, Russia occupies eastern Ukraine.
China laid claim to the South China Sea and is constructing bases on islands claimed by other countries. The Chinese military has confronted U.S. naval vessels and aircraft.
North Korea tests ballistic missiles which are capable of reaching the U.S. It is working on developing ballistic missiles outfitted with nuclear warheads by 2018.
Iran is involved in the Syrian War and is a backer of Islamic terrorist organizations. It keeps challenging our naval forces in the Persian Gulf and continually threatens to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
A dictatorship in Venezuela is causing instability in the country.
Given these situations, what are Trump's priorities? He is focusing on repealing Obamacare, building a border wall, banning transgender people from our military, worrying about news leaks, undermining the media, replacing White House Staff, pardoning a convicted criminal sheriff, attacking NFL and NBA players, and showering Putin with platitudes.
Trump is fraying the fabric of American society, tweeting away the Presidency and jeopardizing our security.
Trump is our disastrous President.
Donald Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Tweeting Away The Presidency
We currently have problems with countries who could threaten our national security.While the phrase ‘new year, new me’ is overused on basically every New Years Eve related post, the meaning behind it is a sigh of relief for businesses looking for a fresh start in the coming year. There is no better time to reevaluate past marketing campaigns, set new goals, and create a new strategy than the start of a new year. One marketing goal that should make the top of your list is creating a stronger brand identity. Doing so will allow your brand to stand out among competitors, and build a stronger relationship between you and your customers. In order to accomplish this goal it is important to do the following: Re-evaluate Core Competencies: In order to better market your organization it is critical to discover what makes your brand unique. Organizations may find this a variety of ways including: Review the mission statement to identify core values and purposeCustomer feedback to find most important qualities in productsEvaluate competitors products to see how you are differentThis quality will shape future marketing campaigns and the reputation for your organization. In the New Year, take time to make this attribute synonymous with your brand. This will differentiate your brand from competitors and give customers a better idea of what you will offer them. For example, Apple is a brand that thrives off their core value of innovative products. Apple’s campaign to ‘think different’ captured the attention of the public and turned the concept into a lifestyle rather than just a computer. They have remained true to values created by founder Steve Jobs and thrived off their reputation. Consistent Posting Schedule: Another idea to build a stronger brand identity is creating a consistent posting schedule to stay on the radar of consumers. It is important to put out material that is in line with your core competency identified in the previous tip. Consistent posting creates a depth to your organization and allows you to interact with consumers with similar interest following along. You can share related industry news or even just interesting articles that will entertain your target market. It also creates a personality for your brand that people can relate to and share with friends and family. An example of this is Starbucks, who posts regularly on Twitter with tweets mentioning featured menu items and content for anybody that loves coffee. Not only do they feature a story about Nick Jonas buying coffee and singing for fans in a Starbucks location, but also announce a fun national Hot Cocoa Day to get attention back to their products. This is effective as you are able to stay up-to-date with current events and, therefore, remain relevant for consumers. Conversation with Customers: In addition to consistent posting, it is also critical to interact with customers to create a personal connection and once again show your personality. Creating an identity for your organization goes beyond just pictures and videos you share but to interactions with customers using your products or services. This communication will be one of the most memorable aspects of your organization. You can dramatically change how people view your company based on how you respond to their experiences. For example, Jet Blue responds to seemingly every tweet they are tagged in. Here are a few of them….In each interaction, JetBlue provides a friendly response to value each and every mention from their customers. This kind of reputation for an organization can increase brand loyalty and further depict their brand as a friendly airline service. Thankfully, in this modern era responding to every customer is an actual possibility and can be done with relative ease, and JetBlue takes advantage of this. Wishing you a Happy New Year and a successful 2018 marketing campaign! For additional articles, check out Conscious Collaborative’s blog where we discuss various marketing ideas to offer support. Our team is also available to provide a full range of services that will elevate your next campaign. Once again wishing you success in the New Year from Conscious Collaborative.
NB there's an AC meeting on the Tuesday from 11:00-15:00. See also the TPAC 2014 ad hoc meetings page.
Minutes for both Monday 27th October and Tuesday 28th October are concatenated here.
To Do: make this agenda more detailed.
Response to request from MPEG to host a registry of TTML profiles - see Issue-305 and TTML/CodecsRegistry.
See the TTML to WebVTT page for issues, output etc.
WD comments review (see the comments tracker).
We have a temporary bridge setup for this call, but will not dial in unless notified that someone would like to join remotely - please use IRC to do so.
0900 Respec work - see SpecProd/Restyle.
Give me 3-5 adjectives for how the visual design of a W3C spec should "feel".
List the URLs to 3 specs that are representative of your WG's output (especially wrt markup and structure of the content).
What spec processing tools does your WG actively use?
Is there anything else we should know / consider?
Timing relationship with related media objects (Issue-270, Issue-335, Issue-346).
Priority 1 Change Proposals - see the change proposal index and sort by Priority.
1600 Multimodal Interaction - Debbie Dahl as guest. See EMMA.
Pronunciation lexicons - see PLS.
Emotion markup - see EmotionML.
Speech synthesis - see SSML.Mmm...tired. Long day.
I don't know how clear it is what I'm actually doing these days -- it's a fairly chaotic mix of writing stuff for money, writing other things, trying to get better about sending stories out, temping, learning FrameMaker, waiting for this tech writing gig to happen, etc. So today, I had a one-day temp assignment...it was supposed to be two, but I finished the work in one, so no job tomorrow. :( Not much I could do about it; I *could* have stretched the work out to two days, but I would have been bored stiff. It was a weird assignment...instead of the moderately technical executive secretarial stuff I usually do (which is harder than it looks, and actually takes some skills), today I filled in on a clerical assignment. It was all they had, and was better than not working, since money is tight right now, but it's been a while since I did that kind of thing. I spent most of the day counting. The company (which makes magnets, of all things), needed several boxes inventoried, so it was a fair bit of pretty tedious unpacking, sorting, counting, repacking. And I caught myself reminding myself that I don't really do this for a living, and I have two degrees, dammit, and so on and so forth. I had to resist the urge to explain to my boss that I was really pretty overqualified for this job -- as if he cared! *sigh* I will be *so* happy when I am once again working close to full-time at something that I can take seriously. Today just felt so wasteful...
Anyway. It sounds worse than it was; I'm tired, and my neck and shoulders hurt from all the bending over, but it actually went pretty quickly. And I *am* glad I got it done and don't have to go back there tomorrow.
Read some Sharon Olds poems this morning; Jed had loaned me a book, and I read them on the train. Really good...so rich that I closed the book after three poems; I don't want to race through these. I'll pick my favorites once I have read through and put one or two up here for y'all.
Lessee -- other reading. Well, I'm quickly reading through Nancy Kress's new book on character (that Leah's Mike loaned me). Nothing tremendously new so far, though it's interesting to see laid out consciously some things that I've known subconsciously. That's a lot of what Clarion did, and it's clearly helped my writing, so I'm going to finish the book, and perhaps some stuff will seep in. I think it would be a very helpful book to a new writer.
Also reading through LeGuin's _Steering the Craft_, which I think would be more helpful to a writing teacher than to an individual writer, though it's a little hard to say. Also reading her essays in _Dancing on the Edge of the World_; I like those better. Interestingly, this year, both Kevin and I (independently) started reading a lot more nonfiction. Not that I don't still love fiction (I spent a while in the bookstore at lunch reading Pratchett's _Interesting Times_), but nonfiction interests me more