The Tokyo District Court on Thursday ordered the operator of a now-defunct manga piracy website to pay ¥1.7 billion in compensation to three major Japanese publishers.
Presiding Judge Masaki Sugiura recognized that the site operator and his associates had uploaded the manga for people to read for free, without approval from the publishers, thereby inflicting financial damage.
The plaintiffs — Kadokawa, Shueisha and Shogakukan — said the ¥1.7 billion sum was most likely the highest ever granted by the court among other similar cases, and they hoped the lawsuit would help deter other manga piracy site operators from uploading content illegally.
They originally sought ¥1.9 billion from piracy website Manga-Mura, which was shut down in 2018 after a criminal investigation for violating copyright law. The damages were calculated by multiplying the average number of views by the sales price of the claimed work.
Shueisha executive Atsushi Ito welcomed the ruling. “We will continue to take every possible measure to protect (authors’) works by enforcing their rights not only in Japan but also in other countries where serious damage is still occurring,” he said.
Ito added that eradicating piracy remains difficult. One issue is domain-hopping, where operators can change domain names every two weeks or a month, to avoid anti-piracy measures in place for specific domains, he said.
Eliminating piracy sites where the operators are based overseas is another challenge. “It’s quite challenging for foreign authorities to act in the interest of Japanese companies,” he said.
In addition, many works are translated into English, with the Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), which monitors illegal digital publications, identifying 1,207 such piracy sites.
According to the ABJ, 10 major English-language manga piracy sites have been accessed around 500 million times.
He also said that the creative works are being translated into other languages. Translations into Vietnamese make up the largest share of pirated content after English.
Link to the rest at The Japan Times and thanks to C. for the tip.
Microsoft is working on a major new AI feature for Windows 11, which it plans to unveil during an event on May 20.
The feature, dubbed AI Explorer internally, will be able to document and organize everything you see on your PC, and turn everything you do into a searchable memory with natural language.
It looks like AI Explorer will launch first on new Arm PCs, as its system requirements list Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X Elite NPU as a baseline.
This would omit Intel’s new AI PCs from taking advantage of this year’s blockbuster AI feature.
It’s an open secret that Microsoft is working on a significant AI update for Windows 11 this year, timed with new “AI PCs” that are set to begin being made available in June. In fact, Microsoft is holding a special event on May 20, where it intends to unveil its plans for AI in Windows 11, along with new Arm-powered Surface hardware.
We already know that the big new AI feature coming this year is something called AI Explorer, which I detailed earlier this month. AI Explorer turns everything you do on your computer into a searchable memory using natural language. It works across any app and enables the ability to search for previously opened conversations, documents, web pages, and images. It can also understand context and streamline tasks based on what’s currently on screen.
Now, we’re starting to learn more about the system requirements for AI Explorer. Spotted by @thebookisclosed on Twitter, the current system requirements for AI Explorer are set to an ARM64 CPU, 16GB RAM, 225GB storage, and a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite NPU. This suggests that AI Explorer will be exclusive to new Arm PCs that are shipping this summer.
If we had to take an educated guess, an ARM64 CPU is required because Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform outputs 45 TOPS for its NPU, whereas Intel’s NPU is around 10 TOPS and AMD is 16 TOPS, making them far weaker compared to Qualcomm’s. Indeed, Qualcomm’s NPU is so powerful it could be considered a ‘Gen 2’ NPU, as that is where Intel and AMD will go next with their next-gen CPUs, due in late 2024 and early 2025.
Turns out Windows 11 build 26100 (purported 24H2 RTM) contains the AI Explorer requirements 📃 baked into the OS💠 ARM64 CPU💠 16GiB of RAM💠 225GiB system drive (total, not free space)💠 Snapdragon X Elite NPU (HWID QCOM0D0A)I guess that’s one way to drive ARM64 adoption
Link to the rest at Windows Central and thanks to F. for the tip.
Authors employ different literary devices to create plot twists and conflicted characters. One of these devices is the unreliable narrator—a storyteller who withholds information, lies to, or misleads the reader, casting doubt on the narrative. Authors use this device to engage readers on a deeper level, forcing them to come to their own conclusions when the narrator’s point of view can’t be trusted.
What Is an Unreliable Narrator in Writing?
An unreliable narrator is an untrustworthy storyteller, most often used in narratives with a first-person point of view. The unreliable narrator is either deliberately deceptive or unintentionally misguided, forcing the reader to question their credibility as a storyteller.
4 Types of Unreliable Narrators
An author typically assigns different characteristics to a first-person narrator to compromise their credibility and fuel their unreliability. Unreliable narrators can fall into four categories based on those qualities:
Picaro. The picaro is a character who has a knack for exaggerating. Moll Flanders, the main character in the book Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe, was born to a mother in prison, but lies about her social standing in order to wed wealthy men and inherit their money.
Madman. The madman is unreliable because they are mentally detached from reality. In Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, Patrick Bateman is a self-proclaimed serial killer—or is he? The Wall Street investment banker narrates his killing spree until it’s revealed that one of his supposed victims is alive and well, forcing the reader to question Bateman’s story.
Naif. The naif’s narrative abilities are impacted by inexperience or age. In Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, 15-year-old Christopher weaves the tale of his supposedly deceased mother and the murder of his neighbor’s dog. Both his age and his Asperger’s syndrome color his narrative, and how he comprehends the world around him. Holden Caulfield, the narrator of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, is another famous example of a naif narrator due to his youthful ignorance.
Liar. The liar is the most deliberate of all the unreliable narrators. The character fabricates stories, often to paint a better picture of themselves or achieve a desired outcome. In Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Dr. James Sheppard narrates as he helps detective Hercule Poirot investigate the murder of a mutual friend. WIth a reputable prefix before his name, Sheppard is a trusted confidante. But, as Poirot solves the crime, the reader realizes they’ve been fooled—Sheppard is actually the killer.
. . . .
5 Examples of Unreliable Narrators in Literature
Literary critic Wayne C. Booth first coined the phrase “unreliable narrator” in his 1961 book Rhetoric of Fiction, but authors began using this literary technique long before that. Here are some famous examples of books with unreliable narrators:
Gillian Flynn,Gone Girl. When Amy Dunne takes on the role of the narrator halfway through Gone Girl, it comes as somewhat of a surprise. Readers have spent the first half of the book thinking she is dead thanks to the novel’s first unreliable narrator, Amy’s husband Nick. With two unreliable narrators—Amy and her husband, Nick—Flynn doubles down on the novel’s conflict and dismantles the story’s moral compass.
Daphne du Maurier,Rebecca. The narrator’s unreliability in this 1938 novel comes from her highly subjective retelling. When Mrs. de Winter talks about her predecessor, the first Mrs. de Winter, and the mystery surrounding her death, it is all speculation, with a touch of jealousy. The reason for her jaded perspective is finally exposed when the tragic truth comes to light.
Winston Groom,Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump’s tales of becoming a ping pong champion and NASA astronaut are questionable, but his earnest unreliability, due to a low IQ, allows the reader to forgive his possible embellishments. Groom creates a very likable narrator in Forrest Gump but lets the matter of his credibility rest solely with the reader.
Chuck Palahniuk,Fight Club. From page one, Palahniuk hints at the fact that the enigmatic Tyler Durden is not just a friend of the narrator—he is the narrator. Palahniuk ultimately pits the narrator’s alter ego against him, creating a satisfying narrative conflict.
The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general today sued Amazon.com, Inc. alleging that the online retail and technology company is a monopolist that uses a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power. The FTC and its state partners say Amazon’s actions allow it to stop rivals and sellers from lowering prices, degrade quality for shoppers, overcharge sellers, stifle innovation, and prevent rivals from fairly competing against Amazon.
The complaint alleges that Amazon violates the law not because it is big, but because it engages in a course of exclusionary conduct that prevents current competitors from growing and new competitors from emerging. By stifling competition on price, product selection, quality, and by preventing its current or future rivals from attracting a critical mass of shoppers and sellers, Amazon ensures that no current or future rival can threaten its dominance. Amazon’s far-reaching schemes impact hundreds of billions of dollars in retail sales every year, touch hundreds of thousands of products sold by businesses big and small and affect over a hundred million shoppers.
“Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. “The complaint sets forth detailed allegations noting how Amazon is now exploiting its monopoly power to enrich itself while raising prices and degrading service for the tens of millions of American families who shop on its platform and the hundreds of thousands of businesses that rely on Amazon to reach them. Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.”
“We’re bringing this case because Amazon’s illegal conduct has stifled competition across a huge swath of the online economy. Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to hike prices on American shoppers and charge sky-high fees on hundreds of thousands of online sellers,” said John Newman, Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “Seldom in the history of U.S. antitrust law has one case had the potential to do so much good for so many people.”
The FTC and states allege Amazon’s anticompetitive conduct occurs in two markets—the online superstore market that serves shoppers and the market for online marketplace services purchased by sellers. These tactics include:
Anti-discounting measures that punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering prices lower than Amazon, keeping prices higher for products across the internet. For example, if Amazon discovers that a seller is offering lower-priced goods elsewhere, Amazon can bury discounting sellers so far down in Amazon’s search results that they become effectively invisible.
Conditioning sellers’ ability to obtain “Prime” eligibility for their products—a virtual necessity for doing business on Amazon—on sellers using Amazon’s costly fulfillment service, which has made it substantially more expensive for sellers on Amazon to also offer their products on other platforms. This unlawful coercion has in turn limited competitors’ ability to effectively compete against Amazon.
Amazon’s illegal, exclusionary conduct makes it impossible for competitors to gain a foothold. With its amassed power across both the online superstore market and online marketplace services market, Amazon extracts enormous monopoly rents from everyone within its reach. This includes:
Degrading the customer experience by replacing relevant, organic search results with paid advertisements—and deliberately increasing junk ads that worsen search quality and frustrate both shoppers seeking products and sellers who are promised a return on their advertising purchase.
Biasing Amazon’s search results to preference Amazon’s own products over ones that Amazon knows are of better quality.
Charging costly fees on the hundreds of thousands of sellers that currently have no choice but to rely on Amazon to stay in business. These fees range from a monthly fee sellers must pay for each item sold, to advertising fees that have become virtually necessary for sellers to do business. Combined, all of these fees force many sellers to pay close to 50% of their total revenues to Amazon. These fees harm not only sellers but also shoppers, who pay increased prices for thousands of products sold on or off Amazon.
The FTC, along with its state partners, are seeking a permanent injunction in federal court that would prohibit Amazon from engaging in its unlawful conduct and pry loose Amazon’s monopolistic control to restore competition.
Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin joined the Commission’s lawsuit. The Commission vote to authorize staff to file for a permanent injunction and other equitable relief in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington was 3-0.
PG has posted about this matter previously. When this complaint was originally filed, the public consensus from independent antitrust attorneys was that the FTC was unlikely to succeed.
From The United States Department of Justice, Antitrust Division:
The Antitrust Laws
The Antitrust Division enforces federal antitrust and competition laws. These laws prohibit anticompetitive conduct and mergers that deprive American consumers, taxpayers, and workers of the benefits of competition.
The Sherman Antitrust Act
This law prohibits conspiracies that unreasonably restrain trade. Under the Sherman Act, agreements among competitors to fix prices or wages, rig bids, or allocate customers, workers, or markets, are criminal violations. Other agreements such as exclusive contracts that reduce competition may also violate the Sherman Antitrust Act and are subject to civil enforcement.
The Sherman Act also makes it illegal to monopolize, conspire to monopolize, or attempt to monopolize a market for products or services. An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm has market power for a product or service, and it has obtained or maintained that market power, not through competition on the merits, but because the firm has suppressed competition by engaging in anticompetitive conduct. Monopolization offenses may be prosecuted criminally or civilly.
The Clayton Act
This law aims to promote fair competition and prevent unfair business practices that could harm consumers. It prohibits certain actions that might restrict competition, like tying agreements, predatory pricing, and mergers that could lessen competition.
An illegal merger occurs when two companies join together in a way that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in a relevant market. This reduction in competition can harm consumers by potentially leading to higher prices or fewer choices for products or services. It can also harm workers by potentially leading to lower wages or fewer choices for employment.
An illegal tying agreement happens when a company forces customers to buy one product (the tying product) in order to purchase another product (the tied product). The two products are bundled or “tied” together, which gives the tying agreement its name. This practice restricts a customer’s choice and can limit competition. In a fair marketplace, business compete on price and on how good their products are. If an illegal tying arrangement is in place, a seller can use its strong market power on a popular product to force customers to buy a second, lesser product.
Predatory pricing is when a company sets its prices very low, often below cost, to drive competitors out of business. Once the competition is gone, the company can raise prices because it has less or no competition left. This practice harms competition and, in the long run, it can result in higher prices for consumers and lower wages for workers.
The Clayton Act also prohibits an individual from sitting on boards of competing corporations. This illegal practice can lessen the competitive vigor that would otherwise exist between truly independent rivals. By sharing a board member, the two companies might synchronize pricing changes, labor negotiations, and more.
The goal of the Clayton Act is to maintain a fair marketplace where various companies can compete, giving consumers more options and better prices, and giving workers a fair market for their labor. This law also protects individuals and small business from being unfairly treated by larger companies. Overall, it works to keep markets competitive and ensure that businesses play fair.
For nearly a decade, workers in a warehouse in Seattle’s Denny Triangle neighborhood have shipped boxes of shoes, beach chairs, Marvel T-shirts and other items to online retail customers across the U.S.
The operation, called Big River Services International, sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazon AMZN -1.11%decrease; red down pointing triangle.com under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss. “We are entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers and creators,” Big River says on its website. “We have a passion for customers and aren’t afraid to experiment.”
What the website doesn’t say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant’s competitors.
Born out of a 2015 plan code named “Project Curiosity,” Big River uses its sales across multiple countries to obtain pricing data, logistics information and other details about rival e-commerce marketplaces, logistics operations and payments services, according to people familiar with Big River and corporate documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The team then shared that information with Amazon to incorporate into decisions about its own business.
Amazon is the largest U.S. e-commerce company, accounting for nearly 40% of all online goods sold in the U.S., according to research firm eMarketer. It often says that it pays little attention to competitors, instead focusing all its energies on being “customer obsessed.” It is currently battling antitrust charges brought last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 17 states, which accused Amazon of a range of behavior that harms sellers on its marketplace, including using anti-discounting measures that punished merchants for offering lower prices elsewhere.
The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon’s elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals’ seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon.
They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally—in emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon email addresses—and took other extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who worked on the project weren’t even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with most teams at Amazon.
An internal crisis-management paper gave advice on what to say if discovered. The response to questions should be: “We make a variety of products available to customers through a number of subsidiaries and online channels.” In conversations, in the event of a leak they were told to focus on the group being formed to improve the seller experience on Amazon, and say that such research is normal, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Senior Amazon executives, including Doug Herrington, Amazon’s current CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, were regularly briefed on the Project Curiosity team’s work, according to one of the people familiar with Big River.
Some aspects were more Maxwell Smart than James Bond. The Big River website contains a glaring typo, and a so-called Japanese streetwear brand that the team concocted lists a Seattle address on its contacts page. Big River’s team members list Amazon as their employer on LinkedIn—potentially blowing their cover.
