We’ve outgrown the cereal marketers, in knowledge and in taste. What once appealed no longer satisfies us for a number of reasons.
There was a time when Millennials loved breakfast cereal, and that was when we were small. It was the perfect combination of sugar, crunch, and cold milk, and it was easy for little hands to prepare while parents slept in on weekend mornings – our first fond memories of culinary independence. The arrangement of boxes on the dining table made a cozy, private fort in which to eat one’s cereal in peace while examining the pictures and indecipherable ingredient lists.
Cereal, however, has lost its appeal in recent years. Millennials are no longer racing to the cereal aisle, despite now being free to buy whatever garishly colorful box they wish. According to Mintel, a global market research company, sales declined from $13.9 billion in 2000 to $10 billion in 2015 (via New York Times).
So what’s going on?
On one hand, we’ve got people up in arms over the fact that Mintel’s report also revealed that 40 percent of Millennials surveyed claimed cereal was “an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it” – as in, they’d rather throw something in the garbage than wash a bowl and spoon. Yes, that’s pathetically lazy and embarrassing, but surely there’s more wrong with cereal than just that.
On the other hand, we’ve got a product that just doesn’t cut it anymore as people become more aware of the importance of good nutrition. I don’t buy cereal (other than the occasional box of Cheerios for my infant to practice picking up), nor do I feed it to my kids, and it’s not because I’m too lazy to wash dishes. No, there are other reasons why cereal has fallen off my radar while grocery shopping, some of which are listed in Kaitlin Flannery’s article, “This Is Why Millennials Actually Don’t Eat Cereal,” and to which I can relate:
First, it’s not healthy enough.
It’s loaded with sugar, it’s highly processed, it contains ingredients I don’t recognize. It doesn’t fill me or my kids up sufficiently. Inevitably, after eating a bowl of cereal, we’re starving an hour later. It’s better just to eat a bowl of stick-to-your-ribs oatmeal that will carry us through the morning much longer.
Second, it’s expensive.
For the big family-sized boxes, it can cost upwards of $8-10 for something that tastes like puffed air and sawdust. When that aforementioned box of Cheerios comes home for baby, it disappears in a flash because the older siblings can’t keep their hands off it. To my frugal mind, that $8 could go a lot further toward filling their tummies in the form of oatmeal, fruit, yogurt, or whole wheat bread.
Third, it has too much packaging.
My heart breaks a little bit every time I pull out a finished plastic bag, shake the remaining crumbs into the compost, and cram the bag into the garbage can. The local recycling facility won’t take it, so it goes to landfill. I prefer my zero-waste breakfast options like granola (made from local oats in paper bags and maple syrup), yogurt (homemade in reusable glass jars), buttermilk pancakes, and my loaves of slow-rise bread transformed into toast with jam made from local berries picked straight into my own reusable containers.
Finally, cereal is just plain boring.
Honestly, it takes minimal effort and planning to have a far more delicious breakfast than cold cereal – and I think that’s what a lot of Millennials are discovering. (Although, in order to enjoy some of those healthier, tastier options, some of my fellow Millennials will have to get their hands wet in the sink occasionally, which may be slightly traumatizing.)
Thinking about what makes you unhappy actually gives you a road map to what will make you happier. (Photo: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock)
Forget the vision boards and the happiness meditations. A new book outlines exactly what you need to do to feel happier and it probably goes against everything you’ve ever heard. Want to feel happier? Think about the things that make you the most miserable.
This approach to happiness was inadvertently developed about 20 years ago by a group of severely depressed patients who were understandably pessimistic about their treatment options. They were all enrolled in an eight-week group therapy session at Changeways Clinic in Vancouver, Canada.
The sessions, led by clinical psychologist Randy J. Paterson, were not going well when Paterson had a sudden insight. Rather than asking his patients what they could do to feel better, he asked them what they could do to feel worse.
As Paterson describes in this interview for the Science of Us, “Suddenly the floodgates opened. People came up with all kinds of answers to that question,” and the therapy sessions became much more beneficial.
