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Top Items:
Daniel Halper / Weekly Standard:
Panetta: Obama Absent Night of Benghazi — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta testified this morning on Capitol Hill that President Barack Obama was absent the night four Americans were murdered in Benghazi on September 11, 2012: — Panetta said, though he did meet with Obama …
Rusty Weiss / The Mental Recession: On the Night Four Americans Were Murdered in Benghazi, President Obama Voted 'Present'
Jennifer Rubin / Right Turn: The second-term curse — We know many recent presidents fell prey to a second-term curse.
Jim Hoft / The Gateway Pundit: NOW THEY TELL US... Obama Was ABSENT Night of Benghazi Massacre ...(Obama Went to Bed)
Deringer / nation.foxnews.com: OBAMA ABSENT NIGHT OF BENGHAZI
William Kristol / Weekly Standard:
On Their Own — The White House left Ambassador Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith on their own on September 11 in Benghazi. That is the upshot of today's Capitol Hill hearing featuring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.
Discussion: Power Line
Scott Johnson / Power Line: On their own — Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey and Secretary …
Associated Press:
Panetta defends military response in Libya attack
Panetta defends military response in Libya attack
Discussion: Weekly Standard, Hit & Run, Hot Air, Pat Dollard and Flopping Aces
Daniel Halper / Weekly Standard: General on Benghazi: 'We Never Received a Request for Support from the State Department'
Ed Krayewski / Hit & Run: President Obama Had One Conversation With Leon Panetta on the Day of the Benghazi Attack
Tim Mak / Politico:
Leon Panetta defends Pentagon response after Benghazi attack
Leon Panetta defends Pentagon response after Benghazi attack
Discussion: ABCNEWS
News Media Scrub Cop Murderer's Manifesto of Pro-Obama, Hillary, MSNBC, CNN, Gay, and Anti-Gun Comments — I've been following closely the news story about Chris Dorner, who is now suspected of murdering three people, including one police officer, and shooting another two police officers.
Discussion: Hot Air, Twitchy, BREITBART.COM, Weasel Zippers, Jammie Wearing Fools, Council of Conservative … and The Jawa Report
Allahpundit / Hot Air: Accused cop-killer left manifesto praising Obama, Hillary, Piers Morgan, gun control
Sarah Desprat / Twitchy: Master murder-politicizer Piers Morgan: Don't politicize Dorner murder spree
John Nolte / BREITBART.COM: SUSPECTED MASS-MURDERER'S MANIFESTO ENDORSES HILLARY, OBAMA, GUN CONTROL, ELITE MEDIA
Andrew Kaczynski / BuzzFeed:
LAPD Spree Killer's Supposed Full Manifesto Shows Support For Gun Control And President Obama
LAPD Spree Killer's Supposed Full Manifesto Shows Support For Gun Control And President Obama
Discussion: nation.foxnews.com and SOOPERMEXICAN
L.A. police look for ex-cop suspected in shootings
L.A. police look for ex-cop suspected in shootings
Discussion: CBS Los Angeles, Little Green Footballs, L.A. NOW and Represent!
Vabergland / CBS Los Angeles: Massive Manhunt Underway For Ex-Cop After Riverside Police Officer Fatally Shot
Crimefile / CRIME, GUNS, AND VIDEOTAPE:
Fired LAPD Officer, Obama Lover and Committed Gun Control Advocate is Being Sought In Revenge Killings!
Fired LAPD Officer, Obama Lover and Committed Gun Control Advocate is Being Sought In Revenge Killings!
Discussion: Associated Press, Bob Owens, The Daily Caller and The PJ Tatler
Patrick Howley / The Daily Caller: Suspected cop killer an Obama, Piers Morgan fan
Stephen Green / The PJ Tatler: The Obama-Loving Cop Killer
Bryan Preston / The PJ Tatler:
Suspected L.A. Cop Killer Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web (Update: KTLA Whitewash)
Suspected L.A. Cop Killer Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web (Update: KTLA Whitewash)
Discussion: Twitchy, protein wisdom, Fire Andrea Mitchell! and Five Feet of Fury
Thisistwitchy / Twitchy: MSM covers up Christopher Dorner's hard-Left political views
Jeff G. / protein wisdom: "Suspected LA Cop Killer Posted Pro-Obama, Pro-Gun Control, Leftist Rant on the Web" [UPDATE]
Kathy Shaidle / Five Feet of Fury: Warren Kinsella: Wrong again — three times in one week
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Dems will offer GOP spending cuts to avert doom — The New York Times reports today that Senate Dems are putting together a plan to avert the sequester with new revenues drawn from things like nixing tax breaks enjoyed by oil and gas companies and closing loopholes for the wealthy and corporations.
