Non profit executive director evaluation form

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Tokenization is a process that involves converting real-world assets into digital tokens that can be stored and traded on blockchain technology. tZERO Group, Inc., focusing on the tokenization of Real World Assets (RWAs), could potentially tokenize a wide variety of asset classes. Based on the estimated Total Addressable Market (T.A.M.) in U.S. Dollars, here is a list of the various asset classes that tZERO could tokenize:
Real Estate:
T.A.M.: Estimated at approximately $280 trillion globally.
Includes commercial properties, residential properties, and land.
Debt:
T.A.M.: Estimated to be in the range of $128 trillion globally.
Includes corporate bonds, municipal bonds, government bonds, loans, and other debt instruments.
Equities:
T.A.M.: Estimated around $95 trillion globally.
This includes publicly traded stocks and private equity.
Commodities:
T.A.M.: Estimated at approximately $5-10 trillion globally.
Includes physical commodities such as gold, silver, oil, and other resources.
Art and Collectibles:
T.A.M.: Estimated around $1-2 trillion globally.
This includes fine art, rare collectibles, and luxury items.
Private Equity and Venture Capital:
T.A.M.: Estimated around $4-5 trillion globally.
This includes investments in private companies and startups.
NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens):
T.A.M.: Difficult to estimate, but rapidly growing as the NFT market matures.
Includes digital art, music, in-game assets, and other digital collectibles.
Derivatives:
T.A.M.: Estimated at approximately $1 quadrillion globally (not all can be tokenized directly).
This includes futures, options, swaps, and other financial instruments.
Intellectual Property:
T.A.M.: Difficult to estimate but includes patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets.
Can be tokenized to represent rights and ownership.
Supply Chain and Inventory:
T.A.M.: Could be substantial as tokenization may facilitate the management and trading of goods in supply chains.
These markets vary significantly in size and tokenization feasibility. The potential T.A.M. for tokenized assets could grow as the adoption of blockchain and tokenization technologies increases.
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Full Disclosure: Nobody has paid me to post this message which includes my own independent research on the potential T.A.M. for tokenized assets, my own training/input to AI and the above AI output result, forward estimates, projections and opinions. I am a Long Investor owning 13,108 of $TZROP — tZERO’s Preferred Equity 10% of Adjusted Gross Revenues (Gross Profits) Quarterly Dividend (Subject to Approval by tZERO’s Board of Directors) Digital Security. This message is for information purposes only and should not be construed as financial, investment and/or tax advice and/or a recommendation to buy or sell $TZROP either expressed or implied. Do your own independent due diligence research before buying or selling $TZROP or any other investment.

Tl;dr disclaimer on what ended up turning into a stream of consciousnesses
I quit Best Buy a couple of months ago and wanted to share some thoughts regarding both my 2 year stint and the current state of Best Buy in general.
Quick background - I’ve worked in multiple sales roles in various capacities for the good part of a decade, and for various reasons took some time off in 2022 to re-evaluate what I wanted to do. In the meantime wanted to be on my feet, so applied for a sales advisor role at one of the largest Best Buys in the northeast, as wayyyyyyyy back in the day I was a seasonal employee in the “media department” at another Best Buy absolutely loved it. In between recommending Nintendo Wii/DS games to customers and buying Xbox 360 controllers, got some real world sales experience as a teenager. I’d tell coworkers in my professional career 10 years later it was my favorite job I’ve ever had.
Back to 2022 – started as a Sales Advisor and enjoyed it at first. Getting the most apps/memberships validated my ego as the best salesperson, and to me that’s all that mattered.
Soon I left to another store in a VPL role that was responsible for leading a team and hitting targets. Actually enjoyed this one as well, as there was a tangible goal, which again validated my own ego as we led the entire market in meeting those goals. Eventually became a Consultant at that same store.
You really get to see how the sausage is made once you’re in the C&D world. Coworkers are generally a little older and have had to endure the sales advisor grind as well, so you naturally both shit on Best Buy and various managers.
That said, there seemed to be a transition to driving revenue above all else in July 2023 or so. Before that, it was all about card/membership efficiency.
This was especially to me because, since Consultants are in store, it is just as important for them to hit (and lead!) revenue targets at the store. Our’s was $1000/hr absolute minimum.
Please explain to me how it’s possible to average $1000/hr on a Tuesday with little foot traffic in Home TheateAppliances where Consultants sell - while Advisors also have to meet their own goal and also asked to sell the appliances? Answer: It isn't. "Consultants" consult insofar of their name and name alone. Instead of consulting, you now are required to sell a computer, phone, kit-kat bar, it doesn’t matter! You are now a glorified sales advisor who makes a sweet 0.5% on Sonos products, so those rare times you nail that Arc sales gets you a whopping $4.50! Fuck development and any other facet to your role beyond immediate numbers
Revenue was more important than anything else, which epitomizes Best Buy’s tunnel vision approach to basically everything it does.
Anyone on the floor is a commodity – doesn’t matter what position. Doesn’t matter what department. Sales advisor selling an $8000 projector instead of the Consultant helping a customer figure out which Best Buy Essentials USB-C cable they should buy? No prob. $8000 is $8000 dollars to the company, full stop. They don’t give a shit about any other variable when the rev is that high. They don't care about positions, knowledge, really anything honestly I don’t even blame the advisor for selling that, as they have rev targets to hit as well.
So now we've established a culture with coworkers angry at each other for "stealing" sales. Stealing sales! When no commission is involved for anyone! Again, why should management care as long as they meet their own goals pushed by their GM, and from the district manager…all the way up the chain What a joke for everyone involve.
At a previous company, my boss quit, so I reported to a big wig just under the CFO. That new boss took me out to dinner one night, and among other interesting facets about the company said:
“Something you always need to remember John: 90% of problems at companies are caused by management.”
An executive at a top 5 private company in the US saying that. Best Buy leadership could never.
In conclusion, going to wrap up with 5 underrated things I could not stand at Best Buy and 3 closing pieces of advice.
1) Walkie talkies were absolute ass, and the expectation to be able to talk to customers at the same time, which for me was literally impossible to do. Also not conducive for small ears appparently
2) Vendors/Citi Bank bringing in fucking Little Ceasars when there’s a Dominos within walking distance. Do you need us to run customers cards twice or some shit?
3) Coworkers unable to articulate mathematically the difference between Best Buy Total (Tech) and AppleCare on a $1000 MacBook Air to a customer who very rarely shops at Best Buy. Quiz for those who sell computers:
a. How much does it cost to have the laptop under AppleCare for 2 yrs w/ Total
b. How much does it cost to have the laptop under AppleCare for 3 yrs w/AppleCare?
Answers: $358 and $279ish
The irony is from my experience some advisors truly don’t know that. And for those that do, it’s a shame management is pushing advisors to hit membership goals at any expense, which naturally leads to a moral dilemma taken on by the lowly salespeople on the floor instead of the bums at corporate Best Buy creating a membership that’s such a catastrophe, it’s a net loss for the company money LMAO. You or I would have generated greater profits playing minesweeper all day.

1. Obsessiveness with laser-lining. Never in the history of history, of history, has someone chosen not to buy something because it wasn’t perfectly aligned. And if I am wrong, it happens at such a small rate that the incremental annoyance that it causes employees supersedes that of the dollars lost from the purple squishmellow being out of place.
   
2. And the absolute kicker: the GM looking you dead in the eye and saying you’ll be getting a 57 cent raise. Not smiling, not trying to hide anything, but truly believing this is an accomplishment we should be thankful for. It doesn’t matter if you’re older and have experience or 16 years old, it's 57 fucking cents. This really just confirms how far removed management has become, and reinforces that we are line items on the Intraday Salesperson Report that must meet x requirements by EOD. If not, that commodity (you) is sold, an offer (job posting) is made, and new interviews (bid) begin. Bid and offer intersect, so now someone else is hired. Commodities trading 101.
   

Advice, and going to try to make this one quick as my blood is starting to boil:
1) THE most important factor you should consider not only in the context of Best Buy, but outside of work, is your mental health. Some of you have dealt head on with severe anxiety and depression at least once. I’m with you on that. Some of you are experiencing for the first time, and the rest are human and will always be at risk for it. $14-$17 isn't worth it, for anyone. There are other places, there are other ways to get you where you need to be. I used to be so depressed at a previous corporate job I’d pop pills during the day to get by. If you’re one of the Gen Z kids that has to vape every 10 minutes because of stress, ask yourself why you feel the need to do it.
b. Use your LOA. If anything this will force you to go to a doctor, which is good thing for many people new to the world of imperfect mental health. You get some free sessions of therapy through a benefit Best Buy offers I can't remember the name of.
2) On a lighter note If you’re in need of memberships, the easiest way to get them is to show items that have a $50 Plus discount that fit the needs of a customer. They want a solid, portable laptop? 14 inch Dell Inspiron on sale for $599 with a $50 Plus incentive it is. Big OLED TV? 77 inch LG C3 $200 off with Plus. I actually enjoyed this as it was mentally stimulating to me and it was a win-win for everyone surprisingly
3) Don’t be scared to leave. Best Buy is going downhill. They have a monopoly on brick and mortar electronic stores, and have the luxury to trim what they believe is the “fat” of the company until it begins to negatively affect the bottom number. If that requires destroying the culture, quarterly layoffs, deceit to customers, setting goals they know are unrealistic to keep all level of store employees on their toes, then so be it. Best Buy will eventually cross the line they can’t uncross. As mentioned many times, you are expendable in their eyes.
Don’t let any part of working for Best Buy define who you are. Enjoy the positives of the experience with good customers and intuitive programs like RSS/Order Manage while you’re there. Make your money and leave when it’s right.