Paterson says the idea of focusing on what makes us miserable actually works to make us happier in two ways. First, it helps us create a reality-based road map toward happiness. Often, when people try to focus on what they think they need to do to achieve happiness, their goals are abstract or difficult to achieve, such as making more money or finding a life partner. But when we think about what we could do to be more miserable, we think about things like getting less sleep or eating less nutritious foods. It’s not long before the lightbulb moment hits: “If getting less sleep makes me miserable, maybe I should try getting more sleep if I want to be happier.”
“The path upward and the path downward are usually part of the same mental terrain,” said Paterson. “So if you can isolate the things that you do that would make you feel worse — like continuing a behavior that doesn’t help you — then you can similarly isolate the things that will make you feel better.”
Another way Paterson’s trick works is that it helps people see how much worse things could really be. It’s sort of the flip side of practicing gratitude or visualizing happiness. When you realize that things could be much worse, you tend to find happiness in the life you already have.
One patient was killed and a nurse and an off-duty policeman were wounded when 25 armed men stormed a Rio de Janeiro hospital in a brazen plot to free a suspected drug trafficker.
RIO DE JANEIRO — A group of heavily armed men stormed a Rio de Janeiro hospital Sunday to free a suspected drug trafficker, sparking a shootout with officers that left a patient dead and a nurse and an off-duty policeman wounded.
The attack took place at Hospital Souza Aguiar, one of the medical facilities recommended for tourists seeking emergency treatment during the upcoming Olympic Games.
At least five attackers stormed the hospital before dawn and freed the 28-year-old suspect, who was being treated for a gunshot wound, Rio police said in a statement. As many as 15 other gunmen were outside during the attack, witnesses told police.
Investigators were studying security camera footage, and Rivaldo Barbosa, head of the state’s homicide unit, said two of the assailants had been identified.
“This was a carefully orchestrated attack,” Barbosa told reporters outside the hospital. “It was a bold action that will not go unpunished. It is unacceptable.”
Souza Aguiar is one of five hospitals designated by the city to treat tourists during the sporting event because of its proximity to the famed Maracana Stadium, site of the opening ceremony on Aug. 5. It’s also on a U.S. Embassy list of medical facilities recommended for travelers to the games.
Fabio Melo, a sergeant who was guarding the suspect in the hospital, said he feels vulnerable to attacks as Rio de Janeiro state is increasing officers’ shifts.
The state declared a financial disaster on Friday largely because revenues from oil royalties have plummeted as a result of low crude prices. The government wants more freedom to manage scarce resources in areas such as public safety, health care and education as it wraps up Olympic projects and beefs up tourist services during the games.
“People in our line of duty go through these kinds of different experiences. Thank God I was not injured and I was able to help my co-worker,” Melo told reporters. “But we are defenseless. I am defenseless, you are defenseless and the whole population, too.”
Later in the day, police acknowledged that they had received reports last week that about a plot to free the suspected drug trafficker. Col. Luiz Henrique Pires told journalists they reinforced security at the hospital but that they don’t have the resources “to deploy 30 or 40 police officers to police after every report that is made.”
Pires also said public hospitals are not prepared to admit prisoners and that it is necessary to have special medical facilities for such cases.
DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has turned over her duties to Brandon Davis, National Political Coordinator for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), who was installed by the Clinton campaign. Wasserman Schultz will retain her title as DNC Chair until the Democratic Party votes on a successor.
While Democratic presidential nominees traditionally appoint election managers after the primaries end—as Barack Obama did in 2008—the alleged removal of Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair was nothing more than a publicity stunt. In effect, the move allows Clinton to tout an image of responding to Wasserman Schultz’s poor favorability without actually having to do anything about it.
This is not a sign of progress. Rather, the removal buys time and entertains the possibility of retaining Wasserman Schultz after the Democratic National Convention, once criticism for her poor party leadership dies down. In short, Wasserman Schultz protected Clinton with a limited primary debate schedule and now Clinton is returning the favor—which does doing nothing to fix the corruption Wasserman Schultz flooded into the Democratic Party as DNC chair.