The LinkedIn page of Max Kless, a former eBay executive who led Big River in Germany before moving to a senior role on the team in the U.S., says that he “developed and led a research subsidiary for Amazon in Germany that prototyped and researched new experiences for Small Business sellers and developers.” Kless didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“Benchmarking is a common practice in business. Amazon, like many other retailers, has benchmarking and customer experience teams that conduct research into the experiences of customers, including our selling partners, in order to improve their experiences working with us,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. Amazon believes its rivals also carry out research on Amazon by selling on Amazon’s site, she said.
. . . .
Virtually all companies research their competitors, reading public documents for information, buying their products or shopping their stores. Lawyers say there is a difference between such corporate intelligence gathering of publicly available information, and what is known as corporate or industrial espionage.
Companies can get into legal trouble for actions such as hiring a rival’s former employee to obtain trade secrets or hacking a rival. Misrepresenting themselves to competitors to gain proprietary information can lead to suits on trade secret misappropriation, said Elizabeth Rowe, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who specializes in trade secret law.
Amazon for years has had what it calls a benchmarking team that sizes up rivals to ensure the best experience for people who shop on its site. The team has placed orders on websites such as Walmart.com for delivery around the U.S. to test things such as how long it takes competitors to ship. Other companies also have teams to compare themselves to rivals.
In late 2015, Amazon’s benchmarking team proposed a different sort of project. The business of hosting other merchants to sell their products on Amazon’s platform was becoming increasingly important. So-called third-party sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace, which the company started in 2000, surpassed half of the company’s total merchandise sales that year, and rival retailers had started similar marketplaces.
Amazon wanted to better understand and improve the experiences of those outside vendors. The team decided to create some brands to sell on Amazon to see what the pain points were for sellers—and to sell items on rival marketplaces to compare the experiences, according to the people familiar with the effort.
The benchmarking team pitched “Project Curiosity” to senior management and got the approval to buy inventory, use a shell company and find warehouses in the U.S., Germany, England, India and Japan so they could pose as sellers on competitors’ websites.
The benchmarking team reported into the chief financial officer, Brian Olsavsky, for years, but this year changed to report to Herrington, the consumer chief. Olsavsky and Herrington didn’t respond to requests for comment made through Amazon.
Once launched, the focus of the project quickly started shifting to gathering information about rivals, the people said.
In the U.S., the Big River team started by scooping up merchandise from Seattle retailers holding “going out of business” sales. Some of its first products were Saucony sneakers from a local retailer that was closing. The company registered for a licensing agreement with the popular Marvel superhero franchise to sell Marvel-branded items, and bought items including Tommy Bahama beach chairs from Costco to resell.
In the pitch, Project Curiosity leaders identified online marketplaces that they wanted to sell on, including Best Buy and Overstock.
The top goal was Walmart, Amazon’s biggest rival. But Walmart had a high bar for sellers on its marketplace, accepting only vendors who sold large volumes on other marketplaces first. Big River initially couldn’t qualify to be a Walmart Marketplace seller, but it did sell on Jet.com, which Walmart acquired in 2016 and later closed in 2020. And in India, it sold on Flipkart, the giant Indian e-commerce marketplace in which Walmart owned a majority stake.
In order to meet Walmart’s revenue threshold, the Big River team focused on pumping products through Amazon.com to bolster its overall revenue, some of the people said. Big River’s goal wasn’t to do massive amounts of volume on the competing platforms, but to simply get on them and gain access, they said.
The Amazon spokeswoman said that in 2023, 69% of Big River revenue worldwide was on Amazon.com.
In 2019, Big River finally got onto Walmart’s website. This month, Big River had around 15 products listed on Walmart.com under the seller name Atlantic Lot, including Tommy Bahama beach chairs, cooking woks and industrial-size food containers. In 2023, Big River had more than $125,000 in revenue on Walmart.com alone, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Walmart wasn’t aware that Amazon ran the seller accounts on the Walmart and Flipkart sites before the Journal told it, according to a person familiar with the matter.
. . . .
Atlantic Lot is listed as a “Pro Seller”—a distinction Walmart says is for “top-performing Walmart Marketplace sellers.” Listings show that Walmart Logistics, another Amazon rival, handles storage and shipping for it.
Amazon at the time also was building up its logistics business to store and ship items for sellers for a fee to compete with FedEx and United Parcel Service. The business has boomed over the past decade. Amazon’s total revenue from what it calls third-party seller services has grown nearly twelvefold since 2014 to $140 billion last year, accounting for nearly a quarter of Amazon’s total.
To get information about rival logistics services, the Big River team stored inventory with companies including FedEx. Other targets, according to an internal document, included UPS, DHL, Deliverr and German logistics company Linther Spedition.
FedEx in 2017 launched FedEx Fulfillment, a competitor to Fulfillment by Amazon, for offering logistics to sellers. Big River was accepted into the FedEx Fulfillment program as an early customer, and the team received early details about pricing, rate cards and other terms as a result of the partnership, according to the people. FedEx had several phone calls and email exchanges with Big River team members who represented themselves as Big River employees and didn’t disclose their employment at Amazon, according to some of the people.
The team presented its findings from being part of the FedEx program to senior Amazon logistics leaders. They used the code name “OnTime Inc.” to refer to FedEx. Amazon made changes to its Fulfillment by Amazon service to make it more competitive with FedEx’s new product as a result of the information it learned from the partnership, according to one of the people.
For such meetings, the team avoided distributing presentations electronically to Amazon executives. Instead, they printed the presentations and numbered the documents. Executives could look at the reports and take notes, but at the end of the meeting, team members collected the papers to ensure that they had all copies, the people said.
. . . .
Amazon took other measures to hide the connection with Big River. Staffers were instructed to use their second, non-Amazon email address—which had the domain @bigriverintl.com—when emailing other platforms to avoid outing their Amazon employment.
“We were encouraged to work off the grid as much as possible,” said one of the former team members, about using the outside email.
Amazon’s internal lawyers reminded Big River team members not to disclose their connection to Amazon in their conversations with FedEx, according to an email viewed by the Journal.
Staffers, who worked in private areas of Amazon offices, were told not to discuss their work with other Amazon employees who weren’t cleared to know about the project. In the early days, some Big River team members had to take time away from their Amazon desk jobs to go to the warehouses to fulfill orders and pack them in boxes to send out.
When gaining access to rival seller systems, Big River members were instructed to take screenshots of competitor pricing, ad systems, cataloging and listing pages, according to the people. They weren’t allowed to email the screenshots to Amazon employees, but instead showed the screenshots to the Amazon employees on the Marketplace side of the business in person so they didn’t create a paper trail, some of the people said. Amazon then made changes it believed improved the seller experience on its site based on the information.
The Amazon spokeswoman said the team was secretive so that it wouldn’t get any special treatment as a seller on Amazon.com.
Still, there were telltales. Registration documents filed with the Washington Office of the Secretary of State for Big River Services, while not mentioning Amazon, list a management team made up of current and former Amazon employees, including lawyers. The management team lists its address as 410 Terry Ave. in Seattle, which is Amazon’s headquarters.
. . . .
Some team members were uncomfortable with the work they were doing, according to some of the people.
Among the anxiety-inducing activities was representing themselves as employees of Big River in person while attending conferences thrown by rivals. For instance, team members attended eBay’s Las Vegas conference for sellers, according to some of the people. EBay describes the event as a way for sellers to meet with eBay management and learn of planned big changes coming for sellers and “exclusive information.”
Benchmarking-team leadership ordered up what Amazon calls a PRFAQ that would outline what to do if competitors or the press discovered the project. In the event of a leak, leadership was to say that the group was formed to improve the seller experience on Amazon.com, and that Amazon pays attention to competition but doesn’t “obsess” over it. They were also told to act like this was normal business behavior in the event of a leak, according to one of the people.
In 2017, Amazon formally changed the name of Project Curiosity to the Small Business Insights team to make it sound less cryptic, some of the people said.
The Big River team invented its own brands to sell on the competing sites, including “Torque Challenge” and “Crimson Knot.”
Teams often changed the brand name once they sold out its inventory, creating new brands when they received new products.
In India, Amazon gained access to e-commerce giant Flipkart in March 2018 with the Crimson Knot brand, around the time rumors of a Walmart acquisition swirled in local media. Walmart bought a majority stake in Flipkart in May of that year.
Crimson Knot makes wooden home goods, with its website’s “About Us” page saying: “Based in a small wood workshop in Bangalore, our dedicated team of 8 skilled craftsmen work consistently to handcraft each piece from scratch, transforming them into stunning showstoppers.”
PG found the WSJ article to be very interesting. It’s been a very long time since his law school antitrust class, but he suspects that Amazon’s lawyers have set some bright-line boundaries on what Amazon does while watching its competitors.
Any business entity as large as Amazon will attract attention from competitors, and competitors can talk to antitrust enforcers. These people—the Attorney General and the Chair of the Federal Trade Commission—are presidential appointees and, hence, have political connections and sensibilities.
That said, paying attention to competing businesses and what they’re doing is as old as business itself.
If two lemonade stands are set up on the same block, one advertising a glass of lemonade for 25 cents and the other offering a glass of lemonade for 50 cents, how long will it be before one of the stands adjusts its price? Is there anything evil if the operator of one stand walks over to see the offering price of the other stand?
In 1909, the year before his death, Leo Tolstoy was visited at his estate, Yasnaya Polyana, by the Count S. Stackelberg. Stackelberg was on a mission — persuade Tolstoy to write an article on Abraham Lincoln for The New York World. Tolstoy declined the commission but told Stackelberg a story:
Once while traveling in the Caucasus I happened to be the guest of a Caucasian chief of the Circassians, who, living far away from civilized life in the mountains, had but a fragmentary and childish comprehension of the world and its history. The fingers of civilization had never reached him nor his tribe, and all life beyond his native valleys was a dark mystery. Being a Mussulman he was naturally opposed to all ideas of progress and education. I was received with the usual Oriental hospitality and after our meal was asked by my host to tell him something of my life. Yielding to his request I began to tell him of my profession, of the development of our industries and inventions and of the schools. He listened to everything with indifference, but when I began to tell about the great statesmen and the great generals of the world he seemed at once to become very much interested.
The conversation continued. Descriptions of the Czar. Napoleon. Frederick the Great. But the Circassian chief was clearly unhappy. Something was missing.
‘…You have not told us a syllable about the greatest general and greatest ruler of the world. We want to know something about him. He was a hero. He spoke with a voice of thunder; he laughed like the sunrise and his deeds were strong as the rock and as sweet as the fragrance of roses. The angels appeared to his mother and predicted that the son whom she would conceive would become the greatest the stars had ever seen. He was so great that he even forgave the crimes of his greatest enemies and shook brotherly hands with those who had plotted against his life. His name was Lincoln and the country in which he lived is called America, which is so far away that if a youth should journey to reach it he would be an old man when he arrived. Tell us of that man.’
Remember who is telling the story. Not some run-of-the-mill humdrum storyteller, but the supreme master of Russian literature. Indeed, the Circassian chief as quoted by Stackelberg sounds more like Tolstoy than how I imagine a Circassian chief might sound. Regardless. Tolstoy told him everything he knew about Lincoln. But the Circassian chief was not satisfied. He wanted something more. The story tells us that mere words are often not enough. He needed a photograph.
I can hardly forget the great enthusiasm which they expressed in their wild thanks and desire to get a picture of the great American hero. I said that I probably could secure one from my friend in the nearest town, and this seemed to give them great pleasure…
One of the riders agreed to accompany me to the town and get the promised picture, which I was now bound to secure at any price. I was successful in getting a large photograph from my friend, and I handed it to the man with my greetings to his associates. It was interesting to witness the gravity of his face and the trembling of his hands when he received my present. He gazed for several minutes silently, like one in a reverent prayer; his eyes filled with tears. He was deeply touched and I asked him why he became so sad. After pondering my question for a few moments he replied: ‘I am sad because I feel sorry that he had to die by the hand of a villain. Don’t you find, judging from his picture, that his eyes are full of tears and that his lips are sad with a secret sorrow?’
This is a question that Perplexity suggestedfor itselfto answer: What is the meaning behind Shakespeare’s Sonnet 136?
Perplexity’s Answer to its own question:
Sonnet 136 by William Shakespeare, often referred to by its first line, “If thy soul check thee that I come so near,” is a complex and layered poem that uses wordplay and puns to convey the speaker’s desire and emotional plea to the Dark Lady, a character in Shakespeare’s sonnets known for her captivating but elusive affection 125.
Themes and Interpretation
Wordplay on “Will”
The sonnet is notable for its clever use of the word “Will,” which serves multiple purposes within the text. It refers to the poet’s own name, William, to the concept of will or desire, and potentially to a sexual pun, common in the Elizabethan era, where “will” could also mean sexual desire or even the genitals themselves. 247. This punning serves to create a playful yet earnest tone as the speaker attempts to persuade the Dark Lady to reciprocate his love or at least acknowledge his presence among her many admirers.
Desire and Acceptance
The speaker expresses a deep yearning to be accepted by the Dark Lady, not just as another lover but on a more personal and intimate level. He implores her to accept his “will” in both senses—his identity (name) and his desire. The repeated entreaties to “make but my name thy love, and love that still” suggest a plea for enduring affection based solely on his identity, an identity that he feels should be sufficient for her to return his love. 125.
Inclusion Among Many
There is also a theme of inclusion and enumeration in the sonnet. The speaker acknowledges that the Dark Lady has many lovers and uses the logic that adding one more (himself) would not be significant in terms of number but would be meaningful to him. This is encapsulated in the lines “Among a number one is reckoned none” and “Then in the number let me pass untold,” where he suggests that his inclusion would not disrupt her life but would immensely satisfy his desire to be close to her. 125.
Literary Devices and Structure
Shakespeare employs several literary devices in Sonnet 136, including alliteration, metaphor, and rhetorical questions, enhancing the lyrical quality of the poem and emphasizing the emotional depth of the speaker’s plea. The sonnet follows the traditional Shakespearean form with three quatrains and a concluding couplet, using the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG. The meter is predominantly iambic pentameter, which lends a rhythmic, persuasive quality to the speaker’s arguments 24.
Conclusion
Overall, Sonnet 136 is a poignant reflection on unrequited love, identity, and the desire for acceptance. Shakespeare uses linguistic cleverness and structural nuances to craft a sonnet that is both intellectually engaging and emotionally resonant, revealing the complexities of human desire and interaction
PG’s Comment
Of the various experiments he tried with Perplexity, this one was the most impressive because Perplexity suggested the prompt itself.
Plus, as with other experiments, the AI appears to be quite careful to provide links to the web resources it used for its analysis and response. No plagiarism for this AI.
Prompt: Write a Shakespearian Sonnet about a 16-year-old boy named Tom who is very anxious about asking a girl named Susan to a school play, Much Ado About Nothing
Perplexity’s Response:
When youthful Tom beholds fair Susan’s grace, His heart doth race within its bony cage. Forsooth, he longs to ask her to a place Where players tread the boards, the Bard their stage.
In iambic beats, his pulse doth pound, A sonnet’s rhythm in his chest doth play. The words to woo, in anxious loops abound, Yet fear doth grip his tongue, leads thoughts astray.
