They also announced that they were going to significant reduce coal bought from NK and buy from the US instead.
I've heard they've actually sent ships full of coal back to NK. "Almost all coal shipments to the Chinese city of Dandong, on the North Korean border, since February have been turned back, a source with knowledge of North Korean government operations in Dandong told CNN."
Which ties in to Jeff Sessions /Alabama coal industry promises. As someone who lives in Alabama I am interested to see the effects but afraid it's just going to be an environmental shitshow. With how endlessly corrupt out state gov good ol boys are, I don't have a lot of hope that this is going to be a happy ending for anybody but the owners on top. The small increase in tax revenue will do very little. Our state is not able to operate on a deficit as some states are and there have been huge educational cuts as well as hiring freezes on an almost annual basis, so the additional revenue MIGHT stem the flow....but I will believe it when I see it.
So it looks like the ad revenue issues for youtube creators are more or less over. Long story short, while there will be a drop in revenue there won't be mass demonetization of anything that uses a swear word or discusses politics. I'm getting kind of sick of some of the youtube mini-celebrities constantly bitching about youtube. Sure, it has issues, but they seem to make a sincere effort to resolve them. It seems every time something happens, even if it's minor, a bunch of creators lose their shit. You're making (and in some cases a shit load of money) a good income doing exactly what you want and youtube made that possible. Maybe some of them would have done ok if youtube didn't exist, but probably not nearly as well. Also, google makes jack fucking shit off of youtube, primarily because the revenue is geared towards supporting the creators. I'm not saying they should be licking youtube's ass, but I don't see why they need to be so fucking whiny about it. With a lot of the issues that take a couple days to a week to resolve I'm sure youtube could do it faster if they invested in more personnel and cut creator profits, but I'm going to guess the creators wouldn't like that. Anyway, I'm glad it got resolved because what the media does with their constant fear mongering attacks on alternative outlets is really fucking pathetic and I'm glad they're consistently losing. I hope too that as some of these channels continue to grow they branch off and start doing investigative journalism. Basically we have TYT and rebel media right now, neither of which is particularly good or objective.
I've seen 3 channels that I subscribe to basically come out and say they're now getting as little as 1/5 of what they used to because a ton of big advertisers have pulled out so the adds aren't worth as much to them due to scarcity. As a result there's a huge push for Proteon right now as a low, monthly subscription option. In the end, if they're making $5k a month which supports their efforts and allows them to spend the time and resources to produce good content, and that drops to $1k a month, I can kind of see their point. Personally, I think online advertising is an eventual lost cause as it is. It will not be sustainable, and conversions are getting fewer and farther between, and much harder to get. But forget all that, I think that we're starting to see the death of physical retailers kind of hit home... it's not the big box stores that are causing it, it's the online retailers. Personal anecdotal experience: Went to buy mom a new camera for our safari and I wanted to get it from Amazon. She said "no, I want to support the local camera shop who we've bought from religiously for years". I said "sure", and we went there. Proceeded to get a nice camera (25% markup from Amazon), with someone who was annoyingly pushing extended warranties and did a hard push for cross-sell up-sell items, and who eventually sold us the wrong extra batteries and chargers. 3 days later we went back to return the wrong ones and it turns out they didn't have the right ones in stock and it would be a couple of weeks before the right ones would come in. I hop onto Amazon and get 2 day free Prime shipping for 2 batteries and a charger for 1/5th the cost of what the shop was charging us. My mom basically said, "why would I ever go back there?" I basically said, "why did we go there in the first place?"
I really don't feel that bad for them. The ones I watch are getting between 50-80% of the revenue they used to, which is a cut, but they're also making a ton of money off patreon, t-shirt sales, and other miscellaneous stuff. Also, most of the channels I view don't have astronomic, but pretty high view counts. The smaller channels are probably the ones that got hit the hardest. Online advertising is never going to be worth as much per user as tv/radio/magazine/etc advertising, but I think it's here to stay. More and more people are turning away from television (and for good reason imo) so they need a way to reach their audience. I'm not as sure about the US channels, but I know in the UK the average viewer for nearly all of the news television outlets is over 50. Also, while people can click through or skip over shilling segments in youtube ads, I think they're still better value than the banners at the sides of sites hardly anyone even looks at. Yeah, I do a good chunk of my shopping online as well now. There's just know reason to pay 30% more or higher and have less options. I think for a lot of things, mainly the kind you need to touch and test before you buy the stores will do ok, but the better value is almost always online. In an ideal world that could be a good thing as maybe a lot of those shitty low end service sector jobs will continue to dry up and more manufacturing jobs will replace them. Or it'll be a total cluster fuck for the economy. We'll see...
Yeah but new manufacturing jobs aren't really going to be created, or at least nowhere near the rate to counteract the jobs lost to automation (lumping manufacturing automation in with the fact that places like Amazon don't need to pay someone to walk around the store and such). Following on that, and keeping in mind that I'm not an economics expert by any means so this may be somewhat ignorant -- With technological advancements being what they are is the direction we are moving going to drive us to a point where there aren't enough jobs to sustain the population? For example, when we get to the point that every fast food place is fully automated, trucking industry is automated and the majority of good are sold in either big box stores or online millions (??) of jobs will have been eliminated. Is the assumption that new industries are created which create more jobs or do we just have a lot of people who can't work?
