society, by showing that the dominant ideology misrepresents how human relations occur in the real world, and how such misrepresentations function to justify and legitimate the domination of people by capitalism.

In the praxis of cultural hegemony, the dominant ideology is a ruling-class narrative story, which explains that what is occurring in society is the norm. Nonetheless, the story told through the ruling understandings conceals as much as it reveals about society, hence, the task of the Frankfurt School was sociological analysis and interpretation of the areas of social-relation that Marx did not discuss in the 19th century especially in the Base and superstructure aspects of a capitalist society.[16]

Horkheimer opposed critical theory to traditional theory, wherein the word theory is applied in the positivistic sense of scientism, in the sense of a purely observational mode, which finds and establishes scientific law (generalizations) about the real world. That the social sciences differ from the natural sciences inasmuch as scientific generalizations are not readily derived from experience, because the researchers understanding of a social experience always is shaped by the ideas in the mind of the researcher. What the researcher does not understand is that he or she is within an historical context, wherein ideologies shape human thought, thus, the results for the theory being tested would conform to the ideas of the researcher, rather than conform to the facts of the experience proper; in Traditional and Critical Theory (1937), Horkheimer said:

The facts, which our senses present to us, are socially performed in two ways: through the historical character of the object perceived, and through the historical character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as receptive and passive in the act of perception.[17]

For Horkheimer, the methods of investigation applicable to the social sciences cannot imitate the scientific method applicable to the natural sciences. In that vein, the theoretical approaches of positivism and pragmatism, of neo-Kantianism and phenomenology failed to surpass the ideological constraints that restricted their application to social science, because of the inherent logicomathematic prejudice that separates theory from actual life, i.e. such methods of investigation seek a logic that is always true, and independent of and without consideration for continuing human activity in the field under study. That the appropriate response to such a dilemma was the development of a critical theory of Marxism.[18]

Because the problem was epistemological, Horkheimer said that "we should reconsider not merely the scientist, but the knowing individual, in general."[19] Unlike Orthodox Marxism, which applies a template to critique and to action, critical theory is self-critical, with no claim to the universality of absolute truth. As such, critical theory does not grant primacy to matter (materialism) or to consciousness (idealism), because each epistemology distorts the reality under study, to the benefit of a small group. In practice, critical theory is outside the philosophical strictures of traditional theory; however, as a way of thinking and of recovering humanitys self-knowledge, critical theory draws investigational resources and methods from Marxism.[15]

The Institute also attempted to reformulate dialectics as a concrete method. The use of such a dialectical method can be traced back to the philosophy of Hegel, who conceived dialectic as the tendency of a notion to pass over into its own negation as the result of conflict between its inherent contradictory aspects.[20] In opposition to previous modes of thought, which viewed things in abstraction, each by itself and as though endowed with fixed properties, Hegelian dialectic has the ability to consider ideas according to their movement and change in time, as well as according to their interrelations and interactions.[20]

History, according to Hegel, proceeds and evolves in a dialectical manner: the present embodies the rational sublation, or "synthesis", of past contradictions. History may thus be seen as an intelligible process (which Hegel referred to as Weltgeist), which is the moving towards a specific conditionthe rational realization of human freedom.[21] However, considerations about the future were of no interest to Hegel,[22][23] for whom philosophy cannot be prescriptive because it understands only in hindsight. The study of history is thus limited to the description of past and present realities.[21] Hence for Hegel and his successors, dialectics inevitably lead to the approval of the status quoindeed, Hegel's philosophy served as a justification for Christian theology and the Prussian state.

This was fiercely criticized by Marx and the Young Hegelians, who argued that Hegel had gone too far in defending his abstract conception of "absolute Reason" and had failed to notice the "real"i.e. undesirable and irrationallife conditions of the working class. By turning Hegel's idealist dialectics upside-down, Marx advanced his own theory of dialectical materialism, arguing that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."[24] Marx's theory follows a materialist conception of history and space,[25] where the development of the productive forces is seen as the primary motive force for historical change, and according to which the social and material contradictions inherent to capitalism inevitably lead to its negationthereby replacing capitalism with a new rational form of society: communism.[26]

Marx thus extensively relied on a form of dialectical analysis. This methodto know the truth by uncovering the contradictions in presently predominant ideas and, by extension, in the social relations to which they are linkedexposes the underlying struggle between opposing forces. For Marx, it is only by becoming aware of the dialectic (i.e., class consciousness) of such opposing forces, in a struggle for power, that individuals can liberate themselves and change the existing social order.[27]

For their part, Frankfurt School theorists quickly came to realize that a dialectical method could only be adopted if it could be applied to itselfthat is to say, if they adopted a self-correcting methoda dialectical method that would enable them to correct previous false dialectical interpretations. Accordingly, critical theory rejected the historicism and materialism of orthodox Marxism.[28] Indeed, the material tensions and class struggles of which Marx spoke were no longer seen by Frankfurt School theorists as having the same revolutionary potential within contemporary Western societiesan observation that indicated that Marx's dialectical interpretations and predictions were either incomplete or incorrect.

Contrary to orthodox Marxist praxis, which solely seeks to implement an unchangeable and narrow idea of "communism" into practice, critical theorists held that praxis and theory, following the dialectical method, should be interdependent and should mutually influence each other. When Marx famously stated in his Theses on Feuerbach that "philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it", his real idea was that philosophy's only validity was in how it informed action. Frankfurt School theorists would correct this by arguing that when action fails, then the theory guiding it must be reviewed. In short, socialist philosophical thought must be given the ability to criticize itself and "overcome" its own errors. While theory must inform praxis, praxis must also have a chance to inform theory.[citation needed]

The second phase of Frankfurt School critical theory centres principally on two works: Adorno and Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Adorno's Minima Moralia (1951). The authors wrote both works during the Institute's exile in America. While retaining much of a Marxian analysis, in these works critical theory shifted its emphasis from the critique of capitalism to a critique of Western civilization as a whole, as seen in Dialectic of Enlightenment, which uses the Odyssey as a paradigm for their analysis of bourgeois consciousness. In these works, Horkheimer and Adorno present many themes that have come to dominate the social thought of recent years; for instance, their exposition of the domination of nature as a central characteristic of instrumental rationality in Western civilization was made long before ecology and environmentalism had become popular concerns.

The analysis of reason now goes one stage further: The rationality of Western civilization appears as a fusion of domination and technological rationality, bringing all of external and internal nature under the power of the human subject. In the process, however, the subject itself gets swallowed up and no social force analogous to the proletariat can be identified that enables the subject to emancipate itself. Hence the subtitle of Minima Moralia: "Reflections from Damaged Life". In Adorno's words,

For since the overwhelming objectivity of historical movement in its present phase consists so far only in the dissolution of the subject, without yet giving rise to a new one, individual experience necessarily bases itself on the old subject, now historically condemned, which is still for-itself, but no longer in-itself. The subject still feels sure of its autonomy, but the nullity demonstrated to subjects by the concentration camp is already overtaking the form of subjectivity itself.[29]

Consequently, at a time when it appears that reality itself has become the basis for ideology, the greatest contribution that critical theory can make is to explore the dialectical contradictions of individual subjective experience on the one hand, and to preserve the truth of theory on the other. Even dialectical progress is put into doubt: "its truth or untruth is not inherent in the method itself, but in its intention in the historical process." This intention must be oriented toward integral freedom and happiness: "The only philosophy which can be responsibly practiced in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption." Adorno goes on to distance himself from the "optimism" of orthodox Marxism: "beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption [i.e. human emancipation] itself hardly matters."[30]

From a sociological point of view, both Horkheimer's and Adorno's works contain a certain ambivalence concerning the ultimate source or foundation of social domination, an ambivalence that gave rise to the "pessimism" of the new critical theory over the possibility of human emancipation and freedom.[31] This ambivalence was rooted, of course, in the historical circumstances in which the work was originally produced, in particular, the rise of National Socialism, state capitalism, and mass culture as entirely new forms of social domination that could not be adequately explained within the terms of traditional Marxist sociology.[32] For Adorno and Horkheimer, state intervention in the economy had effectively abolished the tension in capitalism between the "relations of production" and "material productive forces of society"a tension that, according to traditional Marxist theory, constituted the primary contradiction within capitalism. The previously "free" market (as an "unconscious" mechanism for the distribution of goods) and "irrevocable" private property of Marx's epoch have gradually been replaced by the centralized state planning and socialized ownership of the means of production in contemporary Western societies.[33] The dialectic through which Marx predicted the emancipation of modern society is thus suppressed, effectively being subjugated to a positivist rationality of domination.

Of this second "phase" of the Frankfurt School, philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis writes that:

According to the now canonical view of its history, Frankfurt School critical theory began in the 1930s as a fairly confident interdisciplinary and materialist research program, the general aim of which was to connect normative social criticism to the emancipatory potential latent in concrete historical processes. Only a decade or so later, however, having revisited the premises of their philosophy of history, Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment steered the whole enterprise, provocatively and self-consciously, into a skeptical cul-de-sac. As a result they got stuck in the irresolvable dilemmas of the "philosophy of the subject," and the original program was shrunk to a negativistic practice of critique that eschewed the very normative ideals on which it implicitly depended.[34]

Kompridis argues that this "sceptical cul-de-sac" was arrived at with "a lot of help from the once unspeakable and unprecedented barbarity of European fascism," and could not be gotten out of without "some well-marked [exit or] Ausgang, showing the way out of the ever-recurring nightmare in which Enlightenment hopes and Holocaust horrors are fatally entangled." However, this Ausgang, according to Kompridis, would not come until later purportedly in the form of Jrgen Habermas's work on the intersubjective bases of communicative rationality.[34]

Adorno, a trained classical pianist, wrote The Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), in which he, in essence, polemicizes against popular musicbecause it has become part of the culture industry of advanced capitalist society[pageneeded] and the false consciousness that contributes to social domination. He argued that radical art and music may preserve the truth by capturing the reality of human suffering. Hence:

What radical music perceives is the untransfigured suffering of man [...] The seismographic registration of traumatic shock becomes, at the same time, the technical structural law of music. It forbids continuity and development. Musical language is polarized according to its extreme; towards gestures of shock resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards a crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her tracks [...] Modern music sees absolute oblivion as its goal. It is the surviving message of despair from the shipwrecked.[35]

This view of modern art as producing truth only through the negation of traditional aesthetic form and traditional norms of beauty because they have become ideological is characteristic of Adorno and of the Frankfurt School generally. It has been criticized by those who do not share its conception of modern society as a false totality that renders obsolete traditional conceptions and images of beauty and harmony.