Discussion: New York Times, Booman Tribune, Hullabaloo, Daily Kos and The Maddow Blog
Laura Clawson / Daily Kos: Republicans start to squirm over sequester
Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online:
As Neocons Defend Obama, Allies Doubt Him on Drones as Never Before — The John Brennan confirmation hearings are the biggest showdown yet on extrajudicial killing and executive branch secrecy. — For once, the Obama Administration's drone policy is much in the news.
Discussion: Wall Street Journal, Flopping Aces, New York Times, Taking Note, Lawfare, Washington Monthly, The Week, CANNONFIRE and Taylor Marsh, more at Mediagazer »
Lincoln Caplan / Taking Note: The Targeted Killing Memo and the Problem of Secret Law
Ritika Singh / Lawfare: Today's Headlines and Commentary
Quinnipiac News + Events:
Release Detail — February 7, 2013 - Americans Back Women In Combat 3-1, But Less For Draft, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Support For Universal Gun Background Checks Is 92% — American voters support allowing women in combat by an overwhelming 75 - 22 percent, including 77 …
Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Politico, ABCNEWS, The Plum Line, Gawker, Daily Kos, Hot Air, Firedoglake, Outside the Beltway, NPR and msnbc.com
Katie Glueck / Politico: Poll: 75 percent for women in combat
Emily Deruy / ABCNEWS: Latinos Favor Allowing Women in Combat
Doug Mataconis / Outside the Beltway: Poll: 75% Of Americans Support Women In Combat
Eyder Peralta / NPR: Poll: 9 In 10 Americans Support Background Check For All Gun Sales
Bryan Weakland / msnbc.com: Phoenix Mayor: Tide is turning on immigration reform
Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
The Morning Plum: GOP resolve on sequester begins to crack
The Morning Plum: GOP resolve on sequester begins to crack
Discussion: Mother Jones, Businessweek, Angry Bear, Booman Tribune, Hot Air and msnbc.com
Kevin Drum / Mother Jones: No Need to Panic About the Sequester Yet
Joshua Green / Businessweek: The Looming Republican Crackup Over the Sequester
Beverly Mann / Angry Bear: Does Obama Have Stockholm Syndrome, Or Is Greg Sargent Misreading Obama's Press Conference Comments?
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air: Obama releases secret drone memo to Senate Intel Committee
Daily Rundown / msnbc.com: Republican rift over sequester
Ashley Killough / CNN:
Poll: Americans back drone attacks, but not on U.S. citizens abroad
Poll: Americans back drone attacks, but not on U.S. citizens abroad
Discussion: AEIdeas and Weasel Zippers
The GOP, Fox political purge — Republicans and Fox News are moving to purge the controversial political creatures they created. — Both were damaged badly in 2012 by loud, partisan voices that stoked the base — but that scared the hell out of many voters.
Charles P. Pierce / Esquire: THINGS IN POLITICO THAT MAKE ME WANT TO GUZZLE ANTIFREEZE, PART THE INFINITY
Stephanie Ebbert / The Boston Globe: Joins board of Mass. paper processing firm
Thereisnospoon / Hullabaloo: Can't take the grift out of the GOP, by @DavidOAtkins
David Ferguson / The Raw Story: GOP infighting turns ugly over 'hater' comment
Steve Benen / The Maddow Blog: What the 'cranks, haters and bigots' believe
Paul Bibeau / Goblinbooks: Karl Rove to the GOP: "Please. Please Stop Talking"
Steve M. / No More Mister Nice Blog: DOES GOP WEAKNESS MATTER WHEN THE MAINSTREAM PRESS IS ROOTING FOR REPUBLICANS TO WIN?