Hello all; I see alot of argument and misinformation being traded back and forth in the comments lately, and I've been doing my best to get ahold of an expert so I'm not so lost with these documents but that has stalled.
I elected to instead Google translate a few of the associated research and news articles posted on the internet archive by Alfredo Lissoni to demonstrate some basic facts that are claimed to be associated with the case.
The whole case DOES NOT rely solely on the documents sent in the 90s. Ive seen this so many times its gonna make my head explode. If you parrot this falsehood; you are not being intellectually rigerous and reading everything you need to read.
Find Roberto Pinnoti and friends full claims about the 1933 case here.
https://forum-termometropolitico-it.translate.goog/259673-x-files-fascisti.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
No where else that I can find ties everything together like this link. If your serious about connecting claims to documents you must read the whole thing.
I'm rather certain that every newspaper I'm looking for in relation to the link above is on the archive but I'm having alot of trouble connecting a claim with a document in most cases because well, I don't speak/read Italian yet( am learning slowly)
Here's a few documents from the archive that were plainly important. I very carefully went over the Italian and English text as many times as my brain will allow so you'll have to forgive a few spelling discrepancies. In most cases I was typing the words from the newspaper word for word because of the image quality. This is not an easy task. It's no wonder that no one has done all this for free yet; because it's alot. I only did .01 percent of the work here and It's full of leads to study the actual historical side of this case.
This is not my final conclusions on the case; in fact I've gone to the beginning like this because I've already moved on a long way and connected alot of puzzle pieces in the timeframe after RS33.
This element of the case is trivial compared to the intreague and power dynamics between the germans, italian fascists, the vatican and the Americans.
A name you should look out for in the link above is Galeazzo Ciano.
My work is more focused broadly on this person because his diaries would later be coveted by Allen Dulles.
Allen Dulles personally visited Italy multiple times for these diaries and I am going to prove this action was not only because of their political importance but also because of their connection to the activities of the RS33 research. This work here ultimately has nothing to do with that element of my research; this should simply posit that the case from a historical standpoint has a real event associated with it.
Now I will say that the rest of the work must be done to independently verify the claims in the link above; but what I've seen is enough for me personally to go forward on.
I'm not claiming to have proven anything here on this post. Let's get that extremely clear because im not going to argue about it.
It's simply information.
Translated document 1
https://archive.org/details/cabinet-rs-33_20230330/page/n17/mode/1up?q=rs33
1.)A capo del Gabinetto RS/33, fin dalla sua istituzione, fu designato Guglielmo Marconi, sebbene il noto scienziato avesse più volte espresso l'opinione che al suo posto venisse designato l’astronomo Gino Cecchini. Mussolini -su parere di Giovanni Gentile- incaricò Marconi, senatore e di provata fede fascista, che ne faceva un elemento prestigioso ed anche politicamente affidabile.
Marconi però non partecipò mai a nessuna delle sedute del Gabinetto RS/33 che si tennero lui in vita, ma delegò costantemente un suo collaboratore che era indicato come dottor Ruggero Costanti Cavazzani, e che evidentemente era un nome di copertura di un personaggio mai identificato.
Altri componenti del Gabinetto RS/33 (RS stava per Ricerche Speciali) furono, nel corso del tempo e per periodi diversi, i professori : Dallauri, Pirotta, Crocco, Debbasi, Severi, Bottazzi e Giordani; nonché il conte Cozza quale referente organizzativo ed elemento di collegamento logistico con le massime gerarchie del regime: Mussolini, Italo Balbo, Galeazzo Ciano.
Il Gabinetto si riunì alcune volte per discutere di fenomeni oggi denominati ufologici e che all’epoca erano collegati ad attività di aeronautica militare. Il parere più diffuso tra gli esperti era che gli aereomobili sconosciuti fossero prototipi di velivoli inglesi e/o francesi. Solo in un paio di occasioni fu dichiaratamente posta la questione se tali oggetti fossero strumenti di volo interspaziale, e la questione rimase essenzialmente aperta. Il prodotto più consistente del Gabinetto RS/33 fu un dossier di una trentina di pagine che esaminava dettagliatamente tutta la casistica italiana, dal 1933 al 1940. Con lo scoppio della guerra (10 giugno 1940) il Gabinetto RS/33 fu ancor più militarizzato, e -cosa assai significativa- il governo nazista chiese più volte notizie, dati e dossier all’ente italiano.
Il Gabinetto RS/33 raccolse anche alcune fotografie di oggetti volanti non identificati ed anche un breve filmato realizzato sulle Alpi in occasione di un avvistamento notevole. Tali notizie sono ricavate indirettamente da altre fonti, poiché l'archivio del Gabinetto fu trasferito in Germania ed attualmente risulta irreperibile.
1.)Since its inception, Guglielmo Marconi was designated head of the RS/33 Cabinet, although the well-known scientist had repeatedly expressed the opinion that the astronomer Gino Cecchini should be designated in his place. Mussolini - on the advice of Giovanni Gentile - appointed Marconi, a senator with proven fascist faith, who made him a prestigious and also politically reliable element.
Marconi, however, never participated in any of the sessions of the RS/33 Cabinet which were held during his lifetime, but constantly delegated one of his collaborators who was indicated as Doctor Ruggero Costanti Cavazzani, and who was evidently a cover name for a person who was never identified.
Other members of the RS/33 Cabinet (RS stood for Special Research) were, over time and for different periods, the professors: Dallauri, Pirotta, Crocco, Debbasi, Severi, Bottazzi and Giordani; as well as Count Cozza as organizational contact and logistical link with the highest hierarchies of the regime: Mussolini, Italo Balbo, Galeazzo Ciano.
The Cabinet met a few times to discuss phenomena now called ufological and which at the time were connected to military aeronautics activities. The most widespread opinion among experts was that the unknown aircraft were prototypes of English and/or French aircraft. Only on a couple of occasions was the question openly raised whether such objects were interspace flight instruments, and the question remained essentially open. The most substantial product of the Cabinet RS/33 was a dossier of about thirty pages which examined in detail all the Italian cases from 1933 to 1940. With the outbreak of the war (10 June 1940) the Cabinet RS/33 was even more militarised, and - what is very significant - the Nazi government asked the Italian body for news, data and dossiers several times.
Cabinet RS/33 also collected some photographs of unidentified flying objects and also a short film made in the Alps on the occasion of a notable sighting. This information is obtained indirectly from other sources, since the Cabinet archive was transferred to Germany and is currently untraceable.
2.)Pirotta, Pietro Romualdo. Botanico (Pavia 1853-Roma (1936). Professore di botanica all'università di Roma (18831924) e di fisiologia vegetale pure presso l’ateneo romano (1924-28), fu l’ideatore e uno dei fautori più attivi della creazione del Parco nazionale degli Abruzzi. Copiosa è stata la sua produzione scientifica. Fra l’altro si occupò della peronospora e degli altri parassiti della vite, di istologia, anatomia ed embriologia vegetale. Scrisse anche un trattato di fisiologia vegetale; si occupò pure della flora romana ed eritrea, e del massimo interesse sono le sue pubblicazioni sulla storia della botanica. Senatore del regno, accademico d’Italia, dei Lincei, dei Quaranta e di varie Società di cultura italiane e straniere. Si ricordano le sue pubblicazioni sulla storia della botanica, in specie la Flora rorzana (1900-01), e il suo trattato di Fisiologia vegetale (1929). Fondò (1885) la rivista «Annuario del Regio istituto botanico di Roma», cui seguirono, dal 1903, gli «Annali di botanica». Alla scuola di P. si formò il nucleo iniziale degli studiosi italiani dei cicli biologici delle piante e dell’embriologia vegetale.
2.)Pirotta, Pietro Romualdo. Botanist (Pavia 1853-Rome (1936). Professor of botany at the University of Rome (1883-1924) and of plant physiology also at the Roman University (1924-28), he was the creator and one of the most active supporters of the creation of Abruzzi National Park. His scientific production was copious. Among other things he dealt with downy mildew and other vine parasites, histology, anatomy and plant embryology. He also wrote a treatise on plant physiology; and Eritrea, and of the greatest interest are his publications on the history of botany. Senator of the kingdom, academic of Italy, of the Lincei, of the Quaranta and of various Italian and foreign cultural societies. We remember his publications on the history of botany. in particular the Flora rorzana (1900-01), and his treatise on Plant Physiology (1929) the magazine «Annuario del Regio botanico di Roma», which was followed, from 1903, by the «Annali di botany» The initial nucleus of Italian scholars of plant biological cycles and plant embryology was formed at P.'s school.
3.) PIROTTA, Pietro Romualdo. — Botanico, nato a Pavia il 7 febbraio 1853. Ivi laureatosi in scienze naturali nel 1875, frequentò per qualche anno quel laboratorio crittogamico; nel 1879-1880 fu a Strasburgo per perfezionarsi presso il De Bary; nel 1880, in seguito a concorso, occupò la cattedra di botanica dell'università di Modena e nel 1883 fu chiamato a Roma, dove insegnò per 4i anni botanica e dove, nel 1924, passò alla cattedra di fisiologia vegetale che venne fino al 1928, epoca in cui fu collocato a riposo. Spetta a lui il merito di aver fondato a Roma, tra il 1884 e il 1889, l’Istituto e l'Orto Botanico attuali. Egli ha anche fondato e diretto per molti anni l'Annuario del R. Istituto Botanico di Roma e gli Annali di Botanica. È stato l'ideatore e il fautore più attivo della creazione del Parco nazionale d'Abruzzo, Nella sua copiosa produzione scientifica sono da rilevare principalmente i lavori sulla peronospora e gli altri parassiti della vite, i numerosi contributi all’istologia, all'anatomia e all'embriologia vegetale, le pubblicazioni sulla storia della botanica, in particolare quelle sulle Tabulae Phytosophicae del Cesi, la Flora Romana, la Flora Eritrea, il trattato di Fisiologia vegetale. È socio nazionale della R. Accademia dei Lincei, membro dei XL, e dal 1929 accademico d’Italia.
3.) PIROTTA, Pietro Romualdo. — Botanist, born in Pavia on 7 February 1853. Having graduated there in natural sciences in 1875, he attended that cryptogam laboratory for a few years; in 1879-1880 he was in Strasbourg to perfect his studies at De Bary; in 1880, following a competition, he occupied the chair of botany at the University of Modena and in 1883 he was called to Rome, where he taught botany for 4 years and where, in 1924, he moved to the chair of plant physiology which remained until 1928, period in which he was laid to rest. He deserves the credit of having founded the current Institute and Botanical Garden in Rome between 1884 and 1889. He also founded and directed for many years the Yearbook of the R. Botanical Institute of Rome and the Annals of Botany. He was the creator and most active supporter of the creation of the Abruzzo National Park. In his copious scientific production, the works on downy mildew and other vine parasites, the numerous contributions to histology, anatomy and to plant embryology, publications on the history of botany, in particular those on Cesi's Tabulae Phytosophicae, the Roman Flora, the Eritrean Flora, the treatise on Plant Physiology. He is a national member of the R. Accademia dei Lincei, a member of the XL, and an academic of Italy since 1929.
4.) Il Governo italiano promuove, il 3 aprile 1933, una legge speciale che fissa il finanziamento per la costruzione della Sede del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Subito dopo il Direttorio del Consiglio dei Ministri affida lo studio del progetto al Comitato Nazionale per l'Ingegneria, costituendo allo stesso tempo un'apposita Commissione di studio presieduto dal Senatore Luigi Cozza
Il progetto definitivo viene redatto da Dagoberto Ortensi, che si occupa dell'impostazione architettonica e della decorazione e dell' arredo degli ambienti
L'edificio si estente su una superfice di 2.105 mq, a cui si aggiungeranno altri 1.720 mq di ampliamento previsti, Ha un volume di 54.445 me articolato su sei piani, per una altezza complessiva di circa 25 mt°
l'edificio viene realizzato dall'impresa di costruzione Tommaso e Alberto Mora, sotto la direzione di Antonio Carlini e inagurato il 21 Novembre 1937
4.)
On 3 April 1933, the Italian Government promoted a special law establishing the financing for the construction of the headquarters of the National Research Council
Immediately afterwards the Directory of the Council of Ministers entrusted the study of the project to the National Engineering Committee, at the same time establishing a specific study commission chaired by Senator Luigi Cozza
The final project is drawn up by Dagoberto Ortensi, who takes care of the architectural layout and the decoration and furnishing of the rooms
The building covers a surface area of 2,105 m2, to which another 1,720 m2 of planned expansion will be added. It has a volume of 54,445 m and is divided into six floors, for a total height of approximately 25 m.
the building was built by the construction company Tommaso and Alberto Mora, under the direction of Antonio Carlini and inaugurated on 21 November 1937
5.) Còzza, Luici, conte, — Ingegnere (Acquapendente 1867 - Roma 1955). Laureato a Roma nel e nel corpo del genio civile; dal 1925 al 1930 fu presidente del Consiglio superiore dei Lavori pubblici. È stato l’istitutore e l'organizzatore del Servizio idrografico italiano ed è autore di varie pubblicazioni sulle opere idrauliche. Senatore del Regno (1934)
5.)
Còzza, Luici, count, — Engineer (Acquapendente 1867 - Rome 1955). Graduated in Rome in and in the civil engineering corps; from 1925 to 1930 he was president of the Superior Council of Public Works. He was the founder and organizer of the Italian Hydrographic Service and is the author of various publications on hydraulic works. Senator of the Kingdom (1934)
6.)
Giordani, Francesco. Chimico (Napoli 1896-ivi 1961). Già accademico d’Italia dal 1930 al 1943, socio nazionale dell’Accademia dei Lincei dal 1935, ne divenne presidente nel 1958. Dal 1936 al 1943 fu presidente dell’IRI e dal 1956 al 1960 del CNR. Fu professore di elettrochimica e di impianti chimici presso la Scuola di ingegneria di Napoli e direttore dell'Istituto chimico di quella università. I suoi numerosi lavori (che gli valsero nel 1929 il premio reale per la chimica) riguardano specialmente l’elettrolisi, la catalisi e la cinetica chimica.
Si occupò anche di problemi economici, particolarmente rispetto alle zone sottosviluppate del Mezzogiorno (fu presidente dell’Associazione per lo sviluppo dell’industria nel Mezzogiorno).
6.)
Giordani, Francesco. Chemist (Naples 1896-ibid. 1961). Already an academic of Italy from 1930 to 1943, a national member of the Accademia dei Lincei from 1935, he became president in 1958. From 1936 to 1943 he was president of the IRI and from 1956 to 1960 of the CNR. He was professor of electrochemistry and chemical plants at the School of Engineering of Naples and director of the Chemical Institute of that university. His numerous works (which earned him the Royal Prize for Chemistry in 1929) concern especially electrolysis, catalysis and chemical kinetics.
He also dealt with economic problems, particularly with respect to the underdeveloped areas of the South (he was president of the Association for the development of industry in the South).
7.)