On June 16, Senator Bernie Sanders called the Democrats a party of “wealthy campaign contributors” in a speech streamed to supporters. Wasserman Schultz opened the Democratic Party to wealthy campaign contributors by quietlyrescinding a ban on contributions from federal lobbyists and political action committees, initially enacted by Barack Obama in 2008. A giant step back from removing the influence of big money in politics, the move enabled the Hillary Victory Fund—a joint fundraising committee between the DNC and the Clinton campaign—to launder funds into the Clinton campaign under the pretenses of raising money for down-ticket Democrats. While the ban remains removed, Clinton continues to rake in millions of dollars in campaign contributionsfrom influences with interests contrary to progressive and liberal agendas.
Wasserman Schultz’s false claims of impartiality employed a variety of mechanisms to rig the election for Clinton, including appointing several corporate lobbyists to serve as super delegates. Recently-leaked internal DNC correspondence illuminates strategies that were formulated with Hillary Clinton as the presumed nominee in mind—several months before the first primary state even voted.
Transitioning Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s duties to another Clinton surrogate will do nothing to reform the Democratic Party. In a recent address to supporters, Sanders noted his hope to work with Clinton to transform the Democratic Party into one that, “has the courage to take on Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the fossil fuel industry and the other powerful special interests that dominate our political and economic life.”
With her insincere proposal to eventually remove Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair, Hillary Clinton proves she doesn’t take purging corruption from of the Democratic Party—a primary platform of Sanders’ campaign—seriously.
The death of Wei Zei, a student seeking cancer cures online, raises questions about the responsibility of tech companies for the health data they provide
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaking about the Apple Watch. Apple pulled a “health and wellness” app from the watch after it emerged it may have been based on false claims. Photograph: Stephen Lam/REUTERS
China’s equivalent of Google is under fire. Search engine Baidu has been criticised following the death of 21-year-old student Wei Zai, who used the search engine to research esoteric treatments for his cancer.
After Wei Zai’s death, the state-run People’s Daily attacked Baidu, claiming it was ranking search results in exchange for money. “There have been hospitals making profits at the cost of killing patients who were directed by false advertisements paid at a higher rank in search results,” the article claimed, adding, “profit considerations shall not be placed over social responsibility”.
The Chinese party newspaper may have its own reasons for wanting to control Baidu; a powerful search engine is a gateway to the outside world and a challenge to any repressive state. But does it have a point? Are search engines responsible for the health results they promote?
When we search the internet for a medical diagnosis, we trust that the ranking will lead us to the most reliable information first, and leave the wacky stuff to the end. But who decides what’s reliable? And is it the search engine’s ultimate responsibility to guide us, or should we be more sceptical about using technology to inform our health decisions?
Professor Stephen Goldberg of the University of Miami school of medicine doubts that search engines such as Google make their health recommendations based on the accuracy of the health website: “They don’t really have the facility to do this and appear more concerned with number of hits on the website and key words associated with the website, regardless of what inaccurate information it may concern.”
Google declined to comment specifically on its policy, instead referring to a blogwhich says that one in 20 Google searches is for health-related information. In February, the company began using its Knowledge Graph, a tool to enhance search results, to give searchers instant and relevant medical facts: “We’ll show you typical symptoms and treatments, as well as details on how common the condition is – whether it’s critical, if it’s contagious, what ages it affects, and more.”
While the company insists the search results are not intended as medical advice, the move seems intended to cement Google’s role in the health tech market.
The rise of health apps
People don’t just turn to search engines for health data; there’s also a growing appetite for apps. The mobile health market is currently valued at $10bn and forecast to grow by 15% to reach $31bn by 2020.
But the hype for apps has caught out some companies. In 2013 Australian blogger Belle Gibson – who claimed she had cured her terminal cancer through diet and lifestyle changes – created The Whole Pantry, dubbed “the world’s first health, wellness and lifestyle app”.
Belle Gibson, the founder of the Whole Pantry, claimed that she cured cancer with healthy eating Photograph: Supplied
Downloaded 200,000 times in the first month, it was one of the few apps to be pre-installed on the Apple Watch. When it emerged Gibson’s cancer was reportedly faked, Apple pulled the app and many customers demanded their money back.
The reliability of health apps is fundamentally dependent on the quality of databases and the algorithms that process the raw data. And many tech companies are wading into this hugely profitable health informatic field.