Tengrain / Mock, Paper, Scissors: "Some Say," Some Said — Tiger Beat on the Potomac (Thanks Charlie! …
Joan McCarter / Daily Kos: Politico: Fox 'purge' shows GOP is trying to moderate
Jennifer Jacobs / Des Moines Register:
Congressman Steve King: Help fight Karl Rove's crusade against me
Congressman Steve King: Help fight Karl Rove's crusade against me
Discussion: Ballot Box, The Fix and Post Politics
Cameron Joseph / Ballot Box: Steve King fundraises off Karl Rove's 'crusade' against him
Sean Sullivan / Post Politics: Steve King: 'Nobody can bully me out of running for Senate'
James Hohmann / Politico:
Steve King: Donate to me to stop Karl Rove
Steve King: Donate to me to stop Karl Rove
Discussion: The Huffington Post, CNN and The Caucus
Karl Rove / CNN: Steve King: Karl Rove 'launched a crusade against me'
Jeff Zeleny / The Caucus: Iowa Congressman Pushes Back Against Rove Group
Karl Rove vs. tea party for GOP's future
Karl Rove vs. tea party for GOP's future
Discussion: New York Times, ABCNEWS, The Maddow Blog and Daily Kos
Jeff Zeleny / New York Times: New Rove Effort Has G.O.P. Aflame
Chris Good / ABCNEWS: The New GOP Civil War
Amie Parnes / The Hill:
Obama 'prepared, eager and anxious' for GOP sequester fight — President Obama told House Democrats on Thursday that he is "prepared, eager and anxious" to produce a "big package" on the so-called sequester that would end "this governance in crisis." — Speaking to lawmakers …
Jennifer Epstein / Politico: Obama urges House Dems to stay with him on agenda
Kevin Liptak / CNN:
Obama tells House Dems he wants 'big deal' on debt
Obama tells House Dems he wants 'big deal' on debt
Discussion: Politico
Kate Nocera / Politico: DCCC chair: Jan. record in member donations
Darlene Superville / Associated Press:
Michelle Obama to Attend Chicago Girl's Funeral
Michelle Obama to Attend Chicago Girl's Funeral
Jennifer Epstein / Politico: First lady to attend girl's funeral
Eyder Peralta / NPR: First Lady Michelle Obama Will Attend Slain Chicago Teen's Funeral
Washington Post:
Sen. Menendez contacted top officials in friend's Medicare dispute — Sen. Robert Menendez raised concerns with top federal health-care officials twice in recent years about their finding that a Florida eye doctor — a close friend and major campaign donor — had overbilled the government …
Jordan Fabian / ABCNEWS: Sen. Menendez: No Undue Influence on Behalf of Political Donor
Jeffrey Meyer / NewsBusters blogs: WashPost Runs 43 Paragraph Front-Page Article On Sen. Menendez; Buries Prostitution Scandal In Style Section
Justin Sink / The Hill: Menendez: Nothing improper in Medicare calls for donor
OpenSecrets.org: Capital Eye Opener, Feb. 7: Menendez Ties to Donor Deepen, Hutchison Joins Giuliani's Firm, and More
Robert Stacy McCain / The Other McCain: Washington Post Reports Menendez Corruption, Downplays Jailbait Hookers
Jennifer Rubin / Right Turn: Comeuppance for Menendez, Obama and Hagel
Charlie Spiering / Washington Examiner: 'Menendez is a good friend of mine, and he knows I never did anything wrong'
Dana Halferty / Medium:
Damsel, Arise: A Westboro Scion Leaves Her Church — Just after 11 last Sunday morning at Old First Reformed Church in Brooklyn, the Rev. Dr. Daniel Meeter is starting the Sunday service as he always does. He runs through the opening salutation and the collect for the day …
Discussion: AMERICAblog, Religion Dispatches, Good As You, Mediaite, Advocate and The Stranger …
John Aravosis / AMERICAblog: Two of Fred Phelps' granddaughters defect from GodHatesF*gs Westboro Baptist
Peter Montgomery / Religion Dispatches: Two of Fred Phelps's Granddaughters Leave Westboro Church of Hate - Post by PETER MONTGOMERY
Noah Rothman / Mediaite: The Amazing Transformation Of A Westboro Baptist Church Leader Who Left The Church And Moved To Brooklyn
Lucas Grindley / Advocate: How Two Phelps Family Members Become 'Betrayers'
Megan Seling / The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Megan Phelps-Roper, and Her Sister Grace, Have Left the Westboro Church
Megan Phelps-Roper / Medium:
Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise
Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise
Discussion: Joe. My. God., Mashable!, Guardian, Wonkette, Towleroad News #gay and Gawker
The Daily Dot / Mashable!: Westboro Baptist Heiress Pens Online Goodbye to Church
Rebecca Schoenkopf / Wonkette: Wait A Minute, Did You Know The Westboro Baptist Church Girls Are Super Pretty?
Miriam Valverde / Sun-Sentinel:
"Breastaurants" Tilted Kilt, Twin Peaks coming to area — Hooters Girls are getting more competition. At least two new "breastaurant" chains are working on plans to open in South Florida this year, also featuring scantily clad women. — Next month, the Tilted Kilt Pub & Eatery will open …
Discussion: Vodkapundit
Stephen Green / Vodkapundit: "In-N-Out Burger" Was Already Taken
National and Local Weather Forecast …:
Winter Storm Nemo: Potential Historic Blizzard Looms — Potentially Historic Storm: Snow Impact — Winter Storm Nemo is now poised to become the latest example of a powerful, potentially historic, February storm. — We lay out the forecast of heavy snow on this page …
Discussion: The Week and Suburban Guerrilla
Michael Sneed / Chicago Sun Times:
SNEED EXCLUSIVE: Pending Jesse Jackson Jr. plea deal includes 'significant jail time,' source says — Sneed has learned a plea deal is now on the table between former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and federal authorities probing allegations of campaign fund misuse.
Hans von Spakovsky / The Heritage Foundation: Jesse Jackson Jr. Facing "Significant Jail Time"
Vince Coglianese / The Daily Caller: REPORT: Jesse Jackson, Jr. plea deal includes 'significant jail time'
ZIP / Weasel Zippers: Report: Dem Ex-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. To Do "Significant Jail Time" In Plea Deal With Feds...
