Tag: social media

The Internet is God

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Last night my husband got very sick. He was vomiting simultaneously with diarrhea and shat himself. He was restless through the night and got up early, clearly still feeling ill.

This morning when I came downstairs I asked him how he was feeling. Not so great, he told me. Still have diarrhea, but I’m not feeling as nauseous. I still can’t hold water down though. I think I have the norovirus, or food poisoning.

I put on my Dr. Mom role. Whatever is in your system you have to get it out, I told him. So, drink a lot. Start with water, or Gatorade for the electrolytes. Sip it throughout the day if it makes you feel sick drinking.

I don’t know if that’s the best idea. The internet says I should avoid drinking if I keep throwing it up, he told me he’d read earlier, likely off some bullshit site selling pharms but claiming to be ‘medical,’ like WebMD.

I felt my irritation building as he sat at the kitchen table and scrolled his laptop. You lost a lot of fluids last night, I told him. You need to replace it to help your system fight whatever you’ve got. And you need to eat something. How about a banana? They’re binding. Or a piece of dry toast, no butter.

Let me look it up and see what they recommend, he said and continued scrolling and reading.

Are you kidding me? I asked, miffed. Who are ‘they?’ The Internet!? By the time you find any real information on not only what is wrong with you but also what to do about it you’ll be convinced you need hospitalization. I’ve played Dr. Mom to our kids hundreds of times. Stomach flu, even norovirus is manageable with a few key steps. You don’t need to look it up! You need to stay hydrated. Bananas are binding and will help suppress diarrhea, I told him. Water will help flush your system of whatever is bothering you.

I know why he got sick. It’s the height of Spring, and we’re in New Jersey for his mom’s 90th. By the second day there he was suffering with recurring bouts of rapid-fire sneezing. Wheezing. Continual runny nose. Four days of severe allergies taxing his immune system, and he got on a plane to come back to the w[b]est coast. And while his allergies eased on the plane and entirely once home, someone in overpopulated New York City — the cesspool of the country, the crowded airports we waited in for hours with delays at Newark, or on our plane had something, and he got it.

Used to think the internet was the savior of mankind. Now, I fucking HATE CELLPHONES and the INTERNET! Both spread lies on a global scale, enable massive, unrelenting GREED, convert blind believers (Christians) into Trump supporters. And most all of you are addicted to both!

Raise your hand if you know someone who constantly pulls out their phone during casual conversation to ‘get the facts’ (what a joke!) on whatever the subject of your dialog. Hella annoying! I’d rather contemplate the answer than have it served to me by an unreliable source.

We got together with a friend of my husband’s while we were back east. He’s ‘one of those guys’ who whips out his phone to check if whatever is being said is ‘right.’ He read aloud with authority whatever [garbage] he found on the net. But iterating the first thing that pops up on his phone screen is, well, idiotic. Today’s internet makes it impossible to find any real facts without hours of searching multiple sources well beyond Google or Chatgpt, and even then, the information you’ll find is limited to the recommendation engines behind most platforms.

Do you pull out your mobile when you’re on the toilet, in line at the store, even with friends or fam? Text someone? Check your email? Scroll Insta? Look for…whatever? At both airports, on both planes, in line at any store, in most public places packed with people, or even just a few passing by, and most everyone is on their phones most all the time. Take your face out of your phone and look around to see what I’m saying here is real. The TRUTH*. Instant access to the internet through cellphones or tablets are creating a massive addiction problem. People are relying on their connected devices like junkies rely on heroin. And like the drug, it may feel good upfront getting that dopamine rush from instant access to entertaining ‘information,’ regardless how amusing there is little truth to what most are getting from quick searches. And addicted phone users supply far more data to AI engines making them easier to manipulate you with personalized, targeted messaging. The Republicans have used mobile marketing far more effectively than the Democrats. Clearly.

WebMD says I’m supposed to eat bananas for the diarrhea and stay hydrated with water or tea or something with electrolytes, my husband read aloud this morning. Like most today, he’s becoming one of the converted, a true believer in the Internet, whoever he deems them to be.

That’s what I said, I defended. Without looking on the net, I added cuz I was feeling pissed off, and a bit scared of his internet addiction right then. My husband doesn’t go to the toilet without his phone or laptop. The Internet has become his God. And I have no interest in, nor trust in blind believers.

