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The most corrupt president in American history:
• 440 times pleaded the Fifth
• 91 criminal charges
• 38,000 mentions in the Epstein files
• 6 bankruptcies
• 2 impeachments
• 5 draft deferments
• 1 fake university
• 4 indictments
• 26 sexual assault allegations
• 1 fake charity
• $5 million sexual assault verdict
• Fake Trump phone
• Gold sneakers scam
• $2 million fake charity judgment
• $93 million in sexual assault judgments
• $400+ million fraud judgment
The record speaks for itself ...
.
MAGA, you say you’re pro-life? Prove it!
Because you have caused serious damage.
Anti-child trafficking programs eliminated.
Pregnant women with complications bleeding out in their cars
because doctors are afraid of being sued.
Women die while you clap for the laws that killed them.
Key terrorist task forces eliminated.
WIC and SNAP nearly gutted.
Meals on Wheels axed.
Medicaid slashed.
Food protections weakened.
Kids with cancer deported.
School lunches under attack.
People starved, abandoned, and erased.
You are letting the GOP ruin people’s lives.
Including your own. How do you not see it?
Trump is destroying the country with your permission.
With your votes. With your silence. With your help.
Forcing app downloads for basic tasks—like parking, restaurant menus, or medical forms—makes daily life needlessly complicated, drains phone batteries, and invades privacy.
App fatigue is real.
I left already twice restaurants where they force their guests to bring a smart phone in order to scan a QR code to read their menu. In one place the waitress showed me on her own phone the menu, but I could not see something I liked, and just ordered a drink (and gave her a nice tip). The waitress in the other place claimed to have no time to show me the menu, even tough the restaurant was not even half full of guests.
I don't want to scan another QR code just to read a restaurant's menu.
And:
I don't want to create another account just to pick up a parcel.
I don't want to be forced to use the ePA app, BundID, or the next administrative app for every single little bureaucratic task anymore.
And with the banks, all this security nonsense is starting to get on my last nerve.
Constantly new regulations, new PINs, TAN procedures, and ever more digital bullshit that used to be simple and quick.
Today, even picking up a package, grabbing a bite on a patio, or paying for parking has turned into a mandatory digital obstacle course.
They demand an account, an email, a phone number, sometimes even SMS verification … for things that used to take 30 seconds.
No Desire:
I have no desire to install fifteen apps just to exist outside at all.
I have no desire to leave my data at every store or service.
I just want to be able to live in the real world without someone slapping a digital leash on me
at every street corner.
Apps get Hacked
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (all owned by Meta) are the most frequently targeted and searched-for apps for hacking, with Instagram leading individual account compromise statistics at roughly 31% of social media hacks, followed closely by Facebook at 27%.
I have had enough of booking hotels and flights through agencies that show up on top of the search engine results — and sometimes hidden under the hotel offers. Here are only some of my experiences:
Lousy Hotel in Halifax It was already 7 pm and heavily snowing when our airplane landed. Living 200 kilometers away from Halifax, I had booked a room in a hotel next to the airport. The regular bus to our town left the airport only once a day — in the morning at 11 am. Calling friends to pick me up was not in my mind. At least I did not want to ask them on this snow day to drive 400 kilometers round trip.
It took about half an hour until the hotel shuttle bus arrived to pick up a group of seven travelers. However, the shuttle did not drive directly to the hotel but to a huge parking area where all others had their cars parked. One couple did not find their car, and the driver patiently cruised around and around until these folks recognized their vehicle under a snow cover. Finally, almost two hours after landing, I checked in and got a room twenty meters from the reception.
Thin walls allowed me to be entertained beyond midnight by listening to arriving guests or phone calls from the receptionist… The short night ended at 4 am when calls by the receptionist (this time another one) woke me up.
I tried without success to continue sleeping. At 6 am I got up, walked over to their desk, and asked for the manager. He would arrive around 9 am, I was told. “OK, then, when and where is breakfast?” “Sorry, but due to the pandemic, we cannot offer breakfast”. “What? Where can I get a cup of coffee and something to eat?” “The next place is a coffee shop at the airport”. At least I could catch the shuttle bus to be driven to and from the airport after a coffee and a croissant back to the hotel.