Anne Sorock / Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion: The Machine revealed: Jesse Jackson Jr "facing significant jailtime" in plea deal
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air: Jackson Jr plea deal will include "significant jail time"
Rick Moran / americanthinker.com: Plea deal in Jesse Jackson, Jr. case includes 'significant' jail time
Doug Mataconis / Outside the Beltway: Jesse Jackson Jr. Headed To Jail?
Michael Grunwald / TIME:
Immigrant Son — Oriales García Rubio knows how it feels to want more. When she was a girl in central Cuba in the 1930s, her family of nine lived in a one-room house with a dirt floor. Her dolls were Coke bottles dressed in rags. She dreamed of becoming an actress.
Discussion: The Stranger …, FishbowlDC, Red Alert Politics, ABCNEWS, Washington Wire, TheBlaze.com, CNN and Wall Street Journal
Paul Constant / The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper: Marco Rubio's Ascent Continues
Betsy Rothstein / FishbowlDC: TIME Cover: Marco Rubio - The Republican Savior
Kelsey Osterman / Red Alert Politics: Marco Rubio: Hombre en Fuego!
Arlette Saenz / ABCNEWS: How Marco Rubio's Mom Influenced Him on Immigration Reform
Tim Hanrahan / Washington Wire: Rubio: Only One Savior, and It's Not Me
Meredith Jessup / TheBlaze.com: For Rubio & TIME, what a difference 2 years makes
Siobhan Hughes / Wall Street Journal: Rubio to Deliver GOP Response at State of the Union
Dan Popkey / Idaho Statesman:
Longtime Labrador spokesman fired for bawdy Super Bowl tweet — Phil Hardy, Rep. Raul Labrador's spokesman since his upset congressional win in 2010, has been fired for mistakenly tweeting in the name of his boss about his admiration for two actresses pole dancing in a Super Bowl ad.
Discussion: Politico, Post Politics, Forbes and Mashable!
Breanna Edwards / Politico: Labrador spox sacked after tweet
Rosalind S. Helderman / Post Politics: Labrador fires spokesman over accidental tweet
Alex Kantrowitz / Forbes: Congressional Staffer's Crude Twitter Fail Costs Him His Job
Ian Millhiser / ThinkProgress:
Reagan-Appointed Judge On Race: 'Eleanor Roosevelt Said Staffs Of One Color Always Work Better' — A Texas civil rights group filed a complaint against Judge Lynn N. Hughes, a Ronald Reagan-appointee to a federal district court in Texas, criticizing his "outlandish racial comments" …
Discussion: alan.com
Mike Malloy / Ames Tribune:
Bill would define abortion as murder — State Rep. Rob Bacon believes abortion is murder and he wants the Iowa Code to reflect that. — Bacon, R-Slater, and eight other Republicans introduced such a bill in the Iowa House Wednesday. It would alter the definition of a person in murder cases to …
Discussion: Little Green Footballs, The Raw Story and alan.com
Gatemouth / Room Eight:
Exclusive: Lena Dunham—Born Again Political Virgin — LENA DUNHAM (in a video supporting President Obama's re-election): Your first time shouldn't be with just anybody. … The actual story of the cherries jubilee celebrating the loss of Lena Dunham's virginity is somewhat less romantic.
Discussion: Politico, Washington Examiner, Mediaite, BREITBART.COM, Red Alert Politics, The Daily Caller, PopWatch, Gawker and BuzzFeed
Caitlin McDevitt / Politico: Lena Dunham: Chill out, I voted
Matt Wilstein / Mediaite: Lena Dunham Did Vote In 2012 Election, Despite All Evidence To The Contrary
Ezra Dulis / BREITBART.COM: PUBLICIST: YES, LENA DUNHAM VOTED IN 2012
Kelsey Osterman / Red Alert Politics: Lena Dunham of Obama 'first time' ad didn't vote in 2012 ... or did she?
Jim Treacher / The Daily Caller: Lena Dunham is a young woman who we're all supposed to take seriously …
Jeff Labrecque / PopWatch: Lena Dunham did go all the way with Obama on the ballot after all...
Taylor Berman / Gawker: Breaking: Lena Dunham Reportedly Did Not Vote in Last Election (But Says She Did)


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You can visit this page again and again for information you can use during your son or daughter's time at CIU.
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We've put together a Parent's Guide with tools, articles, and online resources to help you prepare financially for college.
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When it's time to make a payment on your student's account, we have a few options available. You can sign up for a payment plan each semester to make paying for a college a little easier. Tuition payments can be made online, by phone or mail. Make checks payable to Columbia International University.
Prayer Guide
Recognizing that prayer is one of the most important things a parent can do for their college student, we have compiled a prayer guide for parents.
Transition Tips
Transitioning to college comes with mixed emotions for both you and your student. We've put together a few transition tips to make separating for college less stressful.