Cellphone and Internet usage, whether for ‘convenience’ or entertainment or ‘information’ is moving humanity in the WRONG direction, away from compassion, empathy, and quality, to idiocracy. It is creating more blind believers than any religion. Your cellphone and the internet are TELLING YOU WHAT AND HOW TO THINK. Think you know why there is no customer service at Macy’s, or why most retail is shutting down? Yeah, Amazon, but more to the point, no one protests their spending their life hours in the long line at Macy’s because they are on their phones, being entertained by messaging to convince us to buy [into], try, subscribe!

GET A CLUE! It costs me (and likely you) MORE to order plane tickets for New Jersey using Chrome than on Edge. Why? Dynamic or Personalized Pricing, except the profit is for the airline, and the assholes who make and manage their SaaS. Google (who runs Chrome) has more data on my spending habits, my income, my ‘purchasing power’ than Microsoft. Clearly. So Alaskan Airlines went with Googles data and charged me over $40 per ticket more. And most everything you buy online now has variable pricing — you are CHARGED MORE the more data you give them through your phone because every site you look at, every platform you engage with, every purchase you make through your mobile is recorded and sold to the highest bidder.

Have I lost you yet? You want to be ENTERTAINED, not brought down with the TRUTH. Look it up and the Internet will tell you I’m a conspiracy theorist. The Internet saves lives! It moves society forward.

Well, it sure has. It’s creating a planet of junkies.

Don’t think of yourself as an addict? Well, if you got this far and are reading this on your phone right now, put it down and look into a mirror. NOT a selfie. A real mirror and then ask yourself to tell you the TRUTH. Most addicts can’t see it — can’t admit to being addicted. That’s why the #1 Rule in Alcoholics Anonymous is first to ADMIT YOU ARE AN ADDICT.

Do you care you are a junkie, addicted to your phone? If you don’t believe you are, then put it down and leave it for two hours. How many times do you think to pick it up? Just check it, quick check, see if it has anything you must know about right now?

It doesn’t. That’s algorithms designed to convince you to stay on your device. That way you are a target for selling — products, services, messaging, belief.

If you are one of the very few junkies who understand mass addiction to corporate talons is bad for society globally, take the Internet off your phone so you’re not tempted to spend hours every day blowing away your life’s time on mindless content meant to get you to blindly believe whatever political agenda or corporate America is selling you.

 — 

*How can you trust I’m not touting conspiracy theories, that I’m telling you TRUTH here? My husband is a software architect that helped design the first recommendation engine [for Netflix]. I have been marketing SaaS startups in Silicon Valley since the dot com boom in the late 1990s, and teaching entrepreneurs developing SaaS and ‘AI’ at Stanford and Cal Berkeley for a decade. Sometimes I wish I didn’t know what you all do not know — that I too could be an ignorant addict like most of you. It’s certainly easier to live with your head up your own ass. Too harsh? Maybe. But really, in the long run, ask yourself what kind of world are you leaving for our children when everyone is a junkie sucking on the corporate tit.

The TRUTH about Mark Zuckerberg

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can get into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have a 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before mailing, “for luck,” then hugs you, with her silent prayer that you’ll be accepted everywhere, that the world will see her beautiful daughter the way she does.

Pins and needles until the letters start coming in, or maybe they won’t, and no college will want you, keeps playing in your head, until March rolls around and letters DO come. Cal Berkeley wants you! UC Davis wants you! Stanford wait-listed you. And Harvard ACCEPTED YOU!! You’re dancing in the kitchen with your mom, dad, and little brother, laughing, hugging, celebrating your achievement of hard work and tenacity. For the moment, you let yourself bask in the glow of your family’s pride.

August comes around, and you are settling into your dorm room at Harvard. Your roommate is nice enough, though she’s hardly there. Unlike you, she’s very social. She got into Harvard on her daddy’s dime. He went there too. She has a 3.6 GPA, but got a free pass into the school, as did ex-president George Bush Jr (with a 2.35 GPA). If nothing else, Harvard is incestuous. Known as ‘Legacy students,’ over a third of Harvard students are related to past students, with money.