I opened my laptop to use the time until the manager would arrive. But no luck, the Internet did not work. I packed my suitcase and got ready for departure, hoping that the Internet at the airport would work. In the meantime, the manager (or his junior assistant) arrived at his office, and I complained about my not-so-clean room, about the missing breakfast (which was included in the hotel fee), and about the loud noise that kept me from sleeping. I demanded a discount.
The manager told me that he could only talk about it if I had booked directly at their hotel (chain) — but not when booked through a third party. I would have to go through Booking, Priceline, Expedia, or wherever I paid for my hotel room. I was furious, but couldn’t do anything other than write a one-star review for this hotel on Google. And I swore to myself never, ever to book through an agency for flights, trains, rental cars, or hotel rooms.
Another Hotel: As I am almost a full-time traveler, my resolutions, however, melted in the sun…
In spring, I traveled near Algonquin Park and in the late afternoon, I discovered an attractive hotel in a small town. I went in and inquired at the reception about a room and its price. A bit shocked by the answer, I gambled and offered a lower price “which I had seen on the Internet”.
The receptionist explained to me that I would have to order it online to get a price like this. “So, you mean I can pull out my laptop and order it online in front of you and get a lower price? Even though the agencies deduct another 15–20%? Why don’t you just give me a lower price?” “No, that’s not possible,” she explained, “due to directions she got from her manager”.
“OK, then please give me your password, and I’ll order online”. “No password needed; you can go directly to the Internet.” So I sat down in the hotel lobby and checked the agency’s hotel prices. To my surprise, it was only ten dollars lower. But at the same time, I saw a bed & breakfast with lots of favorable reviews — and I booked a room there — without an agency. Thanks to the friendly but firm receptionist (or her managers) — they lost a potential customer…
Rental Car Nightmare
Weeks later I prepared for another trip to Europe, and to avoid traveling in trains or buses during the pandemic, I booked a rental car. Despite having paid in full for three weeks through the agency’s website, I was forced to leave a deposit of 2,000 euros. When I returned the car, I demanded my credit card payment back.
No, they cannot give me the credit back as I had booked with an agency. But I had given my credit card in their office to pay for the deposit in person in Salzburg, Austria. I wanted my deposit back from them! They assured me I would have the credit returned within 3 days by the agency.
Four months later, I still did not have the money back on my credit card, despite dozens of emails, calls, and even a registered letter. I was bounced forth and back from the rental place to the agent and vice versa.
I then went to the Internet and Social Media and posted the case to several consumer sites, to the Salzburg tourism office, the city of Salzburg, as well as to authorities in Munich where the agency is located. I even sent the case to several daily papers in both cities. I am not sure who or what influenced the agency or the rental office, but finally, five months after the incident, I got my money back.
Losing Hotel Points
On another occasion, during a busy, long travel weekend, I even drove from hotel to hotel in person, but every room in the area was booked. Until my laptop showed me a hotel at Booking.com where one room was available.
I drove to the place, and when checking in, I showed them my loyalty membership card for their hotel chain. To my dismay, I learned that loyalty cards are not recognized once a guest books through Expedia, Priceline, or Booking.com, and I could not get any points.
Most hotel brand loyalty rewards programs don’t offer points on stays booked through third-party sites, I learned through my research. On top of this, when I checked the hotel’s website, I saw that a direct hotel booking would have saved me sixteen dollars.
Using hotel agencies, you will lose not only your points from hotel chains but also all discounts for seniors, AARP, military, and membership points from the AAA (US) or CAA (Canada).
Enough is enough! I am done with these agencies and will avoid any of them, and book hotel rooms, rental cars, flights, etc. directly — even if I pay a couple of dollars more.
Some of the hotels are fed up with agencies and try to lure customers back with price-matching and other perks, such as a free breakfast. Other places are not so smart and lose not only money by paying agency fees but also losing some customers who avoid places where customer service is bounced back to the booking agency.
The travel website Frommer’s stated in an article: “To get the best deal, you should always surf the Web for the best hotel price, right? Well, no, not anymore. Hotels are increasingly trying to sweeten the pot if you agree to book a room directly with them — so long as guests book directly with the hotel.”