In particular, Adorno despised jazz and popular music, viewing it as part of the culture industry, that contributes to the present sustainability of capitalism by rendering it "aesthetically pleasing" and "agreeable". The British philosopher Roger Scruton saw Adorno as producing 'reams of turgid nonsense devoted to showing that the American people are just as alienated as Marxism requires them to be, and that their cheerful life-affirming music is a 'fetishized' commodity, expressive of their deep spiritual enslavement to the capitalist machine.'[36]

With the growth of advanced industrial society during the Cold War era, critical theorists recognized that the path of capitalism and history had changed decisively, that the modes of oppression operated differently, and that the industrial working class no longer remained the determinate negation of capitalism. This led to the attempt to root the dialectic in an absolute method of negativity, as in Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964) and Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1966). During this period the Institute of Social Research resettled in Frankfurt (although many of its associates remained in the United States) with the task not merely of continuing its research but of becoming a leading force in the sociological education and democratization of West Germany. This led to a certain systematization of the Institute's entire accumulation of empirical research and theoretical analysis.

During this period, Frankfurt School critical theory particularly influenced some segments of the left wing and leftist thought, particularly the New Left. Herbert Marcuse has occasionally been described as the theorist or intellectual progenitor of the New Left. Their critique of technology, totality, teleology and (occasionally) civilization is an influence on anarcho-primitivism. Their work also heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies.

More importantly, however, the Frankfurt School attempted to define the fate of reason in the new historical period. While Marcuse did so through analysis of structural changes in the labor process under capitalism and inherent features of the methodology of science, Horkheimer and Adorno concentrated on a re-examination of the foundation of critical theory. This effort appears in systematized form in Adorno's Negative Dialectics, which tries to redefine dialectics for an era in which "philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed". Negative dialectics expresses the idea of critical thought so conceived that the apparatus of domination cannot co-opt it.

Its central notion, long a focal one for Horkheimer and Adorno, suggests that the original sin of thought lies in its attempt to eliminate all that is other than thought, the attempt by the subject to devour the object, the striving for identity. This reduction makes thought the accomplice of domination. Negative Dialectics rescues the "preponderance of the object", not through a nave epistemological or metaphysical realism but through a thought based on differentiation, paradox, and ruse: a "logic of disintegration". Adorno thoroughly criticizes Heidegger's fundamental ontology, which he thinks reintroduces idealistic and identity-based concepts under the guise of having overcome the philosophical tradition.

Negative dialectics comprises a monument to the end of the tradition of the individual subject as the locus of criticism. Without a revolutionary working class, the Frankfurt School had no one to rely on but the individual subject. But, as the liberal capitalist social basis of the autonomous individual receded into the past, the dialectic based on it became more and more abstract.

Habermas's work takes the Frankfurt School's abiding interests in rationality, the human subject, democratic socialism, and the dialectical method and overcomes a set of contradictions that always weakened critical theory: the contradictions between the materialist and transcendental methods, between Marxian social theory and the individualist assumptions of critical rationalism between technical and social rationalization, and between cultural and psychological phenomena on the one hand and the economic structure of society on the other.

The Frankfurt School avoided taking a stand on the precise relationship between the materialist and transcendental methods, which led to ambiguity in their writings and confusion among their readers. Habermas's epistemology synthesizes these two traditions by showing that phenomenological and transcendental analysis can be subsumed under a materialist theory of social evolution, while the materialist theory makes sense only as part of a quasi-transcendental theory of emancipatory knowledge that is the self-reflection of cultural evolution. The simultaneously empirical and transcendental nature of emancipatory knowledge becomes the foundation stone of critical theory.

By locating the conditions of rationality in the social structure of language use, Habermas moves the locus of rationality from the autonomous subject to subjects in interaction. Rationality is a property not of individuals per se, but rather of structures of undistorted communication. In this notion Habermas has overcome the ambiguous plight of the subject in critical theory. If capitalistic technological society weakens the autonomy and rationality of the subject, it is not through the domination of the individual by the apparatus but through technological rationality supplanting a describable rationality of communication. And, in his sketch of communicative ethics as the highest stage in the internal logic of the evolution of ethical systems, Habermas hints at the source of a new political practice that incorporates the imperatives of evolutionary rationality.

In The Theory of the Novel (1971), Georg Lukcs said that the Frankfurt School were:

A considerable part of the leading German intelligentsia, including Adorno, have taken up residence in the Grand Hotel Abyss which I described in connection with my critique of Schopenhauer as "a beautiful hotel, equipped with every comfort, on the edge of an abyss, of nothingness, of absurdity. And the daily contemplation of the abyss, between excellent meals or artistic entertainments, can only heighten the enjoyment of the subtle comforts offered."[37]

In "Addendum 1974: The Frankfurt School" (1994) Karl Popper said that:

Marx's own condemnation of our society makes sense. For Marx's theory contains the promise of a better future. But the theory becomes vacuous and irresponsible if this promise is withdrawn, as it is by Adorno and Horkheimer.[38]

In his criticism of Habermas, the philosopher Nikolas Kompridis said that a break with the proceduralist ethics of communicative rationality is necessary:

For all its theoretical ingenuity and practical implications, Habermas's reformulation of critical theory is beset by persistent problems of its own. . . . In my view, the depth of these problems indicate just how wrong was Habermas's expectation that the paradigm change to linguistic intersubjectivity would render "objectless" the dilemmas of the philosophy of the subject.[39] Habermas accused Hegel of creating a conception of reason so "overwhelming" that it solved too well the problem of modernity's [need for] self-reassurance.[40] It seems, however, that Habermas has repeated rather than avoided Hegel's mistake, creating a theoretical paradigm so comprehensive that in one stroke it also solves, too well, the dilemmas of the philosophy of the subject and the problem of modernity's self-reassurance.[41]

That:

The change of paradigm to linguistic intersubjectivity has been accompanied by a dramatic change in critical theory's self-understanding. The priority given to questions of justice and the normative order of society has remodeled critical theory in the image of liberal theories of justice. While this has produced an important contemporary variant of liberal theories of justice, different enough to be a challenge to liberal theory, but not enough to preserve sufficient continuity with critical theory's past, it has severely weakened the identity of critical theory and inadvertently initiated its premature dissolution.[42]

That to prevent that premature dissolution critical theory should be reinvented as a philosophic enterprise that discloses possibilities by way of Heidegger's world disclosure, by drawing from the sources of normativity that were blocked by the change of paradigm.[43]

The historian Christopher Lasch criticized the Frankfurt School for their initial tendency of "automatically" rejecting opposing political criticisms, based upon "psychiatric" grounds:

The Authoritarian Personality [1950] had a tremendous influence on [Richard] Hofstadter, and other liberal intellectuals, because it showed them how to conduct political criticism in psychiatric categories, [and] to make those categories bear the weight of political criticism. This procedure excused them from the difficult work of judgment and argumentation. Instead of arguing with opponents, they simply dismissed them on psychiatric grounds.[44]

During the 1980s, anti-authoritarian socialists in the United Kingdom and New Zealand criticised the rigid and determinist view of popular culture deployed within the Frankfurt School theories of capitalist culture, which seemed to preclude any prefigurative role for social critique within such work. They argued that EC Comics often did contain such cultural critiques.[45][46] Recent criticism of the Frankfurt School by the libertarian Cato Institute focused on the claim that culture has grown more sophisticated and diverse as a consequence of free markets and the availability of niche cultural text for niche audiences.[47][48]

In contemporary usage, the term Cultural Marxism identifies an anti-semitic conspiracy theory that misrepresents the Frankfurt School intellectuals as part of continual academic and intellectual efforts to undermine and destroy Western culture, then to be replaced with Marxist culture.[49] In the late 1990s, Cultural Marxism claimed that the Frankfurt School were in a culture-war conspiracy against the Western world, to be realised by undermining traditionalist conservatism with the social liberalism of the Counterculture of the 1960s, such as the social equality of progressive politics, the racial equality of multiculturalism, and linguistic political correctness.[50][51]

In the U.S., the conspiracy ideology of Cultural Marxism is particular to paleoconservative politicians, such as Paul Weyrich, William S. Lind, and Patrick Buchanan, and to like-minded politicians of the alt-right and white nationalist organisations, such as the neo-reactionary Dark Enlightenment.[52] In 1998, Weyrich presented his notion of Cultural Marxism in the speech Letter to Conservatives to the Conservative Leadership Conference of the Civitas Institute think-tank; and later re-published it in the Paul Weyrich Culture War Letter.[53] For the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, Washington, D.C., at Weyrich's request William S. Lind wrote a short history of (Weyrich's) notion of Cultural Marxism, which said that the presence of gay people in television programming is proof of Marxist cultural control of the mass communications media (radio, cinema, television); and claimed that Herbert Marcuse considered and proposed a revolutionary, cultural vanguard, composed of "blacks, students, feminist women, and homosexuals" specifically in the internal politics of the U.S.[50][51][54] A year layer, Lind published Victoria: A Novel of 4th Generation Warfare (1995) about a societal apocalypse in which Cultural Marxism deposed traditionalist conservatism as the culture of the Western world; ultimate, Christian military victory re-establishes traditionalist socio-economic order using the Victorian morality of Britain in the late 19th century.[55][56]

The antiMarxism of Lind and Weyrich advocates political confrontation and intellectual opposition to Cultural Marxism with "a vibrant cultural conservatism" composed of "retro-culture fashions", a return to railroads as public transport, and an agrarian culture of self-reliance, modeled after that of the Amish folk.[57]In the Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment: The Frankfurt School as Scapegoat of the Lunatic Fringe (2011), the historian Martin Jay said that Lind's documentary of conservative counter-culture, Political Correctness: The Frankfurt School (1999) was effective propaganda, because it:

. . . spawned a number of condensed textual versions, which were reproduced on a number of radical, right-wing sites. These, in turn, led to a welter of new videos, now available on YouTube, which feature an odd cast of pseudo-experts regurgitating exactly the same line. The message is numbingly simplistic: All the ills of modern American culture, from feminism, affirmative action, sexual liberation and gay rights to the decay of traditional education, and even environmentalism, are ultimately attributable to the insidious [intellectual] influence of the members of the Institute for Social Research who came to America in the 1930s.[58]