Vallauri, Giancarlo. Scienziato (Roma 1882-Torino 1957). Dopo aver frequentato l'Accademia navale di Livorno, si laureò in ingegneria presso la Scuola superiore politecnica di Napoli. Nel 1916, quando a Livorno si costituì presso l’Accademia navale l’Istituto elettrotecnico e radiotelegrafico della marina, V. ne divenne il capo e l'animatore di iniziative e di ricerche, di cui uno dei più mirabili frutti è l’eguazione di V., che rappresenta la prima teoria analitica del funzionamento dei tubi elettronici. Nel medesimo tempo si dedicò alla costruzione del Centro radiotelegrafico di Coltano, uno dei più grandiosi e moderni dell’epoca. Importanti sono gli studi da lui condotti nel campo del ferromagnetismo, che portarono alla conferma indiscussa dell’esistenza dell’isteresi magnetica rotante, allora assai controversa in campo internazionale. Intra-
7.)
Vallauri, Giancarlo. Scientist (Rome 1882-Turin 1957). After attending the Naval Academy of Livorno, he graduated in engineering from the Polytechnic High School of Naples. In 1916, when the electrotechnical and radiotelegraphic institute of the navy was established at the Naval Academy in Livorno, V. became its head and animator of initiatives and research, of which one of the most wonderful fruits is the equalization of V., which represents the first analytical theory of the functioning of electron tubes. At the same time he dedicated himself to the construction of the Coltano radiotelegraph centre, one of the grandest and most modern of the time. The studies he conducted in the field of ferromagnetism are important, which led to the undisputed confirmation of the existence of rotating magnetic hysteresis, which was then very controversial in the international field.
8.)
E' morto ieri a Torino il prof. Giancarlo Vallauri
Torino, 7 maggio
E' deceduto stamane all’ospedale delle Molinetto. dov'eth ricoverato fin dai primi di gennaio, il prof. Giancarlo Vallauri, eminente figura di scienziato. Nato a Roma nel 1882 da (umiriza Gi . origine piemontese, dopo ver partecipato Alla prima guerra mondiale come ufficiale di marina, diresse l'Istituto elettrotecnico della Marina fino al 1025, quando venne a Torino quale insegnante al Politecnico. di cu fu poi direttore dal 1933 al 1934,
Nominato membro dell'Accademia d'Italia, ne divenne vicepresidente per le scienze fisiche, matematiche e naturali. Fu membro del Consiglio superiore dei Lavori Pubblici. e del Comitato superiore Tecnico per i servizi elettrotecnici e delle comunicazioni; presidente di sezione del Consiglio nazionale delle ricerche: esperto della Societa deile Nazionj per ll servizio deile comunicazioni; presidente generale dell'Associazione elettrotecnica Italiana: presidente dell'Istituto nazionale « Galileo Ferraris» di elettrotecnica, componente del Comitato tecnico Interalleato delle Radiocomunicazioni.
Numerosi suol studi e pubblicazioni sia nel campo dell'elettrotecnica che della radiotecnica. Tra l'altro fu il primo a lurinulare la teoria matematica della valvola termoionica che si riassume nella e equazione di Vallauri ». Fu anche il precursore della misurazione a distanza del campo elettromagnetico irradiato da una stazione trasmittente
8.)
Prof. died yesterday in Turin. Giancarlo Vallauri
Turin, 7 May
He died this morning at Molinetto hospital. where he has been hospitalized since early January, Prof. Giancarlo Vallauri, eminent scientist. Born in Rome in 1882 of Piedmontese origin, after having participated in the First World War as a naval officer, he directed the electrotechnical institute of the Navy until 1925, when he came to Turin as a teacher at the Polytechnic. director from 1933 to 1934,
Appointed member of the Italian Academy, he became vice-president for the physical, mathematical and natural sciences. He was a member of the Superior Council of Public Works. and of the Higher Technical Committee for electrotechnical and communications services; section president of the National Research Council: expert of the Society of Nations for the communications service; general president of the Italian Electrotechnical Association: president of the "Galileo Ferraris" National Institute of Electrotechnics, member of the Inter-Allied Technical Committee of Radiocommunications. He studies and publishes both in the fields of electrical engineering and radio engineering. Among other things, he was the first to formulate the mathematical theory of the thermionic valve which is summarized in the Vallauri equation." He was also the forerunner of remote measurement of the electromagnetic field radiated by a transmitting station
Page 10 is unreadable to me
9.)
XIV GAETANO ArtURO Crocco - Commemorazione di B. Finzi. Il discorso inaugurale del secondo corso ebbe per titolo: « Dall’antiaereo alla base orbitale ». In essa affacciò l’idea del polistadio per accrescere la gittata, adombrò il problema del rientro per satelliti con equipaggio e quello del rifornimento nello spazio.
Fra le altre pubblicazioni ricordo quella su « La sopportazione fisiologica nei missili a reazione », la Nota lincea intitolata « La barriera della temperatura nei missili geodetici », quella su « Quesiti sui missili geodetici » del Seminario matematico e fisico di Milano. Ricordo altresì le belle sintesi «I fondamenti dell’astronautica », « Dal dirigibile al missile », « Anticipazioni di nautica interplanetaria », « Il primo passo verso l'astronautica » e molte altre, fra le quali sono degne di particolare rilievo le Note lincee « Formulazioni di Meccanica astronautica » del 1955, quella dell’Accademia pontificia « Possibilità e limiti della cosmonautica » del 1957. E’ stato memorabile il suo discorso inaugurale al VII Congresso astronautico internazionale di Roma nel 1956, nel quale, partendo dal satellite artificiale, si avventura nell'esplorazione siderale, valendosi della teoria della relatività. E' pure memorabile la sua proposta « Giro esplorativo di un anno Terra-Marte-Venere-Terra », ancor oggi detta « missione Crocco ». L'epoca più favorevole per la missione sarà il giugno 1971,
Nella Nota dell’Accademia pontificia del 1957 Crocco così profetizza: « L'alimentazione endogena del getto propulsore viene riserbata allo stadio finale di marcia, e si usufriusce dell’alimentazione esogena per partire dalla terra, frenare e ritornarvi. Gli stadi intermedi saranno percorsi a velocità uniforme senza consumo e le totali distanze valicabili consentiranno di scegliere le ricognizioni entro una sfera contenente 20.000 stelle. La più lontana richiederà 28 anni di vita dell'equipaggio per andare e tornare. Utopia! »... Ma, continua Crocco, «è stato detto che tutta la nostra civiltà è sbocciata dall’utopia ».
Dopo il volo del primo Sputnik, che realizzava quanto egli aveva vaticinato, concluse, al di là degli ottant'anni, la sua miracolosa attività di scienziato e di profeta col magistrale discorso al VII Convegno internazionale delle comunicazioni, tenutosi a Genova nel 1959, « Le determinanti dell'era astronautica », con quello tenuto nell'adunanza solenne del 1960 ai Lincei « Anticipazioni extra-terrestri » e con il suo contributo all'opera «Il mondo della tecnica » del 1962 « Il momento astro-cosmonautico ». E’ questo un piccolo trattato sull'attività spaziale dalle origini al volo di Gagarin, nel quale si spinge anche nell’ambito della teoria della relatività e della propulsione fotonica.
Ricordo infine i titoli di alcuni studi e meditazioni su problemi che esulano dall’aeronautica: « La proprietà scientifica », « La degradazione della ricchezza », « Il diavolo e la ricerca atomica » (storia della bomba atomica), « Discorso del gradiente » (riguardante l’accelerarsi esasperato del progresso scientifico), « Premesse scientifiche al diritto spaziale
9.)
XIV GAETANO ArtURO Crocco - Commemoration of B. Finzi. The inaugural speech of the second course was entitled: "From anti-aircraft to the orbital base". In it he presented the idea of the multi-stage to increase the range, he outlined the problem of re-entry for manned satellites and that of refueling in space.
Among the other publications I remember the one on «Physiological tolerance in jet missiles», the Nota lincea entitled «The temperature barrier in geodetic missiles», the one on «Questions on geodetic missiles» of the Mathematical and Physical Seminar of Milan. I also remember the beautiful summaries «The foundations of astronautics», «From the airship to the missile», «Previews of interplanetary nautical», «The first step towards astronautics» and many others, among which the Notes are worthy of particular note lincee « Formulations of Astronautical Mechanics » of 1955, that of the Pontifical Academy « Possibilities and limits of cosmonautics » of 1957. His inaugural speech at the VII International Astronautical Congress in Rome in 1956 was memorable, in which, starting from the artificial satellite , ventures into sidereal exploration, making use of the theory of relativity. His proposal for a "one-year exploratory tour of Earth-Mars-Venus-Earth" is also memorable, still known today as the "Crocco mission". The most favorable time for the mission will be June 1971,
In the Note of the Papal Academy of 1957 Crocco prophesies as follows: «The endogenous power supply of the propulsive jet is reserved for the final stage of travel, and the exogenous power supply is used to start from the earth, brake and return there. The intermediate stages will be traveled at uniform speed without consumption and the total distances that can be crossed will allow the choice of reconnaissance within a sphere containing 20,000 stars. The furthest will require 28 years of crew life to get there and back. Utopia! »... But, Crocco continues, «it has been said that our entire civilization blossomed from utopia».
After the flight of the first Sputnik, which realized what he had prophesied, he concluded, beyond the age of eighty, his miraculous activity as a scientist and prophet with a masterly speech at the VII International Communications Conference, held in Genoa in 1959, « The determinants of the astronautical era", with the one held in the solemn meeting of 1960 at the Lincei "Anticipations extra-terrestrials" and with his contribution to the work "The world of technology" of 1962 "The astro-cosmonautic moment". This is a small treatise on space activity from its origins to Gagarin's flight, in which he also delves into the theory of relativity and photonic propulsion.
Finally, I recall the titles of some studies and meditations on problems that go beyond aeronautics: "Scientific property", "The degradation of wealth", "The devil and atomic research" (history of the atomic bomb), "Discourse on the gradient" (concerning the exasperated acceleration of scientific progress), « Scientific premises for space law
10.)
Supponiamola di cinque, cioè “cinque volte quella che si risente in volo rettilineo o sulla superficie della terra, presa come unità. Trattasi di un elevato. ‘valore; di acrobazia pesante. In tale sopportazione. il peso del corpo del pilota diverrà mediamente di 360 chili, di cui 300 graveranno sul seggiolino e gli altri sui ‘comandi.’ Le sue braccia, distese sul volante o sulla leva di guida aggraveranno di una ventina di chili ciascuna e le gambe allungate verso la pedaliera dovranno complessivamente sostenere il sovraccarico di un centinaio di chili. Il cervello premerà per quasi sette chili sulla base del cranio; gli occhi affonderanno nell'orbita, generando il fenomeno del veder nero e le palpebre si appesantiranno come per sonno improvviso; i visceri s'insaccheranno nell'addome; la respirazione si farà difficile;
il cuore dovrà sospingere nelle arterie un liquido che per effetto della centrifugazione verso il basso assumerà una densità quintupla della normale.
tutto avverà come se il corpo del pilota venisse d’un tratto a trovarsi alla superficie di un pianeta, che diremo il pianeta X, ove la gravità fosse ‘cinque volte quella terrestre. Un tal pianeta non esiste nel sistema solare; perché su Giove, il più grosso, essa è appena due volte e mezza; ma la immagine è suggestiva ai fini della nostra esposizione.
Quali conseguenze anatomiche e funzionali l’organismo umano questo temporaneo gravame? Evidentemente’ non ne avrà se gli organi del volatore, appena cessata la manovra, saranno in grado di riprendere in piena immunità le loro funzioni; ed il tal caso quel pilota
10.)
Suppose it is five, that is, "five times what is felt in straight flight or on the surface of the earth, taken as a unit. This is a high one. 'value; of heavy aerobatics. In such endurance. the weight of the driver's body will become on average 360 kilos, of which 300 will weigh on the seat and the others on the 'controls.' His arms, stretched out on the steering wheel or on the driving lever, will weigh on the the pedal set will have to support an overload of around one hundred kilos in total. The brain will press almost seven kilos on the base of the skull; the eyes will sink into the socket, generating the phenomenon of seeing black and the eyelids will become heavy as if due to sudden sleep; the viscera will become encased in the abdomen; breathing will become difficult;
the heart will have to push a liquid into the arteries which, due to the downward centrifugation, will take on five times the normal density.
everything will happen as if the pilot's body suddenly found itself on the surface of a planet, which we will call planet X, where the gravity was five times that of Earth. Such a planet does not exist in the solar system; because on Jupiter, the largest, it is just two and a half times; but the image is suggestive for the purposes of our exposition.
What anatomical and functional consequences does this temporary burden have on the human organism? Evidently there will be none if the flier's organs, as soon as the maneuver has ceased, are able to resume their functions with full immunity
11.)
Dal 1951 in poi l’attività scientifica di Crocco, ormai vecchio, fu rivolta al volo nello spazio extra-atmosferico e all’astronautica. Già nel 1923, a dire il vero, aveva precorso i tempi con la Nota lincea « Sulla possibilità della navigazione extra-atmosferica », in cui proponeva di valersi della reazione provocata dall’efflusso dei prodotti della disintegrazione di materiale radioattivo. Si trattava, in sostanza, della propulsione ionica, ancor oggi non ancora realizzata praticamente. Nel 1927 aveva iniziato ricerche anche sperimentali sui propellenti solidi per i razzi, in collaborazione col figlio Luigi, e aveva poi ripreso tali ricerche fra il 1932 e il 1935. Segnalo altresì la Nota lincea del 1946 « Sulla applicazione dell'energia atomica alla navigazione interplanetaria ». Nel discorso inaugurale del primo corso di missilistica e astronautica, tenuto a Roma nel 1951, parlò dei missili geodetici, trattando dei propellenti e del calcolo delle traiettorie nell'ipotesi di terra piatta e in quella di terra
11.)
From 1951 onwards, Crocco's scientific activity, now old, was aimed at outer space flight and astronautics. Already in 1923, to tell the truth, he had been ahead of his time with the Nota lincea «On the possibility of extra-atmospheric navigation», in which he proposed making use of the reaction caused by the outflow of the products of the disintegration of radioactive material. It was, essentially, ion propulsion, which has not yet been practically achieved today. In 1927 he had begun experimental research on solid propellants for rockets, in collaboration with his son Luigi, and had then resumed such research between 1932 and 1935. I would also like to point out the Note line of 1946 « On the application of atomic energy to interplanetary navigation ». In the inaugural speech of the first rocketry and astronautics course, held in Rome in 1951, he spoke about geodetic missiles, dealing with propellants and the calculation of trajectories
12.) Pretty sure that's all the relevant pages for this one; the rest are either superfluous or establishing identity of those above, the Numbers are just To keep organized, not Page numbers.
Translated document 2
https://archive.org/details/ufo-crash-at-vergiate
1.)
Sullo stradale ira Novara e Magenta cinque operai che rincasavano in bicicletta durante un temporale sono stativi investiti dal fulmine e gettati violentemente a terra. Uno di casi è rimasto gravemente ferito.
1.)
On the road between Novara and Magenta five workers were returning home by bicycle during during a storm they were struck by lightning and violently thrown to the ground. One of the cases was seriously injured.
Soon to be translated document 3
https://archive.org/details/marconis-death-ray/mode/1up
This is going to require alot of help. My will To do this with a language I don't know is at an end for this moment.
The archives of the Newspapers reflected by Pinnoti may be fully available on the archive but without more expert translation Services I'm not totally sure. Let this be a baseline That the documents most likely exist. There are more things available to those to speak Italian I simply need someone to read it all; figure out which pictures are which and translate appropriately.