subset: commoncrawl


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CHRISTIAN FUCHS" by Adam Arvidsson and Elanor Colleoni. (pdf)
This compelling paper starts by trying to discredit using the labor theory of value to critique "prosumerism" and "digital sharecropping"-- the harvesting of the value created by consumers through acts of consumption, collaboration, identity display network forming and general sociality. Seems like a bit of a side issue to me -- but it is a stepping stone to a much more interesting point about how social media produce value. The labor/value that Facebook harvests isn't a matter of time invested on the site but more a matter of how many connections are traced. These build it's brand, and brand equity isn't measured in time. The same is true for the emerging personal brand that Facebook facilitates in its image.
But I found this interesting: "If Facebook made a profit of $ 355 million in 2010 (according to its own figures), this would mean that each Facebook user was a 'victim of exploitation of surplus value' to the extent of $ 0.7 a year, and if we use the consulting company McKinsey's most recent figure on the overall value created by audience participation on the internet globally, $ 100 billion, this becomes $ 59 per internet user per year, hardly an 'a rate of exploitation that converges towards infinity' as Fuchs claims." That's a good point, but I suppose the way to interpret that is that users are putting a lot of time in to create very little economic value; their work time can be inefficiently wasted since it is not a disutility to workers (they regard the labor as creating personal identity and living social life, not working) and because the social-media firms harvesting the "value" aren't paying much for it and have scaled up to the level of billions of unpaid "employees."
The authors appear very concerned about putting an accurate price tag on the value created through social media practices and volunteer brand building and so on, as they see such a calculation as the key to their argument that the financial valuation of social media companies and the like is the new means of capital accumulation and expropriation (not exploiting labor):
appropriation and realization of value in informational capitalism needs to be understood as part of an extended, society-wide process of finance-centered accumulation, where the link between reputational (or affective) value and access to financial rent becomes fundamental. This, we argue is particularly true for social media platforms, the values of which are very difficult to justify in terms of their non-financial revenues.The finance system, they argue, and not commodities, is where the "value" appears in hard dollar terms that is generated by the social factory, or the general intellect, or informational capital, or immaterial labor, or whatever you want to call it. And there, I suppose, it accrues to the people who have the means, access, and know-how to manipulate value at that level -- bankers, large-scale investors, tech entrepreneurs, etc. Otherwise, they suggest, the value of the brand equity co-creation and the marketing data created by our social practices and mediated online can't be extracted. In other words, value in this realm isn't generated by a commodity's circulation; it comes through financial manipulation of the underlying platform for sociality, through instruments tied to those platforms conceived as assets, which then circulate in the commodities' stead. The value of these media platforms is tied inexactly to the amount of communication and "value creation" we do on and through them.
In other words, the setting of values on financial markets is a deliberative decision that mobilizes and builds to a large extent on the public reputation of companies, brands and related assets. This leads us to suggest that informational capitalism ever more deploys a reputational 'law' of value, where the value of companies and their intangible assets are set not in relation to an objective measurement, like labor time, but in relation to their ability to attract and aggregate intersubjective judgments of their overall value or utility in terms of mediated forms of reputation.
The authors add that "the value of brands depend less on the (directly measurable) quanta of labor time that go into their production, and more on their reputation and brand strength [and] in the case of knowledge workers, and in particular freelances, the value of skills is increasingly determined by their ability to create a 'personal brand.'" That obviously rings my bell; my whole spiel lately revolves around social media as a vector for transforming subjectivity into personal branding, to make that feel like common sense and natural instead of alienating, self-centered and rude.
I am intrigued by the possibility of applying this whole line of thinking to individuals rather than firms and by the implicit idea that credit may be the way a "basic income" is extended to workers in "informational capitalism" (call them the creative class or the cognitariat, if you like) in lieu of stable wages. The level of credit access becomes an index to an individual's perceived contribution to the "general intellect" or alternatively, the value of their personal brand to the information economy. Credit scores may become vaguely tied to how hipsterish one is, how credible one's lifestyle and habitus and social network are and thus how valuable one is likely to be to the generation and circulation of valuable meanings/uses/brands/innovations to be attached to goods and services. Perhaps in the future Facebook status will be factored into one's credit worthiness (perhaps this is already happening, as it is with employment, and hirers using Facebook as a tool to evaluate candidates.) It seems that the authors welcome this possibility in their conclusion, with social media "democratically" determining personal worth. That sounds like the very definition of dystopia to me, as I see these sorts of technological systems as likely means to leverage preexisting social inequities.