You love your classes. Your professors. A few months into your Harvard experience you are doing well academically, even if you haven’t made any real friends. You assure your mom you’re fine, though you don’t tell her you’re feeling more than a bit lonely. The popular girls, like your roommate, came in with money, and come from money. They dress trendy, buy expensive, look sharp, act confident. Make it in Harvard, or not, they have no worries after school. The rich rarely have to worry like the rest of us.

You come back to your empty dorm room one afternoon, turn on your computer, and are about to get started on the paper you have to write for Expository, but the image on the screen stops you dead. Your face stares back at you, next to some sexy female student. Headline reads, “We were let in for our looks? No. We will be judged by them? Yes.” Subhead says, “Who’s Hotter? Click to choose.” Under YOUR PICTURE voters agree you’re not.

This is the beginning of Facemash, which eventually became Facebook. This is MARK ZUCKERBERG’S idea of fun — making women feel like shit for his entertainment. IMAGINE what that girl must have felt when she saw NOT under her Harvard profile picture. IMAGINE if it was YOUR CHILD. Or YOU.

And here’s what ZUCKERBERG said the first night he released Facemash: “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

This is MARK ZUCKERBERG then, and THIS IS MARK ZUCKERBERG NOW! He is still the same ugly, petty, small man/child, pulling the same ugly crap, indifferent to anyone but himself, ignoring the pain he is causing around the globe now.

Zuckerberg was already a second-year student at Harvard when he began Facemash. He was not a child. If ZUCKERBERG was a decent man, a man of compassion, empathy, not cruelty, he never would have COPIED HOT OR NOT, an app that was already out there. Zucky just ripped it off! To debase Harvard WOMEN. Shame on you ZUCKY, and your MAMA and PAPA, for not teaching you how to treat others with respect and kindness!

ZUCKERBERG is still indifferent to anyone but his own needs, even today. His Facebook recommendation engine helped get TRUMPY ELECTED! Twice! How? Facebook only shows you what ZUCKY WANTS YOU TO SEE. You do NOT see all your connection’s posts. ZUCKY only shows you posts that REFLECT YOU. Upset about inflation? FB will show you Russian and Republican advertisers (disguised as friends and connections) who sell you that Trump will fix the economy. We are all merely seeing posts that reflect our personal concerns and opinions now.

ZUCKY only sees his own reflection too. It’s what allowed him to debase women at Harvard. It is allowing him to keep his screwed-up recommendation engine on and running. Republicans spreading lies, ZUCKY doesn’t care. He cares about getting and keeping advertisers. His “fake news” AI department is a joke. I know someone working there, and they tell me he isn’t trying to stop it at all. It doesn’t serve him to do so. He wants advertisers, and you don’t get them, and keep them, limiting ad sales.

He got lucky debasing women from an app he RIPPED OFF. Now he’s god to so many in Silicon Valley. Sadly, they are so blinded by his “success” that they cannot see the ugly little man/child he was @Harvard and still is. Humans get our moral fiber, our value systems, between 0–8, maybe up to 10 years old. Mark clearly didn’t get much moral guidance from his parents. And amoral people rarely change. They need a brick to the head, to ‘hit bottom,’ and ZUCKY ain’t fallin any time soon. In fact, Mark’s aligned himself with powerful Republicans to protect his self-interests.

The spoiled, self-serving brat is guiding the world to disaster after reaping huge profits on fake news without restraint to get Trumpy elected again. We now have a fascist running our country [into the ground] for the second time. Why? On top of getting him elected again, ZUCKY is paying Trump millions (billions?) to stop the Fed’s from breaking up Mark’s META monopoly.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, your power was wielded by the wealth of your parentage — mere chance, dumb luck. You’ve prioritized status and image over compassion and authenticity. Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Your crime, Mark, is the narcissist you’ve chosen to be.

Imagine how you and your wife, Priscilla Chan, would feel if YOUR DAUGHTERS, Maxima and August, were voted NOT HOT, deemed UGLY their first year at Harvard, as no doubt they’ll go there with the money you have made on the wasted hours all of us have spent on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM.

DELETE Facebook

DELETE Instagram

Parenting

Trump

Musk

WhatsApp

On Fitting In

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Ever been with a group of people, you may, or may not know, and everyone is talking amicably, (or on their cellphones), and you’re sitting there watching and listening, and you feel like an alien? Not a foreign national among a group of natives. More like you’re from another planet. Or they are.