In the "New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness' " (1992), Michael Minnicino communicated the Cultural Marxism conspiracy for the Schiller Institute, of the LaRouche movement; that the antiWestern conspiracy of the Jewish intellectuals in the Frankfurt School promoted Modern art as a form of cultural pessimism that shaped the counter-culture of the 1960s in the manner of the counter-culture of the socially liberal Wandervogel youth movement, in Germany, whose Monte Verit commune was the 19th-century predecessor of Western counter-culture.[59][58][60][61]

In "Ally of Christian Right Heavyweight Paul Weyrich Addresses Holocaust Denial Conference" (15 June 2002) the Southern Poverty Law Center reported William S. Lind's participation in a conference of Holocaust deniers, wherein he spoke of Cultural Marxism being a threat, because the Frankfurt School was, "to a man, Jewish". That, although he is neither an anti-semite nor a Holocaust denier, Lind participated in the conference because the Center for Cultural Conservatism has "a regular policy to work with a wide variety of groups, on an issue-by-issue basis", in behalf of the Free Congress Foundation.[50][62]

In Fascism: Fascism and Culture (2003), Matthew Feldman traced the ideological etymology of the term Cultural Marxism, which is derived from the antiSemitic term Kulturbolshewismus (Cultural Bolshevism) with which Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party claimed that Jewish cultural influence was the source of social degeneration in the German society of the Weimar Republic (191833) and in the Western world.[63]

In Hate Crimes, Vol. 5 (2009), Heidi Beirich said that the Right Wing use Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory to politically de-ligitimize their opponents in the Left Wing, by misrepresenting the Other (person who is not the Self) as someone who threatens the status quo culture especially "feminists, homosexuals, secular humanists, multi-culturalists, sex educators, environmentalists, immigrants, and black nationalists" as politically destructive members of the body politik.[64] In his political manifesto, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, the Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik quoted William S. Lind's usages of the term Cultural Marxism, such as: "[the] Sexually transmitted disease (STD) epidemic in Western Europe [is] a result of cultural Marxism"; that "Cultural Marxism defines . . . Muslims, Feminist women, homosexuals and some additional minority groups as virtuous, and they view ethnic Christian European men as evil"; and that "The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg is a cultural-Marxist-controlled political entity."[65] Breivik e-mailed his manifesto and a copy of Political Correctness: A Short History of an Ideology (by the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation) to 1,003 addresses some ninety minutes before realising his terrorism in the 2011 Norway attacks in which he killed seventy-seven people.[66][67][68]

In "Collectivists, Communists, Labor Bosses, and Treason: The Tea Parties as Right-wing, Populist Counter-subversion Panic" (2012), Chip Berlet, identified Cultural Marxism conspiracy as an ideological basis of the Tea Party movement, as published in their websites. That the Tea Parties are a right-wing populist movement whose claims of social subversion echo earlier white nationalist claims of subversion. That the economic lites use populist rhetoric to encourage counter-subversion panics; thus, a large, middle-class white constituency sides with the lites to defend their relative and precarious socio-economic position in society. The blame for failures (economic, political, social) is diverted from the faults of free-market capitalism to mythical conspiracies of collectivists, communists, labor bosses, and other cultural scapegoats. In that manner, the accusation of Cultural Marxism defends racist and sexist social hierarchies, under the guise of patriotism, economic libertarianism, Christian values, and nativism that oppose the big government policies of the Obama Administration.[69][70]

In the essay "Cultural Marxism and the Radical Right" (2014), the political scientist Jrme Jamin said that "next to the global dimension of the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, there is its innovative and original dimension, which lets its authors avoid racist discourses and pretend to be defenders of democracy" in their respective countries.[71] In that ideological vein, "How Trump's Paranoid White House Sees 'Deep State' Enemies on all Sides" (2017), reported that Richard Higgins was fired from the U.S. National Security Council, because of his memorandum about a conspiracy to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump; Higgins identified the conspirators as American public-intellectuals of Cultural Marxism, foreign Islamists, and globalist bankers, the news media, and politicians from the Republican and Democrat parties.[72][73][74]

In the speech The Origins of Political Correctness (2000), William S. Lind established the ideologic lineage of Cultural Marxism, from Weimar Germany to the U.S.; that:

If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the Hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I [to Kulturbolshewismus]. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with [the basic tenets of] classical Marxism, the parallels are very obvious.[62]

Lind's historical delineation of the denotations and connotations of the ideology of Cultural Marxism demonstrated that "The Alt-rights Favorite Meme is 100 Years Old" (2018); law professor Samuel Moyn said that anti-intellectual fear of Cultural Marxism is "an American contribution to the phantasmagoria of the alt-right"; while the conspiracy theory, itself, is "a crude slander, referring to [ Judeo-Bolshevism ], something that does not exist."[75]

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Frankfurt School - Wikipedia

Andrew Wommack: Political Correctness Is Nothing but Anti …

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

During last nights Truth & Liberty Coalition webcast, right-wing pastor Andrew Wommack said that banning so-called conversion therapy is an anti-Christ attack on religious freedom.

After Richard Harris, who oversees the School of Practical Government at Wommacks Charis Bible College, warned that the LGBT movement is trying to silence Christians by prohibiting the use of therapy on minors for the purpose of attempting to change their sexual orientation, Wommack weighed in to declare that such efforts are part of an anti-Christ plot to destroy morality.

Let me just cut through the chase here, he said. This is an anti-Christ movement. Political correctness is nothing but anti-Christ. The scripture says that the spirit of Antichrist is already at work and this is an attack. If you strip back all of the layers and you get to the core, the thing that motivates all of this is that people do not like the morality that is promoted through the Bible. They are against that. They feel convicted of their own conscience and this is an attack against all morality.

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Eagle Lodge Private Islands of Georgia Private Island …

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

It only looks rustic.

Walk in. Drop your bag. Let your private island vacation begin. Eagle Lodge has everything a luxury vacation home needs and all the peacefulness of being on a private island. All you have to bring is your sense of adventure. And maybe a good book.

Wrap-Around Screened Porch: Relax in comfort with help from the hammock, bed swing, outdoor fireplace and outdoor dining area.

Five-Moon Outdoor Shower: A double-headed shower with heater, sink and bath amenities are waiting after a great day of adventure.

Five-Moon Outdoor Kitchen: Boil pot, oyster steamer, grills, sink, prep table and ice machine help you cook the perfect lowcountry meal.

Downstairs Living & Recreation Room: Spacious living area includes a queen bed, single bunk bed, full bunk bed, laundry facilities, a full bath and game table.

Bedrooms and Bathrooms: Open and roomy with modern amenities, Eagle Lodge can easily accommodate 12 guests in style and comfort.

Dock on May Hall Creek: Dock your boat and relax in the swing, enjoy dinner under the stars, catch crabs, fish or take a kayak adventure.

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Viral marketing – Wikipedia

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Viral marketing or viral advertising is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product. Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people in their social networks, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another.[1] It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.[2]

The concept is often misused or misunderstood,[3][4] as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word "viral".[5]

Viral advertising is personal and, while coming from an identified sponsor, it does not mean businesses pay for its distribution.[6] Most of the well-known viral ads circulating online are ads paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company webpage or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube.[7] Consumers receive the page link from a social media network or copy the entire ad from a website and pass it along through e-mail or posting it on a blog, webpage or social media profile. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages. The most commonly utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include: pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based. However, the creative nature of viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices.[8]

The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.[9]

The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaignsmarketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to.[10]

The emergence of "viral marketing", as an approach to advertisement, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses. The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s.[11] As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context.

The term viral strategy was first used in marketing in 1995, in a pre-digital marketing era, by a strategy team at Chiat/Day advertising in LA (now TBWA LA) for the launch of the first PlayStation for Sony Computer Entertainment. Born from a need to combat huge target cynicism the insight was that people reject things pushed at them but seek out things that elude them. Chiat/Day created a 'stealth' campaign to go after influencers/opinion leaders, using street teams for the first time in brand marketing and layered an intricate omni-channel web of info and intrigue. Insiders picked up on it and spread the word. Within 6 months PlayStation was number one in its categorySony's most successful launch in history.

There is debate on the origination and the popularization of the specific term viral marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the current term are attributed to the Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport. The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing",[12] and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users.[13] An earlier attestation of the term is found in PC User magazine in 1989, but with a somewhat differing meaning.[14][15]

Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Doug Rushkoff.[16] The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them", in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than onethe standard in epidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.[citation needed]

Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential."[17] Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature.[citation needed]

In early 2013 the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas. It attempted to identify similar trends in viral marketing methods for various media.

This exponential growth is not infinite, because customers, people, are finite. This ceiling is called carrying capacity.[18]

According to the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On,[19] there are six key factors that drive virality.[20] They are organized in an acronym called STEPPS which stands for:

According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:[21]

Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies' viral marketing study in 2001,[citation needed] carves a different role for marketers which pushes the 'art' of viral marketing much closer to 'science'.[23]

To clarify and organize the information related to potential measures of viral campaigns, the key measurement possibilities should be considered in relation to the objectives formulated for the viral campaign. In this sense, some of the key cognitive outcomes of viral marketing activities can include measures such as the number of views, clicks, and hits for specific content, as well as the number of shares in social media, such as likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter, which demonstrate that consumers processed the information received through the marketing message. Measures such as the number of reviews for a product or the number of members for a campaign webpage quantify the number of individuals who have acknowledged the information provided by marketers. Besides statistics that are related to online traffic, surveys can assess the degree of product or brand knowledge, though this type of measurement is more complicated and requires more resources.[24][25]

Related to consumers' attitudes toward a brand or even toward the marketing communication, different online and social media statistics, including the number of likes and shares within a social network, can be used. The number of reviews for a certain brand or product and the quality assessed by users are indicators of attitudes. Classical measures of consumer attitude toward the brand can be gathered through surveys of consumers.Behavioral measures are very important because changes in consumers' behavior and buying decisions are what marketers hope to see through viral campaigns. There are numerous indicators that can be used in this context as a function of marketers' objectives. Some of them include the most known online and social media statistics such as number and quality of shares, views, product reviews, and comments. Consumers' brand engagement can be measured through the K-factor, the number of followers, friends, registered users, and time spent on the website. Indicators that are more bottom-line oriented focus on consumers' actions after acknowledging the marketing content, including the number of requests for information, samples, or test-drives. Nevertheless, responses to actual call-to-action messages are important, including the conversion rate.Consumers' behavior is expected to lead to contributions to the bottom line of the company, meaning increase in sales, both in quantity and financial amount. However, when quantifying changes in sales, managers need to consider other factors that could potentially affect sales besides the viral marketing activities. Besides positive effects on sales, the use of viral marketing is expected to bring significant reductions in marketing costs and expenses.[26][27]

Viral marketing often involves and utilizes:

Viral target marketing is based on three important principles:[28]

By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost effective advantage.