The issue with retail as it is now is that it's simply a pain in the ass compared to online. The companies that are thriving are doing a better hybrid strategy. Electronics in particular are getting fucked because you simply can't do anything to provide more value other than showrooming: it doesn't matter where you buy your phone, does it? Smart companies are using online to put people in their stores, but if you offer the same thing everywhere, the pain in the ass of going to the store loses. Online isn't the death knell of retail, but it is the death knell of BAD retail. Lots of studies indicate the US was "over-stored" anyway. Aside from genocide (fucking hell, Clutch, seriously), the solution is most likely going to be regulation that actually protects workers. Canada and Australia have strong unions, good safety nets and lower income inequality than the US. I also think the notion of a 40-hour work week will erode, as will the notion of the company as the centerpiece of life. Also, we're long over due for some de-monopolization, and decentralization, which will make a lot more jobs. We're kind of already seeing this in restaurants and travel: there's been a boom and it has largely ignored the chain restaurants.
I'm still of the belief that it doesn't necessarily matter if automation replaces jobs. If we can make more people want more shit. There will be jobs to be had if people are willing to get more education. Regardless of robots these plants still won't run themselves. People who insist on not learning how to do anything will be fucked. Or they'll be janitors and work in sanitation departments...
24 janitors for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) made over $100,000 last year. One janitor made over $200,000. Never underestimate the power of a strong union and a person who wants to work hard regardless of higher education.
My cousin is a dispatcher for BNSF railroad in Ft. Worth. They get paid a stupid amount of money for the type of job it is especially in that area of the state. An entry level train dispatcher makes over $100k/year starting not including bonuses. And they keep raising it every couple of years because of the demands from that union. What's funny is my cousin is politically super conservative, and typically anti union but he's totally happy being in this one.
So it looks like people are getting fed up with Antifa's wannabe revolutionary bullshit. They went to a rally of a bunch of Trumpers yesterday, (who were rallying for free speech or something???) started attacking people and calling everyone nazis, because of course everyone is a nazi, and proceeded to get their asses kicked. Kind of hard to feel bad for them after they started dragging people out of the crowd and attacking them. Maybe they should focus their efforts on something more meaningful than the literally Hitlers. I'm guessing this silly movement flames out pretty quickly. Unlike BLM I don't see them getting much in the way of public support.
I understand the point of a union, but generally the workers in especially mine(ILWU) think they don't get paid enough and bitch about everything. Shut the fuck up, you are getting paid 120-160k(i work day shift 5 weekdays so i don't come close to that) a year for a dead simple job with really no pressure, you have no qualifications, if it wasn't for this job you wouldn't be making 30k a year. Hell there are literal fucking crack heads that make that much that don't have a dime to there name. But i just got my yearly bump, think it was 1.56 an hour so i am not going to complain.
Richard Spencer was supposed to speak at Auburn last Friday but the university cancelled the speech. He's going to go there tonight. So is Antifa. This could be very interesting in the south. "Counter protesters associated with an antifascist group called “Atlanta Antifa" have promised to confront alt-right extremists at Auburn, saying Spencer’s outdoor talk “will make it easier for opposition to get close.” Meanwhile, prominent neo-Confederate extremists are encouraging followers to be ready to meet violence with violence." https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch...ichard-spencer-promises-auburn-speech-will-go
At least Spencer actually is a piece of shit. This is one of the few times I've seen them go after someone who actually is despicable. Antifa though - it really seems like a bunch of upper/middle class early 20s and late teens dip shits who think they're being bad asses by dressing up in all black. It's kind of sad that we've had so many movements over the last 5-10 years and practically without exception they've all been composed of idiots.
Who is actually inviting Richard Spencer to a college campus? There are some speakers that get heavily protested that I understand why the university, or a campus group, would invite, but what the fuck does Richard Spencer add to anyone's education?
He wasn't invited. He paid to use the space before Auburn decided they didn't want him to come. - http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/04/richard_spencer_to_speak_at_au.html
It's a interesting topic for debate. At what point does the market place of ideas stop being productive for the whole? Where does that start? Who gets to decide what ideas are good or bad and when they need to be stopped? What means can be used to stop or stifle ideas that have shown repeatedly in the past to lead to terrible outcomes? For me it's mostly been just pure entertainment as you see whacked out fringe assholes fight each other. Anyone else catch the latest flap at the most recent Berkeley riots? The one where the convicted felon nationalist punched the Dixiebandit approved porn starlet that had been boasting about collecting nazi scalps? Man you can't write better comedy. I watched a handful of Boston antifa vids and have to think someone is either trolling the group hard or the whole antifa thing is a sham for some 4chan lulz.
It's like Braveheart only the entire cast has fetal alcohol syndrome. I say give them blades and let them thin the herd. Oxygen is precious. Why in this day of instant social media exposure does ANYBODY show up to start shit at these melees? Have the countless destroyed lives via Twitter and the like not served a hard enough deterrent yet?
Here we go...live stream at Auburn: http://www.oanow.com/townnews/unive...cle_a9620ca8-23e7-11e7-a8d3-fb610b88333b.html