I’ve known I was different for most of my life, always on the outside looking in at the world I live in, but don’t understand. But beyond theology like my atheism, there are actual, real differences that separate me from most.

  1. I don’t drink alcohol. Can’t stand the taste of the stuff. Wine. Beer. Hard liquor. BLA! Even rum wrecks some would-be-great desserts, like tiramisu. Virtually the first thing that happens at any gathering is the ritual serving of the drinks. I always refuse, which immediately raises suspicions that I’m either a friend of Bill W, or on some fad diet, or a hippy-vegan. The first brick in the wall between me and the group.
  2. I have no internet connection on my cellphone. I don’t carry my phone with me most of the time and often forget where I leave it. I do not look at my phone except to make a call or send a text, which I do rarely, especially when I’m with other people. I follow no one on social media intentionally (as X automatically follows back anyone who follows you). I don’t read most posts, and I don’t know what is trending online.
  3. I don’t watch TV. Too much of a time kill. I average three movies in the theater a year. I don’t watch, or follow sports. Any. Ever. I don’t know the latest shows, any of the actors, or what rock star is hot on YouTube. I must have some mental disorder because people who play no active role in my life just don’t register with me.
  4. As a woman, with other women, I feel particularly off-planet. I have no interest in discussing my kids for the most part. I’m with my kids a LOT. I don’t want it all about them when I’m not. I don’t care about sales or shoes. I dress for comfort, prefer my old, soft, often ripped clothes to new. I never wear makeup. I don’t even carry a purse. The diamond studs in my ears have been there for 30 yrs. I wear no other jewelry. I don’t have a lot, and I don’t want a lot, of things.
  5. I am an atheist, in faith-based (mostly Christian) America. I don’t belong to the neighborhood church, or celebrate any religious holidays, or get how seemingly reasonable people can believe in myths and fairytales at this stage in human development.
  6. I want to discuss the issues of the day, without being politically correct, or woke, and with virtually nothing held sacred — an open forum of communication and healthy debate. But it seems every time I bring up global, national, or even local news, I create a void in the group’s dialog, this vortex of weighted silence. Either no one seems to have heard of what I’m talking about, or they have no opinion, or they’re too afraid to state it.

The bitch is, I want to fit in, be a part of, integrate as I see others do. Sort of. I just don’t want to DO what most seem to. I don’t wish to remain ignorant about global and local issues so not to disrupt my personal bliss. I couldn’t care less about celebs and influencers. And while I like playing racquetball, I’ve no interest in watching someone else play sports. Pro athletes work towards excellence 24/7, yet somehow fans take on team victories as their own while they sit on the couch downing beer. I just don’t get it. The ‘little bit of color’ my mother insisted was mandatory to put on my lips and cheeks, make most women who wear makeup look like clowns, or manikins to me. And it’s a rather ironic twist that the media convinces women they need cosmetics to be attractive, especially since it’s a proven cause of cancer, and cancer isn’t pretty.

Clearly, I am damning myself to the outside looking in. And since it’s unlikely I’ll develop a taste for alcohol anytime soon, or become addicted to my cellphone, I’m unclear how to move forward, to integrate, fit in with the group at the table now on their second or third drink. They’re getting sloppy, and rather loud, and all I want to do is leave.

So I do. I get in my spaceship (my car) and venture home to my sleeping kids and working husband. He’ll ask me how the Mompreneur’s Meetup went and I’ll say fine, and later I’ll be standing in the shower feeling small and valueless. Friendless.

The road is empty and dark. Houses are lit inside and look warm and welcoming. Mine will be too, a safe harbor where people ‘get’ me, but I know I isolate there too much. I want friends, to be a part of the world beyond my fam, I just don’t know how to step inside where most seem to live. But truth be told, it’s rather lonely out here.

The Truth About Mark Zuckerberg

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have the 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before mailing, “for luck,” then hugs you, with her silent prayer that you’ll be accepted everywhere, that the world will see her beautiful daughter the way she does.