The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight. However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster. Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful:

The growth of social networks significantly contributed to the effectiveness of viral marketing.[30] As of 2009, two thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social networking service or blog site at least every week.[31] Facebook alone has over 1 billion active users.[32] In 2009, time spent visiting social media sites began to exceed time spent emailing.[33] A 2010 study found that 52% of people who view news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts.[34]

The introduction of social media has caused a change how viral marketing is used and the speed at which information is spread and users interact.[35] This has prompted many companies to use social media as a way to market themselves and their products, with Elsamari Botha and Mignon Reyneke stating that viral messages are "playing an increasingly important role in influencing and shifting public opinion on corporate reputations, brands, and products as well as political parties and public personalities to name but a few."[35]

'The influencers in order to communicate marketing messages to the audiences you seek to reach'.[36] In business, it is indicated that people prefer interaction with humans to a logo.[37] Therefore, it seems that influencers are on behalf of a company to build up a relationship between the brand and their customers. Companies would be left behind if they neglected the trend of influencers in viral marketing, as over 60% of global brands have used influencers in marketing in 2016.[38]The influencer types come along with the level of customers' involvement in companies' marketing.[39] First, unintentional influences,[40][39] because of brand satisfaction and low involvement, their action is just to deliver a company's message to a potential user.[41] Secondly, users will become salesmen or promoters for a particular company with incentives.[40][39] For example, ICQ offered their users benefits to create the awareness of their friends. Finally, the mass reached influencers are those who have a huge range of followers on the social network. Recent trend in businesses activity is to offer incentives to individual users for re-posting the advertisement messages to their own profiles. A common type of an incentive puts all the re-posting users into a random draw for a valuable gift [42]

Marketers and agencies commonly consider celebrities as a good influencer with endorsement work. This conception is similar to celebrity marketing. Based on a survey, 69% of company marketing department and 74% of agencies are currently working with celebrities in the UK. The celebrity types come along with their working environment. Traditional celebrities are considered as singles, dancers, actors or models. These types of public characters are continuing to be the most commonly used by company marketers. The survey found that 4 in 10 company having worked with these traditional celebrities in the prior year. However, people these years are spending more time on social media rather than traditional media such as TV. The researchers also claim that customers are not firmly believed celebrities are effectively influential.[43][44]

Social media stars among a kind of influencer on viral marketing since consumers are spending more time on the Internet than before. And companies and agencies start to consider collaborating with social media stars as their product endorser.

Social media stars such as YouTuber Zoella or Instagrammer Aimee Song are followed by millions of people online. These online celebrities are having more connection and influence with their followers because they have more frequent and realistic conversation and interaction on the Internet in terms of comments or likes.[45]

This trend captured by marketers who are used to explore new potential customers. Agencies are placing social media stars alongside singers and musicians at the top of the heap of celebrity types they had worked with. And there are more than 28% of company marketers having worked with one social media celebrity in the previous year.[44]

The challenges of strategically maximizing the influence spread in social networks are addressed in management science.[46]

Using influencers in viral marketing provides companies several benefits. It enables companies to spend little time and budget on their marketing communication and brand awareness promotion.[47] For example, Alberto Zanot, in the 2006 FIFA Football World Cup, shared Zinedine Zidane's headbutt against Italy and engaged more than 1.5 million viewers in less than the very first hour. Secondly, it enhances the credibility of messages.[48][49][50][51][52] These trust-based relationships grab the audience's attention, create customers' demand, increase sales and loyalty, or simply drive customers' attitude and behavior.[50][51] In the case of Coke, Millennials changed their mind about the product, from parents' drink to the beverage for teens.[53] It built up Millennials' social needs by 'sharing a Coke' with their friends. This created a deep connection with Gen Y, dramatically increased sales (+11% compared with last year) and market share (+1.6%).[53]

No doubt that harnessing influencers would be a lucrative business for both companies and influencers.[54] The concept of 'influencer' is no longer just an 'expert' but also anyone who delivers and influence on the credibility of a message (e.g. blogger)[49] In 2014, BritMums, network sharing family's daily life, had 6,000 bloggers and 11,300 views per month on average[55][56] and became endorsers for some particular brand such as Coca-Cola, Morrison. Another case, Aimee Song who had over 3.6m followers on the Instagram page and became Laura Mercier's social media influencers, gaining $500,000 monthly.[55]

Decision-making process seems to be hard for customers these days. Millers (1956) argued that people suffered from short-term memory.[57] This links to difficulties in customers' decision-making process and Paradox of Choice,[58] as they face various adverts and newspapers daily.[59] Influencers serve as a credible source for customers' decision-making process.[49][41] Neilsen reported that 80% of consumers appreciated a recommendation of their acquaintances,[60] as they have reasons to trust in their friends delivering the messages without benefits[60] and helping them reduce perceived risks behind choices.[61][62]

The main risk coming from the company is for it to target the wrong influencer or segment. Once the content is online, the sender won't be able to control it anymore.[63] It is therefore vital to aim at a particular segment when releasing the message. This is what happened to the company BlendTech which released videos showing the blender could blend anything, and encouraged users to share videos. This mainly caught the attention of teenage boys who thought it funny to blend and destroy anything they could;[64] even though the videos went viral, they did not target potential buyers of the product. This is considered to be one of the major factors that affects the success of the online promotion. It is critical and inevitable for the organisations to target the right audience. Another risk with internet is that a company's video could end up going viral on the other side of the planet where their products are not even for sale.[65]

According to a paper by Duncan Watts and colleagues entitled: "Everyone's an influencer",[66] the most common risk in viral marketing is that of the influencer not passing on the message, which can lead to the failure of the viral marketing campaign. A second risk is that the influencer modifies the content of the message. A third risk is that influencers pass on the wrong message. This can result from a misunderstanding or as a deliberate move.

Between 19961997, Hotmail was one of the first internet businesses to become extremely successful utilizing viral marketing techniques by inserting the tagline "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail" at the bottom of every e-mail sent out by its users. Hotmail was able to sign up 12 million users in 18 months.[67] At the time, this was historically the fastest growth of any user based media company.[68] By the time Hotmail reached 66 million users, the company was establishing 270,000 new accounts each day.[68]

In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.[69]

Burger King has used several marketing campaigns. Its The Subservient Chicken campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.[70]

The Blendtec viral video series Will It Blend? debuted in 2006. In the show, Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder and CEO, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008.[71] In 2010, Blendtec claimed the top spot on the AdAge list of "Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time".[72] The Will It Blend page on YouTube currently shows over 200 million video views.[73]

The Big Word Project, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word. The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball and Wired Magazine.[74]

Companies may also be able to use a viral video that they did not create for marketing purposes. A notable example is the viral video "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird. After the initial success of the video, Mentos was quick to offer its support. They shipped EepyBird thousands of mints for their experiments. Coke was slower to get involved.[75]

On March 6, 2012, Dollar Shave Club launched their online video campaign. In the first 48 hours of their video debuting on YouTube they had over 12,000 people signing up for the service. The video cost just $4500 to make and as of November 2015 has had more than 21 million views. The video was considered as one of the best viral marketing campaigns of 2012 and won "Best Out-of-Nowhere Video Campaign" at the 2012 AdAge Viral Video Awards.

In 2014, A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge was among the best viral marketing challenges examples in the social network. Millions of people on the social media started filming themselves, pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads and sharing the video with their friends. The challenge was created to give support for fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease. People finished the challenge and then nominated the next person they knew on the social media to take the same challenge. By following this trend, Ice Bucket Challenge became a 'fab' on social media with many online celebrities such as Tyler Oakley, Zoe Sugg and huge celebrities and entrepreneurs like Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates participating.[76] Until September 2014, over 2.4 million ice bucket-related videos had been posted on Facebook, and 28 million people had uploaded, commented on or liked ice bucket-related posts. And about 3.7 million videos had been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtags #ALSicebucketchallenge and #icebucketchallenge.[77] The ALS association didn't invent the ice bucket challenge, but they sure received a huge amount of donation from this activity. It raised a reported $220 million worldwide for A.L.S. organisations, and this amount is thirteen times as much donation as what it had in the whole preceding year in just eight weeks.[78]

In mid 2016, an Indian tea company (TE-A-ME) has delivered 6,000 tea bags[79] to DonaldTrumpand launched a video on YouTube.[80] and Facebook[81] The video campaign received various awards including most creative PR stunt[82] in Southeast Asia after receiving 52000+ video shares, 3.1M video view in first 72-hour and hundreds of publication mentions (including Mashable, Quartz,[83] Indian Express,[84] Buzzfeed[85]) across 80+ countries.

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Viral marketing - Wikipedia

Over 100 Child Sex Traffickers Arrested In Florida – News …

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Over 100 child sex traffickers have been arrested in Florida during a massive undercover investigation on human trafficking.

Detectives with the Polk County Sheriffs Office conducted a six-day Human Trafficking sting from November 27 to December 2.

Abcactionnews.com reports: Undercover detectives posted fake ads or profiles on social media platforms, websites, and mobile phone applications, posing as prostitutes or those soliciting prostitutes. Some of the detectives found profiles and online ads posted by prostitutes and responded to them.

A total of 104 arrests were made. Fifty-four of the arrests were for those who advertised as prostitutes online. Twenty-nine of the arrests were those who solicited undercover detectives who posted ads posing as prostitutes. Thirteen arrests were those who derive support from proceeds ofprostitution and seven were taken into custody for drug charges and other offenses.