“Much Ado About Nothing” is the play, A tale of love that’s tangled in its weave. Tom wishes Susan by his side to stay, If courage he can muster up to heave.
To conquer dread, the question he must pop, Ere curtain’s rise and lights do finally drop.
Perplexity’s Explanation of What It Did:
In this Shakespearean sonnet, we follow the traditional structure of three quatrains followed by a couplet, with a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The poem captures the anxiety of a 16-year-old boy named Tom, who is nervous about asking a girl named Susan to join him at a school play, “Much Ado About Nothing.” The sonnet reflects Tom’s internal struggle and his desire to overcome his fear to express his feelings to Susan.
Prompt: Compare and contrast the factors that have resulted in bestselling authors J.K. Rowling and Stephen King’s success.
Note – The links in the response were inserted by Perplexity.
Response:
Writing Style
J.K. Rowling: Rowling’s writing style is often described as clear, accessible, and richly detailed, which has contributed significantly to her broad appeal. Her narrative style in the Harry Potter series combines whimsical fantasy with complex themes, making her books beloved by both children and adults. The progression in the complexity of language and themes throughout the Harry Potter series reflects her ability to grow with her audience.
Stephen King: King’s style is markedly different, known for its directness and vivid, often graphic, descriptions. His storytelling is characterized by an ability to transform the ordinary into the terrifying, using the horror and supernatural genres to explore the depths of human psychology and societal issues. King’s narrative style is often conversational, creating a sense of closeness between the reader and the characters35.
Genre
J.K. Rowling: Rowling is synonymous with the fantasy genre, particularly through her Harry Potter series. However, she has also ventured into adult fiction and crime writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, where she maintains her narrative depth with a more mature and gritty approach26.
Stephen King: King is a prolific figure in horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, and fantasy. His works often blend elements of the genres to explore the darker side of human nature. King’s ability to cross genre boundaries while maintaining a strong core identity as a horror writer demonstrates his versatility5.
Marketing
J.K. Rowling: The marketing of the Harry Potter series was a phenomenon, with midnight book releases and extensive merchandising. Rowling’s books also benefited from strong word-of-mouth and a growing online fan community. The later books were marketed with significant secrecy and hype, adding to their allure8.
Stephen King: King’s marketing has often played on his established reputation as the “Master of Horror.” His books frequently leverage his name recognition and the promise of high suspense and horror. King’s approach to marketing also includes his active social media presence and engagement with his fan base39.
Personal Background
J.K. Rowling: Rowling’s personal “rags to riches” story, in which she wrote the initial Harry Potter book as a struggling single mother, has become a part of her public persona and has endeared her to many fans. Her background and personal struggles have been well-publicized, contributing to her relatability and the rooting interest of her audience617.
Stephen King: King’s background includes a stint as a high school English teacher and a struggle with addiction, which he has openly discussed. These experiences have influenced his writing and are reflected in the depth and authenticity of his characterizations. King’s openness about his personal challenges has helped form a connection with his readers519.
Conclusion
Both J.K. Rowling and Stephen King have mastered the art of storytelling, albeit in very different ways. Rowling’s enchanting style and expansion from young adult fantasy to broader genres contrasts with King’s straightforward, often visceral horror narratives. Their marketing strategies reflect their unique appeals: Rowling’s shrouded in secrecy and magic, King’s straightforward and prolific. Their personal stories provide depth to their public personas, inviting readers not just into their books but also into the journeys that shaped them. Both authors have transformed their personal experiences, distinctive styles, and smart marketing into bestselling phenomena, albeit serving different tastes within the vast landscape of fiction.
Follow-on Prompt: what are the similarities and differences in the writing styles of j.k. rowling and stephen king
Response:
Similarities in Writing Styles
1. Rich Descriptions: Both J.K. Rowling and Stephen King are known for their rich and vivid descriptions. Rowling’s descriptions often bring the magical world to life with sensory details, as seen in her portrayal of characters and settings in the Harry Potter series2.
Similarly, King’s descriptions are vivid, particularly in creating atmospheric settings and building tension in his horror and supernatural stories3.
2. Character Development: Rowling and King both excel in character development. Rowling’s characters are diverse and evolve over the course of the Harry Potter series, with complex themes of friendship, family, and morality2.
King’s characters are also well-developed, often with intricate backstories that contribute to the psychological depth of his narratives3.
3. Engagement with Readers: Both authors have a strong ability to engage readers. Rowling’s narrative style is accessible and has a broad appeal, while King’s conversational tone creates a sense of closeness between the reader and the characters23.
Differences in Writing Styles
1. Genre and Themes: Rowling is primarily associated with the fantasy genre, particularly with the Harry Potter series, and her themes often revolve around magic, belonging, and humanity
King, on the other hand, is a master of horror, suspense, and the supernatural, exploring darker aspects of human nature and societal issues3.
2. Narrative Approach: Rowling is known for her use of a basic plot outline, allowing for some spontaneity in her writing process, which is evident in the structured yet evolving plot of the Harry Potter series1.
King is identified as a “pantser,” preferring to develop his stories organically without a fixed outline, which can be seen in the spontaneous development of his narratives1.
3. Writing Process: Rowling’s meticulous planning and outlining contrast with King’s more improvisational style.
King has been quoted as saying, “Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters’ theses,” indicating his preference for a more free-form approach to storytelling.
4. Literary Devices: Rowling’s writing includes the use of rhetorical devices, ethos, logos, and participles with connectives and active verbs, which contribute to her unique syntax and diction2.
King’s style, while also descriptive, often includes a more direct and sometimes graphic use of language, with a focus on creating a strong atmosphere through metaphors and vivid imagery3.
5. Influence and Inspiration: Rowling’s influences include a range of authors and genres, from the Arthurian legend to European folklore and authors like Roald Dahl and Jane Austen, which is reflected in her allusions and character names46.
King’s writing, while unique, has been compared to his pseudonym Richard Bachman, and his use of brand names and pop culture references is a noted feature of his style3.In summary, while J.K. Rowling and Stephen King share some similarities in their rich descriptive abilities and strong character development, they differ significantly in their chosen genres, narrative approaches, writing processes, use of literary devices, and sources of inspiration.
Prompt: How do J.K. Rowling and Stephen King differ in their approach to writing
Response:
J.K. Rowling and Stephen King, while both highly successful authors, have distinct approaches to writing that reflect their unique creative processes and methodologies.
J.K. Rowling’s Approach:
Planning and Outlining:
Rowling emphasizes the importance of planning in her writing process. She is known for her detailed planning and outlining before beginning to write her novels. For instance, she spent five years planning the Harry Potter series, plotting out the entire story arc and character development across all seven books before publishing the first12.
She also uses intricate, color-coded charts to organize her thoughts and plot details, ensuring a coherent and well-structured narrative13.
Writing in Spare Moments:
Rowling advises aspiring writers to write whenever they can find the time, highlighting the importance of utilizing spare moments to progress one’s writing. This approach was crucial during the early stages of her career when she was a single mother writing in cafes910.
Rewriting and Persistence:
Rowling places a strong emphasis on rewriting and the necessity of resilience in the face of rejection and criticism. She acknowledges the importance of informed feedback and the need for humility and resilience as part of a writer’s life14.
Stephen King’s Approach:
Organic Development:
King’s writing process is more organic and less reliant on detailed planning. He often starts with a situation and develops the story by following the characters and situations to see where they lead, without a fixed outline. This approach allows for a spontaneous development of the narrative3.
Daily Writing Routine:
King is known for his disciplined daily writing routine, emphasizing the importance of writing every day to maintain momentum and progress in one’s work. He believes in the power of routine to foster creativity and productivity1.
Revision and Rest:
After completing a draft, King advocates for setting it aside for a period before returning to it for revision. This break allows for a fresh perspective on the work, making it easier to identify areas for improvement15.
Avoidance of Adverbs and Passive Voice:
King advises writers to avoid adverbs and passive voice, promoting a writing style that is direct and active. He believes that strong writing should stand on its own without relying on adverbs for emphasis511.
Conclusion:
While both authors share a commitment to their craft and a disciplined approach to writing, their methodologies diverge significantly. Rowling’s methodical planning and detailed outlining contrast with King’s more spontaneous and organic development of stories. Rowling utilizes structured time management, writing in whatever time she has available, and emphasizes the importance of rewriting and resilience. King, on the other hand, follows a daily writing routine, advises a break between writing and revising, and focuses on the technical aspects of writing, such as avoiding adverbs and passive voice. These differences highlight the diverse approaches to writing that can lead to successful and compelling storytelling.
I was balancing a plate of honeydew in the green room of a book festival when I walked by a white man bemoaning the state of the publishing industry. The man wore a suit, and he spoke to a white woman; both of them looked to be in their 40s. As the man speared a clump of melon, he explained his frustration that editors kept buying memoirs. At this point, as a memoir-y writer, I had no choice but to sit down at the nearest table. To hear something like this, amidst casual eavesdropping, was like finding $20 on the sidewalk. I sipped my coffee, took out my phone, and pretended to gaze at the screen.
Why are memoirs still being published, the man asked. It was beyond him. It fed a nonsense cycle. Why do people keep reading them? Worse of all: Why are they being written at all? He leaned back, smug, as if he had just landed a well-placed punch against Big Memoir. The woman nodded politely, burrowing into her yogurt with a silver spoon. People are publishing them too young, continued the man. They are publishing too many. He paused, throat puffed with conviction: There’s no reason for that, unless you’re an admiral or something. He stabbed a strawberry. Eyes on the city skyline, he shook his head.
At that moment, the open tab on my phone was the Rachel Cusk profile of Nobel-prize winning memoirist Annie Ernaux. “Her art bears no relation to a privileging of personal experience,” writes Cusk. “What Annie Ernaux understood was that as a female child of the regional laboring classes, her self was her only authentic possession in this world, and thus the sole basis for the legitimacy of her art.” I was thinking about how the life we live determines our perceived authority around what we can write about, or rather, what we are allowed to be experts on, which is to say published experts on.
When I heard his line about the admiral, I stopped looking at my phone. I became very fixated on carving the melon from the rind. I needed a knife in my palm. I needed to separate that which was sweet from that which would lodge in my throat.
I am not going to tell you who this author was. Not out of any sense of protection, but because I realize I was not meeting him as an individual. I was meeting him as the vessel of a voice that had, until that moment, been only in my head. His was the voice that tripped me when I sat down to type, that hissed at me whenever someone (usually a man) asked “So you’re a journalist?” and I said “Well, not exactly,” then went on to explain, his face pinched into a pitying smile, that my nonfiction reliably included myself, too. When I heard this man at the festival, I became convinced that every ghost who haunted my writing desk would, one day, appear in human form. That they might be friendly in the elevator. That when I dropped my fork, they’d hand me another.
. . . .
The first-person writing that I love refutes—critically—this myth of neutral narrator.
A few months later, I was traveling for the book in a different corner of the United States when, on a morning jog, I came across a historic waterfront sign about “naval stories.” I immediately thought of admirals. And then I thought of my belly.
To think of the belly-button is to think of navel-gazing, which is to think of the charges brought against those of us who write about ourselves, a kind of writing allegedly so myopically focused on the self that it does not see the world beyond it. Ted Kooser defines a poet as someone who stands before a window, controlling the strength of the sun outside, but the metaphor extends to creative nonfiction as well: Your silhouette can fade when you make the world outside brighter, just as your reflection can sharpen when that world darkens. Every time I sit down to write, I find myself in front of this window, fiddling with the lights. Who, or what, do I want the reader to see most clearly?
It is true that a first-person author turns their own narrative presence up or down, but I have come to resent the idea that I must choose between seeing my navel or seeing the world. When I say I am omnivorous, I mean I am hungry to read and write about everything. I do not want to pick between writing about another subject—as my training in academia and journalism taught me—and writing about myself. I look at the world to understand my life even as I mine my experiences to learn about the larger world.
Writing is the act of making one’s thoughts visible to other people. My pencil scrawlings are, very literally, the bridge between my interior and exterior world. Writing is an art form that lends itself, then, to complicating—to detonating—the binaries between self and other; inner thought and outer action.
Let us think literally about the alleged insult of “navel-gazing.” Imagine writing about your belly-button, a puckered lint-specked innie that nobody else, ostensibly, should care about. Then consider how looking at one’s belly button is not only to consider the bridge to one’s mother, but the body’s first interaction with civic infrastructure.
. . . .
Can you see that each navel has a different story? That to tell a navel story is to tell a story of labor, not just of your own mother’s, but of a system around you? Can you see how this story might be as important as a story about the life of a naval admiral?
To imagine that writing about oneself is not also writing about these larger systemic inheritances is utterly wrong. The writer’s job is to make visible the structures which might otherwise be unseen. We live in a world of interconnection, but we exist in a society that often tries to silo us into our factions, our nations, our species, our careers. To make us forget, for example, that the money our government spends on war is money they don’t spend on education. It is the writers’ imperative to illuminate the linkages between us, and to the histories we all carry. Not as a mode of teaching the reader facts, but as a way of helping them see their own body in union with the world.
In 2019 a federal judge named Alan Albright gave a presentation to a group of lawyers. His courthouse in Waco, Texas, where he is the only judge, sits near a sweet shop. The talk was called “Why You Should File Your Next Patent Case Across the Street from the ‘Hey Sugar’”.
The intellectual-property lawyers who heard his pitch were apparently persuaded. Less than two years after being appointed to the bench, he had nearly 20% of the country’s patent cases, according to Lex Machina, a legal-analytics firm. By 2021, he had 23%. Trial teams of white-shoe attorneys from New York and California, representing clients such as Google and Intel, began streaming into Waco, a city of 140,000 people in central Texas.
Bill Wetterman, a real-estate developer and Waco native, spotted a business opportunity. In 2021 he opened up Legal Lawfts, rentable office space—“war rooms”, in the parlance—that come outfitted with security cameras, back-up internet and, by request, gluten-free Oreos.
In Waco Mr Wetterman’s competitors include Connect Litigation, a firm that runs a few war rooms downtown. But Connect focuses its operations about 200 miles north-east. The “patent docket” is a familiar term in Marshall, a faded but quaint town of about 24,000 people near the Louisiana border. Between 2000 and 2020, more than 17% of all patent cases filed in federal court were in the Eastern District of Texas—roughly 13,500. By comparison Delaware, where most big American companies are incorporated, had fewer than 10,000 cases; the Northern District of California, where Big Tech firms are based, had fewer than 5,000.
T. John Ward, Marshall’s federal judge from 1999 to 2011, is responsible for the town’s puzzling popularity. Patent cases are technical. Judges must referee the sharing of sensitive source code, for example: plaintiffs argue it will prove their case; defendants resist, fearing their secrets will leak. They also interpret what a patent’s words actually mean, which can be “outcome determinative”, says Mark Siegmund, a patent litigator in Waco. Cases can also take years to get to trial.
Mr Ward learned that Northern California’s court had implemented local rules to build what lawyers call “certainty”—a predictable process—into the unwieldy cases. He adopted similar ones, tweaking them to prioritise speed. Litigants reached trial in half the time it took in California. Around the same period, “it also happened that there was an explosion of patent-troll litigation,” says Paul Gugliuzza of Temple University, referring to plaintiffs who own bad patents and seek quick and cheap settlements. By the mid-2010s Mr Ward’s successor, Rodney Gilstrap, had about a quarter of the country’s patent cases.