Pins and needles until the letters start coming in, or maybe they won’t, and no college will want you, keeps playing in your head, until February rolls around and letters DO come. Cal Berkeley wants you! UC Davis wants you! Stanford wait-listed you. And Harvard ACCEPTED YOU!! You’re dancing in the kitchen with your mom, dad, and little brother, laughing, hugging, celebrating your achievement of hard work and tenacity. For the moment, you let yourself bask in the glow of your family’s pride.

August comes round, and you are settling into your dorm room at Harvard. Your roommate is nice enough, though she’s hardly there. Unlike you, she’s very social. She got into Harvard on her daddy’s dime. He went there. She had a 3.6 GPA, but got a free pass into the school, as did ex-president George Bush Jr (with a 2.35 GPA). If nothing else, Harvard is incestuous. Many of Harvard students are related to past students, with money.

You love your classes. Your professors. A few months into your Harvard experience you are doing well academically, even if you haven’t made any real friends. You assure your mom you’re fine, though you don’t tell her you’re feeling more than a bit lonely. The popular girls, like your roommate, came in with money, and come from money. They dress trendy, buy expensive, look sharp, act confident. Make it in Harvard, or not, they have no worries after school. The rich rarely have to worry like the rest of us.

You come back to your empty dorm room one afternoon, turn on your computer, and are about to get started on the paper you have to write for Expository, but the image on the screen stops you dead. Your face stares back at you, next to some other young woman. Under her picture it says, “HOT!” Under YOUR PICTURE voters say you are not.

This is the beginning of Facemash, which eventually became Facebook. This is MARK ZUCKERBERG’S idea of fun—making women feel like shit for his entertainment. IMAGINE what that girl must have felt when she saw NOT under her Harvard profile picture. IMAGINE if it was YOUR CHILD. OR YOU.

And here’s what ZUCKERBERG said the first night he released Facemash: “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

This is MARK ZUCKERBERG then, and THIS IS MARK ZUCKERBERG NOW! He is still the same ugly, petty, small man/child, pulling the same ugly crap, indifferent to anyone but himself, ignoring the pain he is causing across the globe now. Zuckerberg was already a second year student at Harvard. He was not a child. If ZUCKERBERG was a decent man, a man of goodness, not cruelty, he never would have COPIED HOT OR NOT, an app that was already out there. Zucky just ripped it off! To debase Harvard WOMEN. Shame on you ZUCKY, and your MAMA and PAPA, for not teaching you how to treat others with respect and kindness!

ZUCKERBERG is still indifferent to anyone but his own needs, even TODAY. His Facebook recommendation engine helped get TRUMPY ELECTED! And he’ll likely do it again. How? His recommendation engine only shows you what ZUCKY WANTS YOU TO SEE. You do NOT see all your connection’s posts. ZUCKY WON’T LET YOU. He shows you only posts that REFLECT YOU. It helps his advertisers sell you more, to show you only what you’ve shown interest in, or people like you have clicked on. We are all merely seeing posts that reflect our own opinions now.

ZUCKY only sees his own reflection too. It’s what allowed him to debase women at Harvard. It is allowing him to keep his screwed up recommendation engine on and running, as you are more likely to BUY from people reflecting your position. Russians, Republicans spreading lies, ZUCKY doesn’t care. He cares about getting and keeping advertisers. His “fake news” AI department is a joke. I know someone working there, and they tell me he really isn’t trying to stop it at all. It doesn’t serve him to do so. He wants advertisers, and you don’t get them, and keep them, limiting ad sales.

He got lucky debasing women from an app he RIPPED OFF. Now he’s god, to so many. Sadly, they are so blinded by his “success” and they can not see the ugly little man/child he was @Harvard, and still is. Humans get our moral fiber between 0 – 8, maybe up to 10 years old. He clearly didn’t get much moral guidance from his parents. And amoral people rarely change. They need a brick to the head, to ‘hit bottom,’ and ZUCKY ain’t fallin any time soon. Now, he’s guiding the world to disaster, to make money from advertisers, to keep FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM going. (And this is what Millennials, and MBAs deem “success.”)

Now he’s on to #THREADS, to collect MORE DATA on you to SCREW YOU, this country, the world. Don’t let him! Don’t get on THREADS!