Three of the suspects arrested,Walter Leiva, Juan Loaisa and Yefri Guevara, are in the country illegally and have all be charged with soliciting a prostitute, according to Sheriff Judd. Detectives are searching for a traveler suspect who is on the run. William Welch, 49, reportedly arrived near the location to have sex with a 14-year-old girl. His vehicle was found in the area, but deputies were unable to locate him. Welch is facing several charges, including Traveling to meet a minor, Using a 2-way communication device, Using a Computer to Solicit a Child and Attempted Lewd Battery.

Charges for those arrested include soliciting another for prostitution, deriving support from proceeds of prostitution, transporting to building for prostitution and using a communication device to commit a felony.

We conduct these kinds of investigations because of the link between prostitution, human trafficking, drug crimes, economic crimes such as burglary and fraud, and violent crime. We have learned over many years that when we pay attention to public order and quality of life crimes such as prostitution, we can reduce and prevent other crimes while strengthening the community. Prostitution is not a victimless crime. From the spread of disease, destruction of families, and to the scourge of human trafficking, prostitution is bad for our community. In some cases, children and women are forced to prostitute while under the control of pimps. We remain committed to fighting human trafficking by arresting those who engage in prostitution and trying to identify human trafficking victims. Our goal is to change the lives of those who are feeling trapped in this horrific lifestyle. Grady Judd, Sheriff

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Over 100 Child Sex Traffickers Arrested In Florida - News ...

New Age Spirituality – Religious Tolerance

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

a.k.a. Self-spirituality, New spirituality, Mind-body-spirit

The New Age Movement is in a class by itself. Unlike most formal religions, it has no holy text, central organization, formal membership, ordained clergy, geographic center, dogma, creed, etc. They often use mutually exclusive definitions for some of their terms. The New Age is in fact a free-flowing, decentralized, spiritual movement -- a network of believers and practitioners who share somewhat similar beliefs and practices, which many add on to whichever formal religion that they follow. Their book publishers take the place of a central organization. Seminars, conventions, books and informal groups replace of sermons and religious services.

Quoting John Naisbitt:

"In turbulent times, in times of great change, people head for the two extremes: fundamentalism and personal, spiritual experience...With no membership lists or even a coherent philosophy or dogma, it is difficult to define or measure the unorganized New Age movement. But in every major U.S. and European city, thousands who seek insight and personal growth cluster around a metaphysical bookstore, a spiritual teacher, or an education center." 1

The New Age is definitely a heterogeneous movement of individuals; most graft some new age beliefs onto their regular religious affiliation. Recent surveys of US adults indicate that many Americans hold at least some new age beliefs:

The group of surveys cited above classify religious beliefs into 7 faith groups.2 Starting with the largest, they are: Cultural (Christmas & Easter) Christianity, Conventional Christianity, New Age Practitioner, Biblical (Fundamentalist, Evangelical) Christianity, Atheist/Agnostic, Other, and Jewish, A longitudinal study from 1991 to 1995 shows that New Agers represent a steady 20% of the population, and are consistently the third largest religious group. 2

Joe Lonsdale – Wikipedia

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Joseph Todd "Joe" Lonsdale V (September 12, 1982) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is a founding partner at 8VC, a technology investment fund. Most recently, Lonsdale was a founding partner at Formation 8, one of the top performing private funds and the precursor fund to 8VC.[2] Together these funds manage over $2.7 billion.[3] He was an early investor in many companies including Wish, Oculus, Illumio, Virgin Hyperloop One, RelateIQ, ZenReach, Color Genomics, and uBiome. Lonsdale also co-founded and serves as chairman of Addepar, a wealth management technology company, and OpenGov, a technology platform that helps manage data intelligence and budget processes of governments. In 2004, Lonsdale co-founded Palantir Technologies, a company focused on analyzing, integrating, and visualizing data especially in defense and finance.[4] In 2018, Joe placed #22 on the Midas List, which makes him the top ranked venture investor in the world under 40 years old. [5]

Lonsdale grew up in Fremont, California and attended Mission San Jose High School. He was a two-time scholastic state chess champion.[6] He was raised in his mother's Jewish faith (his father is of Irish Catholic descent).[7]

Lonsdale graduated from Stanford University in 2003 with a degree in computer science.[7] He also served as Editor-in-Chief of The Stanford Review, the universitys conservative/libertarian newspaper. Lonsdale is a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Lonsdale joined the financial arm of PayPal as an intern while a student at Stanford.[8] After graduation he left to work in a variety of roles with PayPal co-founder, Peter Thiel. Lonsdale also served as an early executive from 2002-2009 at Clarium Capital, a macro hedge fund founded by Thiel.[9] At Clarium's peak the fund grew to $8 billion in assets under management, but eventually shut down after a series of unprofitable investments and client redemptions resulted in its assets declining to between $300-400 million as of 2011.[10]

In 2004, Lonsdale co-founded Palantir Technologies with Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Palantirs software allows human analysts to explore data from many sources, specifically in the intelligence and financial services sectors.[11] It had a corporate culture modeled in part on Google's.[12] Lonsdale initially served as co-head of product at Palantir. After the core leadership and engineering teams were established, Lonsdale and Eric Poirier built Palantir Finance (now known as Metropolis) as a separate division within Palantir. They created a technology platform analogous in scope to the government platform but focused on time series data and financial ontologies.

The company was valued at $15 billion in November 2014.[13] In June 2015, Buzzfeed reported the company was raising up to $500 million in new capital at a valuation of $20 billion.[14] By December 2015, it raised a further $880 million, while the company was still valued at $20 billion.[15]

Lonsdale co-founded Addepar in 2009 with Jason Mirra.[16] Addepar works with Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), major private banks, and family offices to provide transparency into client portfolios. Currently Addepar has over $1 trillion in assets managed on the platform.[17] The company has attracted a cadre of supporters from the finance industry including Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth Langone, Harrison LeFrak, Poju Zabludowicz, Justin Rockefeller and a number of others.[18]

Lonsdale currently serves as Executive Chairman at Addepar.

In 2010, Lonsdale launched Anduin Ventures, a seed fund focused on helping technology teams in Silicon Valley build information technology companies across a variety of industries. Anduin's advisors included Alex Moore, Steve Loughlin, Matt Michelsen, and Brian Koo. Anduin's portfolio companies include Addepar, Wish (Context Logic),[19] Any.do, a project with Lady Gaga to launch Backplane,[20] Badgeville, Blueprint Labs, Edmodo, Healthtap, JoyTunes, Karma, Onramp, Ostendo, Ness, Practice Fusion and Vicarious.[21]

In 2011, Lonsdale co-founded Formation 8 with Brian Koo and Jim Kim.[22] Other senior members of Formation 8 included Gideon Yu and Pierre Lamond. The fund had a broad mandate, investing across stages in both IT and energy companies, with an intended emphasis on Asian start-ups.[23] Investments included Oculus VR,[24] As of December 2015, Formation 8 recorded an 84% internal rate of return in its first fund, putting it among the top funds of its class.[23]

Formation 8 broke up in the fall of 2015, following a lawsuit filed against Lonsdale by his ex-girlfriend.[23]

In 2015,[25] Lonsdale co-founded 8VC with a group that included 15 of the 25 colleagues from Formation 8.[26] 8VC funds include a $425 million venture fund, a $50 million angel fund, and a follow-on fund (size unreported). Like Formation 8, 8VC invests primarily in technology-driven businesses positioned to redefine modern workflows and unlock otherwise untapped data assets.

8VC's portfolio companies include Joby Aviation, Senti, Asana,[27] uBiome,[28] LoadDocs, Honor,[29] Showroom, Plated, Rested, Flexport,[30] and Common.

Lonsdale co-founded and serves as chairman of OpenGov.[31] Lonsdale also co-founded and serves on the boards of Esper, Anduin Transactions, Affinity, and Zanbato.

Lonsdale is the Chairman of California Common Sense (CACS.org), a non-partisan non-profit dedicated to opening government to the public, developing data-driven policy analysis, and educating citizens about how government works.[32] In July 2010, CACS.org launched Californias first data transparency portal.[33] He also chairs CACS affiliate Argive, which is dedicated to regulatory transparency and accessibility for all citizens.

Lonsdale is the Chairman of ONEHOPE Wine[34] and its charity ONEHOPE Foundation, a social enterprise company devoted to donating a portion of their profits to charity.[35]

Lonsdale also served on the Board of Strive for College[36] and was the founding Chairman of The Seasteading Institute.[37]

Lonsdale is a board member and adviser to Thorn, a non-profit founded by actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore which partners with innovative technology companies to prevent child-trafficking and child pornography.

Lonsdale often speaks at technology events and conferences around the world. A few notable appearances include:

On November 3, 2016 Lonsdale spoke at the WIRED 2016[38] conference in London on a few of the most innovative industries today. Lonsdale discussed transportation, government, and finance, with a special emphasis on Hyperloop One and the role it will play in transforming cities into more powerful engines of growth.

On September 14, 2016 Lonsdale spoke at the Second Annual GSV Pioneer Summit. In a fireside chat alongside Michael Moe, Lonsdale discussed emerging areas of entrepreneurship and the implications of big data.

On May 24, 2016 Lonsdale delivered a keynote speech at the Pioneer Festival in Vienna. Lonsdale spoke about the evolution of the technology ecosystem and lessons learned in building a billion dollar business.

On February 26, 2016, Lonsdale spoke at the Pacific Pension & Investment Institute's Winter Roundtable in Los Angeles. Lonsdale spoke about technological transformation in the context of global financial markets and the impact of these trends on investing.

On June 2, 2015 Lonsdale served on a panel about "Venture Capital Trends" at Rutberg's Future: Mobile conference, and on September 16, 2015, Lonsdale led a panel about Big Data Analytics at the BDO conference which hosts public company board members.