Patentsville, USA
The caseload in Marshall books up the courthouse and boosts businesses downtown. One hotel bought a subscription to pacer, an online database for court records, to keep track of potential clients. In an apparent bid to make locals (read: jurors) like it more, Samsung, a frequent defendant, sponsored an ice rink across from the courthouse. TiVo spent $10,000 on a champion steer at a livestock auction, and named it TiVo.
This sits uneasily with some. Federal judges are meant to be generalists, and courts are not supposed to power their local economies. And the rules “tend to be more plaintiff-friendly”, says Andrew Russell, a patent litigator in Delaware. Defendants often try to transfer their cases elsewhere. But that is partly because the speedy tempo suits plaintiffs, as deep-pocketed defendants can afford to drag out litigation. Early on, verdicts in the Eastern District were lopsided, because the posh defence lawyers were “terrible” at arguing before juries, says Michael Smith, a longtime patent litigator in Marshall. Verdicts in the Eastern District now conform to national averages; in Waco, defendants actually win more, according to Lex Machina.
But the optics in Marshall were sufficiently bad that in 2017 the Supreme Court made it harder, in effect, for plaintiffs to file lawsuits there, by requiring defendants to have “regular and established” business where they are sued. Apple shut down its nearby stores. (Samsung did not and, despite the ice-rink, was hit with a $303m jury verdict in Marshall last year.)
By 2021 Waco’s patent docket—similarly speedy, thanks to local rules—was attracting scrutiny, too. John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, acknowledged senators’ concerns about the “extreme concentration of patent litigation” there. Starting in 2022 Waco patent cases were required to be put into a lottery, so that any of the Western District of Texas’s 12 judges could draw them. In 2023 fewer patent cases were filed overall, and Waco saw a steep drop-off.
PG isn’t going to deluge visitors to TPV with patent, trademark, trade secrets and other types of intellectual property beyond copyright, but the Waco story illustrates how intellectual property laws can be turned into something he doubts the creators of US intended as they have revised and updated IP laws over the years.
For the record, PG’s opinion is that the Supreme Court should have intervened earlier. While federal law and rules permit Federal District judges to hear patent infringement lawsuits, there is a specialized court located in Washington, DC, that would likely do a better job.
At present, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board is part of the US Patent Office.
The PTAB currently only reviews rejections made by examiners in proceedings called ex parte appeals and decides patentability questions for issued patents raised by third parties in proceedings called AIA trials.
While these duties are different from a patent infringement lawsuit, the judges in the PTAB are experts on patent law. To the best of PG’s knowledge, each of the judges are drawn from experienced patent attorneys. In order to become a patent attorney, an individual must have gained at least an undergraduate degree in a technology subject.
A patent attorney must have received a Bachelor’s Master’s or PhD in a Recognized Technical Subject. Examples of Recognized Technical Subjects include Aeronautical Engineering, Engineering Physics, Electrical Engineering, Metallurgical Engineering, Petroleum Engineering, Marine Engineering, etc., etc
After obtaining a degree in a recognized technical subject, a patent attorney must then go to law school, graduate, then take and pass a difficult patent bar examination. Year in and year out, only about 50% pass the patent bar exam.
A federal district court judge is nominated by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate. How does the President decide who would be a good district judge?
Invariably, if there is an opening for a new District Judge in Wyoming, Wyoming’s Senators and the state’s single Congressional representative will recommend a Wyoming state judge or a Wyoming attorney to the President. If nothing nasty shows up on a background check, the President will be quite likely to nominate the person suggested by the Senators and Representative.
The new District Judge may have spent her/his legal career exclusively in Bankruptcy Courts, divorce litigation or medical malpractice lawsuits.
Does the new District Judge know anything at all about patent law? Nope.
It is possible the first patent case the District Judge hears will involve a patent infringement claim regarding a sub-system in a nuclear-powered electrical generation plant. Bankruptcy law will not be much help for the Judge.
As artificial intelligence (AI) moves beyond performing simple tasks to creating original content, it blurs the lines between humans and machines. In doing so, it challenges a core tenet of many traditional intellectual property (IP) frameworks: only works created by humans are protected by copyright laws.
The development and training of AI models also raise another important copyright issue: whether the use of third-party content in that exercise might infringe on the copyright of that content.
Emerging use cases around generative AI are disrupting traditional views of creativity, authorship and ownership and pushing the boundaries of copyright law. As the world catches up with innovation, the resulting legal ambiguity impacts all sides of the AI equation – developers, content creators and copyright owners.
Training and copyright infringement
To create content, generative AI learns from processing vast amounts of information. This training process can involve using copyright-protected content, raising a critical question: does training generative AI models constitute copyright infringement, exposing developers to related claims?
If so, is new legislation needed to address this issue in a manner that does not unreasonably impede innovation but still respects the rights of creators?
These questions have led some jurisdictions to consider amendments to existing text and data mining exemptions and/or fair use/fair dealing exceptions to cover the training of generative AI. Such exemptions permit certain activities that would otherwise constitute copyright infringement.
Other jurisdictions are still awaiting guidance, creating a drastically uneven regulatory landscape that will continue for some time. But, no matter where they stand, legislators need to consider this issue to incentivise innovation while protecting content creators’ rights.
Looking past the legal uncertainty at traditional means of creativity, humans constantly learn as we receive and process information. Typically, things we create are inextricably linked to what we have learned from others and our experiences. One could argue that AI is no different in that it learns from the underlying datasets to produce something new.
Copyright – ownership of content
Copyright law is a key means by which innovation and creation are rewarded – and thus enabled – raising the stakes for courts and intellectual property authorities to define copyright ownership in the context of generative AI.
Depending on where you are in the world, the definition of copyright varies, a significant legal consideration in its own right. But virtually everywhere, copyright requires meaningful human contribution.
Generative AI, which often involves little human input, shatters the mould of this traditional framework. It calls into question whether AI-generated content can be protected by copyright in the first place and, if so, then who owns this copyright?
Is it the developer of the AI model who arguably enabled the ‘creative’ process? Is it the owner of the AI model? Or is the person who considered and input the prompts that allowed the AI tool to generate the content? Of course, this depends on whether there was sufficient human contribution to justify copyright protection in the first place.
Currently, most generative AI tools provide that users own the content they generate in their terms of use. However, if the content is not copyright-protected in the first place, then the terms of use can’t change that position. There is less clarity around who is responsible if AI-generated content infringes someone else’s copyright in a protected work.
To answer these questions requires courts and intellectual property authorities to challenge the scope of traditional copyright law in relation to generative AI, which could lead to changes to existing legislation covering ownership of computer-generated content.
Eventually, it is possible that copyright law will need to be further reimagined and redefined to account for the possibility of recognizing a machine as its own entity with independent authority and the ability to own and protect content, though this does not appear to be on the horizon in the short term. In this more progressive scenario, it is unclear where liability would rest for negative consequences (including copyright infringement) caused by generative AI outputs.
To the best of PG’s knowledge, The World Economic is a non-profit NGO based in Switzerland that sponsors a variety of conferences and programs to make the world a better place. Its most high-profile program is a conference held annually in Davos, Switzerland.
Roughly 3,000 of the most powerful and wealthy leaders globally use over 1500 private jets plus a great many larger government jets to arrive and depart. Global warming has a regular place on each conference’s agenda.
Staff at technology company Meta discussed buying publishing house Simon & Schuster last year in order to procure books to train the company’s artificial intelligence tools, it has been reported.
According to recordings of internal meetings shared with the New York Times, managers, lawyers and engineers at Meta met on a near-daily basis between March and April 2023 to discuss how it could get hold of more data to train AI models. From the recordings, which were shared by an employee of the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company that owns Facebook and Instagram, the New York Times found that staff had discussed buying Simon & Schuster and some had debated paying $10 per book for the licensing rights to new titles.
Simon & Schuster is one of the English-speaking world’s major book publishing houses and is part of what is referred to as the “Big Five”, along with Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Macmillan. Simon & Schuster’s authors include Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and Bob Woodward.
In March 2020, Paramount Global, the parent company of Simon & Schuster, announced its intention to sell the publisher. After a much-criticised planned merger with Penguin Random House was blocked by US courts, Simon & Schuster was eventually sold to private equity firm KKR in August 2023.
According to the recordings, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative AI, told executives that the company had used almost every book, poem and essay written in English available on the internet to train models, so was looking for new sources of training material.
Employees said they had used these text sources without permission and talked about using more, even if that would result in lawsuits. When a lawyer flagged “ethical” concerns about using intellectual property, they were met with silence.
. . . .
Maria A Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, does not believe that Simon & Schuster would have agreed to such a sale. “The fact that Meta sought to purchase one of the most important publishing houses in American history in order to ingest its venerable catalogue for AI profits is puzzling even for Big Tech,” she said. “Did Meta plan to trample the primary mission of Simon & Schuster, and its contractual partnerships with authors, by sheer power?”
As the OP makes clear, Simon & Schuster is anything but an independent company. America’s third largest trade publisher was owned by Paramount Global, which sold it to KKR in 2023 for $1.62 billion. Meta’s market value at the end of 2023 was almost $500 billion. Its annual revenues for the year were almost $135 billion, and its profit margin was 28.98% for the year.
Purchasing S&S to provide content for Meta’s AI would probably have been a smart move because S&S’s value as a publisher was far less than its value as one of many content providers to prime Meta’s AI program.
As PG has opined on previous occasions, he questions the claims of more than a few traditional publishers that using their books to train an AI system somehow violates the copyrights of the authors they publish. In part this is because PG’s understanding that creating an AI does not create copies of the original work. Regardless of the query to an AI program, it won’t produce a copy of any book or any other document to the person making the query.
PG is happy to receive information—likely originating with an experienced copyright attorney or long-time law school professor—that indicates his opinion regarding no copyright infringement in the creation of an AI is incorrect.
Spotify has revealed data showing that 25% of Spotify Premium users are engaging with its audiobooks offering. The Swedish tech giant said the data indicates that “Spotify is driving a meaningful incremental revenue stream for the publishing community”.
“Without Spotify, royalties for independent authors would have increased to 23% from the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024, but with Spotify’s addition of audiobooks in Premium, independent authors have seen a 95% jump in their royalties,” the company added.
Released on Wednesday 17th April, the data also suggests a particular interest in Spotify’s audiobooks offering among users aged 18 to 34, who make up 57% of listeners. In the US, new audiobook listeners have contributed over 2.6 hours overall consumption per user in the first 14 days of starting a book.
Additionally, Spotify has more than doubled top-up purchase volume (through which users buy more audiobook hours) quarter over quarter since launch.
We receive a large number of enquiries and these often highlight a number of common misconceptions and misunderstandings about copyright law. The following attempts to dispel the ‘top 10’ copyright myths.
1. Copyright can protect my ideas
Copyright applies to a recorded work, it cannot apply to something as intangible as an idea. Within certain fields, (such as inventions) it may be possible to apply for a patent.
Because copyright applies to the actual recorded work – documents, music, artwork, etc., if a competitor used your copyright work, (i.e. copied or adapted your promotional literature or stole content from your website to promote their own product), this would be an infringement and you could certainly take action, but there is little you can do to prevent someone else creating their own work based on a similar idea as long as they are not copying your work to do so.
2. I can copyright a name or title
Copyright laws are actually very restrictive, and do not apply to items such as names and titles that may be duplicated coincidentally, or that may be legitimately used in unrelated instances.
From a copyright perspective, there is no reason why two works cannot have the same title. As long as the content of works themselves are not copied or adapted, no infringement has occurred.
This does NOT mean that there is no protection on the name, as it may be covered by other legislation: If the name was a trademark, or if it could be proved that that use of the title misleads or confuses the public, (this is know as ‘passing off’), then there can be issues.
While copyright will apply from the point a work is created, ‘passing off’ is based on the public perception of what the name implies, (i.e. you have a very clear idea of what you expect to be given if you ask for a ‘Coca-Cola’).
3. I can simply post a copy to myself as proof of copyright
This method (sometimes called ‘poor man’s copyright’), may help in some cases, but it is extremely poor evidence as it is very easy to fake – for example by replacing the actual materials inside at a later date.
The main problem if you send your work to yourself via courier or the postal service (including recorded/tracked and signed for services) or use any other system which requires you to store the work yourself, is that there is no verifiable evidence to say that the contents have not been swapped.
I keep hearing this from people who are finding it hard to access their creativity or justify making time to write.
This seems like a new challenge, partly because of the full-on speed of news stories hurtling at us in the digital age. But it’s not new. I would submit that:
A) the world has always been a mess and
B) creative works are the most powerful tool we have to oppose the black-and-white, them-versus-us, whataboutism lack of subtlety in the news.
The arts change hearts, and changed hearts can change the world.
Your creative work is important.
The world is a mess and nevertheless…we must find time to create.
It’s where we are reminded that people are complex; that we can love and hate a character; where we learn to understand why a person might make dubious choices and still be worthy of love; where we see the real, everyday impact of policy decisions made by politicians…and laugh along with characters who are living and loving and laughing amidst the consequences.
In Neil M. Gunn’s The Silver Darlings we follow the lives of displaced Scottish Highlanders forced, after the Clearances, to go from homesteading to learning to be fishermen. The social message lodges in our heats only because we fall in love with Catrine and Roddy and their communities.
In the 1960s in the US you could argue that music and movies helped end the Vietnam War. (SIng it with me: “War! What is it good for?”)
Musicians, artists, and yes, athletes, refusing to visit South Africa helped overcome apartheid.
I grew up in Thatcher’s Britain, where mainstream entertainment encouraged everyone to aspire to be Laura Ashley-clad yuppies. In reality most of us lived in or near towns dealing with miner’s strikes and teachers’ strikes and 10% unemployment and the decline of manufacturing.
Artists like Billy Bragg and Sinead O’Conner, The Specials, Pink Floyd and U2 made art out of those turbulent times.
We must now turn to the idea of a systems collapse, a systemic failure with both a domino and multiplier effect, from which even such a globalized international, vibrant, intersocietal network as was present during the Late Bronze Age could not recover.
The Bronze Age in the Near East and Aegean region began around 3000 B.C. It peaked in the 1500s B.C. and ended gradually, then suddenly, in the Late Bronze Age collapse of the late 1200s and early 1100s B.C. The Egyptian empire went into terminal decline. The Hittite empire fell, and the Assyrian and Babylonian empires faltered. The Mycenaeans, Minoans and Canaanites disappeared from the record. Mainland Greece’s population halved and its palaces collapsed, along with literacy and even the concept of a supreme ruler. Welcome to the age of ignorance, war and poverty that Hesiod called a “race of iron.”
Modern historians attributed the collapse to the Dorian Greek invaders whom the Egyptians called the Sea Peoples; a horde of them sailed into Egypt in 1177 B.C. These categories now seem to be a retrospective mirage. Various peoples came to the Eastern Mediterranean over a period of centuries, some by land, some in peace, and many driven by drought, but none understood themselves as Sea Peoples or Greeks. The crisis at Egypt’s southern border, the wave of tomb robberies attributed to “foreigners” and the partisan paralysis of Egypt’s administrators were consequences as much as causes of Egypt’s demise.