I've been accepted into the Executive MBA programs at Darden and Fuqua with minor scholarships and the Master's in Finance at Georgetown, though without any scholarship. I need to self-fund my education, and the Georgetown program costs about half as much as the others.
I've spent the last twenty years working in various marketing and strategy positions at a small non-profit trade association within the advanced manufacturing and specialty chemicals sectors. I'm now looking to transition into asset management.
Given that I'm funding my education and am in my 40s, should I prioritize the networking and career services the programs offer, or should I focus more on the courses and skills they provide? Essentially, is it more prudent to opt for the less expensive, more technical, finance-focused program at Georgetown, or does the additional cost of the EMBA programs justify the investment?
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The Institute is destroyed by the minutemen, who established the CPG, with its capital in the castle.
Also, most of this is totally conjecture and just my ideas for how the minutemen would run the commonwealth with heavy guidance from the General.

Government

The general of the minutemen is elected as the Commonwealth’s first president. The commonwealth mimics an early America, being an agrarian republic, where settlers from each region elect a representative to serve on a council. Policies generally cater to farmers over people in cities like DC and Goodneighbor because of the electoral-college like system, and thus farmers and those living in rural areas have somewhat of a disproportionate political say. The general and founders of the CPG implemented this system because first; it mirrored the old American system and second; the general didn’t want tyranny of the majority, he valued the common man a great deal and wanted the concerns of these groups to be represented. This sentiment came from his pre-war background, where he saw the government enact policies harmful to people without political say, like Chinese who were placed in internment. This political system places a high priority on the farmer’s concerns first and foremost, and because of this the minutemen are spurred to wage a costly campaign against raiders. The campaign is ultimately successful, and farms see more safety than even under the NCR, allowing farming to become prolific, profitable, and safe. Though gangs do arise from time to time, they never gain beyond a few members and are far less powerful than they were. Most importantly, they know to steer clear of Minutemen territory lest they be quickly and brutally stamped out. After a decade, the Commonwealth Provisional Government was renamed to the Republic of the Commonwealth.

Corruption

The triggermen, generally avoiding small-time extortion, don’t collapse in the same way raiders do because they avoid most public outrage, and continue to operate in cities, specifically Goodneighbor and Diamond City where they have a previously established foothold.. The CPG attempts to regulate the chem trade and crack down on the triggermen. These policies are generally unpopular in cities. This is because of the rampant corruption in these cities. In Goodneighbor, the government had very little involvement in anyone’s life, and thus the triggermen were already well established. In Diamond City, meanwhile, after Mcdounough’s trial, puppets propped up by the triggermen filled many of the city’s positions of government. This corruption led to, for a time, decreased development in cities while farming settlements flourished. Eventually, muckrakers like Publick Occurrences’s very own Piper Wright exposed the prolific corruption seen in urban politics, which motivated most urban and rural voters to support anti-corruption policies. After a few years, the triggermen had mostly been legislated out of existence through RICO-esque policy, anti-smuggling protections, and more diligent enforcement of organized crime laws.

Companies

Trade routes continue to be patrolled to a much greater extent. Multiple large trade companies come out of bunker hill and are very profitable. Stockton’s caravan company grows to a size comparable to the Crimson Caravan. Despite this, the common-man focused government and hindsight of the general leads to strict anti-lobbying policies and regulations on companies, which prevents the corruption seen in the NCR, for the most part.

Infrastructure

Because of the triggermen’s corruption of the government, infrastructure takes some time to develop, but after the CPG passes a slew of progressive anti-corruption policies, projects are passed to restore old-world water infrastructure. The Weston Water Treatment Plant is restored to full efficiency and water becomes generally clean and available throughout the commonwealth. A power grid is established, and after a few decades almost everywhere in the commonwealth has clean water and free access to power.

The Brotherhood & Synths

The Brotherhood, though respected by the General for their resemblance to the pre-war military, did not take over power in the region beyond a seat in the council. The CPG immediately enacted policies to limit the brotherhood’s influence, giving them similar political power to Diamond City. The BOS’s council seat is appointed directly by their Elder. The brotherhood is allowed to operate in the region and recruit freely, but they are not allowed to seize land or technology. Their collection of dangerous technology slowed after synths had mostly vacated the region. They, with the farmers, lobbied for anti-synth policies to be passed, and these were successful, seeing the wider adoption of the SAFE test by settlements in the commonwealth. The brotherhood hunted down remaining super mutants in the region and almost completely wiped them out. Following this conflict that saw both raiders and super mutants eliminated from the commonwealth, excluding a few pro-mutant settlements like goodneighbor and the slog, where intelligent mutants took refuge, the Brotherhood shifted its focus to ghouls.