Anyway, along the way, the authors offer a lucid account of the somewhat elaborate arguments that Negri/autonomist-derived terms"post-Fordism" and "multitude" and :immaterial labor" are supposed to serve as shorthand for. Under Fordist conditions (factories, big firms, Taylorist division of labor, rigid hierarchies) "concrete productive practices must be organized in such ways that they can be measured as expressions of a general equivalent: abstract labor time [and] the labor process must be organized in such ways that value creation can be easily attributed to individual actors or units. Both of these conditions become increasingly problematic as capitalist development proceeds 'beyond Fordism'." That is to say, production in the sphere of informational capitalism is more collaborative and inspiration-driven; it isn't a matter of x number of employees putting x amount of hours in. Basically, "labor creates value in ways that are poorly related to quanta of time."
Thus the nature of the workplace must change from being a factory to the "social factory" -- meaning production can occur through sociality at any time, and requires that people get along with one another (thus building friendships becomes a work process too). The premier productive force and source of wealth is what Marx called "general intellect" rather than labor time -- updating that for contemporary times, that general intellect becomes the value of social being being captured and harvested all the time by various media.
As the authors note, Negri argued that this sort of labor is "outside capital" but it seems more that it broadens capital's nature to include platforms and networks and identity itself as resources to marshal and exploit. What is "valorized" is these media is not, as the authors notes, pageviews or clicks or audience eyeballs but social relations themselves -- that is what is being brokered and sold by Facebook. We create "webs of affective attachments around informational objects" -- I tend to call this "immaterial labor" or "meaning making" or "affective labor" or "communicative capitalism" depending on the context.
But the idea is that social media can capture the value in our efforts to make ourselves seem cool by sharing well-curated stuff and ideas with others (or in the authors' jargon, social media "trigger forms of 'self valorization' whereby the multitude itself confers the kinds of affective investments on an informational object that is able to render it interesting and worthy of attention"). These media encourage us to orient more and more of our self-fashioning efforts to that model -- to build our personal brand, our influencer status, which is measurable in terms of retweets and likes and so on. This engenders a new kind of alienation, a kind of perpetual reflexivity and calculating approach to our social behavior that ruins it as a respite. Identity and friendship become more and more explicitly competitive, and capital (social media companies and marketers, mainly) reaps the benefit.
The authors are anxious to stress that the economic value in these attached affects stems not from the time it takes to notice and like things but from "affective webs" among the "networked multitude" -- a kind of commons of social affinity that Facebook encloses.
From a business point of view this means that the strategic key to value is not the sheerThey control the platform, and then they securitize it (via IPO, etc.) to transform it to financial value (leveraging implicit brand equity derived from all that immaterial labor the platform has attracted), to collect their tax. But who has paid the tax? That's what gets lost in the web of financial engineering chicanery.
number of hits or hours of attention paid to a site but, on the one hand, the 'virtuosity' that is able to attract such affective investments by inserting an informational product at the right time and place in such communicative and affective flows and, on the other hand, the ability to control the platforms, like Facebook, on which such affective self-valorization takes place. Indeed the value of Facebook is not primarily built on its ability to attract attention time, but on its ability to control and objectify the affective flows that organize the attention and prosumer input on the part of the multitude, and, to tax these flows in some way.


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After that, if you are connecting your account to a .GOP domain, all you have to do is go to Join.GOP and go to My Domains > Configure, and click the DNS tab. (If you are using a registrar other than .GOP, navigate to their DNS editor and follow the rest of these steps.) Under the section that says "A (HOST)," find the entry whose subdomain is the @ symbol. Click the IP address and replace it with the one you copied from your Win.GOP account, then click "Save Changes." Finally, you'll want to add a new record in this section. Click "Add Host," in the "A (HOST)" section. Under "Subdomain," enter an asterisk (*), and for the IP address use the same one we just added. Click "Save Changes."
Changes can take upwards of a day to take effect, but when they do, your Win.GOP site and custom domain will be linked—anybody who visits joesmithforsenate.com will view your Win.GOP website, and any changes you make to your site in the back end (by logging into Win.GOP, same as before) will be automatically reflected there.
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My Very Own Music - French
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We've randomly chosen Sara for this demonstration.
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Humboldt County is a beautiful place, nestled in northern California along the Pacific coast. It's home to breathtaking old-growth Redwood forests, majestic mountains and one of the largest concentrations of Victorian manors and architecture outside of New England. The 134,000 residents who live there enjoy mostly rural landscapes with cool, mild summers kissed by ocean breezes.
But over at the county seat in Eureka, a storm was brewing inside the permit office.
Steven Santos is the development assistance manager for Humboldt County. It's his job to make sure that permits for both the planning and building divisions move through the system smoothly and quickly. That means that everyone from a major developer who wants to build an entire subdivision to an individual homeowner who needs a new roof comes through his office.
"We like the public to be able to think of government as a monolith," Santos said. "They want to come to one place to get everything done, when in fact there's a lot going on behind the scenes."
That behind-the-scenes part of the process is especially true for handling building permits in Humboldt County, where architectural and environmental considerations must be examined for just about every type of construction. Santos gave an example of a county resident needing to build something that encroached near a county road. In that case, the building division needs to send a request to the public works office so that they can inspect the area.