Tech giant IBM, for example, whose super computer Watson supports health apps, has recently gained access to the health data of 300 million people through its acquisition of Truven Health. Google-owned artificial intelligence (AI) company DeepMind has agreed a data-sharing deal with London’s Royal Free Hospital Trust to give it access to healthcare data on 1.6 million patients. In return, the trust will get an app to monitor patients with kidney disease.
These companies say they are committed to transparency and democratisation. But underlying all this activity is one overarching motive: profit. So can we have faith that companies are acting in our best interests to provide high-quality, evidence-based and validated information?
Just because companies are driven by profit doesn’t necessarily mean the information or rankings are not reliable. There has probably never been a time of greater scrutiny of health information. We live in a complex and interconnected world, where public healthcare providers and private companies work in parallel; Deepmind and the Royal Free is just one example of this.
If we are diagnosed with a frightening illness, we’re likely to Google it. A few of us will still buy a book to get an alternative or broader view. A growing number of us will download an app to help manage the condition, improve our wellbeing or cope with the anxiety that a scary diagnosis brings.
We may as well get used to the vast amount of health data now available to us. Some companies may commit to rigorously scrutinising their data but algorithms are so complex and potentially influenced by commercial factors, that the onus must remain with the individual to make their own judgement.
There is still no substitute for face-to-face conversations with health professionals who have your wellbeing rather than their own commercial interests at heart. And whatever the source of information that we access, a healthy degree of scepticism is important. Goldberg says: “Patients should be drawn into the medical decision-making process if they are interested.” He thinks we all need to learn how toevaluate health information for ourselves so that search engine rankings are not the only way we decide what’s good for us.
Many companies are aware of the recent federal change to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exemption rule that, according to the Department of Labor, will make 4.2 million additional salaried white-collar American workers eligible for overtime pay.
The FLSA does not provide an exemption from these requirements for small businesses. The new exemption rule generally applies to employees who perform executive, administrative or professional duties at most companies.
Here are some tips to help ensure company payrolls remain in control when the new overtime rules go into effect.
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Here are some tips to help ensure company payrolls remain in control when the new… more
Under the old rule, white collar employees were required to receive overtime pay if they made less than $455 per week or $23,660 a year. Effective Dec. 1, 2016, the minimum salary level increases to $913 per week or $47,476 annually. It also establishes an algorithm based on economic factors which will be used to determine future adjustments to the minimum salary requirement.
As is the case with all salary issues, the opinions of business owners fall at both ends of the spectrum — from being supportive to seriously concerned about additional costs. However, one thing is true for all companies: With the implementation of this rule change officially on the horizon, now is the time to make certain that payroll costs can be tracked on a timely and accurate basis.
Following are some tips to help ensure company payrolls remain in control when the new overtime rules go into effect:
1. Determine the impact now
All companies need to be aware of how many employees on their payroll will be affected, review job duties of affected employees, and develop compensation plans to review the cost of increasing salaries and/or reclassifying any affected employees as non-exempt, which requires employers to track hours and pay additional overtime pay for hours over forty in a work week.
2. Consider time-tracking software
Companies without tracking systems will need to implement hourly tracking systems to manage new time-keeping responsibilities for employees reclassified to non-exempt status. Companies with hourly tracking systems that are less robust should consider electronic solutions that allow workers to clock in and clock out at their workstations or via mobile devices.
3. Revisit company overtime rules
Are employees required to obtain written permission from an authorized supervisor prior to working overtime hours? If not, management may want to change protocols and policies to better track and control overtime costs.
It should be noted that a policy requiring permission to work overtime is valid, but if an employee works overtime and the employer knew or should have known (or, as the FLSA says, “suffers or permits an employee to work,”) overtime must be paid, although the employee may be disciplined for not following the policy. For many businesses, new checks and balances will become crucial to ensure that productivity and costs are appropriately managed.
4. Communicate
Once a company determines if the new rules will have an impact and identifies the employees who will be affected, management should communicate with the affected employees and their supervisors to proactively explain any protocol or policy changes.
5. Consider some salary adjustments
Finally, some companies may decide to make pay adjustments for some employees whose salaries are near the cap. Doing so could reduce some of the timekeeping complexities the law might create. Employers need to know that a salary increase alone does not guarantee an employee is exempt from overtime because there are also duties tests that must be met for an exemption to apply.