Ghouls, Mutants, & Outcasts

Political parties arose over the issue of ghouls. A brotherhood & diamond city block formed which opposed goodneighbor, the northeast, which has a high ghoul population, and many farms which had ghoul staff amongst them. This issue brought the foundations of a two-party system, but the DC-Brotherhood block ultimately dissolved because of conflicting interests regarding technology, salvage rights, and trade regulations. This fragmentation allowed the pro-ghoul block to pass policies which protected mutant rights, ensuring civil protections for ghouls and intelligent super mutants. It was still widely unpopular to advocate for synth rights in the commonwealth, as they were seen as vestiges of the institute. Institute remnants themselves often hid amongst the general population and if discovered were typically tried in CPG courts for their crimes. Most were not sentenced, but socially ostracized. In smaller farms, suspected institute refugees were executed on a few occasions. A short-lived witch hunt against ex-institute members occurred, but it fizzled out after an innocent man was executed and the movement was widely condemned.

The Railroad

The railroad, thanks to the anti-synth sentiment, continued to operate with clandestine support from the General and sympathizers among the minutemen. After a decade, the majority of synths had either fled the commonwealth or had undergone reconstructive surgery. Because of this, the railroad fragmented. Many joined the minutemen and laid the foundations for the minutemen’s intelligence wing. Others left the commonwealth to fight for the freedom of human slaves. Because of slavery’s wide unpopularity and lack of presence in the Commonwealth, it was outlawed in the commonwealth soon after the CPG’s restoration. Some members of the railroad remained in the commonwealth to advocate for synth rights, but because no new synths were being created and there was almost no public support for the movement, the uniqueness soon faded and these activists faded away into obscurity.

Military

The president unilaterally commanded over the minutemen, holding the rank of General of the Minutemen. Under him are Generals that command the individual branches. These include the Army, in which the militia’s operate, the Air Corps, the Coast Guard, and the Military Police who had inter-branch authority. Key divisions within the minutemen’s army include minutemen intelligence, infantry, airborne, which works closely with the air corps, and the militia, which is structured differently in that it is organized of local volunteer militiamen and generally autonomous within the settlement it is based in, but a wider command structure exists for larger scale military action.

Loblaw Companies Ltd. is facing pressure to release supply chain records amid concerns from activist investors that the company could be importing goods from suppliers with ties to forced labour in China.
In a proposal to company shareholders last month, the British Columbia General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) alleged that Canada’s largest food retailer purchased textiles and cotton products from Xinjiang, the remote area of western China where Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are subject to mass detention and oppressive working conditions by the government.
While Loblaw pledged to cut off imports from Xinjiang early in 2021, the BCGEU motion points to logistics research conducted by a U.K. professor who alleges the company has received products from the region within the past year.
The shareholder motion, which asked Loblaw to “publish annually a summary of the results of its supplier audits,” was voted down at the company’s annual general meeting last Thursday after Loblaw’s board of directors recommended shareholders vote against the motion.
But despite Loblaw’s recommendations, the motion was supported by a number of prominent minority shareholders including the Bank of Montreal and Norges Investment Management, Norway’s largest sovereign wealth fund.
Loblaw denies that it is importing products from the Uyghur region.
In a statement to the Star, Loblaw said its code of conduct “prohibits the use of any child labour or forced labour of any kind and we do not import products from the Uyghur region.”
“The shareholder proposal raised important concerns regarding standards of care in our supply chain. We welcome the active engagement and encouragement from our shareholders on this important topic,” the company said.
“The timeline proposed in the shareholder resolutions for further action did not match up with our own implementation timeline and consequently, the board did not feel ready to support the shareholder proposal at this time.”
The union referenced research from Laura Murphy, a professor at Sheffield Hallam University who compiles shipment data from Chinese exporters.
Murphy points to supply chain records collected from Panjiva, a global trade data company owned by S&P Global Inc., which indicate that Loblaw acquired products from a supplier called Zhejiang Zhongda Novotex Co., which Murphy says leases and owns a swath of cotton and textile factories in the Xinjiang region.
The data from Panjiva shows that a customer named “Loblaws Inc.” purchased apparel from Zhejiang Zhongda as recently as February of this year.
In the proposal, the union argued that supply chain connections to the Xinjiang region opened investors to risk.
“Enhanced information on these audits would give investors key information to ensure that Loblaw’s enterprise risks are being managed and mitigated,” the investors wrote.
“Loblaw’s failure to address the gap between its disclosure and that of its global peers leaves investors open to risk.”
Though the motion to release supply chain records received just 34 per cent support from company shareholders, the fight isn’t over.
Among independent shareholders — namely, those that are not members of the Weston family, who hold a controlling 53.5 per cent stake in the company they founded — nearly 88 per cent voted in favour of the BCGEU motion.
The proposal also received the backing of two major shareholder advisory firms: U.S.-based ISS and Glass Lewis.
BCGEU spokesperson Emma Pullman said the vote was only the beginning of a pressure campaign against the company over Xinjiang imports.
“We look to the companies we invest in to manage their human rights risks, address their impacts and provide adequate disclosure. The best outcome is they agree to the disclosure we’ve asked for and begin providing investors with critical information on supplier audits. If not, we will consider following up with the company and refiling the proposal next year if necessary,” Pullman said.
Loblaw is one of several North American companies to face intensified shareholder scrutiny related to China’s treatment of Uyghurs, which many countries have labelled a genocide and — according to the U.S. State Department — amounts to the largest-scale detention of an ethno-religious community since the Second World War.
Minority shareholders at the Walt Disney Company recently sought to have the company produce an annual report demonstrating it was not sourcing materials from Xinjiang, though the motion failed.
Canadian Solar Inc., based in Guelph, Ont., recently promised shareholders it would launch an independent investigation of whether workers in its supply chain are the victims of forced labour after the company built a solar farm in Xinjiang.
In 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that seeks to ban all imports from the Xinjiang region given widespread forced labour in Uyghur internment camps.
The BCGEU, which represents more than 80,000 workers across the province, has a history of shareholder activism aimed at pressuring majority-controlled companies to increase transparency on human rights concerns.
The union filed a proposal with Montreal-based dairy company Saputo in 2019 to crack down on food waste, prompting the company to release a comprehensive food waste policy the following year.
Similarly, in April, Thomson Reuters acquiesced to BCGEU demands to conduct an independent, company-wide human rights impact assessment of its products and services — including contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — after the union filed repeated shareholder motions in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
The union isn’t afraid to try the same tactic with Loblaw, said BCGEU president Stephanie Smith.
“We are still monitoring ... Loblaw closely. We intend to follow up with Loblaw and all of its investors, including those who didn’t back our proposal. Forced labour is an issue that cannot wait,” said Smith.
According to Smith, the union initially approached Loblaw in private to negotiate supply chain transparency but took the matter public when the company said it needed at least two years before improving its disclosure of supplier audits.
“Two years is unacceptable. This overwhelming vote in support of the BCGEU’s proposal sends a strong message that investors want to see the company tackle this issue now, not in two years,” said Smith.
In a note distributed to shareholders before Thursday’s vote, the company acknowledged the importance of “increased transparency with regard to its supply chain,” but argued the shareholder motion does not match with the company’s timeline for implementation.
“Loblaw is committed to enforcing the obligations of suppliers in its supply chain. Factories are monitored through various means, including site audits. The corporation’s representatives reinforce workers’ rights and safety by conducting reviews and assessments,” the company wrote.
Loblaw has previously promised to stay away from suppliers with ties to forced labour.
In 2017, the company committed to not source cotton produced in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan over concerns about child labour in cotton harvests. In July 2021, the company signed onto the Better Cotton Initiative, a non-profit that advocates for sustainable and safe cotton harvesting.
https://www.thestar.com/business/loblaw-faces-pressure-from-activist-investors-bmo-over-allegations-of-ties-to-suppliers-in-china/article_00460d11-c1b5-557a-9648-474894660af8.html

In 2023, I did a story with StarterStory.
I enjoyed working with them - everything went well!
But... it is behind a paywall and even I can't read it.
No bueno, as I want to read it, and I want others to read it too.
So... why not make it public? Here it is ⬇️
I updated it since, and hopefully you get some value or inspiration out of it ✌
I realise this is my first post here but my aim is to continue contributing and engaging with the community. I feel honoured to be part of this community, thank you :)
Who are you and what business did you start?
Hey everyone, I’m Denis and I’m the co-founder of Glimp - a business started 8 years ago.
During that time:

• I survived on $150 NZD per week for a year
• volunteered at Rio 2016 Olympics
• lived in Bali, Mexico, Portugal, Brazil, Russia to name a few and visited even more countries
• made lots of friends, and memories
• improving my dating... a lot
• battled depression and started doing therapy
• became TikTok famous in New Zealand
• went sober and continue to do so
• committed to calisthenics and flexibility
• and of course, built a 7-figure business while making a tonne of mistakes

So, let’s talk business!
Glimp.co.nz is a utilities, financial products, and insurance comparison website in New Zealand. 🇳🇿Think SkyScanner, except in the industries I mention.
We help Kiwis (that’s what you call New Zealanders) find better deals and save money. We do this by negotiating exclusive offers and presenting them in as easy and as straightforward as possible. That’s the consumer side.
From the business side, we help big and small companies acquire customers. We promote their offers and get paid when customers sign up.
Today, our average revenue is $170,000 NZD ($100,000 USD) per month with a healthy gross margin.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I started my career as an auditor at one of the big accounting firms - BDO. Then one day, after 2 years there, I had enough.
I looked around my office and asked myself “Is this the life I want?”.The work didn’t inspire me. I wanted freedom and change, so I quit.
I quit my job in June 2015, I was 24 years old. I had 6 months left to get my Chartered Accountancy (CA) qualification aka CPA. The highest honour for accountants. It meant I was saying no to a 6-figure salary and a relatively stable career path. It felt really scary.
Two weeks later, I moved alone to Wellington, New Zealand, where I didn’t know anyone, and began my 8-week coding journey.
If you asked me about my plan then… I would not had a single idea it would lead me to where I am today.
My aim at the time was to claim back my freedom, start a business and travel around the world.
The plan went something like this:

1. I want to start a business
   
2. If the business doesn’t work, I will get a coding job
   
3. If I can’t get a coding job, I will go back to whatever I was doing before
   

During the coding bootcamp, I met my now business partner - Michael. We clicked as we both didn’t want to work 9 to 5 but do our own thing. So we brainstormed a few ideas and settled on our comparison website. The funny thing is… the ideas that we wrote down, all of them have been executed by other entrepreneurs.
The comparison idea was close to Michael’s heart, as he is an immigrant from UK and price comparisons there are huge. Enormous! So we decided to copy their model and launch the first all-inclusive comparison website in New Zealand. We were the first to include a comparison of many products. The thinking was… if it worked there, it has to work here.
I barely had any business experience, besides what I learned online. I was fresh. Michael was an ex-electrician and a property manager. He was also fresh.
That meant we had to figure everything out, and we did.
At the time I was living off my savings of approximately $150 USD per week. That included rent, food, gym, and 1 cup of coffee a week. Talking about being thrifty.
I lived like that for a year and four months. Challenging at times, but overall, it was fun. At one point, I moved back to my parents but that was after I went to Brazil to volunteer at Rio 2016 Olympics for 3 months and came back home broke.
A few months since returning from my Brazil trip, we started paying ourselves equivalent to the minimum wage in New Zealand. This was December 2016. I decided I had enough of living with my parents and that’s when I moved to Bali.
My journey of travel and self-discovery has begun.
But we are here to talk business, so let’s talk business.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
I built an MVP in two weeks and started with Internet comparison. I was an internet geek, World of Warcraft, etc, and it felt right to start with what I know - prices for different internet plans😅.
As Steve Jobs once said “Good artists copy, Great Artists steal”Having zero design or CSS skills, I did exactly what Steve said. I went on overseas websites and started to understand how they operate. Some call it, reverse engineering.
In my head, I’m thinking, these guys are spending millions of dollars optimising their websites and products, so they must be doing something right.
However, I did add my own spice to it. After analysing websites, I noticed they all do comparison one above the other. Whereas in real life, we do it side by side, so I implemented a comparison of our offers like that.
In reality, it was just two guys trying to apply what they learned during the coding bootcamp. Using the latest Ruby on Rails framework, Bootstrap and jQuery. We fell into a natural rhythm where over time I was focusing mainly on Front-end and my business partner was focusing on Back-end.
It was a lot of spaghetti code, which is code that is lacking any structure. One of these days we will rebuild the website.
Describe the process of launching the business.
In January 2016, we launched our website. We just pushed it live on Heroku and… now what?As you remember, we were fresh, there was no growth hacking or anything.
Luckily for us, New Zealand was going through a massive Fibre rollout and the government was spending millions on marketing. So that’s what we focused on.
Around the same time, an overseas internet company entered New Zealand with a market-leading offer. They wanted new clients but they only had a referral program for door-to-door salesmen at $120 NZD on acquisition. We asked them if we can do acquisitions online. They agreed.
We featured their offer and began a simple AdWords campaign. Our budget was $1,000 a month. This was all financed via our savings. And to this day I remember the first lead that we generated. I was frothing.
At the end of our first financial year, we made $60k in revenue and $20k in profit. Not bad. This was purely from focusing on AdWords.
Over time our main source of user acquisition became SEO but it takes time to build it out. So we kept grinding and getting better at what we do while improving our core offering.
We also were trying to get more client relationships. In some cases, it was a waiting game to get noticed. In other, it was someone we knew. And in other cases, it was us approaching them and saying what we can do for them.
When we started we would accept the price that the provider was willing to pay. However, as time went on, we negotiated for better and higher CPAs.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
In the beginning, it was AdWords. This was the main source of our traffic. Since we were bootstrapping, it was really important we were profitable from day 1. So I made our website flow super simply to get our users from Point A to Point B.
I put a lead capture where we would collect customer details when accessing a certain deal. We would then use those emails to follow up with them. At the time, I also coded up a simple transactional email so we didn’t pay for the service.
Then I started exploring ways how to generate more traffic and stumbled across SEO. I started diving deeper and quickly implementing the best SEO practices at the time. The most fun I had was figuring out how to write content that ranks. Publishing it and then seeing it at the top of Google’s first page. It was great.
The content pipeline system was simple. It was putting myself into the shoes of a consumer and answering questions they might have. I would also analyse the content our competition was writing and make it better.
Michael and I would reach out and get backlinks with the partners that we worked with and websites in a related industry.
We later got SEO tools like SEMRush to help us with content ideation, and eventually we outsourced the SEO side of the business. To this day, we haven’t found an SEO agency or partner to continue working with - the search goes on.
Next, I was analysing industries we haven't started comparing yet. Seeing where we could easily rank and launch another vertical. That allowed us to rank top of Google’s search for Mobile Plans, Car Insurance, and Power in New Zealand.
As we grew in traffic, we started bringing on more paying partners. You see, at first, for our idea to work we had to sell our service on an acquisition basis only. And we had to include companies that didn’t pay us because they were well-known in New Zealand.
However, with higher traffic, we were able to onboard new paying partners and get better exclusive deals. And the exclusive deals meant customer retention because they weren’t able to find these deals anywhere else.
We also tried leveraging Facebook, forums, and groups to promote those deals. However, the best we found was SEO and Adwords.
How are you doing today?
Personally, I'm doing great. In fact, the best I've been mentally since doing therapy, but it wasn't like that before.
Up until 2020, our business has been doubling in revenue every year.
We started to expand our team and by end of 2020, we had 20 full-time staff mainly from the Philippines. We had a call center team, marketing team, operations, and developer. The idea was to grow the business and streamline operations.
Since that point, our business has been through a lot of ups and downs. Some people worked out great and some didn’t. It was a learning experience for me too because I never really managed a team.
Currently, we are a team of 3 full-timers combined with 10 contractors in different parts of the business.
The biggest lessons were:

1. Find the right people
2. Make sure they are kept accountable for the deliverables

Between the period of 2020 and 2022, when we had 20 full-time employees, I relaxed and thought the people I had could run the business. And I guess they did, the question is how well.
I also wasn’t enjoying the business. I managed to achieve my goal of living anywhere and working whenever I want. And yet... it felt meaningless.
Looking at this period now, I was depressed and going through a lot of internal growth and changes. And still going, and what a ride it is.
Things had to change... I let go of all of our marketing team at the beginning of 2022 and replaced them with contractors.I was paying more per hour but was getting better results. Great success!
The year 2022 was also the worst year in terms of profitability, achieving a loss in September. That was a wake up call for me - it was time to really do something about it.
In the second half of 2022, we let go of our operations manager and made more staff from full-time to hourly.
I also found that our email automation was turned off for over a year with a user base of 120k+ emails. I didn’t want to think about how much revenue we lost, so I found an email team to help us with it. Even then, I had to part ways with them and find another person to help me.
In 2023, we let go of our call centre team and replaced with a new one - that was the last change in employees for now.
After all those changes, we were back to making the highest profits we’ve made in a very long time.
One thing I’m forgetting to mention is that during that period I also improved our conversion rate from 6% to 12%.
What does the future look like?
Short term plan is to continue putting the right people into the right seats within the business.I want to increase profitability and automate as much as I can.
I'm happy to share that we finished year 2023/2024 (different financial year in NZ) with highest profit to date! And I want to continue the momentum going.
Long term plan is to figure out the next stage of life from a business and personal perspectives. Remember, the internal growth journey I talked about?
Michael and I are currently at crossroads on whether to put the business in the maintenance mode, continue building within New Zealand and dominate it, go for a bigger market or sell.
This comes from losing steam in the recent months and discussion of selling the business are starting to show up but whatever we decide will be the right decision.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Timing and luck play an important factor. It has been proved to me many times during my journey. Combine that with hard work and you will get results.
When it comes to evaluating people you want to have a clear idea of their responsibilities and objectives. Using those objectives is how you will evaluate them. For example, if you agree with someone on 10 pieces of content per week, and only receive 5, you discuss that with them next week. If it keeps happening, then you have a basis to take action. Simple and effective.
If I knew the above earlier I would’ve let go of some of my employees sooner. They were the right people but in the wrong seat. Or the wrong people in the wrong seats. It just wasn’t serving anyone.Also, as someone who gets emotional about this matter, it allows me to look at it more objectively.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We’ve built the website on Ruby on Rails. For our hosting we use AWS but when we started it was Heroku. For CRM, it is Freshsales, and for email we use ActiveCampaign.
On day to day basis we use Slack and GSuites, it does the job. We use Trello for project management.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
I think it was the 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. I read it before I started my business journey but at the time, I was hooked. From day 1, the business was fully remote and had no office. We were doing the remote thing before it was cool… kind of.
Another one is Traction by Gino Wickman, I read it in 2022 and it is about setting up operations within the business. The key takeaway is to measure the performance of key metrics on weekly basis. That way you don’t wait one month to see how things are going.
Once I implemented what I learned from Traction, my business grew a lot.From -$10k profit to $80k profit... not bad.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Realise that you can always go back to whatever it is you were doing before.
If you have a fear around money, I lived on $150 USD per week for over a year. Honestly, this was one of the best times for me during my business journey.
Figure out what is your minimum “survival” requirement and you will be surprised how little you need to get by. In turn, you will experience freedom and it will allow you to focus on building whatever it is you are building.
Note: I was 24, single and debt free at the time. But if you are not, I’m sure you can figure out a solution that works for you.
Where can we go to learn more?
At the moment, I'm starting to be active on my Twitter (@denistyurkov) and sharing there my journey and interests more. You can also find me on other socials, if you want, as it won't be that hard.

• Twitter

Would love to connect with amazing people and chat about business, relationships, travel, calisthenics, hiking, kitesurfing, men’s work, and many other things... or just say hi :)
Hope you all find this somewhat useful!I welcome feedback and any questions you may have.

13-minute read.

did/does Russia support or oppose the ongoing Tavush border delimitation process?

Some pro-West figures in Armenia believe that Russia is against this delimitation process because that would further reduce the need to have Russian boots in those regions, and Armenian government member(s) have publicly stated that there will be no need for Russians to stay there. Others cite a recent statement made by Russian MFA spokeswoman Zakharova to suggest Russia supports the delimitation. Others believe Russia organized this delimitation process by using its "puppet" Mher Grigoryan - the head of the Armenian border commission.
Let's recall the events.
March 18: PM Pashinyan announces a plan to delimit the borders and to start it from Tavush. Says the chance of a war is high if Armenia doesn't return the 4 (2.5) Soviet-era Azerbaijani villages where civilians used to live.
March 20, Moscow, Zakharova: There is a mechanism for delimitation and Russia is ready to assist the parties with our expertise. We are ready to cooperate [suggests that Russia is not currently part of that process]. That is the role we could play. Now regarding the role we certainly do NOT play today. We have nothing to do with the decisions voiced by the Armenian government. Do me a favor, understand and remember, that whatever Pashinyan said, must not and cannot be associated with Russia. Armenia held no consultations with Russia in advance, no contacts, this is an exclusively Armenian decision based on Yerevan's consultations with the West. This is the West's zone of responsibility. The questions on what agreements they have reached, what the [West] was pushing Armenia to accept, should be directed at Yerevan. The Armenian government should not blame Russia for this. //
Fast forward to April 19. Armenian government announces a breakthrough agreement with Azerbaijan. Territorial-wise, it is more favorable for Armenia than many expected, with Armenia maintaining control of crucial roads and most of the Soviet-Azerbaijani territories during this phase of the delimitation.
Following this agreement and the successful launch of the border marking process, Russia's Zakharova makes a generic statement welcoming any diplomatic effort: "Let me remind you of our [Russia's] traditional position. We support the settlement of all issues related to the demarcation of the state border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, without exception, exclusively by political-diplomatic methods."
Do you believe Russia organized, supported, or truly supports this process? Leave your opinion in the comments below.
video, source, source,

Armenia's ruling party met Ben Cardin, the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