The problem that Humboldt County and Santos was having was that the paper-based system for permitting had been designed years ago to serve a much sleepier community. And it was designed in pieces with no integration. Residents couldn't track where their permit applications were located in the overall process, so it was mostly guesswork as to how long something would take to get approved. This was creating a lot of frustration which would sometimes spill over into public hearings.
"We were using a wall-sized metal cabinet to store the records," Santos said. "Receipts were made on three-sheet carbon copy paper, and for special inspection needs, we added Post-it notes to the documents. Other divisions had to walk down and physically get the records out of the cabinet."
Normal maintenance tasks were also getting out of hand. Santos said that at the end of the month, all receipts needed to be tallied by hand, a process that could sometimes take days.
Santos compensated with some Visual FoxPro databases and Excel spreadsheets to speed things up a bit, but there was still no integration between departments, no ability to track permits going through the process, and no way to know exactly how long a permit approval would take from start to finish.
In truth, Santos and Humboldt County's problems were not too dissimilar from those in other state and county governments, and even private businesses, that were finding that the old ways of doing things simply wouldn't hold up to the needs and demands of the 21st century.
Santos asked two vendors with experience setting up the permit processes for other government entities to come in and demo a new system. Almost as an afterthought, Interneer Inc. was also invited. Even though Interneer didn't have specific experience with the permitting process, the company makes business process management software that is flexible enough to be configured to any need.
That flexibility ultimately won Interneer the job. "We automate everything so that a business person or an analyst can set up a complex database without needing a background in IT," said Romeo Elias, Interneer's founder and CEO. "They simply drag and drop fields into place and can automatically set up the different calls and functions using a visual interface."
Santos used the Interneer software at first to move all the paper forms online, a process he described as being like playing with colorful Legos. It was a matter of stacking them in the order he needed. Once a form's fields were in place, he was able to perform a single right click to populate them with data from his Visual FoxPro databases and his Excel spreadsheets.
Although you don't need refined IT skills to create and change the database, Interneer has an SQL backend built on Microsoft's .NET platform. So someone with database training can get inside the works and manage every aspect of it if they want. Humboldt County paid $10,000 as part of its contract to train an employee who works with Santos to do just that, if needed. Santos said he handles all the light to medium-level tasks, and relies on his trained administrator to do really detailed work.
Humboldt County spent $80,000 getting the Interneer database installed, in addition to the training costs. It runs on a standard database server that connects to a Web server for the front end. Elias said that Interneer could also be set up to run completely in the cloud, with an identical interface to the locally housed version, though he understands that some government agencies like Humboldt would prefer the local version. The county paid $49,000 for 80 seat licenses, and pays $9,900 per year in maintenance fees to keep the software up to date with all the latest patches and improvements. The company plans to deploy an app for the Apple iOS in the coming months, and Humboldt County, along with all of Interneer's other customers, will get that for no additional charge.
Today, not only is the permit process streamlined, but the public, which technically shares one of the seat licenses, can log into the database and search for permits by project number, giving an instant look at where it stands, what still needs to be done, and how long it will take before final approval. The wall-sized filing cabinets, the FoxPro databases, the Excel spreadsheets and even the Post-it notes have all been retired.
But Santos isn't resting on his laurels. He maintains a copy of the database on a separate server, which he uses to experiment with tweaks to make the process even more efficient before deploying it over to the live production environment.
As an example, a resident noticed that a certain type of minor permit process, like a homeowner who needs to replace the siding on their home, could be scheduled in advance if they wanted to do it in person at the office. It's mostly a matter of paying a fee and filling out the forms. But the actual forms that needed to be filled out weren't actually printed until after the homeowner paid their fee. Santos, based on a suggestion, simply changed the database so that the forms were printed automatically at the time the appointment is scheduled, so they are ready to go as soon as the homeowner arrives. That saved about five minutes per visit, which adds up over time.
The system has other benefits. The end-of-the-month tallying process that used to take three days now lasts about two hours, Santos said. And because the Interneer database is flexible and not tied just to the permitting process, the department is using it to manage timesheets, billing and invoicing processes too. In the near future, Santos would like to deploy Interneer to other departments like Environmental Health and Land Use.
For now, new construction, building and improvements continue in Humboldt County unhindered by the retired tracking system. Residents can easily discover exactly where their permits are in the process, and can even suggest ways that could make their government more efficient; suggestions that have a good chance of quick consideration. And Santos says he's happy to report that nobody complains about the permit process at public hearings anymore.
With one less thing to worry about, perhaps residents can get back to enjoying those beautiful vistas and striking landscapes that Humboldt County offers, all while their county government works quietly, and much more efficiently, behind the scenes.
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Artist description:
I decided to time myself today xD...
Flash Draw Created Jul 16, 2007 470 x 338px Unless noted Copyright 2007 Silver.
We encourage you to submit a comment and let the artist know what you think of this drawing. Please log in or join to post a comment.