On August 23 and 24, 2014 Lonsdale hosted a hackathon with Ashton Kutcher to support Thorn. The event brought nearly 100 engineers, data scientists and designers together to build tools to help mitigate child trafficking. Other judges included Twitter's Head of Privacy Del Harvey and White House Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. Lonsdale subsequently published an article calling on technologists to tackle social problems.[39]

On February 12, 2014 Lonsdale and Marc Andreessen were featured as the Keynote for the 2014 Goldman Sachs Technology Conference in San Francisco with Gary Cohn. They discussed a variety of issues including bitcoin, valuations of technology companies, and the impact of mobile.[40]

Lonsdale has been featured twice on CNBCs SquawkBox. Lonsdale discussed big data and security in a June 26, 2013 episode titled Big Datas Past Present and Future.[41] On April 29, 2013 Lonsdale was featured in an episode titled The Disruptors on which he discussed how Silicon Valley technology is beginning to emerge as a force on Wall Street.[42]

In 2011, Lonsdale participated in TEDxSilicon Valley. Lonsdale gave a speech titled "Learning from Numbers" where he discussed technology's role within finance.[43]

On August 25, 2008 Lonsdale was hosted by Glenn Beck on CNN, where he discussed the Seasteading Institute.[37]

A common theme across the majority of Lonsdales public speaking and written work is Smart Enterprise. Lonsdale has coined the term to describe the companies leading the 6th wave of Innovation occurring in Silicon Valley.[44]

Specifically, Smart Enterprise companies leverage recent IT advances in order to integrate heterogeneous big data and empower knowledge workers to solve non-linear problems across major economic industries. By doing so, these companies gain the potential to harness network effects within their industry vertical and become platforms, increasing innovation by enabling novel applications to quickly spread throughout the industry.[44]

On January 27, 2015, former Stanford University student Ellie Clougherty filed a lawsuit against Lonsdale accusing him of rape and sexual and emotional abuse.[7][45] Lonsdale denied the claims and filed a counter suit against Clougherty.[46] Stanford University banned Lonsdale from campus as a result of the allegation.[47]

Clougherty dropped all of her legal claims against Lonsdale in a court filing on November 2, 2015. Lonsdale also dropped his counterclaims.[48] Stanford University investigators, citing evidence uncovered during discovery, said Lonsdale did not violate Stanford's sexual harassment policies and there was no basis to support a ban from Stanford's campus.[47]

Lonsdale married Tayler Cox, in September 2016.[49]

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Joe Lonsdale - Wikipedia

Brigade Utopia – Brigade Pre Launch Project Varthur Bangalore

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Full of each feature Brigade Utopia- going to be new landmark in term of residences that has been launched by the major realty Brigade Group at elegant locale Varthur, Bangalore. The urban based project is offering 1, 2, 3 and 4 BHK apartments with unmatched features. The housing project hosted high rise towers & building to set a grand outsider environment. Property consists better design according to modern lifestyle ongoing in the world. The infrastructure development in the property is running in such a way through which you would get better residential lifestyle in Bangalore city. Varthur is located on the bank of Varthur Lake, and also famous for its connectivity to prominent region of Bangalore city like Marathahalli, Balagere, Whitefield and many more. The region is known for its growth since two past decades. Brigade Utopia Varthur Bangalore apartments are coming amongst that kind of environment from which you would be in the comfort zone at every moment.

The property consists two side open home within towers. Each infrastructure is being created vastu shastra consideration, space effective and effective outline, so that fresh air increase in the quality atmosphere all around. Brigade Utopia varthur apartments have been ventured considering the suggestion of best firms, that's why its towers & building got better configuration in compare to other housing project going on in Bangalore. Brigade varthur apartments got better shape of basement+ground+upper storeys consideration. In the presence of courtyard & gallery, each apartment supposed to be a ventilated layout, even every home has been created to follow the winds & suns path.

Brigade Utopia master Plan has been created according to modern RERA updation. Each apartment is being created under the guidance of best civil engineer & master architectures. The provision of providing basement in each building is brilliant thinking, it will give a enough space for several utilities. Where would garden location and swimming landscaping, both have been covered inside the master plan. Even buildings area and others infrastructure location have been decided in the project perfectly. Brigade groups designer suggested better master plan for the towers & buildings. Brigade Utopia Apartments will have every features that should be inside the modern living homes.

A dedicated space provided to the clubhouse that space will be used as party lawn & other occasional utilities. Children playground consist indoor & outdoor games that generally perform by the kids after coming from their school. Moreover swimming pool landscaping, swimming premises, yoga hall, multipurpose hall and other social things, are some advance residential features inside the Brigade Utopia Varthur Housing project. It is lashed with each basic amenities such are sewage treatment plant, 24 hour electrical conveniences with backup, 24 hour uninterrupted water supply, security at main gate, intercom and much more.

Brigade Utopia Master Plan has been planned under the guidance of world class architecture firm. Thats why, it got brilliant storeys & proactive terrace on. Even its floor plan got zero wastage planning to utilize each space in each flat. With including much better residential amenity such are clubhouse, community hall, multipurpose hall and other social features make the apartment better than better. Bangalore is known as Electronic/IT city in India, it is home of information technology parks & electronic companies. The property is well connected to the key region by the public transport facility, moreover many upcoming constructions regarding to entertainment, education and hospitals are giving its important part in the development of Varthur.

Brigade Utopia New housing project is one of excellent creations, it came from the top inventory of brigade group. Now it has been executed physically. As far as the question is about price of homes inside project, very reasonable in compare to other residences developing in Bangalore city.

Brigade Utopia - Brigade Pre Launch Project Varthur Bangalore

Quick notes from Basic Income Guarantee Panel – falicon.com

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

I took some time out to attend the Basic Income Guarantee talk tonightoverall a really really interesting discussion that Im still processing a bit in my head.

I also used the event to practice myvisual note taking skills (related to another book Im reading)so I thought I would just take a minute to upload/share a copy of those notes here (along with some personal takeaways and caveats).

#1. The single biggest, and most important, note I came away with is that Basic Income Guarantee is really a discussion about basic FREEDOM for individuals and not really so much about individual wealth or revenue.

#2. My handwriting is most likely tough to read here (and in real life too)my artwork is also seriously lacking here (and in real life too)so Ill try to post some notes below to explain some things (but also feel free to ask questions/leave comments about anything you need deciphered).

and a few other quick bits I added on a second page:

throughout the talks, I also wrote a handful of questions (that ended up mostly being answered via questions the rest of the crowd asked and/or the panelists decided to mention in related answers)here is the list of questions I had jotted down during the initial talk portion:

A.) Downside? Who is against this?

General answer was some companies; some fear too much freedom given to the masses; there is a potential moral challenge to what people would/will do with freedom; the current wealthy/middle may feel devalued/threatened.

B.) If oil goes away what does Alaska do? How would it affect the state?

In my opinion this was mostly addressed by the answers to A.

C.) What dependancies would this build? How is it kept in check to remain useful?

A couple of people in the crowd expressed concern that prices would simply rise as a result of this the panel (especially Albert) made the point that most of this only works in a deflationary economy, but they also touched on the fact that distribution and scale of the plan would ensure more freedom to the consumers (and hence the balance of price power would actually become *more* equal between consumers and sellers).

D.) How to get it started/tested?

Most agreed that an iterative approach was the most likely waysome private initiatives are already doing things/testing versions of this which is leading and driving the discussion if nothing else

E.) How does healthcare fit into this? If we cant get universal healthcare, how can we get this?

Albert touched on this in response to some of the other questions but didnt have the opportunity to really deep dive into itbut hes clearly thinking about it and I expect will address it more going forward.

F.) What can this crowd do to help? What are our action items/take aways?

Essentially the panel just wants the word and the discussion to spread at this point.

SOnow to explain a few key things about my notes above:

1. Unfort. I had Michael Lewis and Nathan Schneider mixed up throughout most of my note taking (Michael is the one that talked about political hurdles, freedom, and trade offs; Nathan was the one coming from the time management angle and was the biggest proponent of doing this all outside of government [and not testing the ideas by taking anything *away* from the current poor])

2. The interesting thing about the panel was that everyone came to the idea/desire for a basic income guarantee from a completely different angle (Albert; robots and tech make it reasonable/possible. Peter; Climate & environment changes make it required. Michael; political hurdles are getting too high and difficult for the majority of people to get any value out of current gov. programs. Nathan; Time management is forcing the issue because we no longer have time for *anything* but, often meaningless, work).

3. There was no real opposing view; many in the crowd appeared to have askeptical reactionbut mostly, I think, because they havent fully dug into the source material the panelists have been sharing (yet).

4. I knew about Alberts work around this topic (its also how I knew about the event) but was not aware of the othersof the panel, I found Michaels take very rooted in reality and at least possibleI will dig into all of the panelists content/ideas a bit more over the next few weeks, but Im excited to dig into Michaels stuff the most.

5. Unrelated to anything really, but holy cow do people need to work on asking questionsevery single question that came from the crowd was a multi-minute ramble fest (kinda like this post)they were great questions, but they took a lot to get out.

6. There is clearly a lot of growing passion around this topicthats both encouraging and excitingI hope it continues to grow.

7. If you want to get involved in this topic and other stuff around it you should check out the web site they mentioned at the end http://basicincome.nyc, follow the panelists on twitter (and their blogs), and also check out @civichall

Quick notes from Basic Income Guarantee Panel - falicon.com

‘Hartz reforms’: how a benefits shakeup changed Germany …

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Exactly 10 years ago today, Germany's labour market was subjected to the first of the so-called Hartz IV reforms. Brought about by the smooth centre-left chancellor Gerhard Schrder, it was a watershed moment that changed the way the German government deals with poverty.

The changes were riddled with the kind of Anglicisms that German officialdom likes to deploy for any modernisation. In the past decade, unemployed Germans have been bewildered with a kaleidoscope of new "Denglish" terms, from "Jobcenter" to "Personal Service Agentur" to "Mini-Job" to "BridgeSystem". But the measures recommended by the Hartz commission named after its chairman, former Volkswagen executive Peter Hartz boiled to down to this: the bundling of unemployment benefits and social welfare benefits into one neat package.

The immediate effect was to leave those living on benefits worse off (as of 2013, the standard rate for a single person is 382 a month, plus the cost of "adequate housing" and healthcare). But the new element that brought the most profound change was the contract, drawn up between the "jobseeker" and the "Jobcenter", which defined what each party promised to do to get the jobseeker back on somebody's payroll. This was coupled with "sanctions" in other words, benefit cuts if the jobseeker failed to keep up his or her side of the bargain. With those two measures, Germany came to accept the modern interpretation of the word "incentive" in the job market: the doctrine that poor people will only work if they are they are not given money.

There are myriad debates about the net results or benefits of the Hartz reforms. Unemployment, both long-term and short-term, has certainly dropped considerably in Germany since 1 January 2003, but critics say that's only because most jobless people are forced to accept the next job they can find and often they end up in one so low-paid and part-time that they were still dependent on some sort of state welfare anyway. Then again, the flexibility that allows employers especially major industrial companies to take on and lay off part-time shift workers depending on the state of the export market has certainly helped Germany to ride out the global economic crisis in the past three years.