A delegation of ranking ruling MPs and Armenia's Ambassador Lilith Makunts were hosted by Senator Cardin on Wednesday.
They discussed the AM-AZ peace process and the Crossroads of Peace regional logistics project that aims to lift the blockade on Armenia.
Cardin expressed support for Armenia's sovereignty and democracy and expressed willingness to further deepen the US-AM relations.
source,

tens of U.S. Representatives urge Congressional Appropriators to allocate $200 million for Artsakh refugees

66 members of the House want to...
(1) Expand the US military aid to Armenia. $20M in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and $10M in International Military Education and Training (IMET).
(2) Suspend all US military and security aid to Azerbaijan.
(3) Urge Blinken to develop a potential sanctions package against the Azerbaijani regime.
(4) $200M for Nagorno-Karabakh refugees.
(5) $10M for law enforcement reforms in INCLE
(6) $10M in democratic reforms under OTI
ANCA welcomed the letter by the Congress members:

With tens of billions of American dollars being shipped overseas to crisis zones around the world, the less than $20 million that President Biden has set aside – but not yet allocated – for displaced Artsakh Armenians is truly an embarrassment

source,

United States Commission on International Religious Freedom recommends listing Azerbaijan among "countries of particular concern" like Afghanistan, North Korea, and Cuba

The USCIRF made that recommendation to the US government in its 2024 Annual report.
It also urges the US government to allocate funds to restore, preserve, and protect Armenian religious and cultural sites in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The report notes that in 2023 the Azerbaijani government continued to pose a threat to religious sites in Nagorno-Karabakh. For example, the chairman of Azerbaijan's official State Committee for Work on Religious Affairs Mubariz Gurbanli urged Armenian Apostolic priests to leave the Dadivank Monastery, falsely claiming that they had no ties to the religious site.
source,

U.S. Treasury Department sanctions an Azerbaijani business for assisting Russia to bypass the weapons sanctions

An Azerbaijani company is accused of acting as an intermediary to negotiate and execute business deals on behalf of sanctioned Russian entities.
source, source,

Azerbaijani president Aliyev praises Russia's role in "ensuring security" in Caucasus and globally

Ilham Aliyev hosted the Russian Senate's deputy leader Kosachev and the head of the Eurasian Integration Committee Leonid Kalashnikov.
RUSSIAN SENATOR: President Aliyev's insightful speech at the World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue regarding the restoration of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and [the anti-French speech about] neo-colonialism were very relevant under today's conditions. Mr. Aliyev's recent visit to Moscow was very successful.
ILHAM ALIYEV: My visit to Moscow was very productive and it once again displayed the strategic nature of the Russian-Azerbaijani alliance. As neighboring states, we provide maximum support to one another. Russia plays an important role in ensuring security not only in the region but also in the wider area.
source,

Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Ukraine discussed bilateral and regional issues over the phone

Emphasizing the efforts to achieve lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus, Ararat Mirzoyan attached importance to the unconditional respect for the principle of territorial integrity in the process of border delimitation, the commitment to the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration and the position expressed by international partners

source,

Armenian government approves the package to establish Police Guard as part of ongoing police reforms

EXECUTIVE: Purely police service will be created with new weapons and trained personnel in accordance with international standards, which will be entrusted with the maintenance of public order and public safety, the protection of state buildings and important objects, the escorting of delegations provided for by the state protocol, as well as ensuring the legal regime of martial law and state of emergency.
At the same time, the adoption of the drafts will contribute to more effective realization of the right of citizens to hold assemblies, and will exclude the risks of use of disproportionate force against participants of rallies.
INTERIOR MINISTRY: Police Guard will be one of the 4 pillars of the police reforms [Patrol Police, Police Guard,...]. We have been working with the Council of Europe and Armenian NGOs to develop this reform. It has received a positive evaluation from international observers.
The Police Guard will have civilian management and be monitored by the parliament. In comparison, the existing Police Forces operate under a different code. The Police Guard will be formed as an entirely new structure and won't be a legal successor of another division.
New international standards will be implemented for the use of force and weapons. This will come to replace "inaccurate" formulations in the existing structures.
Today we have reports about a disproportionate amount of force being used by police, or other inappropriate conduct. That is because these police officers were never trained and educated for years. The Police Guard applicants will receive training on how to ethically communicate with citizens during mass events, how to negotiate with citizens, what the citizens' rights are, etc.
The main law will go into effect in September, launching a process of bringing other laws in line with the new code. The head of the Police Guard will be appointed in January 2025; it will be fully formed two months later. We decided to do it slowly so as not to compromise the quality and to give enough time for applicants to study and join the service.
PASHINYAN: This is the next important reform in the police. We have decided to do it slowly but accurately. We need to standardize how much force the police can use and when. The correct boundaries will protect not only citizens but also the officers who will avoid harsh consequences by not overstepping their boundaries.
source, video,

Armenia and US extend agreement on cooperation in the area of counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction

MOD Papikyan hosted Ambassador Kvien. They discussed the current state of AM-US relations and future developments.
The US expressed readiness to continue to support defense reforms in Armenia.
source,

Armenia will join an EAEU mechanism to identify the true origin of goods

There is a unified system of determining the origin of goods that helps streamline the movement of goods.
EXECUTIVE: This will significantly facilitate trade, as goods from the EAEU member states, as well as from countries that have or are planning free trade agreements with the EAEU, will undergo minimal inspections and enjoy favorable trade regimes. The unified system will simplify the procedure for processing documents.
source,

the government discusses changes to the tax code for businesses

FINANCE MINISTER: (1) We need to raise the turnover tax rate to reduce the difference in tax burden compared to the VAT/profit taxation system. (2) Turnover taxpayers should improve their documentation discipline. (3) Certain types of activities won't enjoy the privileges of microbusinesses and turnover tax. The latter must be more targeted.
As you know, the purpose of the turnover tax system was to simplify the tax system and have a milder approach to certain businesses. However, the research shows that the turnover tax system has turned into a system of "privilege". We compared the tax burden under profit/VAT and turnover systems and found that in almost every sector, the profit/VAT burden was much heavier than the turnover-based burden, ranging from 2-3x.
Moreover, recent years' experience with turnover tax and microbusiness shows that these systems often include types of business activities that resemble activities that are prohibited under the turnover tax system.
Therefore, it is necessary to double the turnover tax for most cases to address the aforementioned issues.

the tax rate for trade enterprises will be set at 10%, for production enterprises - 7%, and for the catering sector - 12%. At the same time, the limit for turnover tax will remain unchanged at 120 million drams per year (equivalent to about $300 thousand), and if the business exceeds this threshold, it will be forced to switch to VAT and profit tax

At the same time, the final turnover tax rate will be lower in practice than the existing rates for certain businesses that properly document their activities.

retailers will be able to reduce their minimum tax rate from 1.5% to 1%, manufacturing companies from 3.5% to 3%, and the catering sector from 4% to 3.5%. Full report.

As of 2022, we had 56,000 businesses paying turnover tax. That's twice the number of businesses in the profit/VAT system. These turnover-based businesses paid only 2.3% of the share last year. This is a very low number. We need the tax system to be fair.
PASHINYAN: Our conclusion is that the turnover tax system has been promoting bad motivations. Our goal was to allow businesses to grow so we believed that by providing certain privileges, certain trampolines, to allow people to "kickstart" their businesses, it would allow them to grow and in turn grow the economy. The goal was to allow them to grow and exit the turnover tax system and enter the VAT system.
Today the turnover tax threshold is ֏120M so you pay turnover tax for under ֏120M, and VAT for turnover above ֏120M. For microbusinesses the annual turnover threshold is ֏24M.
The research shows that as soon as the business reaches this threshold, instead of using the trampoline to jump, it for some reason hits the brakes. It turns out that how well businesses perform on paper is mysteriously tied to whatever threshold we set. The turnover reaches ֏118.5M but never crosses ֏120M. This system promotes a shadowy economy.
It is time to gradually abolish the turnover tax system and set healthy motivations for businesses. If we want to have a country, we have to collect taxes. Having an independent state is the most expensive project in the world. Every looma you pay to the tax authority helps strengthen Armenia.
IRS CHIEF: Another amendment sets January 1, 2025, as a deadline for turnover tax businesses to improve their paperwork discipline. If we find discrepancies in the business's product inventory not explained by paperwork, we will be able to demand a 20% tax.
PASHINYAN: I don't get it. This system existed since the early 2000s. Does that mean for 20 years the tax code promoted and allowed illegal activities and we're fixing it only in 2025?
IRS CHIEF: (nods in approval)
PASHINYAN: Why did we not fix it sooner, after 2018? Can anyone explain how it slipped through the cracks? This is why we need to develop Armenia's institutions. This problem is everywhere. We have thousands of state employees presenting daily nonsense reports but not the important things. Sometimes I read stacks of documents, never understand anything at the end, and develop the impression that it's a ploy to keep you distracted from the important. Why are you grinning right now? I know you have all experienced this. Let's fix this.
We must step-by-step abolish the turnover tax and establish one taxation system in Armenia. Businesses that require help will receive help, but we must end this economic deformity. //
full, source,

government authorizes allocation of another $125 million to assist Nagorno-Karabakh refugees

It will keep the monthly payments going until December.
source,

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan could swap parts of their territories to address border demarcation issues

KYRGYZSTAN: It's possible, but only after discussing it with border villagers. The border delimitation work is reaching its end. We have seen two conflicts and we have sustained losses among civilians and servicemen. People are concerned and there is fear among the border populations on both sides. In some regions, the border passes through communities but it's necessary to make mutual concessions, without which it will be impossible to resolve this.
source,

Russia expands the scope of anti-migrant retaliation to include citizens of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan

About a thousand Tajik citizens, many of whom were students studying in Russian universities, were detained at the airports and borders. Now the same is happening to Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens.
Russian NGO: The migrants are being arrested at the airport. They have accumulated around 4,500 people at airports since April 24, and a similar number was blocked on land borders. This is the first time restrictions are applied at this scale. We receive letters that the travelers are left without food, water, and toilet, and that their cellphones are being taken away without an explanation. Some of them got deported within 2 days, while others had to wait a week. //
Foreign ministries of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have urged their citizens not to travel to Russia. Tajikistan's MFA sent a note of protest to the Russian embassy.
source,source,

Georgia’s Western trajectory is at risk: U.S. government

STATE DEPT: The United States condemns the Kremlin-inspired “foreign influence” legislation advanced in Georgia’s parliament and the false narrative government officials have adopted to defend it.
Members of the ruling party have been clear that the intent of the law is to silence critical voices and destroy Georgia’s vibrant civil society, which serves as a critical check on government in any democratic nation.
The statements and actions of the Georgian government are incompatible with the democratic values that underpin membership in the EU and NATO
Comments mischaracterizing foreign assistance in Georgia – which we have provided for 32 years to strengthen Georgia’s economy, democracy, and ability to deter Russian aggression – fundamentally undermine the strong relationship.
source,

What is happening in Georgia? Protests continue in Tbilisi over the "foreign agent" bill.