My hope, MARK ZUCKERBERG, is that you learn to THINK beyond yourself, and to ACT with kindness and empathy, instead of what you were obviously raised to be— mean, thoughtless, sexist, totally and completely self-interested. Your power was wielded by the wealth of your parentage, mere chance you were born into money—dumb luck, literally. Imagine how you and your wife, #PriscillaChan, would feel if YOUR DAUGHTERS, #Maxima and #August, were voted NOT HOT, deemed UGLY their first year at Harvard, as no doubt they’ll go there with the money you have made on the trillions of wasted hours all of us have spent on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM , and coming soon THREADS.

#DeleteFacebook

#DeleteInstagram

Jobless America

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Took a family vacation to Yellowstone last summer. After a day of exploring the spectacular park, we ate dinner at Canyon Village, a sprawling commercial development in the mist of the natural wonders. The kids wanted some souvenirs so we stopped in the gift shop before eating. The clerk at check-out was a kid, no more than 20, as was most of the customer service staff in the park. His name tag said Mal-Chin, and under his name was his country of origin: Korea.

Seated inside the restaurant we were served water by Jianyu, his country of origin: China.

We were served rolls by Mi-Cha, Korea again.

Earlier in the day, when visiting the geyser, Old Faithful, we stopped in the mini-mart at Yellowstone Lodge. The check-out guy was Yeo, China again. At breakfast, at the restaurant in the lodge, our waitress was Fedheeta, country of origin: India.

Our waitress at dinner was Kathy, her country of origin: USA. She was probably 1 of 10 Americans out of the 50 or more employees of the park I saw that day.

Yellowstone is the United State’s first national park. Over 2 million acres of pristine, protected wilderness resides in a massive cauldron of a dormant super-volcano in the states of Montana and Idaho, with the majority of the park in Wyoming. The USA preserved this land for families and fans of natural beauty to come explore, discover and study natures wonders for present and future generations. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars goes to maintaining Yellowstone National Park annually.

So why are most of their service staff from everywhere but the USA? I asked our waitress, Kathy, at dinner in Canyon Village. Why are our kids not landing these jobs, which provide a great opportunity to acquire sales and communications skills, add to college applications…etc?

The American kids get fired here constantly, Kathy told my family after taking our order. They party a lot, get drunk, don’t show up for work, and are rude to the customers. They write the orders wrong, or charge people the wrong amount because they can’t do simple math quickly. The management can’t keep them for more than a few weeks into the summer because they’re mostly irresponsible and lazy.

Her words literally hurt me, because I knew they were the truth.

Kathy went on to describe the programs that land the out-of-country kids the jobs at our national parks. They pay thousands just to get here, she said, which is generally less than the salary for six days of work a week, including the food and lodging during their contract with the park. They clearly want to be here very badly, usually to acquire work skills and develop their English fluency, and they do an excellent job. It’s easy to see why management prefers them.

Heavy sigh.

World News Tonight on ABC used to have a segment they called Made in America. It was a joke, an embarrassment to any sensible, educated, aware adult who knows that China produces over 1/3 of all global manufacturing, with Mexico and Korea close behind them. The World News segment was touchy-feely, saccharin and all smiles with David Muir interviewing American manufactures of unique hats and scarves, or a cupcake maker gone viral, and then touted these businesses as being the cornerstones of our future success. This segment is no longer produced.

Hats and cupcakes won’t cure our supply-chain issues. The USA is not, and will never reclaim its manufacturing base when we charge in excess of ten times as much to do the work other nations are willing to do, and do well, for so much less.

The internet has united our world, as it gives most everyone the opportunity to see how others live. It’s easy to find the American lifestyle attractive. Our families generally have warm houses with running water, electricity for light, computers, entertainment systems, cars in almost every garage, freedom from religious and/or political persecution (sort of). Most countries still aspire to be US, to model our independence and luxuries.

Watch World News Tonight’s entire broadcast, and David Muir will tell you all about rising inflation, families charging groceries and gas just to get to work and feed their families, maxing out their credit limits. He’ll tell you about our personal debt crisis, where the average American has over $15,000 in credit card debt, and he’ll introduce you to one of the many families bankrupted from a medical catastrophe not cover by their insurance or Medicare.

This decline in the American lifestyle will continue for most U.S. citizens, and eventually even the 1% wealthy will be effected, guaranteed, if we stay the course we are on.