“Hyatt Hotels, Hilton Worldwide, Marriott International, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), which includes Holiday Inn, Kimpton, Hotel Indigo, Best- Western, etc., began offering “Your Rate by IHG Rewards Club” discounts for its loyalty members as well. Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott also have similar ‘Best Rate Guarantee’ policies in place.”
Book Flights ONLY Directly From the Airlines Website!
After staying away from Booking.com and similar agencies for a couple of years, I fell into their trap again.
I booked a flight with ITA (formerly Alitalia) from Palermo, Sicily to Vienna at the online booking agency. The flight was split into two legs: first to Rome Fiumicino, and from there to Vienna. I stopped in my tracks, and only after I read their guarantee that they would help their customers should anything go wrong with these two flights. So, I used the order button… Big mistake!
Sure enough: The first flight, even though early in the morning, had a delay, and running through the huge airport in Rome, I did not reach the counter to get into the next flight to Vienna.
The “hotline” of Booking.com didn’t answer my calls, the airline refused to help me, and I had no other choice than to book a new ticket from a travel agency at the airport for more than 450 Euros ($720).
However, I could not get a flight until the next afternoon, and the only ticket I could purchase was one to Budapest in Hungary, and then I had to purchase a bus ticket for another 50 Euros to Vienna. All this trouble because I had an important meeting in Austria. I came 15 minutes late to Vienna, but it worked out!
Contacting Booking.com after this horrible Journey and reminding them about their warranty didn’t help. They refused and said I would have to contact the airline. ITA refused too and stated that 1,5 hours flight delay doesn’t allow for a refund, a hotel room, or any other compensation.
Facit: When the reservation relationship is between the guest and the hotel, car rental company, or airline, it’s clean and easy because there are only two parties involved: the customer and the business. When a third party (booking site) gets involved, things can get messy.
Hello Friends, Welcome to the August Newsletter with lots of useful tips for writers and publishers.
Author Erica Verrillo writes about the month of August: “August is affectionately known as the “dead month” in the publishing industry. During August, all work comes to a virtual halt as editors, agents, proofreaders, typesetters, CEOs, dog walkers, and everyone else on the planet takes a much-needed vacation.
So, all you aspiring authors, don’t submit your manuscript to publishers, and don’t send your queries to agents in the month of August. (To be fair, the two weeks up to and after the Frankfurt Book Fair in October are not so great either, and mid-November to mid-January is also a bad time, but for different reasons).”
LOTS OF PUBLISHING NEWS & TIPS
August is the perfect time to gather publishing "ammunition". This is how to do it:
Foreign Book Rights: Multiple Sales of Your Manuscript
The mission of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts is to support established and emerging writers, visual artists, and composers/musicians by providing working and living environments that allow uninterrupted time for work, reflection, and creative growth.
Emerging and established artists may apply in the following disciplines: architecture, film/video, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theatre, and visual arts. There are no residency fees, and need-based stipends and reimbursement grants are available. While artists may request residencies of up to eight weeks, the average stay is 30 days.
Location: Peterborough, NH.
Deadline: September 10 for the Spring/Summer residency season (March 1 – August 31).
Application Fee: $30 (USD) is required with each application.
A highly trusted finance blog with content that belongs to the best in the finance sector. Aim for 1,000 to 3,000 words per post. Pays $300. We are also willing to compensate you for your own identity theft story if you have been victimized before.
They serve a community of adventure-driven millennials who crave meaningful travel experiences. Assignments are typically 700–800 words. Our longest pieces are 1000–1200 words. They generally pay $0.25 to $0.30 per word.
This independent publication focused on the stories that matter to the Black working class. We explain the news, politics, and culture through reportage, analysis, commentary, interviews, and essays with an anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist lens. Our contributors are organizers, experts, and cultural workers who see the world as it is and know the point is to change it. Pay is based on an estimated $.10/word starting at $75 per story.
They welcome submissions from freelance journalists, writers, and media producers whose interests fall within the scope of our mission. Pay ranges from $150 for opinion columns and reviews; $250 for shorter explanatory stories, videos, and photo essays; to $0.50/word for longer-form investigative and time-intensive features. Email your pitch or query to editor@deceleration.news.