In his 2014 book, “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed,” Eric H. Cline attributed the Late Bronze Age collapse to a “systemic failure with both a domino and a multiplier effect.” Mr. Cline, a professor of classics and anthropology at George Washington University, applied complexity theory and systems analysis to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. He detected a cascade effect of unpredictable interactions and nonlinear outcomes, often amplified by the sophistication and interdependence of imperial economies throughout the Mediterranean world. The Sea Peoples’ invasion of Egypt in 1177 B.C. remains a pivotal event, a proof of decline akin to the barbarian sack of Rome in A.D. 476. But the shift from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age was a “rolling” process. The mighty Bronze Age kingdoms and empires took decades to crumble, and the city-states of the early Iron Age took decades to cohere.
History is one sequel after another, and in “After 1177 B.C.,” Mr. Cline describes what happened next. These were, Hesiod wrote, times of “sore trouble,” but “even these shall have some good mingled with their evils.” Late Bronze Age societies adapted and transformed, or they faced eclipse and extinction. What did the dawning Iron Age do for us? Monotheism, coinage, innovations in iron-working, the Greek alphabet, the polis (city-state), the origins of democracy in Athens and the nation-state in Jerusalem, and, as Mr. Cline’s expert, ingenious and endlessly fascinating book shows, an ancient lesson in the lately rediscovered virtue of “resilience.”
Ramses III of Egypt saw off the Sea Peoples in 1177 B.C., but two decades later he was murdered, his throat cut in a “harem conspiracy” led by one of his wives and her son. His predecessor Ramses II became the “Ozymandias” of Percy Shelley’s poem, a “colossal Wreck” in the sand. Egypt went the same way through food shortages, palace intrigues, political schisms and pressure on the southern border. Neither adapting nor transforming, the Bronze Age superpower suffered a “rapid decline” in its standing and stability.
Around the same time the Hittite empire in Anatolia (modern Turkey) shattered. Attacked from the west by Sea Peoples and from the east by Assyria, the empire broke into as many as 15 small “Neo-Hittite” states populated by a “host of political entities and various ethnicities.” Hittite culture survived—the Israelite king David falls in love with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite—but the Hittite capital of Hattusa was leveled and the Hittites’ cuneiform language, a Bronze Age lingua franca, fell into disuse.
The Babylonian and Assyrian empires survived drought, famine and plague, and eventually revived in a new form. Babylonia’s population collapsed and Assyria’s record-keeping seems to have stopped in the mid-1100s B.C., but their “Neo-Babylonian” and “Neo-Assyrian” successor empires retained cultural continuity, governmental capacity and military strength. Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylonia defeated his Elamite neighbors so severely, Mr. Cline writes, that they left “no written records and little archaeological evidence” for centuries. When writing resumed at Nineveh in Assyria, it recorded victories over the Aramaeans, a nomadic people who, displaced by drought, were raiding Assyrian cities. Their language, Aramaic, would become the lingua franca of the Near East in the Iron Age.
The Mycenaean and Minoan societies of mainland Greece and Crete ended by the late 1100s B.C. Contact with the Near East dwindled, writing stopped and only “survivors or squatters,” Mr. Cline writes, lived amid the mainland’s ruined palaces. The Bronze Age was remembered in Homer’s oral legend, and Greek civilization took centuries to rebound. As everywhere, the collapse of large sociopolitical units gave space to city-states. The polis, which the Greeks would export across the region, was born from this power vacuum. The cities of Bronze Age Canaan were reborn as a mishmash of Phoenician cities, an Israelite state in the southern hill country, and, after a Sea People called the Peleset had annexed Canaan’s coastal strip, a league of Philistine cities.
When I won a teaching award at my university, I was asked to write a brief description of my pedagogy. I proudly wrote — and my provost read aloud at the awards ceremony — that I incorporate themes of racial justice and gender equality into my composition classes. Today, if I were in Indiana, I would be afraid of losing my job if I admitted such a thing.
Under Indiana’s Senate Bill 202, known as the “Intellectual Diversity” law, the trustees for public colleges will evaluate faculty every five years on the following:
Whether they “foster a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity.”
Whether they teach “a variety of political or ideological frameworks” within their disciplines.
Whether they “subject students to political or ideological views and opinions” unrelated to the course.
Faculty, regardless of tenure, can be fired if the board determines that they would be “unlikely” to foster intellectual diversity, “unlikely” to incorporate a variety of ideological or political frameworks, or “likely” to talk about their own political views.
According to its supporters and its Republican sponsor, State Sen. Spencer Deery, the law is needed to help politically conservative students feel more comfortable expressing their views on campus. But Indiana’s law is a solution in search of a problem. Survey data analyzed by the political scientist Ryan Burge show that most conservative students feel about as comfortable sharing their views as liberal students. The difference in comfort level is small and mostly due to perceptions of how other students might react, not faculty.
Critics say the law will chill both free speech and academic freedom. But no one is talking about the self-contradictory nature of the law, nor how its built-in contradictions empower a biased policing of campus speech and thought.
When does presenting diverse ideological frameworks to students transform into subjecting them to one’s ideological views? Or is sharing one’s ideological views — which students may never have heard or considered before — part of fostering a culture of intellectual diversity?
Is allowing students to share their own ideologies tantamount to endorsing them to other students, or is it fostering a culture of free inquiry and expression? How does a professor foster “a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” while also satisfying the requirement to teach “a variety of political or ideological frameworks”?
Does “free inquiry” mean exploring everything as though all ideas are equal, or does it require the exclusion of disproved ideas? What constitutes a sufficient “variety” of frameworks? Inquiry struggles to be free when one must treat all ideas and perspectives the same.
. . . .
One person’s “free inquiry” and “variety” of ideological frameworks is another person’s political indoctrination. The frameworks that a professor considers irrelevant to their discipline could be central to a trustee’s sense of “intellectual diversity.” Correcting a student’s misinformed statement with facts and sound reasoning could be portrayed as censorship. The clear message for Indiana faculty: Avoid saying anything that might cause complaints.
Just a few student complaints could be used to claim a professor is “unlikely” to foster a culture of intellectual diversity or “likely” to subject students to political rants, leading to termination of tenure and employment. As all faculty know, course evaluations tend to produce polarized responses: Students love you or they hate you. Sometimes, they project their own biases and assumptions onto you, a phenomenon that will now come with graver consequences.
It is tempting to ask rhetorical questions, as Diane Ravitch did, about professors teaching evolution, climate change, or the Civil War, and then giving equal time to “the other side” to comply with Indiana’s law.
. . . .
After George Floyd’s murder, I began using racial justice and gender-equality advocacy as examples of discourse communities in my composition courses. Students learned some of the key terms, concepts, values, beliefs, and rhetorical strategies of these communities, gaining the transferable skill of audience analysis in a relevant context. Most of my students seemed very engaged. Some students of color said they had never felt so “seen” in a class. Only two or three complained in course evaluations. But when only a couple complaints could lead to your firing, why risk it?
PG understands the frustration more than a few feel about the political/cultural monoculture that rules on many college and university campuses. In an era that privileges an individual’s “comfort,” it’s almost certain that students and professors who disagree with the dominant social/political environment that permeates higher education are likely to feel uncomfortable and isolated.
However, few individuals in the now-dominant culture will recognize and respect their feelings because intelligent individuals today know this is the new normal, and it’s the nonconformer’s responsibility to deal with it.
Many university campuses are replete with speech limits — free-speech zones that imply speech must be carefully censored on the rest of campus. You can only say what you really believe and how you really feel about what’s going on around you in a free-speech zone. But, you still might be drowned out by groups using the hecklers’ veto.
Students and professors must be very careful not to perpetrate microaggressions that may harm a single individual in a large classroom. This morning’s quip might trigger a single student and become a microaggression that brings down disciplinary sanctions on the microaggressor before the day is done.
PG has no idea how professors can recall and use the personal pronouns various individuals may have adopted for themselves –
Ze/hir/hir
Per/per/pers
The person’s name – Jack ate Jack’s food because Jack was hungry
And misgendering is offensive and disrespectful to anyone, but especially to trans and gender non-conforming individuals.
PG wonders if there is a list analogical to U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of universities and colleges that ranks institutions by cultural and political freedoms enjoyed by students.
A staff member at Vardag’s accidentally opened the file of a couple referred to in court papers as Mr and Mrs Williams, when trying to apply for a final divorce order for a different client.
Vardag’s applied three days later to rescind the order but judge Sir Andrew McFarlane dismissed the application.
The firm’s head Ayesha Vardag said the judge’s decision effectively meant “the computer says no, you’re divorced”.
Court papers say that Mrs Williams applied for divorce in January 2023 following 21 years of marriage.
The mistake was made by solicitors acting for Mrs Williams on 3 October last year on an online divorce portal operated by HM Courts and Tribunals Service.
In his summary, Judge McFarlane noted that “with its now customary speed”, the system granted the order just 21 minutes later.
Vardag’s did not discover the error until 5 October, thinking the order had been made for another client, but then promptly applied for it to be rescinded.
The husband became aware of the situation only on 11 October, the same day Vardag’s wrote to his solicitors to explain the situation, court papers say.
In the summary, Judge McFarlane, president of the High Court’s Family Division, said the issue arose against the background of “ongoing contested financial remedy proceedings”.
Ms Vardag has been nicknamed the “diva of divorce”, with her firm based in London, as well as offices in Cambridge and Manchester.
The firm describes itself on its website as specialising in “high net worth and ultra high net worth family cases”.
Lawyers for Mrs Williams argued that as the order had been made by mistake it should simply be “set aside”, describing the error as someone at the firm simply “clicking the wrong button”.
Mr Williams’ legal representatives argued a final order of divorce is a “once-and-for-all” order, which cannot be set aside by the consent of the parties and may only be rescinded by the court if found to be either void or voidable.
Judge McFarlane rejected the wife’s arguments that the order should be set aside, finding it was not “rendered voidable” by her lack of consent as her solicitors were “generally authorised to act for her and the court was entitled to accept the application for the final order made by them as being validly made on her behalf”.
He went on to say that even if the order was voidable, there was “a strong public policy interest in respecting the certainty and finality that flows from a final divorce order and maintaining the status quo that it has established”.
Recalcitrant judge and a likely-dismissed law staff member.
No mention of an attorney who directed the fired staffer to enter the order.
Interesting that Mrs. Williams is contending that the the mistaken order should be set aside while her husband is saying the divorce is final. Something is happening behind the scenes.
Vardag’s “high net worth and ultra high net worth family cases” appear to be their own little world.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “You know, the rich are different from you and me.” Ernest Hemingway is said to have responded, “Yes. They’ve got more money.”
A tech sector dedicated to boiling things down has raised temperatures in some quarters of the publishing world
Hungry for niche knowledge to impress your colleagues? Troubled by the size of a hefty new book? Doubt your abilities to understand complex arguments? Well, today an increasingly competitive industry offers to take away these problems with one product: a book summary app.
Since these digital services first promised to boil down a title, usually a nonfiction work, a decade ago, the marketplace has become crowded. So much so that authors and publishers are concerned about the damage to sales, as well as to the habit of concentrated reading.
Some successful writers, including Amy Liptrot, also fear that apps such as Blinkist, Bookey, getAbstract and the latest, Headway, may be undermining the book trade and misrepresenting content.
Liptrot has approached her union, the Society of Authors, for advice on how to take action. She was alarmed last week to find her acclaimed 2015 memoir, The Outrun, now a film starring Saoirse Ronan, being peddled in potted form on Bookey. “It was unnerving to see a totally fictional quotation purporting to be from my book,” she told the Observer. “These apps are very anti-literary. They’re for people who want to absorb the key ideas without reading the book. I don’t mind a bland, soulless summary, but I do mind a false quotation.”
Diana Gerald, chief executive of the charity BookTrust, is also disturbed by the influence of these apps on young readers. “Book summaries can be a useful starting point. However, it goes without saying that improvements in mental health, in sparking imagination, empathy and language acquisition that reading can have, come from reading the book itself,” she said.
Writer Susie Alegre also sees lurking danger. “The trend towards apps that summarise books so that you can ‘think better’ is likely to have the opposite effect – if we don’t use our minds to reflect deeply, we may lose our ability to think critically at all,” she said, citing research which showed that our reliance on satellite navigation was already rewiring our brains and “destroying our ability to navigate the physical world”.
“Relying on summaries of big ideas might do the same for our capacity for deep thought,” added Alegre, whose forthcoming book Human Rights, Robot Wrongs: Being Human in the Age of AI is published in early May.
“AI is famously prone to hallucinations: if you read an AI-generated summary of a book, there is no guarantee that it actually reflects the content,” she said, pointing out that writers’ “already meagre income” could be destroyed by the summary-app business.
The publishing industry is also on alert. Andrew Franklin, founder director of Profile Books, understands the worry: “These apps are potentially depriving authors of income and bookshops of custom. It is quite a serious way of infringing copyright, although not technically wrong, as you are allowed to summarise a text. These apps are really just the same as the adverts that pop up offering you an effortless way to lose weight without exercise.”
The new crib sites function a little like the York Notes study guide series for British students, (or Cliffs Notes in the US), but have less analytical content and tend to compete over the niche business areas they cover.
Not all in the book world are concerned. Toby Mundy, executive director of the prestigious Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction, wonders if these apps might prove a gateway for readers to actual books.
He said: “When people want to know about a subject, they might start with Wikipedia or a precis app, but publishing is fundamentally about voices. If you want to know about the Russian Revolution – and I mean really know – then most people will turn to Orlando Figes’s masterpiece, A People’s Tragedy, rather than a dreary textbook, because it combines authoritative scholarship with tremendous literary verve. Precis apps might disrupt certain genres, business books perhaps, but they are intrinsically anti-voice and philistine.”
CliffsNotes are a series of student study guides. The guides present and create literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.[1]
History
CliffsNotes was started by Nebraska native Clifton Hillegass in 1958.[2] He was working at Nebraska Book Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, when he met Jack Cole, the co-owner of Coles, a Toronto book business. Coles published a series of Canadian study guides called Coles Notes, and sold Hillegass the U.S. rights to the guides.
Hillegass and his wife, Catherine, started the business in their basement at 511 Eastridge Drive in Lincoln, with sixteen William Shakespeare titles. By 1964, sales reached one million Notes annually. CliffsNotes now exist for hundreds of works. The term “Cliff’s Notes” has become a proprietary eponym for similar products.
IDG Books purchased CliffsNotes in 1998 for $14.2 million.
PG wonders if borrowing a copy of the notes for a class from a friend who Aced the class qualifies as a terrible moral failing.
What if the class is taught by a professor who reads her/his notes, putting nearly everyone to sleep?
What if the world’s worst literature professor teaches Shakespeare?
Do all students have to consume the academic version of Brussels Sprouts from professors who have gained tenure and use their status to force starving graduate students to update their class notes?
It doesn’t take more than being sentenced to one or two boring 500-student lecture classes for many students to realize they should choose the professor instead of the subject. Why? Because, unlike Education majors, professors have never been taught to teach effectively. Teaching skills are not nearly as professionally rewarding as the publication of a paper on an abstruse topic that perhaps 15 people will read in its entirety.