Like it or not, the Department of Labor’s rule change is a reminder that all businesses should regularly review and refine timekeeping procedures and take advantage of new technologies that save time and money along with providing administrative relief. Doing so will benefit both workers and the company as a whole.
Janet Flewelling is a managing director of service operations for Insperity.
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks – said it perfectly this morning. It is a systemic problem.
You have to buy into the system (and believe me Trump is heavily invested too) in order to be elected by the system. Bernie said that the system is broken. The emporer did not like his message.
Now my challenge. How can anyone come up with an electable ticket to purge ourselves of Trump, and still be able to stomach Hillary? Or can we go around her too?
Philly will be interesting indeed. If the DNC wants our votes, they are going to have to put quite a few planks in their platform that they will not be inclined to want to do.
Is Jill Stein a possible partner for the Bern? There might just be enough #nevertrump #neverhillary sentiment out there for something like this to work. Do we have enough time?
Whether it’s part of our spiritual practice or it began for us after awakening, mindfulness is a subtle shift in focus that keeps our attention held lightly in the present moment.
Instead of being lost in thought or distracted by social media, some TV programme or phone app, we find ourselves spending more and more time simply being present with what is.
This is a great gift in one sense. Colors can seem brighter, our interest in nature might be renewed. We literally take time to smell the flowers and watch the playful dance of the insects that float over the lawn. But mindfulness has another side to it. Sooner or later we begin to tune into this human form, and within it we start to notice the energies and feelings that are present and which may have lain buried and undisturbed there, sometimes for years.
This new sensitivity can be a shock at first and not a welcome one. We may notice deep pools of fear or anger, sadness or rage, locked up in messy pockets in the throat, chest or abdomen. When we first tap into these sensations it can seem like there’s something wrong and we may even look for a way to get rid of them.
But perhaps the best advice is to wait. These feelings have very likely been there a long time; they just haven’t been paid any attention in a while. What do we need to do about them? We really don’t need to ‘do’ anything, that’s just the judging mind firing up like it always does. But if we want to understand, to see clearly then we can start by looking more closely…
In one sense our personality or ego is nothing more than a collection of thoughts, opinions, beliefs, tendencies and preferences. Conditioned by experience, culture, gender, it’s what we think about certain people, certain viewpoints, certain situations. What we’re often less aware of is the emotional energy that we invest into each of these.
If it’s something trivial the maybe that’s not much, but look at any deeply held belief or view. How would it feel if that was challenged? Then the emotion comes up, right? But this emotion was here all along, drip fed day by day through the frequency with which we visit and revisit our most cherished thoughts. Even if awakening has occurred, these building blocks of the sense of self haven’t gone away, they’re just not taken to be a separate whole anymore.
Every day situations can arise that challenge us. Usually we’re aware of these on the level of information but not so much on the level of feeling. For instance, your manager comes in at 4.55pm and gives you a pile of urgent work. You listen to their instructions on the level of information but at the same time, there can be a strong reaction happening on the level of feeling that we’re not tuned into.
Because we’re not noticing, not taking the time to be aware and to allow these feelings the space to arise and then to fade away again, they persist. Not only do they persist, they actually build up over time. So when we first start becoming mindful of our feelings, these trapped energies in the body can seem very strong, very painful at first. And if we’re not equipped to expect this we can feel as though something is wrong either with us or with our practice. But really nothing is wrong; we just need to understand how to approach this.
One thing we seem to deal fairly well with as a society is grief. When a person is grieving we often say to them, ‘Let it all out. You have to allow yourself time to grieve, so don’t hide from, just let it be what it is’ and things like that. We know the grieving process can take time and during that time we can experience anger, sadness, denial, and calm acceptance, and that these often crop up over and over again in no particular order until the emotion is played out and fades to the background.
Now let’s consider what grieving is. Without in the least diminishing the value and beauty of a single life, we need to take time to consider that for each of us, that ‘other’ person, is a set of thoughts we have about them. That’s not to say that is the totality or reality of them, we’re just saying our experience of them is a set of stories in thought; or collectively, the story of them.
That story, built up over time and through repeated contact is invested with emotional energy dependent on how close we are to them or how important their story is to us. So when they leave or their body dies, there can be a terrible sense of loss. That story has finished but also the energy with which it’s invested now begins to diminish, and we find this painful.