The Walrus Magazine Note the preference for Canadian writers. They publish original reporting, essays, fiction, poetry, and visual essays in the fields of politics, the arts, science and the environment, health, business, sports, technology, and international affairs. They publish articles of varying length, depth of reporting, and writing style and compensate writers accordingly. For example, short essays of around 1,000 words start at $500; long-form reported features pay up to $1/word. Features 1200–2000 words. Essays 1000 to 4000 words. Fiction 2000–5000 words.
The author will receive $1,000 and the winning story will be published on the Gival Press website. Submit a previously unpublished original (not a translation) stand-alone short story in English must be approximately 5,000 to 15,000 words of high literary quality.
Nonfiction. One of the most important keys to contentment and happiness is the ability to count your blessings. Even during the toughest times, if we can find gratitude and count our blessings, we feel better. Each day holds something to be thankful for, and it could be just as simple as having the sun shine or having food on the table. Payment: $200. Deadline: August 15
First prize is €600. Second prize €400. Third prize €300. The Waterford Poetry Prize is open to all writers currently living on the island of Ireland. A line limit of 40 lines applies.
True humorous stories. “Share your funny stories about something that happened to you in your life — in your relationship with a partner or spouse, a parent or child, a family member or friend, at work or at home — that made you and the people around you laugh out loud. Did you mean for it to be funny? Did the other person mean to make you laugh? Did a situation just get out of control? Did a misunderstanding turn into a comedy of errors?” Payment: $200. Deadline: August 31
You can write whatever you want, so long as you connect it to the photo on the website. Creative nonfiction. Sci-fi. A joke. Something else. It’s up to you. First place gets $1,000. Second and third get $250 each. Anybody can apply to participate. The piece needs to be EXACTLY 1000 words.
The Bedford Competition Short story and poetry main prizes. Separate short story and poetry prize-winning categories for those aged 17–25 and for local Bedford residents. See all competition categories and prize money online. Open to writers worldwide. 1st Prize £2000. 2nd Prize £400. 3rd Prize £300. Stories maximum 3000 words. Poems maximum 40 lines. £8.50 per story/poem. Deadline October 31
August can symbolize seasons of change and renewal in our lives. The eighth month of the Gregorian calendar was named for the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. Famous writers born in August: David Baldacci, Suzanne Collins, and Danielle Steel.
I have never met a garden owner who is really satisfied with their lawn.
There are lots of mistakes to make...
My Best Advice: Shrink Your Lawn Eliminate some of your lawn and create a more natural landscape. You will ultimately use less water, reduce chemical use, and save some money too.
Also, you will do less mowing, fertilizing, reseeding, and raking. Here are some photos of beautiful flower beds instead of front yards with no lawn.
Moving away from water-guzzling and chemical-hungry lawns and cultivating yards that are diverse and self-regulating is a matter of mounting urgency. As global temperatures rise, the demands of turf grass are likely to become untenable.
You will also save money and your health on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And your dogs or cats are not in contact with harmful glyphosate.
Many homeowners are obsessed with lawns. Although originally created by European aristocrats in the 17th century as status symbols, today’s lawns are a symbol of the American dream.
Unfortunately, they also can be a source of unnecessary burden for homeowners, which has led to a recent and growing interest in alternatives to grass in yards. If you are looking to cut down on your grass while still maintaining a luscious green landscape, here are some ideas:
For many writers, the prospect of churning out a steady stream of high- quality blog posts, articles, and most of all, books and ebooks is daunting, to say the least. Unless they dearly love writing and publishing every day.
And that doesn’t count the widespread online distribution that must occur if you hope to extend your reach, your authority, and your influence…to bring you more readers and ultimately, more clients and customers. Here’s where the concept of ‘content repurposing’ comes in.
Repurposing your content strategically can make the difference between always struggling to produce enough fresh content to get yourself noticed and working once and having that same piece of information spread almost effortlessly all over the web.
Here’s the Ultimate Repurposing Strategy:
Write one piece of high-quality content at a time and then use multiple targeted, efficient, and effective distribution strategies to get that content out in as many different forms as possible.
A fast way to boost online visibility is to repurpose blog posts into audio tips using a tool like Audioboo.fm. Because the audio tips are syndicated to iTunes, you get to piggyback on the largest podcasting site with millions of users worldwide.