PG made a big change to his college major to a subject nobody had heard of so he would be taught by one of four superb professors for 90% of his classes, with each class typically comprised of 10-12 students.
His GPA reflected his enthusiasm for these classes, but never completely recovered from the terminally miserable experience of the giant auditoriums struggling to stay awake.
Last week, the American Library Association released its annual list of the top 10 most challenged books. Once again, it was dominated by books by LGBTQ authors or about the LGBTQ community. PW caught up with Sam Helmick, community and access coordinator at the Iowa City Public Library, to discuss the necessity of advocacy, the importance of allies, and how the library community is handling such an unprecedented challenge.
What was it like for you when Iowa’s book-banning law, SF 496, was enacted in 2023?
It was difficult. I was president of the Iowa Library Association at that time, ILA’s first nonbinary, aromantic, asexual president. And there was a wonderful book called Gender Queer that was quite a bit about people like me. And it was the most banned book in the state. At the same time, I was thinking about how we in Iowa are the founders of the Library Bill of Rights. Forrest Spaulding, then director of the Des Moines Public Library, wrote it in 1938.
So these two things were on my mind as I was being asked questions like what my favorite banned book is. And my answer became: my favorite banned book is yours. My favorite banned book is the one that you’re going to check out of my bookmobile today. My favorite banned book has yet to be written. Because the only way books like Gender Queer—which I needed as a teen but didn’t get until my 30s—are written is because library workers before me have defended a process, and invited the public to ruminate on books and to recognize that we as a free people should read freely.
What that was meant to impress was the importance of gently holding people accountable to the process, because library workers cannot single-handedly paint themselves out of the corners that pernicious policy puts them in. When I think about the Freedom Riders, when I think about Stonewall, I think about the brave folks who are part of those communities but also of the allies that came together to support them. It’s going to require the public—the public that resources us by policy, goodwill, and funding—to paint us out of this corner.
Last December, freedom to read advocates scored a victory when a federal court blocked SF 496, but the censorship onslaught continues. How are librarians in the state managing?
We are pulling for each other more than we might have in the past. I’m very pleased that we now have built an affinity coalition inside and outside of library circles, and that we’re much tighter with the school library and college and research library associations than we ever were before. But it’s also complicated and stressful.
I think the solace that I take is that if what we did was irrelevant, the book banners would leave us be. They obviously believe we have the power to support people reading and thinking freely, and there’s something heady about that, even during the hard days. I get to stand up for something important.
On April 2, Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which critics say will legitimize discrimination against the LGBTQ community. Did that feel like déjà vu after fighting SF 496?
I would love to say it’s déjà vu, but it’s been more of a deluge. Iowa had the second-most library-averse bills in the nation last year. Library workers have had two full-time jobs for a very long time: the first is to be incubators of access, opportunity, and hope. The second is to constantly fight for the ability to be that.
This month’s column describes Mensch Publishing’s transition from a mixture of traditional print and distribution to a wholly digitally driven model.
The Downsides
Change is hard and frequently expensive.
The files I’d created for the traditional route and held by my publishing partner were, it turned out, formatted to the first, normally hardback edition. This master file was used to hold any corrections or changes.
In moving to a print-on-demand solution, paperback is the preferred format for reasons of cost and author and customer pressure. I only discovered the problem when proofs, and in a couple of cases of finished book, were reformatted with illustrations in the wrong place and new pagination. We had to re-typeset most of the titles.
I was grateful that I’d taken an early decision that Mensch titles wouldn’t have indexes. If anyone really wanted help in finding a name or whatever, they could buy the ebook and search to their heart’s content, which would have entailed even more work and cost.
Even where there was no change in format, the paper used in on-demand printing is likely to be of a different thickness, meaning that cover artwork had to be revised to take account of a changed spine width.
The next downside is the reluctance of retailers, both traditional and on the Internet, to stock print-on-demand titles because of perceived, although not actual, non-immediate availability; limited returnability; and typically lower discounts, lower retailer margins—all valid reasons from the retailers’ point of view: They’ve enjoyed increased discounts; increased stock security; and improved delivery schedules over the last few decades. They were obliged to resist, even at the expense of reducing the range available to their customers.
Of course there’s nothing about print-on-demand requiring a firm sale or lower discounts to retailers—these are publisher choices but my choices were and are driven by a commitment to reducing waste; maximizing author income; and focusing on marketing to drive sales rather than positioning in terrestrial bookshops.
The corollary of this lack of retail support has been a certain amount of author discomfort at not finding his or her books where they’d like to see them. My riposte that the proportion of new titles prominently displayed at traditional independent and chain bookshops is very small. Ask even the major publishers how many copies of non-automatic best sellers are subscribed into brick-and-mortar stores.
However, there are always exceptions, and launch parties in bookshops can happen if strict discount and returns policies are temporarily waived. The downside of this is that these special arrangements need to be separately accounted, thus undermining the overall pure simplicity of the new model by adding accounting complexity.
And of course right now, print-on-demand books cost more per copy to print, but the savings elsewhere in the supply chain are significant.
Upsides
Every book is available in every market simultaneously without the need for special shipments or inter-warehouse arrangements. In a world of international media, this is, in my view, an essential service to authors. What would an author think of a great review in, say, the Guardian in the United Kingdom, a review downloaded hugely in the United States—but Americans couldn’t purchase the book because the US publication date was later than the UK’s?
With print-on-demand, there are no are no out-of-stock issues. Every book is constantly available. No need to cogitate on the size or practicality of a reprint. No need for the inevitability of the last reprint of a book never selling out (by definition). No stock wastage as there is no stock except where held and made available by retailers and wholesalers. Fewer trees need to be cut down.
Printing takes place mainly in the country of purchase: There are no shipments by sea or by air between continents; no unnecessary handling costs.
Most importantly perhaps, there are no unnecessary CO2 emissions. Production quality is superior to traditional litho. This came as a surprise to many of our authors but a pleasant surprise.
As part of this, I’ve signed up to automated advertising for the books in order to drive sales, rather than rely on retail displays.
Daily access to sales performance is a boon. Daily changes to metadata are feasible.
Most important of all to me is that I now have control and transparency, and this allows me to communicate with authors without having to adapt to any other organization’s time frame.
This question has been bouncing in my brain ever since the digital revolution began and especially after working for various publishers that asked me to help them with social media and website text.
Do you think that being forced to focus on SEO when writing articles, promos, headlines etc can negatively impact your non-journalism writing? My sense is that SEO flourishes from a writing style that is different from the style I use when writing creative works, especially fiction. And I don’t want my brain to be steered down that path.
Good question! Short answer: yes, writing for SEO purposes will affect your prose style!
But don’t panic yet. It’s not all doom and there’s much more to say.
First, a brief explanation, so we understand the difference between SEO writing and the kind of writing we do in our books and other creative domains, the kind of writing that Mark is talking about.
What is SEO writing?
SEO is writing that’s meant to be read by machines, specifically search engines. You do this with keywords and key phrases. Ideally, you imagine what words or phrases a reader might type into Google, and make sure they’re used a lot in your blogpost or article. And especially in your headline because that sums up the whole piece.
Here’s an example from a piece I edited for the Alliance of Independent Authors. If you’re writing about William Shakespeare, perhaps to promote a book you’re publishing, you might post a piece about the 10 best quotes for Valentine’s day. If you’ve got an ounce of soul, you’ll get creative with the headline. ‘When love speaks… Timeless lines from the Bard.’
Will that get the attention of humans? Yes. Will it get the attention of search engines? Probably no, so the humans won’t get to see it. You’re much more likely to get hits if you call it ‘My 10 top Shakespeare quotes about love.’ Dull but true. ‘Top Shakespeare quotes’ is what a reader will ask a search engine to find, so those are the words (the key words) that will get you the most hits. The searching person just wants an answer, and they won’t think of the many inventive or witty ways to enjoy expressing the question.
Here’s where I’m wholeheartedly agreeing with Mark. I want to live in a world of headlines that are intriguing, evocative, stylish, haunting. I love how language can do that. If I ruled the universe, we would all use our words with grace and panache.
SEO, though, isn’t about that. It’s about communicating with machines first, humans second. Labels rule; not a love of language.
Many authors would rather chew off their own arm than stand in the spotlight promoting a book. They say things like, “I don’t want to seem narcissistic,” “I hate being like, ‘Me, me, me!’” or “I just want to write.’” If this describes you, I am here to explain why — and I know this sounds a little harsh — you need to get over it immediately.
(An aside: I get it — finding language that bridges the gap between authentic and promotional can take some thought, and I empathize. But I also hate to see an author not get their due because they are nervous about putting themselves out there. All of this book publicity advice comes from a place of love!)
Below are three ideas that might help you think about leading a book promotion campaign for your book with confidence:
Conduct this thought experiment.
Conjure a smart and talented friend, and imagine they’ve been working on a creative project — maybe an indie film or an art show—for many years. They’ve poured their heart and soul and thousands of hours into bringing it into the world. It’s finally completed, and the premiere, opening, or launch is coming up.
Now, imagine they say to you, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to email my friends and family about it,’ or ‘I don’t want to look like a narcissist,’ or ‘I’m hoping people find out about it organically.’
You would likely tell them, correctly and emphatically, that’s wild, they must let their people and, if possible, the wider world know about their work. How will their ideas and talent be known otherwise? You and your book deserve the same championing you would insist upon for a loved one.
Put on your business hat when promoting a book.
Authors tend to bristle at this idea but once you have a publishing deal or pub date, you need to think of your book as a product. It’s a smart, creative, thoughtful, excellent product, yes. But it is still a new thing that you want people to know about and buy. No (successful) business in the world launches a product and just waits for people to stumble upon it.
Would a band release a new album and neglect to alert their fans? Would a playwright open a show and make a single social media post about it? Of course not. There’d be a launch party, emails to mailing lists, a website, many social media posts, media outreach — a slew of promotional efforts.
Authors need to do the same.
You might be thinking, isn’t that the publisher’s job? That would be nice, but in-house publicity and marketing teams have slim budgets and are way overstretched. They’re often handling an impossible workload. That includes managing every season’s soon-to-be and newly published books. Plus any longer-term interest in books published in past seasons. Today’s media environment, by and large, requires too much in-the-weeds research time for them to lead robust and highly personalized campaigns for all their books.
Publishers expect authors to be active partners in the promotion of their books — running their own social media (occasionally with marketing help provided), building and maintaining an author website, curating a broad contact list for personal outreach, and more.
No one will be paying as much attention to your promotional emails or posts as you.
Remember, people get hundreds of emails a day and see who-knows-how-many social media posts. It may feel like a heavy lift for you to hit send, but it’s going to land as just one in a ton of other messages. When you post about it online, the vast majority of your followers will miss it.
In this era of overwhelm — with the nonstop churn of social media posts, the proliferation of mailing lists, Substacks, and more clogging your inbox, the reduction in book coverage across the print and digital media landscape, and the pick-and-choose format of personalized news intake—you have to make as much noise as possible.
You need to post about it — and then post about it again! You have to email people — and then you need to follow up with them. I cannot tell you how many top national media hits Press Shop PR has landed for authors on a third follow-up. People miss emails all the time. Sometimes they mark them as unread and forget to go back to them. Sometimes, it just gets pushed down into the depths of the recipient’s inbox too quickly. Don’t let the success of promoting a book depend on other people’s email management skills!
More than two decades have passed since we published an academic paper linking the legalisation of abortion to the enormous decline in American crime since the 1990s. The underlying theory is straightforward. Children who are unwanted at birth are at risk of a range of adverse life outcomes and commit much more crime later in life. Legalised abortion greatly reduced the number of unwanted births. Consequently, legalised abortion will reduce crime, albeit with substantial lags.
Our paper created much controversy, which was further stoked by a chapter on the topic in the best-selling book “Freakonomics”, written by one of us with Stephen Dubner, published in 2005. For many, it was more important to spin a political response to our hypothesis than to evaluate whether it was correct.
The data available at the time strongly supported our hypothesis. We showed, for instance, that crime began falling sooner in the five states that legalised abortion in advance of Roe v Wade, the US Supreme Court decision that made abortion available legally nationwide. We documented that crime in states with high and low abortion rates followed nearly identical trends for many years, then suddenly and persistently diverged only after the birth cohorts exposed to legal abortion reached the age at which they would commit crime. Consistent with our theory, looking at arrest data, which reveal the age of the offender, the declines in crime were concentrated among those born after abortion became legal.
These data patterns do not, of course, make an open-and-shut case. No randomised experiment has been conducted on this topic. We also didn’t help our own case by mislabelling the set of control variables included in one of the specifications in one of our tables—a regrettable mistake (later corrected) which led some people to dismiss all of the paper’s findings. One of the most vocal and consistently sceptical voices arguing against our findings has been The Economist, which has written about our study on three occasions (most recently last month), each time taking a critical and dismissive stance.
We concede that reasonable people could disagree about how convincing the findings were in our initial paper. The analysis was retrospective, and there is always the concern that researchers have cherry-picked their findings, or that perhaps it was just pure coincidence that the patterns emerged.
There is, however, something unique about our hypothesis, which allows a second test of the theory that is far closer to the ideal of the scientific method. There is a long lag between abortions being performed and the affected cohort reaching the age at which crime is committed. Thus, we could already at the time of our first academic paper in 2001 make strong predictions about what our theory would predict should happen to future crime. Indeed, at the end of that paper, we made the following prediction: “When a steady state is reached roughly 20 years from now, the impact of abortion will be roughly twice as great as the impact felt so far. Our results suggest that all else equal, legalised abortion will account for persistent declines of 1% a year in crime over the next two decades.”
It is rare—almost unprecedented—in academic economics to be able to make a testable prediction and then to go back and actually test it decades later. That’s what we did in a paper published in 2020. Our methodological approach was straightforward: mimic the specifications reported in our original paper, but limit the time period to the years that were out of sample, ie, those after our original data ended.
The results provided stunning corroboration of our predictions. For each of the seven different analyses we had presented in the initial 2001 paper, the results for next two decades of data were at least as strong as the results in our initial dataset, and in most specifications even stronger. This included what the main critics of our 2001 paper called the “crucial” test, showing that the abortion rate at the time of any birth cohort negatively correlated with the age-specific arrest rate for that cohort years later as it moved through ages 15–24, while perfectly controlling for whatever other factors were influencing crime in a given state and a given year. We would argue that, short of a randomised experiment, this is some of the most compelling evidence one could present.
The magnitude of the implied impacts we are talking about is huge. If you look over the entire sample, violent-crime rates fell by 62.2 percentage points in high-abortion states whereas they rose by 3.1% in low-abortion states.
Though there is not complete acceptance of our hypothesis among academics, all agree that if our paper is not correct, then there is no viable explanation for the enormous drop in crime in America that started in the early 1990s. Indeed, there is not even an arguable theory to supplant the abortion-crime link. Exposure to lead in the environment might, perhaps, be the next best hypothesis. But as we showed in our 2020 paper, when one controls for both environmental lead and abortion, the coefficient on abortion remains large while the coefficient on environmental lead is greatly reduced and loses statistical significance.