In one sense, the personality is nothing more than these bundles of energy. So when we lose one we feel, and sometimes even say, we’ve lost a part of ourselves. And in a sense it’s literally true, that collection of energy has now dissipated back down to the background flow of energy.
The thing to note here is that this process of grieving doesn’t just happen when we lose a loved one, it happens when any important story finishes or is seen through. Whether that story is ‘me’ as a separate self, or even me as a smoker; my belief in X, or my identification with Y; whatever it is, once a big or important story goes; one with lots of energy attached to it, there will follow a grieving process that usually includes anger, denial, sadness and calm acceptance, in any order, and quite beyond our control.
So if through mindfulness you come across some terrible pain in your heart that won’t go away, we can use the skillful approach we would take if we were grieving, and that first involves acceptance, not avoidance. What caused this pain we may not know yet, though perhaps that will come out over time.
But what we do know is that this is a perfectly natural experience. It’s not to be feared, it’s not to be avoided it’s just what happens when there’s the loss of a cherished story. And the pain will pass in time as long we allow ourselves to be mindful of it and allow it to be what it is.
And so the lesson here is patience. Nothing needs fixing, we just need to patiently bear with the pain until the energy moves through and it fades back down. Mindfulness may have been what caused us to see the pain, but mindfulness is also the way out of it. So we allow it to be what it is and allow the natural process of grieving and healing to take its course.
New York (June 9, 2016): The National Federation of the Blind, the Center for the Independence of the Disabled, and individual plaintiffs who are blind, today sued the New York State Board of Elections and Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) over online voter registration that is inaccessible to people with disabilities.
States are required by law to meet accessibility and confidentiality standards when providing services such as online voter registration, but New York is failing to comply, the complaint charges.
Mark Riccobono, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “The right to vote is a fundamental one, and equal access to this right cannot and must not be denied to blind Americans. Equal access means the ability to participate in all aspects of the voting process, including registering to vote, with complete privacy and independence. The National Federation of the Blind is committed to ensuring equal access for blind voters in New York and across the nation.”
“There are many barriers that can stand in the way of New Yorkers with disabilities exercising their right to vote. The shame of inaccessible online registration is that there is an easy and inexpensive fix. It’s a mystery why the New York State Board of Elections refuses to do it, and it’s disappointing. People with disabilities have the right to privacy and independent registration and voting just like every other New York voter. It’s the law,” said Susan Dooha, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York.
“Online voter registration is key to ensuring access to the ballot for people with disabilities. Yet in New York, it’s not just difficult for hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities to register online, it’s virtually impossible,” said ACLU attorney Susan Mizner. “We’ve told the state where the worst barriers are. It can easily fix the problems, but has refused to do so. ”
Those barriers include DMV webpages and downloadable forms that can’t be read out loud by the screen-reader software used by blind and low-vision people to hear and navigate computer screen content. On the privacy rights front, the software cannot read the fillable form’s section on party affiliation on the Board of Elections website; blind and low-vision voters are forced to disclose this private information when they print out the form and get someone else to help them sign it, destroying their privacy and independence.
Plaintiff Eva Eason of New York City encountered numerous obstacles when attempting to update her voter information online after getting married. Eason, who is blind, could not access the DMV site at all, and was only able to access the Board of Elections online registration after getting assistance from someone who is sighted, compromising her privacy and independence.
“A lot of people paved the way and fought for me to be able to vote, so why is New York making it so difficult?” said Eason.
Plaintiff Meghan Schoeffling of Albany added, “I was thrilled when New York created an online voter registration form, thinking it would enable me and others to register to vote privately and independently for the first time. But because the DMV failed to ensure the site was fully accessible, I was unable to register to vote without sighted assistance.”
“Everyone has the right to register to vote privately and independently, and online services are a great way to make that happen. Yet, because the state’s websites aren’t coded to operate with screen readers and other accessibility software, voters with disabilities can’t access those services. Voters should not be excluded from online registration or have their privacy violated just because they have a disability,” said Disability Rights Advocates attorney Christina Brandt-Young.