Like it or not, we are a global world now. Today’s manufacturing, trade and technology bind us, and gives us the opportunity to thrive as a people, a planet; or we can destroy everything we have here, through our laziness and greed.

Our K-12 public education system is failing our kids, regardless that we keep pumping more and more tax dollars into education. U.S. now ranks 36th out of the 79 countries and regions in math, behind China, South Korea, even Canada. It is no wonder U.S. kids aren’t hired for even the simplest retail positions at our national parks. Our kids are unprepared to compete globally. And according to our server, Kathy, at Yellowstone, who went to a private school back home in New York, the American employees clearly demonstrated their lack of education in their reading, writing, and math skills, in addition to their poor interpersonal skills with customers.

Cutting school hours of instruction with “teacher furlough days,” short days, and extending ‘teacher work days’ has not, does not, and will not produce a nation of creators. It takes education, practice, and focused persistence to produce anything of value. For the U.S. to achieve the potential our parent’s achieved—have jobs, and retain the lifestyle to which most of the middle-class has become accustomed, we’re going to have to limit our play/relax time, and work a hell of a lot harder.

Partying, with attitude, instead of doing their work, like the stream of U.S. kids fired from Yellowstone; playing Halo, or killing endless hours on TikTok or SnapChat, or binge watching Netflix instead of studying math and science won’t help our kids compete in the job market locally or globally. H1B visas requested by Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other tech companies reached a whopping 308,613 H-1B registrations for 2022, a 12.5% rise over 2021.

Greed, laziness, the-world-owes-me work ethic so many Americans possess won’t win us jobs, or help us keep them here in the States. We must teach our kids that PRACTICE is the only way to get good at anything. This means investing the time and energy into academics instead of iPhones, social media and video games, which means parents need to pay more attention and invoke more discipline. It means educators need to step up to the plate and give more homework, harder tests, teach longer hours for the same money because giving more money to education shows little improvement in student performance.

We are a nation of [mostly] Christian believers, but if Jesus really saves, he’d better start saving our kids, because it sure as hell isn’t our education system, and clearly most parents aren’t doing any better. Raising a generation of spoiled, unmotivated, under-educated Americans can not, does not, and WILL NOT compete in our global economy.

New Release: Lean Startup BRANDING

by jcafesin, posted in Entrepreneurship

Lean Startup BRANDING (LSB) Workbook 2, is the first marketing book to unify the marketing/branding process. LSB brings together target marketing methods with graphic design techniques, to produce smart marketing strategies and striking campaigns that uniquely brand your products, services, and company.

Bestselling author, and Stanford Marketing instructor, J. Cafesin, introduces an entirely new Branding paradigm. LSB takes you step-by-step through the branding and marketing of your new venture. Create corporate and product identity packages. Examine the fundamental principles of effective design, and learn to produce multichannel print and digital marketing campaigns that get greater response.

You must continually produce campaigns to create a thriving business. Through text, slides, challenges and projects, LSB Workbook 2 empowers entrepreneurs to CEOs with the knowledge to create and produce professional-quality digital and print marketing, that generate the greatest conversion (clicks; try; buy; subscribe).

● Learn to create a complete Corporate Identity. Establish product and/or company names, then create striking logos that can scale from social media feeds to the side of your building. Establish your startup’s voice with taglines that tout your company’s unique value.

● Study graphic design techniques, such as layout, eye-tracking, responsive grid systems, typography, and how to execute attention-grabbing branding and advertising campaigns.

● Discover the components in imagery that create visual impact, and the myriad of sources to get spectacular visual content, at little to no cost.

● Examine print and digital reproduction. Begin a visual library of high-quality images and video clips to use in your marketing efforts for both print and online campaigns.

● Review SEO (search engine optimization) techniques and best practices.

● Explore online technology, and how to increase engagement with your digital marketing efforts.

● Course projects include developing a complete identity for your offerings and startup, as well as an array of effective print and digital marketing campaigns to introduce your new offerings, and promote your business.

At the completion of LSB Workbook 2: BRANDING, you will have gained the ability to design and inexpensively produced tightly targeted, professional-quality marketing campaigns to turn your startup into a thriving, sustainable business.

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