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Stunning work! I wish I had half the talent of this work :3 5/5
this is so amazing, i cant believe you were able to do something like that with only one layer *____*
nice 5/5
i like it ^^
so....good.... 500/5
you.... are..... so... COOL!!!.... 10!!!...
wao,so cool!!XDi like it
wow, this is pretty amazing! i dont know how people draw so good ~ it not fair =[ lol anyways, a 10 for you =D


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UC San Diego has voluntarily agreed to take steps to prevent racial harassment on the La Jolla campus after federal officials launched an investigation into several complaints, including the public display of nooses and a Ku Klux Klan-style hood in 2010.
Under terms of the agreement, which was announced Friday, the university will maintain an office to receive, investigate and resolve complaints of harassment and discrimination; revise its campus policies regarding racial harassment to ensure they are consistent with federal civil rights law; and provide training for staff and students.
The agreement was reached with the Department of Justice and the Department of Education after multiple complaints of harassment against African-American students were investigated, including a February 2010 off-campus party called the Compton Cookout that mocked Black History Month. Those attending were asked to wear chains and cheap clothes while women were encouraged to dress as "ghetto chicks."
Later that same month a noose was found in the Geisel Library and in March, a KKK-style hood was found atop a Dr. Seuss statute. A second noose was found suspended from a stairwell in Mandeville Hall in July 2010.
The race-related events sparked demonstrations and rallies on campus.
"Students have a right to seek and obtain an education without facing racial harassment. UCSD, like all colleges and universities, has an obligation to make clear that racial discrimination and harassment on campus will not be tolerated, and this agreement is a significant step in the right direction," Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
The University of California San Diego voluntarily entered into the agreement. If they had not, a lawsuit could have been filed against the university seeking compliance, a Department of Justice spokeswoman said.
The university had already made moves after the incident, 22 of which were delineated in the 17-page agreement, including the development of the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination where bias, harassment and discrimination complaints can be filed and the creation of a campus council on climate, equity and inclusion.
Allyssa Villanueva, president of the Black Student Union, said she feels that the climate on campus has improved since the incidents of 2010, particularly because the administration now works directly with student groups on issues of harassment and discrimination.
One laudable change is that students are required to take a class in diversity, she said.
"There are always going to be new generations of students each year and they all come in with their own opinions, their own thoughts," she said.
Villanueva said UCSD now has more institutions in place to respond to complaints and concerns about harassment and discrimination.
"It sounds like they are just announcing things that have already been done or been improved," Villanueva said of the agreement. "I think all of it is helpful that people are paying attention to campus climate and student experiences."
Under the terms of the agreement, UCSD said it would enact steps to prevent racial harassment on campus and respond appropriately to harassment that occurs. UCSD spokeswoman Judy Piercey released a statement that said university officials were pleased with the collaborative agreement.
"We believe the voluntary agreement is further illustration of our commitment to systemic change through enhanced training, outreach programs and ongoing communication," the statement said. "Our campus has already enacted a series of actions, programs and initiatives to improve campus climate and welcome a diverse community."
UC San Diego is "resolute in our determination to ensure a safe and just environment in which everyone may live, work, learn and flourish."
Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, saluted UC San Diego for taking the corrective steps.
"We ... hope the entire school community learns from this experience and works together to overcome ignorance and intolerance," Ali said in a statement.
In the wake of the 2010 incidents, Chancellor Marye Anne Fox forged an agreement with the Black Student Union that promised to expand projects aimed at attracting minority students and professors and to make sure they had academic and cultural resources.
UCSD has been criticized in some quarters for not doing enough to attract underrepresented students. Of its approximately 23,000 undergraduates this year, only 2 percent are African-American. However, officials in January said that freshman applications from African-Americans totaled 2,803, up 28.3 percent from the previous year.
As part of those changes, the university created a position in the university's development department devoted to raise funds for diversity initiatives. A woman hired for that position, Ana Baiz-Torres, sued the university in 2011 alleging that she had been fired for speaking up about discriminatory practices and claimed she was a victim of racial discrimination, retaliation and wrongful termination.
University officials said the lawsuit is still pending.
Here's the full Department of Justice's news release on the settlement agreement.


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Browse our full list of developments...
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Nightingale Fields is a traditionally designed collection of high-quality apartments and houses as part of the sought-after Arborfield Green development.
The Rowans is our latest exciting phase of the ever popular Monksmoor Park, providing a stunning choice of 1 & 2 bedroom apartments and 2, 3 & 4 bedroom houses.
At the heart of all Crest Nicholson's activities is a pledge to provide an unyielding focus on the level of service offered to our customers. The results of this dedication are reflected in a whole host of industry and consumer accolades received each year.
We're proud of our trophy cabinet, it's an independent endorsement of our achievements. However we continually strive to do more to exceed our customers expectations. Click here to view all our celebrated achievements.