It seems fair to ask why, in spite of strong supporting evidence, no academic contradiction of any of the findings of our 2020 paper and support for the abortion-crime link from international evidence, so many observers remain sceptical of the hypothesis. Not surprisingly, those whose livelihoods came from fighting crime during the great crime drop were not keen to conclude that their approaches—whether more police, more incarceration or particular social programmes—however important they might have been, were not the dominant factor in the decline. Another possible explanation is that people across the political spectrum were uncomfortable with our conclusions. Many people would prefer that our hypothesis not be true—perhaps not recognising that the core finding is that when women can control their fertility the life outcomes of their children are greatly enhanced.
As somebody who, in my second marriage, insisted on a prenuptial agreement, I can also testify that sometimes it is an act of love to chart the exit strategy before you enter the union, in order to make sure that not only you, but your partner as well, knows that there will be no World War III should hearts and minds, for any sad reason, change.
The first page of your novel is vitally important, but not necessarily because the action starts there. The first page, and first several pages, should:
set your tone and reader expectations. In a thriller, that means establishing a rhythm that will push forward rather than linger, and maybe having some sort of stakes already in play, even if they’re unrelated to the central plot. (Your protagonist is running late to get to a meeting and is running to catch a bus pulling away from her bus stop.)
make your reader care to continue on: have a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, makes them think, “now that’s interesting,” and pulls them from one paragraph to the next. Make them interested in solving a mystery from the first paragraph, even if it’s a minor question only pertinent to your opening scene. (Why was she running late? Where was she rushing off to? What are the consequences of her tardiness?)
introduce some important aspect of character or theme; setting can be introduced here but is easy to overdo. Don’t make setting the only thing you talk about; it is impersonal exposition and therefore doesn’t make the reader care. In a thriller this is especially true; don’t describe setting with any more words than you need to unless it can be worked into what the character is doing or is itself inherently thrilling.
be without flaws. It’s early, you don’t have to defend or overcome structural weaknesses here– but you do have to polish your writing to a mirror finish.
. . . .
The first page (and first sentence, and paragraph) is important in the same way your first meeting with somebody new is important. An agent or publisher (or indeed a customer thinking of buying your book) is going to read the opening line, the first paragraph, the first page to see if they like your style of writing, and see if you know how to begin a story and get the reader engaged.
They want to see if you make dumb mistakes (typos, grammar, clichés, other beginner errors like opening with a fight in progress, or opening with an info-dump, or detailed character descriptions, or the history of your setting, etc).
Agents (and the readers for publishers) reject 95% (or more, seriously) of the books or queries they receive, which means (practically speaking) they have to make snap decisions, and they do. Otherwise they’d have no time to do work that actually pays them money. They expect you to put a great deal of care into the opening sentence, the first page, the first ten pages (which many request).
They expect your most careful and attentive work there, and if it sucks, they don’t need to read the rest. They aren’t there to fix your work, or critique work, or help you get better, or see a promising young talent, or spot a diamond in the rough, they are there for one thing: to find writers that are already good writers, and represent already good writing, and make their 15%. That’s it!
The service agents do for the publishers is screening, searching through the flood of dreck to find some gold nuggets.
No, it is not advisable to move the “thriller” to the first page.
The opening of the book is expected to be an engaging introduction to the main character(s) and the setting, a setup for a story to come. The setup usually lasts for 10% to 15% of the book, before the big problem of the book appears.
Nevertheless, this first 10% is supposed to be engaging. One way to do that is to introduce your character(s) by giving them a “little” or “throwaway” problem of some sort, not necessarily a problem important to the plot but a kind of problem they might encounter in their everyday life. This gives you a chance to talk about setting, show us some of their personality in the process of dealing with their little problem.
The problem with opening in the middle of action is closely related: If you do that, readers don’t really care, because they don’t know who is fighting, whose side they should be on, or anything else. In the opening pages, readers don’t care because they don’t have any context for understanding what is going on.
That is why nearly every movie and story begins with “The Normal World” of the hero; and the main problem first appears 10% or 15% of the way in. If the setting is complex (with magical, fantasy or scifi elements) the main problem is delayed somewhat, until the reader/audience is “up to speed” and has a basic grasp of what the heroes and villains can do, or what their ships can do, etc.
In some series (movie or TV or books) we can cut “The Normal World” quite short, since the audience is up to speed from the first book and doesn’t need much reminder. But in a “from scratch” novel, don’t rush the main conflict, it doesn’t make the book more exciting at all, it makes it boring.
Your query letter, the first sentence, the first paragraph, the first page, the first ten pages, the first chapter: This is how you will be judged, quickly and ruthlessly, by agents and publishers. Nobody is going to invest the time to read your whole book or story if these alienate them.
I am a sick man. … I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well then let it hurt even worse!
First paragraph of Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens – first paragraph
When classes pivoted to remote instruction in 2020, some professors — even some entire colleges — moved to pass/fail grading systems. Sure, it was a short-term crisis response. But allowing pass/fail, even for a little while, demonstrated that the traditional approach to grading isn’t the only option.
Some professors had already decided as much: There’s a small but high-profile “ungrading” movement championed by professors who argue that grades are not only poor measures of learning, but also pull students’ focus from understanding the material to earning points. And there are alternative grading approaches that evaluate student work against a standard, provide feedback, and let students try again if the standard has not been met.
For other professors, grades are a barometer. If many students aren’t performing well — and if there are demographic disparities among them — that is a sign something has gone wrong in how they’re being taught or supported.
Meanwhile, there’s been a wave of worry about grade inflation. And it’s true that grades at many colleges have risen steadily since the 1980s. Grades can rise for many reasons, but the concern is that students and administrators are pushing professors to award higher grades, lowering expectations and losing a main method for differentiating among students.
Grades mean something — articulated by an instructor and interpreted by a student — in the context of a particular course. But that isn’t all they mean. Grades play a gatekeeping role, helping to sort students into colleges, majors, graduate programs, and jobs. They can shape the way students see themselves. Heck, they can get them a discount on their car insurance.
In an attempt to capture the myriad and evolving ways in which grades are perceived, The Chronicle asked a selection of stakeholders, including professors, students, and high-school counselors, to provide a short answer to the same simple question: What does an A mean?
. . . .
As a teacher (of both philosophy and public speaking), my philosophy of grading has always been that a B should be relatively easy to earn, assuming that the student gives an honest effort and does what is expected, and that an A should be hard to get, representing both excellent performance and depth of understanding.
Jim Jump, retired academic dean and director of college counseling at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Va., who writes about admissions issues
You knew what the course was trying to achieve and pursued it sincerely without trying to game the system.
Holden Thorp, editor in chief of the Science family of journals and a former chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
. . . .
It depends on context and content, but I flash back to the rubric I used when teaching high school so many years ago. For me, an A should reflect five things: evidence of deep understanding, masterful application of the relevant knowledge or skills, attentive participation, creative engagement, and thorough attention to detail. These will apply very differently when it comes to a seminar discussion, an essay, a biology midterm, or a math problem set, of course, but the intuitions should consistently apply.
Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who has written about grade inflation
Fuzzy grading that differs from professor to professor and from college to college is one reason that prospective employers sometimes ask prospective employees for their results from standardized testing.
Consulting firms such as Bain & Co. and McKinsey & Co. and banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ask new college recruits for their [SAT] scores, while other companies request them even for senior sales and management hires, eliciting scores from job candidates in their 40s and 50s.
A college student is helping young adults feel more confident in the future of their love life with a new insurance policy tool.
Finding “the one” can be something that happens early in life for some people — or later on for others.
In 2022, the average age of marriage for a female was 30, while the average age of marriage for a male was 32, according to the Knot.
Liam McGregor, however, is making sure that even those at the age of 30 and 32 have some sort of “insurance policy” for living a life in marriage.
In 2017, McGregor and another college student started the Marriage Pact — a tool for students at Stanford University to have a spousal “backup plan.”
Essentially, students who signed up would take a questionnaire that would then match them with someone on campus, a percentage of quality and an email address to reach out if they so choose.
McGregor told Fox News Digital the purpose of the pact.
“A marriage pact is an informal agreement between two people that if both parties remain unmarried by the time they turn 30 or 40, to simply marry each other,” he said.
He added, “When you look up from your career in your mid-30s and realize you never prioritized ‘the one’ … you’re going to need a backup plan. The Marriage Pact matches you with your optimal backup plan in your community, based on what really matters in lifelong relationships.”
The questions on the Marriage Pact vary based on the particular college campus — and students can only be matched with others from their same school.
The 50-question survey is based on core values, according to the Associated Press, and includes questions about communication styles, conflict resolution, smoking and drug habits and more.
McGregor told Fox News Digital that the algorithm doesn’t ask for pictures, height or any of the other typical dating site criteria — saying there’s “no swiping or search[ing].”
An example of a question used at the University of Michigan is: “There is a place for revenge when someone has wronged me.”
From there, the students must rate their response on a scale of one to seven, with one being “turn the other cheek” and seven being “plotting rn (right now).”
A question on the Boston College Marriage Pact is: “I would end a friendship over differing political views.”
Notre Dame has one that reads: “I would send older relatives to a nursing home.”
Based on how individuals respond, the algorithm attempts to match them with their optimal marriage backup plan partner.
“It’s designed using decades of relationship science research to match you with the person who you’re most likely to be compatible with in the long term,” he said.
The economics student, who graduated from Stanford University in 2020, had over 1,000 people sign up from Stanford on the first day, followed by another 1,000 the next and so on.
McGregor said that by the end of the first week of Marriage Pact, 60% of Stanford students had signed up to get their “optimal marital backup plan.”
McGregor told Fox News Digital he was “floored” by the initial response to the survey.
“The way people describe it, it’s the only thing people can talk about for weeks when the Marriage Pact happens at their school,” he said.
Now, seven years later, Marriage Pact is on 88 college campuses across the country and has nearly 500,000 participants.
The U.S. Department of Education and Marriage Pact say there are 14 schools where students are more likely to make a pact by the end of their senior year than students who will graduate.
McGregor said students from 15 different schools initially tried to join the Marriage Pact when it was released at Stanford — and the interest grew from there.
In the fall of 2020, the Marriage Pact was in seven schools — and by the spring of 2021, it was in 50.
McGregor told the AP that about 30% of matches meet up in person and one in nine of those end up dating for a year or longer — many actually getting married.
For example, Max Walker and Melia Summers joined the Marriage Pact as New York University students in the fall of 2020.
Walker was at the New York campus, while Summers was at NYU’s Abu Dhabi campus, per the AP.
Summers eventually decided to do a semester in New York. That’s when she and Walker met for the first time and went on a date — nearly one year after their match.
The pair will wed in June 2024 after having a match rate of 99.65%.
You know, I used to say, when people say, ‘How do you think about what to write about in the poems every week?’ And I say, ‘Well, I have to turn it in on Monday, so on Sunday nights I turn the shower to iambic pentameter and it sort of works out that way.
With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.
Note: This year, The Paris Review chose author Tobias Wolff to receive the Hadada Award, the magazine’s annual prize for lifetime achievement in literature. Following is an excerpt from Mr. Wolff’s remarks.
From The Paris Review:
When Lady Astor was breathing her last, a large group of family and friends gathered around the bed to see her off. Just before she departed this life, she snapped awake and looked around and said, “Is this my birthday, or am I dying?”
Well, don’t tell me.
The scene here bears some resemblances to hers. I look out and see my dear wife, Catherine, and my oldest and best friends, and others who’ve come into our life in later years, even as I still vividly recall the laughing, never-to-be-forgotten faces of two beloved friends who left our company too soon, George Crile and Edward McIlvain. I have been lucky, blessed, really, in family and friendship, and in too many other ways to describe here.
The Irish painter John Yeats, the poet’s father, described the making of art as the social act of a solitary person. Actually, he said “a solitary man.” They talked like that then. Anyway, I nodded in recognition when I came across that line. Maybe Hemingway could write in a crowded café, but I and the other artists and writers I’ve known have had to be shut away somewhere, out of the human stream, to get our work done. Yet as the years have frosted and mowed this head of mine, I have come to a different understanding of the situation. You may have retreated to your attic studio, you may even have pulled up the ladder behind you, but you were not alone. Never.
Case in point:
When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher became exasperated with my mulish refusal to learn cursive. I liked to print my words, so that they looked like the ones in the books I read. Finally, Mrs. Post sent me home with a note to my mother, telling her that I would not be allowed to return to school until I learned to write in cursive. My mother did not need this complication. She was raising me alone, in a small apartment above a garage, working on her feet all day at a Dairy Queen. By the time she got home and finished making dinner she was ready to put those aching feet up and lean back with a book. Now she had to spend her evenings teaching me how to … well, write.
This is how she did it: she started with the “quick brown fox,” and when that became unbearably tedious she chose passages from the books I’d borrowed from the library: Lassie Come-Home; Old Yeller; Jack London’s White Fang and Call of the Wild; Lad: A Dog, or another volume of Albert Payson Terhune’s many-volumed testaments to his love of collies. You see a pattern here. I wanted a dog. So: passage chosen, my mother adjusted the pencil just so in my fingers, then put her hand on mine and guided hand and pencil over the page, copying the chosen passage in her beautiful script that I could never duplicate, though damned if I didn’t finally learn to stitch letters together, and make recognizable if unlovely words and sentences, until I was allowed back into the classroom. And to this day, when I write in longhand, I sometimes stop and remember those nights, and the feeling of my mother’s hand on mine.
Some years later I received a scholarship—preposterously undeserved, but that’s another story—to a rigorous boarding school in Pennsylvania. I spent the summer before school began with my brother Geoffrey. We had not seen each other in six years. He had just graduated summa cum laude in English from Princeton, and was shocked to discover that I couldn’t write an essay, not really. I’d been skating by in a rural high school in Washington State, the classrooms full, the teachers overwhelmed. Late as the day was, my brother took my education in hand. He assigned books for me to read, and essays to write on those books while he was at work, and then he went over my essays when he got home. He was both demanding and kind, his red pencil unsparing but also, often enough, encouraging. So did this young man with plans of his own give his summer nights to his little brother, hoping to get him launched with some hope of success.
Adelle Waldman’s sharp-eyed observations of intellectuals in Brooklyn chasing book deals and bedmates made her first novel, “The Love Affairs of Nathanial P.” (2013), a hit. For her follow-up, she has traded the excesses of the urban elite for the struggles of unskilled workers farther afield. This may sound dreary, but “Help Wanted” is a lively, humane book.
To write about the employees of a big-box store in upstate New York, Ms Waldman spent months working at one herself, earning $12.25 an hour unloading trucks of merchandise at 4am. Many of her colleagues had been working at the shop for years, but their hours were limited and unpredictable, which made it hard for them to make plans, get a second job or reliably cover their bills.
Town Square, the shop in “Help Wanted”, is a rare source of jobs in a town that has seen better days. The fictional Potterstown still hasn’t recovered from losing an office of IBM, a computer firm, to Mexico decades ago. The employees who show up to the “dungeon-like” warehouse in the small hours are not thrilled by their lives, but they are grateful to be there.
Ms Waldman probes the needs of this motley morning team, such as Nicole, a young mother with an unemployed fiancé, who hides her anxiety about how she will feed her daughter beneath “an air of boredom and free-floating hostility”. These affectionate portraits chronicle the rough luck of people who cannot afford university and who struggle to make ends meet or, in some cases, to stay out of prison.