But what is hard to overlook is that the Hartz reforms have had two social effects. First, they have helped to accelerate inequality in Germany. According to an April 2012 OECD report, "Germany is the only [EU] country that has seen an increase in labour earnings inequality from the mid 1990s to the end 2000s driven by increasing inequality in the bottom half of the distribution." The report goes on to point to "a set of reforms in 2003 meant to increase the flexibility of the labour market" which help to explain the "wage moderation".

Second, the Hartz concept has created new support for an old idea that is its ideological opposite the basic income guarantee, or the bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen. This proposes that every citizen should simply be handed an unconditional income, without means-testing or any pressure to work, and thus be allowed to do more or less what they want with their lives. The German website of the income guarantee movement dates the explosion of interest to the fourth and final phase of the Hartz reforms, which came into effect in 2005.

Hartz IV, which still stirred enough anger last autumn to drive one activist to go on hunger strike, has intensified the debate around this radical alternative. And while none of the major parties have adopted it as policy, every one of them including Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union has raised the notion in their internal party debates.

On top of this, the basic income advocates have even been handed some ammunition by Germany's consititution, the Basic Law. Over the years, certain elements of the Hartz reforms have fallen foul of the constitution and its celebrated opening line "human dignity is inviolable". The German state is obliged to guarantee its citizens a life compatible with "human dignity," a principle that resulted in a 2010 court ruling that said the standard Hartz IV payment is not calculated in a way that ensures that. In April 2012, a Berlin court decided that the monthly Hartz IV payment was exactly 36 too little (or 100 for a family) to comply with constitutional requirements. That is not yet, and probably won't ever be, enough to overthrow the entire Hartz concept, but the conflict with the "pressure to work" ideology is growing more apparent.

More here:

'Hartz reforms': how a benefits shakeup changed Germany ...

IEEE-NANOMED 2016 The 10th IEEE International Conference …

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central Sands Cotai Central, Cotai Strip, Taipa, Macau SAR, China

Program Timetable (PDF version) is available. (FINAL, updated on Oct 26)

Registration Time:

IEEE-NANOMED is one of the premier annual events organized by the IEEE Nanotechnology Council to bring together physicians, scientists and engineers alike from all over the world and every sector of academy and industry, working at advancement of basic and clinical research in medical and biological sciences using nano/molecular and engineering methods. IEEE-NANOMED is the conference where practitioners will see nano/molecular medicine and engineering at work in both their own and related fields, from essential and advanced scientific and engineering research and theory to translational and clinical research.

Conference Theme:

Authors are also invited to submit results to a special issue of the journal Micromachines (impact factor 1.295), on the topic of Microdevices and Microsystems for Cell Manipulation. More information on the special issue and paper submission can be found here:http://www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines/special_issues/cell_manipulation

Authors are also invited to submit results to a special issue of the journal Micromachines (impact factor 1.295), on the topic of MEMS/NEMS for Biomedical Imaging and Sensing. More information on the special issue and paper submission can be found here:http://www.mdpi.com/journal/micromachines/special_issues/MEMS_biomedical_imaging_sensing

Continued here:

IEEE-NANOMED 2016 The 10th IEEE International Conference ...

Molecular imaging | GE Healthcare

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Danzig

Discovery comes in many forms. It can be a novel insight into an old problem, or an unexpected revelationafter a long journey. And while every discovery is inspired by the search for something new, what molecular imaging enablesis different. Molecular imaging seeks deeper truths evidence of what is seen, and often not.

This discovery could save the life of one of the patients you see every day in your community hospital, or it could transcendan individual to benefit all patients.

This is known as true discovery.

With its focus on exploration at the molecular and cellular levels, molecular imaging is ideally suited for finding deeplyhidden truths. Each component of the molecular imaging workflow, from acquisition to reconstruction to report generationand communication with referring physicians, is integral to this mission.

As your technology partner, were driven to optimizing each of these components to provide you with the outcomes-basedsolutions you require. We accomplish this by following three core principles. First, we apply an interconnected developmentprocess that offers a comprehensive solution. Then, we emphasize the importance of accurate quantitation. And lastly,we work towards our vision for a fully digital molecular imaging experience.

A fully digital experience connects and enhances each step of the molecular imaging workflow. It starts with best-in-classhardware and software that collects all of your data in the cloud. Then, through deep learning and analytics, that datacan be converted into actionable insights to advance your clinical, operational and economic outcomes.

The beauty of innovation is that its ever-evolving. What makes our vision for a fully digital molecular imagingexperience so exciting is that its a journey we can take together. You can start experiencing its benefits today,while we continue to strive toward the full value of digital technology.

To help you get the most out of your technology, we can be adaptable to your needs. We want you to choose the system thatsright for you, knowing that every system is designed to leverage our fully digital vision right away. It may be a systemalready fitted with digital detection technology, or it may be an adaptable, digital-detection-ready system. No matterwhat you choose, it has the software and hardware needed to start delivering the analytics for operations optimizationand better protocol, patient and asset management.

Get ready. The time for true discovery is now.

Originally posted here:

Molecular imaging | GE Healthcare

Childfree Places from Restaurants to Events The Site …

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Danzig

Last spring, I wrote about my frustration with a new bar/restaurant near my house. You can read the post in full here but basically, there weremanychildren dining inside said bar. At first, I couldnt wrap my head around it. Then, I flipped my menu over and realized there was a kids menu on the back. Thats right, a kids menu at a bar. Where oh where are the adult-friendly restaurants? You can imagine my glee when I noticed I had a new Instagram follower with a brand new website featuring childfree restaurants, events, and more. I had a chance to talk with the founders of this incredible new site and welcome them to the interwebs (one day, Ill stop using that term) Anyway, heres some more information on childfree places from restaurants to events and the site you need to bookmarktoday!

Thank you for the opportunity to chat with you! We are Sarah and Randall, a 30-something childfree couple living in Canada.

The idea for cfplaces.com hit us a few times before we finally acted on it. It seemed that every time we traveled outside of our local area we struggled to find places that didnt allow minors. Whether it was to eat, drink, or have some fun, our searches always came up short. We felt that other resources online were either incomplete or limited in information.

With cfplaces.com,we want people to be able to take ownership of their favorite childfree places, sort of like a local guide welcoming other childfree people to their neighborhood.

We love craft beer and pubs, and its becoming rare to find a quiet pub that isnt overflowing with bored children acting up! In our own city, we know where we can go to be certain that its adults only.

When we travel, on the other hand, were lost. Many places dont list whether theyre child-friendly or not on their websites. Yelp only indicates if its good for kids and isnt really searchable when looking for No, which also doesnt mean they arent allowed.Too often we find ourselves either having a crappy time because we misjudged what looked like an adult place, or stuck with nightclubs and loud party bars! Wasting our time trying to find the sort of place we enjoy is a terrible way to spend our vacations.

Anyone [from anywhere Canada, USA, and beyond!] is welcome to add listings and rate their favorite places on cfplaces.com!

Were looking for restaurants, pubs, hotels, resorts, and events that can help anyone find a refuge from kids. No more frantic web searching Adults Only in every city you visit, hoping that the results you find arent sketchy.

There is a need for more childfree places, sort of Adult Safe Zones. Even parents want to get away from kids sometimes, but fewer places are putting up that No Minors sign. It seems like more and more parents want their kids to be welcome everywhere, even places where it really isnt appropriate.

A bar or a brewery is not typically a place for a kid, but we are frequently seeing traditionally adults only establishments changing their rules based on pressure from that type of parent.

We hope that cfplaces.com will help childfree people enjoy their time spent out of the house, whether its close to home, working abroad or on a big vacation.Maybe it will even help some parents who also want to be away from children sometimes!

This site wassoneeded. Its no small undertaking for Sarah and Randall, Im sure, but the benefits to the childfree community will be innumerable.

I had a chance to add a childfree restaurant to the site and found it incredibly user-friendly especially if the place youre adding has a Facebook page! If you know of any places that are specifically for the childfree, please visit cfplaces.com and add away!

You can also follow CF Places on Instagram here.

Let me know in the comments section below what you think about this new site!

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Childfree Places from Restaurants to Events The Site ...

How Minimalism Relates to Being Childfree | By: Legally …

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Danzig

by: Legally Minimalist

How can someone with children be a minimalist? How does minimalism apply to kids?

Popular proponents of minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus of The Minimalists,are constantly asked these sorts of questions. But, I rarely hear the opposite side of the issue: How has minimalism impacted your decision about whether or not to have children? Should minimalists have fewer children? As a minimalist, should you reproduce at all in this overpopulated world?

I should note that neither of The Minimalists has added to the overpopulation crisis: Ryan does not currently have children and Josh and his partner are the parents of a young girl from his partners previous relationship. Maybe thats not a coincidence.

The word minimalist can bring up images of sparse living quarters with colorless walls and wardrobes. For me, minimalism is about using ones resources, most importantly time and money, wisely. That means eliminating the excess so that you can focus on what truly matters. Its about realizing that all the keeping up with the Joneses is nonsense. Its about intentionalitydoing things because of a deliberate choice and not because of slick advertisements or social pressure. Especially as a young female attorney with aspirations somewhat resembling what most would call mainstream corporate success, it can seem like the image is everything. There is pressure to have it all: the new luxury car, the McMansion, the expensive suits, designer accessories and more.

The essence of minimalism, then, is to concentrate your energy and other resources into pursuing what is meaningful and important.

Paying down my student loan debt, advancing my career, traveling, and spending time with the important people in my life are some of my top priorities and, contrary to popular belief, they dont have to be mutually exclusive.

Im defining my own success. I dont have to work eighty hours a week to advance my career or pay down my debt. Im able to spend time with the important people in my life. I can have a job I find fulfilling and important and still make time to travel. There is a balance. Now, where do children fit into that? If we carefully consider my priorities, children dont seem to fit into that at all. In fact, they seem to contradict many of my stated priorities and make them harder to achieve.

If my husband and I had children, it would impact our ability to travel. An additional person would need to be added to the costone who cannot contribute. I suppose we could leave them with grandparents or other family members, but pawning the responsibility off on others is no way to raise a child. Regardless, it would certainly impact when and how often we could travel, and we would be subject to other peoples schedules.