The lawsuit cites violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act. It seeks immediate adjustments to ensure the websites are legally compliant, creation of Board of Elections policies that ensure accessibility and provide a clear path of accountability, and the development of policies and procedures to ensure the sites remain accessible.
The complaint, Eason et al. v. New York State Board of Elections (1:16-cv-4292), was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. Plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union; Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP; and Disability Rights Advocates.
The National Federation of the Blind knows that blindness is not the characteristic that defines you or your future. Every day we raise the expectations of blind people, because low expectations create obstacles between blind people and our dreams. You can live the life you want; blindness is not what holds you back.
More than a decade after its humble beginnings, LinkedIn has become the unchallenged — and dominant — social network for professionals worldwide.
With 433 million members in 200-plus countries, and with two new members joining every second, LinkedIn has become a sales and marketing powerhousefor B2B-themed interactions that remains unrivaled anywhere else online.
No longer just a jobs site
Sure, you can still find a job or hire employees using LinkedIn, and indeed a large part of its revenue still comes from paid recruiting and job posting services.
But if you still think LinkedIn is little more than a glorified version of an online job board, you haven’t been paying close enough attention.
Listen to LinkedIn’s stated goal from 2014: “Beginning the next decade of LinkedIn, we sought to create a map of the digital economy, its participants, and every facet of opportunity linking these nodes together.”
The key here is the phrase “every facet of opportunity.”
As you’re about to see, LinkedIn is spending billions of dollars to get its hands into seemingly “every facet of opportunity” that exists in the business world right now.
Below are just three examples, and each one offers you a unique opportunity to build your business or brand as part of the process.
Opportunity 1: Online training courses
LinkedIn dropped $1.5 billion back in 2015 to buy online training website Lynda.com for a very specific reason: Teaching sells.
And while the transition has been quiet so far, we’re soon going to see much more of a direct presence on LinkedIn in terms of online training courses being offered both free and for purchase.
To put into perspective how big online learning is, consider that in 2011, about $35.6 billion was spent on self-paced e-learning worldwide. In 2014, e-learning was a $56.2 billion industry, and that number was expected to double by the end of 2015.
In addition to buying Lynda.com’s existing catalog of courses, I can see LinkedInoffering to let you and me upload our training programs as well, and of course with LinkedIn running and hosting everything on its network.
Opportunity 2: Freelance marketplace
LinkedIn recently (and quietly) launched its new “ProFinder” service a few months back, and it’s quickly gaining momentum.
Modeled after popular “freelancer-for-hire” sites such as Fiverr and Upwork, LinkedIn’s “ProFinder” matches customers looking for a specific type of product or service with a qualified professional.
Because of its treasure-trove of user data, LinkedIn is able to quickly and easilyshow you the best prospects for a freelance project or ongoing service you need based on keywords, categories or search terms you type into ProFinder.
LinkedIn can even filter search results based on your network (who you’re already connected to at a first or second degree level), recommendations those professionals have, their physical location (if that matters) and more.
It’s by far the most frontal approach I’ve seen LinkedIn take when it comes to encouraging members to do direct business with one another via the platform.
Opportunity 3: Publishing and content marketing
Along with distributing and sharing professional content thanks to partnerships with top industry news publications and outlets, LinkedIn is also encouraging crowd-sourcing on a massive scope.
In fact, LinkedIn now gives you the ability to publish native blog posts along with embedding everything from podcasts to tweets to training videos right inside the platform.It should go without saying that in today’s online marketplace, you have to earn the right to ask for someone’s time and attention.
Content is the key to earning that right to ask, and LinkedIn wants you sharing as much of your own as possible right inside the network, promising to reward the most well-liked, highest-engaged content by featuring it on its “Pulse” news channels, thus exposing your work to massive audiences you hadn’t even dreamed of reaching.
Best of all, LinkedIn’s detailed analytics show you each and every individual who is engaging with your content, giving you the ability to cultivate warm leads in an fast, efficient and targeted manner.
Where it’s all heading
As I said at the start of this post, LinkedIn is poised to expand in a huge way based on how these ambitious initiatives play out in the months and years to come.
But regardless of what happens, LinkedIn is becoming more interesting and intriguing by the week — something you’d never expect to see from what many critics often call a “boring” social network.
My Black Lab 