By creating an audio format of written text, you will also have the opportunity to reach an audience who prefers getting their content in audio format.
On my page at https://medium.com/@doris.aubin, you will find lots of links to writing contests and magazines that offer (paid) placements for quality articles. At the beginning of every month, I publish these offers under the title “Publishing Newsletter”. A valuable resource for writers.
Audio Books Re-purpose your manuscript and make more out of it than just a book or an e-book. Why not create an audiobook from your book? Audio books are popular!
“Readers” can listen in the car, bus, train, plane… while exercising, walking or hiking, on the beach, or while doing mundane tasks around the house or yard. Special needs readers, such as blind people, will have access to your writing through the use of audiobooks.
Audio books can be listened to on an iPod or iPhone/SmartPhone or other MP3 player, even on most e-readers like Kindle and Nook. Your readers can listen to audiobooks, which can easily increase their overall book consumption by 50% to 100% because they are using time that previously wasn’t available and turning it into valuable “reading” time.
There are three ways of producing an audiobook:
You do it all yourself. If you are on a very tight budget, you can make audios yourself with some relatively inexpensive equipment. Get lots of detailed and useful tips on “Audiobooks for Success”, available at https://books2read.com/u/bPRRyJ
2. You use a narrator who is specialized on audiobooks and who gets a percentage of royalties after production of your audiobook (for which they charge too).
3. You organize a professional production to have your audiobook sold, check www.Audible.com / Amazon.com. You will be referred to ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange https://www.acx.com, where you will see tons of good advice on how to narrate your own audiobook or what to look for when outsourcing. You will be positively surprised by how well they explain in detail the whole process for authors, including case studies, how much you will earn, contract samples, and how to promote your audiobook.
Use Your Copyrights
Your book has a secret ingredient that is called “Copyright.” Every story you write, every novel, is a cake full of copyright. You can sell parts of your book to:
one publisher
other parts to another publisher
some parts to overseas markets
other parts to audio
others as e-Books or Singles
to game companies
maybe to Hollywood’s film industry
use parts of it to submit to contests
divide it in chapters and sell to magazines
or to web publishers
The list goes on and on and on. But what you need to do:
Learn all about copyright to really understand this
Realize that each piece can be a cash stream for you
You don’t even have to use your name, get a pen name, or even several
You can sell these rights or uses in several ways:
First Serial Rights They can be print or electronic and mean that you are selling a publisher the right to publish your article once for the first time. In the case of print rights, you may immediately sell the piece to an e-publisher before print publication. After the print magazine containing your article hits the newsstand, you are free to sell it again as a reprint to other print markets.
First Serial Right Electronic Most Canadian and US freelance authors sell North American first serial rights, reserving the right to sell in other world markets (e.g., Great Britain, Australia, or Asia). Specify what type of rights you are selling: First North American Electronic Rights Only.
Second Serial Right These are reprint rights and apply to print and electronic markets. Never sell reprint rights; keep them at all costs. Even if you earn less money for each reprint, you can sell your work over and over again.
Subsidiary Rights Other rights that authors and freelancers hold are subsidiary rights, including, but not limited to, movie rights, TV and radio rights, audio and other media rights.
Or take a piece of your original article or blog post and expand on it to make another related article. For example, if you have written a book or a lengthy article, you could then take two or three of these chapters and further explain and illustrate them. Then submit these articles to the major article directories with a link back to your blog.
Fiction Writers:
Researching details for your story is a lot of work. Use what you found and build articles around it. Did you research history, landscape, religion, pets, professions, climate, medicine, or other topics? Elaborate more and write short or long articles, and offer them to several magazines and newspapers.
Think about pet magazines, gardening or home magazines, publications for history buffs, travel magazines, and monthly or weekly community papers. Even online magazines for airlines. And did you know that the AARP, the retirement organization, has millions of readers for its magazine?
Never forget to add a byline of two sentences with a link to your website to these magazine articles. Contrary to book ads, these articles stay for a long time on the Internet. And YOU get paid and don’t have to pay for ads!
Each story, each novel is a piece of your writing business. If you spread them out — maybe over a number of pen names you have a pretty consistent cash flow stream working. You just need to offer them to people who will buy them.