By having children, spending time with the important people in my life would not be directly negatively impacted. However, adding another important person in my life certainly would impact the amount of time I could devote to each individual. To be frank, its no secret that children can negatively impact relationships, not only between spouses but between parents and their friends who dont have kids. The time I would get to spend with those important people certainly wouldnt be of the quality it is now. I wouldnt be able to have the type of one-on-one conversations with my mom that I have now if I had children wanting to play with grandma. I wouldnt be able to just pick up and brunch with my best friend like I can now as a married woman without kids.

Like it or not, having children hurts a womans career advancement. In our society, it is still women who are expected to bear the responsibilities of childrearing. Whether its picking up an ill child from school or preparing family meals this is thought of as a moms role. And this fact is not lost on employers. At times it seems like just the possibility that I could have kids someday (and as a married woman in my late 20s, the clock is ticking) has impeded my career advancement.

Having kids would certainly restrict my ability to pay down debt. Obviously, having children is a huge expense one that would take precedence over lowering debt.

Im not saying all minimalists should be childfree. There are certainly people out there who desperately want to be parents and highly prioritize that in their life. Those people should absolutely be parentssomeones gotta do it, right? My priorities are not in line with being a parent. And so, if we define minimalism as using time and other resources to further your goals, being a parent is incompatible with that. The best thing about minimalism is that it is not one-size-fits-all. It looks different for everyone because we all have different needs, resources, and priorities.

Legally Minimalistis a young female attorney who is devoted to her career and her minimalist, childfree lifestyle (yes, you can be a minimalist and still have a job, even a good one!). You can read more about her minimalist journey here.

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How Minimalism Relates to Being Childfree | By: Legally ...

Complete Without Kids: a Childfree by Choice Handbook …

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Danzig

Childfree singles and couples often wrestle with being a minority in a child-oriented world. Whether childless by choice or circumstance, not being a parent can create challenges not always recognized in a family-focused society. Women feel the pressure of a real or imaginary biological clock ticking. Careers, biology, couples priorities and timing influence the end result, and not everyone is destined for parenthood, though there is a subtle assumption that everyone should be.

In Complete Without Kids, licensed clinical psychologist, Ellen L. Walker, examines the often-ignored question of what it means to be childfree and offers ways to cope with the pressure, find a balance in your life and enjoy the financial, health and personal benefits associated with childfree living.

A comprehensive resource on the rewards and challenges of childree living from a unique, unbiased perspective.

A licensed, clinical psychologist, Ellen L. Walker, PhD interviewed childfree adults, men and women, couples and singles, gay and straight, to create a thought-provoking book that sheds light on behind-the-scenes factors that influenced their personal journeys away from parenthood. Childfree herself, Dr. Walker shares the doubts and questions that inspired her to write a useful and supportive guide to a subject often not addressed socially. Complete Without Kids is a resource for any reader considering the joys and challenges of a childfree life path. A fulfilling life is within reach.

Complete Without Kids: a Childfree by Choice Handbook ...

What is cloud computing? | IBM

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Danzig

Enterprises eager to undergo digital transformations and modernize their applications are quick to see the value of adopting a cloud computing platform. They are increasingly finding business agility or cost savings by renting software. Each cloud computing service and deployment model type provides you with different levels of control, flexibility and management. Therefore, its important to understand the differences between them.

Common convention points to public cloud as the delivery model of choice; but, when considering the right architecture of cloud computing for your applications and workloads, you must begin by addressing the unique needs of your business.

This can include many factors, such as government regulations, security, performance, data residency, service levels, time to market, architecture complexity, skills and preventing vendor lock-in. Add in the need to incorporate the emerging technologies, and you can see why IT leaders are challenging the notion that cloud computing migration is easy.

At first glance, the types of cloud computing seem simple: public, private or a hybrid mix of both. In reality, the choices are many. Public cloud can include shared, dedicated and bare metal delivery models. Fully and partially managed clouds are also options. And, in some cases, especially for existing applications where architectures are too complex to move or the cost-benefit ratio is not optimal, cloud may not be the right choice.

The right model depends on your workload. You should understand the pluses and minuses of each cloud deployment model and take a methodical approach to determining which workloads to move to which type of cloud for the maximum benefit.

Dive deeper into specific cloud service and deployment models, cloud computing architecture and cloud computing examples

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What is cloud computing? | IBM

Transtopianism | Sciforums

Posted on January 27, 2019 by Danzig

Transtopianism. A radical new way of thinking, and which seems to fit many of my own life principles quite nicely.

Intro.

We're at a crossroads. For thousands of years mankind has been the dominant species on earth, the pinnacle of evolution. Now, as we enter the 21st century, this is about to change. A new and radically diffferent chapter of evolution is about to begin, for, as Vernor Vinge put it at the 1993 NASA VISION-21 Symposium:

`Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.'

This event, the relatively sudden emergence of superintelligence (SI), is often referred to as the Singularity in Transhuman circles. The longer definition is:

"SINGULARITY: the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered by nanotech, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived". [Vernor Vinge, 1986] (Lextropicon).

Whether these new, Posthuman beings (aka SIs, Powers or PSEs -- Post-Singularity Entities) will be augmented humans, artificial intelligences (AIs) or some hybrid form, they will no doubt change life as we know it rapidly and profoundly. For better or for worse; what happens to those who are left behind in this burst of self-directed hyperevolution is by definition unknown, "unknowable" even, but extinction is definitely one of the more realistic options.

Here is the home page

http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/kuwait/557/index.html

Here are their stated principles

http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/kuwait/557/principles.html

And if you dont want to read all that, there is quite a bit, then here is my summary. Ive taken essentially the first paragraph from each of the principles; there is a lot more interesting detail on the site.

Rationalism. Rational thinking is practical; it is the most reliable way to find solutions to problems. Because we are such frail, imperfect creatures, we need science and technology, the fruits of reason, to conquer death, disease and other biological shortcomings, and thus achieve the most rational of goals: a pleasant, eternal existence.

Memetic Evolution. Transtopianism is a continuously evolving philosophy, a logical consequence of the search for perfection which lies at its core. We need to avoid stale, impractical dogmas while at the same time preserving those values that are clearly reasonable and helpful in improving our condition, or at least aren't detrimental to this goal.

Intelligent Hedonism. Finding "true happiness" and "fulfillment" may not be as difficult as many seem to think; it's all in the chemicals. Not very surprising really, we are "merely" biological machines, after all.

Transhumanism. The belief that we can, and should, try to overcome our biological limits by means of reason, science and technology. Transhumanists seek things like intelligence augmentation, increased strength and beauty, extreme life extension, sustainable mood enhancement and the capability to get offplanet and explore the universe.

Singularitarianism. Vernor Vinge defined the Singularity in 1986 as "the postulated point or short period in our future when our self-guided evolutionary development accelerates enormously (powered by nanotech, neuroscience, AI, and perhaps uploading) so that nothing beyond that time can reliably be conceived". More specifically, it is the moment when superhuman intelligence emerges, either as a result of "conscious" AI, advanced computer/human interfaces, genetic engineering or mind uploading.

Atheism. Transtopianism rejects religious dogma and belief in the supernatural. The rational approach to these things is that they are mere figments of the imagination until proven otherwise. Or, as Occam's Razor puts it: one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

Egoism. There are two primary forms of Egoism, namely 1) Psychological Egoism, which is descriptive and claims that everyone acts in their own self-interest, i.e. everyone is an Egoist at heart, and 2) Ethical Egoism, which is normative and claims that everyone ought to act in their own self-interest.

There are all sorts of excellent arguments both for and against the psychological form, but the best model is probably that of man as an essentially self-serving ("egoistic") creature that is hampered by short-sighted, potentially harmful/lethal hedonistic and altruistic urges, caused by a combination of nature and nurture, i.e. genes and environment. Obviously, there are rather significant variations among individuals; but the basic model is presumably the same for all "normal" human beings, and likely most animals as well.

Regardless of the accuracy of the above psychological model, there is no room for doubt regarding the validity of Ethical Egoism within the Transtopian philosophy; self-interest is the highest good, because pleasure and happiness are the least arbitrary "meaning of life" (see Intelligent Hedonism). Even if one doesn't believe this to be the case, one must at the very least be alive to seek the "true" meaning of life. Needless to say, this could very well be an open-ended search. In order to survive indefinitely, one must overcome hard-wired or learned (seriously) harmful behavior, especially altruism, idealism and guilt. Let's start with the latter:

Tough Liberalism (not to be confused with "bleeding-heart" or "leftist" Liberalism). Anything goes as long as it doesn't (seriously) harm the others within one's contract group (= a group which people voluntarily join/form to achieve common goals, like surviving the Singularity for example).

Mental, Physical & Financial Empowerment. To quote from Five Things You Can Do To Fight Entropy Now by Romana Machado: "To be prepared for a future that may be full of difficult changes, and survive in an entropic world, take personal responsibility for your security. If you are good at self-defense, you need not regard yourself as a powerless victim. Self-defense encourages your sense of autonomy and personal power. Following a course of study in martial arts may help you to develop the proper attitude towards the use of force in self-defense. Learn the proper use of devices and techniques that can protect you from harm". Needless to say, a pacifistic or "meek" attitude is definitely not compatible with the Transtopian spirit.

No Procreation. Transtopians don't [plan to] have offspring. The (practical) reason is that, assuming that you want to be a good parent, children are a serious drain in terms of time and resources, increase stress, make you more vulnerable, more altruistic, less flexible, and generally more "settled" and conservative (bourgeois, if you will). When people become parents, they implicitly (and duly) accept that their "fun days" are over, and that it's time to "get responsible". Well, screw that! Only a fool would give up his life like that. Better to stay young at heart and unbound forever. The only real value of offspring in modern ("Western") societies is "enjoyment" (hedonistic motive), but due to the significant drawbacks of parenthood it can't be considered intelligent hedonism, and should thus be avoided.

Dynamic Pessimism, aka Cynical Optimism. Though Transtopians have no doubts about man's enormous potential to overcome his biological and social limits, they are generally less optimistic than "regular" Transhumanists about the future. The chances that our advanced technologies will accidentally or intentionally cause unparalled destruction are, given our historical precedents, much too great to ignore.

Cryonics, aka applied immortalism. Cryonic suspension is an experimental procedure whereby patients who no longer can be kept alive with today's medical abilities are preserved at low temperature for treatment in the future.

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Transtopianism | Sciforums

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