The government says the law is necessary to protect the country from foreign influence and that it could be revoked/amended later if the EU decides to accept Georgia. The opposition says it's a Russian-style law that aims to punish pro-West NGOs and will derail Georgia's path to the EU.
UGULAVA (ex-mayor of Tbilisi): The vast majority of the population is against this law. If you take the speech by the ruling party leader Bidzina Ivanishvili and replace "Georgia" with "Russia", it won't be any different than the speeches made by Vladimir Putin. Ivanishvili publicly announced that the West is the enemy of Georgia. He even distorted history and announced that the 2003 Rose Revolution was a Western conspiracy. That is an identical copy of how Putin described the revolution. This angered many Georgians, who felt that they didn't "sign up" for this. Modern Georgians have two elements that shaped their identity: (1) Georgia is part of Europe and is a European nation, (2) the Georgian identity was formed during the struggle against the Russian Empire. The separation from the Empire was the biggest achievement of the 20th century.
Ivanishvili also announced that the October elections are a "formality" and that he plans to arrest his opponents as part of a "de-Nazification" crackdown. He plans to declare [Saakashvili's] United National Movement as an illegal organization. He said it point blank during his public speech. [needs fact-check]
REPORTER (RainTV, Russian opposition): Many observers have indeed noted how open and direct Ivanishvili's confrontation was with the West in his speech. He almost promised repressions against the opposition.
UGULAVA: This is a Putinization of Georgia. They have declared Georgia as part of the "Russian world" that must fight for traditional values, etc. but the population is against this en masse. Over 100,000 protesters took to the streets of Tbilisi, which is not a large city.
May 17 is Diversity Day [against anti-LGBT hatred] but the church wants to convert it to Family Day. They are provoking. On that day they [traditional value defenders] often organize mass unrest. This is what Putin does. Ivanishvili, the reactionaries at church, and Putin are operating in tandem.
source, [source,]

9th Crusade is officially launched in Armenia

Robert Kocharyan's MP son Levon Kocharyan's assistant released a statement after assaulting a pro-government journalist over a report critical of an opposition churchman and his involvement in businesses. Context in May 1 news.
KOCHARYAN's ASSISTANT: Yes, there was an incident between us. This young man has adopted a mission to discredit the church, which is unacceptable for me as an Armenian, as a Christian. I attempted to explain this to him in the backyard of the parliament building. It is my duty as an Armenian to defend the church. Spreading falsehoods about the church and its figures is an act void of morality. He accused me of the same, so I punched him once [you telling on yourself, bud, get a fucking lawyer]. He fell to the ground. He got up and started screaming at me but I didn't fall for his provocations. He yelled and said "but I didn't touch you". I told him "you touched my church", that's the same as touching me. //
He has been jailed for 2 months pending a trial.
full, source,

Edmon Marutyan has released a statement in support of opposition church figures and delimitation protesters

video,

update on "ծակվավ" story

The opposition activist who was seen poking a van's tire in Tavush is charged with a crime, and so is a 17-year-old who gave him the knife. Context in April 27 news.
source,

the construction of Park of Life is underway in Yerevan: VIDEO

Dedicated to soldiers, it will be located in Yerevan's Botanical Garden. There will be a pond, newly renovated cascade stairs, alleys, and a parking lot for 180 cars.
video,

what share of the IT workforce is Armenian?

Last year there were 34,000 registered IT workers, a +62% YoY.
44 percentage points of the 62% increase was caused by the influx of foreigners, mostly Russians.
Share of foreigners in the IT workforce:
2022: 4%
2023: 27%
The number of Russian IT workers in Armenia:
2023 Jun: 8,600 (peak)
2023 Dec: 8,300
The gross output of the IT sector:
2022: ֏585B
2023: ֏837B ($2.1B)
more,

the reptiles are among us

The Nature Ministry (which apparently still exists) responded to concerns raised by residents about an increasingly frequent encounter with lizards.
The ministry says there are 27 types in Armenia and almost half of them are in the Red Book so try not to kill them, they are benign, and they help protect crops by feeding on harmful invertebrates.
source,

Demographics: Female, Asian (moved here in elementary), CA, competitive public high school,
hooks: legacy at nyu, athlete, non-profit
Intended Major(s): CS/Applied Math
ACT/SAT/SAT II: 1550 (760 Reading 790 Math)
UW/W GPA and Rank: 3.83UW/4.43W, school does not do ranking
Coursework: AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores, etc
10 APs: AP Chinese, AP Calc BC (sophomore year), AP Physics 1, AP Stats, AP CSA, AP Bio, APUSH, AP CSP, AP Seminar, AP Physics C
Dual Enrollment: Multivar Calc
Senior year courseload: AP Physics Electricity, AP Lit, AP Gov, AP Macro, Linear Alg
5 on AP's except AP Physics 1
Awards:
Model UN: Best Delegate (x2) (one international one regional), Honorable (x1) (international)
National Merit Scholarship Qualifier
Presidential Volunteering Service Bronze (2023, 2024)
National Spanish Exam Top Percentile
National Chinese Honor Society
Regional Swim Competition Silver (x2)
Regional Debate Tournament Win (x3)
Extracurriculars:
Model UN: won competitions, club officer, chaired for conference
nonprofit org: regional/city director, volunteer for 200+ hours
intern: interned at cs startup, cs backend
women in stem club: founder, president of club, organized county science fair and partnered with nationally recognized non profits and churches to tutor low income children
research: competitive summer program, researched bioengineering at UCSD
game dev: made website and app games (x2)
Chinese club: school club vp
art commissions: totaling 2k+, 6 years, website portfolio
dance: nationals, 11 years
debate: varsity
Marine Biology Volunteering Program 100 Volunteering Hours
FIRST robotics
neurology newsletter, 3 years
Essays/LORs/Other:
Essays: I would focus on my experience of transferring high schools sophomore year & how that affected me and also what I learned from it. I can also talk about the differences that I have experienced being here vs being in the country I lived at before. Additionally, I can talk abt my passion for public speaking.
LORs: Generally good relationship w/ APUSH teacher, tutoring for AP Bio teacher next year
Schools:
UIUC (CS + Linguistics) , UMich, GT, WashU, Purdue, UT Austin, UCI, UCSB, NYU
chat am i cooked or what.

Please help me improve my application, atrocious grades for Wharton ik. Also I kinda go in depth in my ec section so you'll get a better idea of my overall standing :)
Demographics: Male, Asian, Cali, Public, and FGLI (no assets)
Intended Major(s): Business/Finance
ACT/SAT/SAT II: taking in may but projected score is 1500+ PLEASE COMPENSATE FOR LOW GPA (could still retake jun,aug,oct)
UW/W GPA and Rank: 3.67/4.15 junior yr, top 10% or 15% idk (taking like 20 credits this summer so it'll go up slightly but ik it's still low, extenuating circumstance will explain in essays)
Coursework: 9th- 2 honors and like 3 B's
10th: 1 H and 1 AP, only 1 B first sem but grades dipped second sem and got 1 C, 2 B's
11th: 3 B's first sem and might end with 1 or 2 B's second sem.
4 AP classes 2 DE; 5 classes planned for summer; taking single variable calc (calc AB) at CC.
12th: 5 AP planned; rigorous load to make up for
Awards: got basically none lol
-National Recognition Award(college board)
-AP Scholar with Distinction (college board)

• NHS

-FBLA award
Extracurriculars:

1. Founder of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to providing low-income elementary students with free access to chess education. Operates in the local library and is preparing to expand to local elementary schools. Donations go to chess drives that donate chess-boards to schools. 4+ schools, 50+ students, 15+ instructors, managed social media accounts and websites. Actually passionate with real impact, not some bs passion project with 20 followers.
   
2. Marketing Intern: unpaid intern at medium-sized business; gained sales experience selling products through phone and in-person, did market research on demographics to determine optimal product placement, website development and evaluated its effectiveness on sales. Photographed products which were presented on product websites. 25% increase in sales. Total shadowing hours: 25, span of 2 months.
   
3. Assistant to Manager at family-owned restaurant: Large-scale, fast paced environment, 1000-1500 customers served a day, summers are busy af and it's next to multiple amusement parks; worked all 4 summers of hs. First summer I worked for 70 hours as a host (learned how to run a restaurant while gaining hospitality experience) Following summer I was promoted to assistant to manager and was paid . 150 hours (10 hour shifts) each summer. Oversaw and monitor a team of 4-6 employees , managed customer affairs, work the cash register, give order call outs, answer phone calls, etc. Not the best pay but I gained a lot of experience and could practically run the place without the manager.
   

4.) Co-Founder of school's chess club: weekly meetings, lecturing and friendly competitions for club points, 35+ members, run insta acc with 80+ followers, organize and host monthly tournaments with 5+ highschools. Sparked the beginning of my npo. Planning to use funds from a fundraiser to purchase chess-boards for toy-drives.
5.) School Newspaper: Joined this my jr year and helped write articles that are published on the school's news site. Nothing crazy but I'm hoping to write about my chess projects and about business.
6.) FBLA: Candidate for VP of Activities. Joined kind of late but I'm planning on having a decent impact my senior year before application deadline.
7.) Varsity T&F: 11/12 grade, occasionally lead team warmups and lead workouts for hurdles. First year and is 2nd in the league for hurdles.
8.) President of weightlifting club: hold weekly meetings, provide safe and judge-free environments for students to exercise and workout. 45+ members, 200+ followers on social media, host friendly bench press, deadlifts, and pullup competitions and tournaments.
9.) Beach Captain for environment non-profit called Heal the Bay. Assisted in hosting and organizing monthly clean up events on the beaches of California. Helped with sign in, led cohorts to appropriate cleanup areas, directed volunteers to tents and passed out buckets for cleanup. Attended like 5 cleanups with like 8 hours at each event.
10.) Family responsibility: Translation for immigrant parents who don't speak English, help parents pay the bills (online, phone-call, through mail), cook and take care of siblings while parents are at work, clean and organize the house.
Essays/LORs/Other: I think I got some pretty decent lore. Immigrant family, typical FGLI, parents don't speak any english. One of my essays is gonna be about my chess non-profit which I started because I never got access to those enrichment programs as a kid because I grew up poor so I decided to start one in my community.
Also I'm going to write about why my grades had a drop during second sem of 10th and first sem of 11th. Grandparent that lived with us got diagnosed with stage ll cancer so i slept in the living room and did all my studying and work at the kitchen table. hella distractions from my parents coming home from work and cooking, constant walking around the living room etc. also we have lodgers to help pay for rent so they are hella distracting so I barely could focus or even get a good night sleep. Living in the living room allowed me to get closer to my family but I hope colleges can see that algebra 2 hw may have been difficult for me to complete at the time.
LOR:

1. English 2 Honors teacher that I spoke to about my situation and gave me lots of accommodations. Should be able to write a good letter.

2.) My advisor for my non-profit so should be pretty fire.
3.) School Counselor, I tell her about everything so I hope she writes me a good letter
Schools: ED Wharton, Stanford , Berkeley, Cornell Dyson, Stern, USC Marshall, UChicago, UCLA, UCI
Additional Information: didn’t have that many opportunities and connections so a lot of my extracurriculars were self initiated. Didn’t have crazy internships, didn’t shadow a congressman, didn’t have any research opportunities, no state or national awards. Applying through QuestBridge so hoping it’ll show the struggles of being low-income.