. . . .
The employees of Town Square enjoy their shared rituals and take pleasure in their “sense of mastery” as they expertly stack boxes and arrange displays. Their pride is real but fragile, threatened by greedy employers, monopolistic e-tailers and the prospect of automation, which looms ominously near the end of the book.
The act of sacrifice holds an elevated and sometimes sacred place in societies across the globe. While sacrifices may be rare in a person’s daily life, they happen as a matter of course in a large number of chess games. Many positions cannot be won or saved without something of value being given away, from a lowly pawn all the way up to the mighty queen. Certain types of sacrifices happen so frequently that to an experienced player they might be considered routine, almost boring, and it often takes an unusual sort of sacrifice to quicken the pulse of jaded grandmasters who have seen tens of thousands of them in their lifetimes.
In the introduction to his classic book “The Art of Sacrifice in Chess,” player Rudolf Spielmann wrote, “The beauty of a game of chess is usually appraised, and with good reason, according to the sacrifices it contains. On principle we incline to rate a sacrificial game more highly than a positional game. Instinctively we place the moral value above the scientific.”
It is this “moral value” that separates some sacrifices from others. Spielmann draws a clear distinction between what he calls a “sham sacrifice” and a real one. A sham sacrifice is one where one can easily see that the piece being given up will return concrete benefits that can be clearly calculated. Any player would be happy to part with their queen if they see that they can checkmate the opponent’s king within a couple of moves.
However, in the case of a real sacrifice, giving away a piece offers gains that are neither immediate nor tangible. The return on investment might be controlling more space, creating an assailable weakness in the opponent’s position, or having more pieces in the critical sector of attack.
In chess, we call these intangibles “compensation.” Having enough compensation for a sacrificed piece is a judgment call based on knowledge of similar situations or a refined intuitive feel based on thousands of games played. Of course, compensation doesn’t guarantee that you will win the game, and if these intangible advantages don’t pan out then that extra material you gifted to the opponent could come roaring back to overwhelm your smaller army.
Life is filled with examples of sham sacrifices versus real ones. When someone takes out a college loan, there is a reasonable assumption that, through future earnings, they will be able not only to pay off the loan, but also to earn more money on top of it. This assumption may not work out, but it has been executed so many times with success that many students feel safe taking on that debt. The fact that it may take years, or in some cases even decades, to see the sacrifice pay off doesn’t change the sense of confidence most young people and their families have when investing in education.
In contrast, real sacrifices promise no guarantee of a concrete return. My mother made an incalculably real sacrifice when she made the painful decision to leave my brother, sister, and me in Jamaica, where we’re from, to head to the U.S. in search of a better life. I was only two years old when she left. It would take her 10 long years to gain citizenship and be able to sponsor us to join her in this land of opportunity. She could not have known how those 10 years would play out and the infinite number of possible challenges we might all have to overcome.
In fact, the very first day after she arrived in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.was shot and killed in Memphis, setting off riots all around the country. The way she tells it, she was in shock that her dream began in such a devastating fashion. But she understood that this wasn’t just about her emotions and fears; she had three young kids, being taken care of by her mother, who were relying on her to push on. And push on she did, with courage and determination and sense of purpose, and a decade later, she accomplished the task that she had set her mind to so many years before, and finally we were able to reunite as one family.
Her sacrifice came with unanticipated results. While she had dreamed that we would all get a college degree (we did), she assumed that we would end up in traditional professions with guaranteed pension plans. She could not have foreseen that I would end up making my living from chess, that my brother’s martial arts passion would lead to his becoming a three-time kickboxing champion, or that her baby girl would leave the world of business behind to win six world titles in boxing.
It did not have to turn out that way. It did because she was willing to stomach the key aspect of making real sacrifices: the willingness to take risks. For a chess player, risk is as much intuited as it is calculated. Due to the inherent complexity of the game, it is virtually impossible to assess with certainty whether a risky move will pay off in the end. It’s up to the player to decide if sufficient conditions have been met to take the chance on a risky move. Those conditions may be an aggressive, attacking posture, dominant pieces, weaknesses in your opponent’s position, time pressure, or the stress of the competitive situation. All these could add up to a certain degree of confidence in the chance of a positive result.
When it comes to risk, grandmasters are not a monolithic group. Depending on their personalities, top players have different levels of risk tolerance. On one hand, you’ll find the swashbuckling, dynamic attacking personality types like Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Tal, and Rashid Nezhmetdinov, who will take risks without much hesitation. On the other side of the spectrum are more conservative players such as José Raúl Capablanca, Tigran Petrosian and Wesley So. Tolerance for risk is very personal.
What we do know, however, is that the famous saying “No risk, no reward” is true in many cases. A skilled adversary is normally able to handle solid, conservative play and therefore able rob us of opportunities that may be inherent in our position. As Magnus Carlsen put it: “Not being willing to take risks is an extremely risky strategy.”
To be comfortable with risk is to be comfortable with uncertainty.
TikTok is actively exploring and integrating various AI-driven features and tools to enhance content creation, advertising, and user engagement on its platform. This exploration includes the development and testing of AI-generated avatars, AI-driven content creation tools, and advanced advertising solutions that leverage AI to improve targeting, engagement, and measurement. Here’s a comprehensive overview of TikTok’s considerations and implementations regarding AI ad avatars and related AI features:
AI-Generated Avatars and Content Creation
Digital Avatars: TikTok introduced AI-generated Digital Avatars as a new feature for content creation, offering over 100 different avatars with a range of appearances, accents, and languages. These avatars are designed for various uses, including narrating product demonstrations, explainer videos, and gameplay, thereby providing a cost-effective way for businesses and content creators to produce engaging content.
AI Avatar Testing: TikTok is testing a new option to let users create AI-generated avatars for their profile pictures. This feature, still in the early stages of testing, aims to put recent advances in AI technology at the forefront for millions of users, potentially enhancing personalization and engagement on the platform.
AI-Driven Advertising Tools
Pencil: Pencil offers a service that uses AI to combine branding and products with user-generated content (UGC) to create TikTok ads that blend seamlessly with the platform’s native content. This service emphasizes the importance of standout text and contemporary video effects, following TikTok’s best practices for ad layouts and text use.
Promote Tool Enhancements: TikTok has added new targeting and boosting features to its Promote advertising tool, allowing creators and small businesses to more effectively turn their content into ads. These features include driving traffic to TikTok pages or inboxes and expanded audience targeting options.
Search Ads and AI Content Label: TikTok has introduced search ads, allowing brands to position their advertisements strategically during user searches, and an AI label to flag videos entirely generated by AI. These initiatives aim to enhance transparency and trust while leveraging AI for advertising and content creation4.
Strategic AI Integration
Generative AI Tools: TikTok continues to experiment with generative AI tools, including profile images, improved contextual search, and AI music generation. These efforts are part of TikTok’s broader strategy to integrate AI in ways that drive engagement and offer new creative opportunities for users and advertisers13.
Measurement Tools: TikTok has launched new ad performance measurement tools, such as Cross-Channel Partners and Lift Partners, to provide marketers with improved insights into the effectiveness of their campaigns. These tools leverage AI to analyze ad performance across different platforms and measure the impact on brand metrics, sales, and physical store visits14.
TikTok’s exploration and implementation of AI ad avatars and related AI-driven features reflect the platform’s commitment to staying at the forefront of social media innovation. By leveraging AI, TikTok aims to enhance content creation, advertising effectiveness, and user engagement, offering new opportunities for businesses, creators, and advertisers to connect with their audiences in creative and impactful ways.
Perplexity Prompt: Create an outline for a murder mystery in the style of Dorothy Sayers
Perplexity Response:
Setting: The Quaint Village of Little Hampden
Little Hampden is a picturesque English village known for its tight-knit community, charming cottages, and a central village green where the annual summer fete is held.
The village is surrounded by dense woods and rolling hills, with a small river running through it.
The local vicarage, the pub called “The Weeping Willow,” and the village hall are the main social hubs.
Introduction: A Mysterious Death
During the village fete, a beloved local artist, Jonathan Eastwood, is found dead in his studio, which overlooks the village green.
The death appears to be a suicide, but certain inconsistencies lead to suspicions of foul play.
Lord Peter Wimsey, visiting his aunt in Little Hampden, takes an interest in the case.
Key Characters
Lord Peter Wimsey: The aristocratic amateur detective with a sharp intellect and a passion for justice.
Mervyn Bunter: Wimsey’s loyal valet and assistant, with a keen eye for detail.
Reverend Thomas Marple: The well-respected vicar with a love for gardening and a secret past.
Eleanor Brampton: The victim’s muse and a talented painter, known for her fiery temper and tumultuous relationship with Eastwood.
Dr. Henry Forbes: The village doctor, whose medical opinion on the death raises more questions than answers.
Inspector Charles Parker: Wimsey’s friend from Scotland Yard, called in to assist with the investigation.
Red Herrings
A mysterious figure seen near the artist’s studio on the night of the murder.
A scandalous love letter found in Eastwood’s desk, hinting at a possible affair.
A recently altered will that benefits a distant relative.
A disgruntled former student of Eastwood’s who had a public falling out with him.
Twists and Turns
Evidence that the suicide note was not written by Eastwood.
Discovery of a hidden compartment in the studio containing a valuable missing painting.
An anonymous tip that leads Wimsey to question the alibis of several villagers.
A break-in at the vicarage that uncovers a stash of blackmail letters.
Character Development
Wimsey’s empathy and understanding of human nature help him connect with the villagers and gain their trust.
Bunter’s military background proves crucial in deciphering a code found among Eastwood’s belongings.
Eleanor Brampton’s initial hostility towards Wimsey softens as she becomes an ally in the investigation.
Reverend Marple’s struggle with his conscience as secrets from his past come to light.
Clues and Evidence
A palette knife smeared with paint and blood, found in the nearby woods.
A torn piece of a jacket caught on a bramble that matches the fabric of a local squire’s missing coat.
A set of footprints leading away from the studio that suggests the presence of a second person.
The discovery of a rare poison in the victim’s system, not readily available to the public.
Conclusion: Unveiling the Murderer
Wimsey gathers all suspects for a dramatic reveal in the village hall.
He meticulously explains how each piece of evidence fits into the puzzle, exonerating the innocent and cornering the guilty.
The murderer is revealed to be someone unexpected, with a motive rooted in a long-held grudge and greed.
Wimsey’s clever deduction and attention to human psychology bring the case to a satisfying close.
Epilogue: Aftermath and Reflection
The village of Little Hampden returns to its peaceful ways, with the shadow of the murder lifted.
Wimsey reflects on the nature of crime and justice, and the impact of the case on the community.
Eleanor Brampton dedicates her next painting to Wimsey, capturing the essence of Little Hampden and its resilience.
Wimsey and Bunter depart, leaving behind grateful villagers and a sense of order restored.
Based upon his playtime with Perplexity, he thinks the AI might be most useful for this sort of question – an author is stuck for a plot and wants some fresh ideas. PG thinks there might be help for sub-plots, character creation, etc., generated with similar more-focused prompts.
One of the key pitfalls of backstory, especially early in a novel, is either confusing backstory or overly coy and “mysterious” backstory. Here’s what it looks like.
In the enigmatic town of Serenity Falls, nestled deep within the embrace of towering pine forests and shrouded in perpetual mist, secrets were as abundant as the whispers that echoed through the labyrinthine streets. The townspeople moved with an air of quiet reserve, their eyes veiled and their lips sealed, guarding the mysteries that lurked in the shadows of their collective history.
Isabella, a newcomer to Serenity Falls, with a past as elusive as the morning fog, felt an inexplicable pull toward the town’s enigmatic allure, drawn by a sense of curiosity that she could neither explain nor ignore. She found herself embroiled in a web of intrigue and suspense that seemed to emanate from the very soul of the town itself.
Editor Tiffany Yates Martin discusses this terrible passage of backstory (written by AI, in fact) and then shows how to improve it.
I am drawn to the things that people won’t talk about. That may be obvious, if you know that my first two novels were about body image and suicide. When was the last time you asked a new mom about her poochy, post-baby abdomen, or what it was like for your neighbor to find her son dead by his own hand? Body-altering, life-changing events happen to us every day that most people just won’t talk about, even though staying mum feeds a churning magma of shame.
Secrets and lies are everywhere in contemporary fiction, and will often drive the entire novel, as David Corbett covered well in a 2022 post. For the purposes of this post, if the protagonist participated in “the thing that shall not be mentioned,” it’s probably more like a shameful secret that someone might lie to cover up.
What I want to look at today is a subtler contribution to characterization—unquestioned taboos passed down through your character’s family or tribe of origin.
Our understanding of what behavior is acceptable in society can come from what we’re told—“No sweetie, we don’t bite our friends”—or, sometimes more powerfully, through what’s never spoken about. If you’d like to try this way of enhancing characterization, look for a taboo relevant to your premise that is specific to the character’s family, as in the examples below. Because it won’t ever be talked about, the character may not even know why it’s taboo; they’ve simply accepted it as forbidden. These silent influences can add shading to a character, impact goal achievement, or dam/damn their inner arc of change.
Love. A man approaching a dock in a motor boat is met by a four year old waving his arms. “Uncle Jim, Uncle Jim, I love you!” The man climbs onto the dock, says hello to the child, then marches up to the boy’s mother and asks why her son would say that to him. She says, “Um, because he loves you? Wild guess.” The uncle harrumphs. “Well. We don’t do that.” What if using the word love causes suspicion in a family member instead of pleasure?
Money. Even though your character’s father was a vice-president of a major company, she had no idea what he earned except that according to her mother, the money didn’t stretch far with five children. This might leave the character clueless about budgeting, saving, and investing in ways that could impact her goal achievement. If her best friend hinted at “how much more money” she was making at her new job, your protagonist might feel prompted to ask for the details her friend longed to spill, but, believing it was crass to talk about money, have to force those words through the involuntary constriction in her throat. What if making money made her feel uncomfortable rather than successful?
Age. At dinner, a girl once asked her favorite aunt how old she was. Her mother cut her a stern look. A long, tense pause ensues. Her aunt finally says, “Old enough to know better.” How might this impact the girl? Would she think that aging is shameful and to be avoided at all cost? Might she be waiting for the day when she knows better?
Emotions. As with many who will not talk about the trauma they’ve suffered, there might be only two prevalent emotions at home: silence and anger. How might this impact a sensitive boy, who perceives the emotional world in many more shades, and cannot stop his tears despite his mother demanding that he do so? Might he see his emotional intelligence as emotional damnation, instead?
. . . .
Interpersonal issues. An only child grows up to be a mother ill-equipped to manage the five children she has after she marries, especially since her husband works long hours supporting them. Her strategy when trouble erupts is to divide and conquer. How might this impact her daughter, when she’s called upon to resolve conflict in her own life?
Mistakes. A boy grew up never realizing that the parents he’s been emulating made mistakes. They certainly never admitted to any. How might this hamper this young man later in life, when an important relationship requires that he make use of the fine art of apology? And might he dismiss as weak an important mentor after the man admits to his own mistakes? How can he leave perfectionism behind in order to allow new awareness and personal growth?
