Genderless Nipples exposes Instagram’s double standard on nudity

My first impression was to skip this and not raise questions about why I posted, and not have to think about it. 

However, I think that the point. Maybe not seeing it as a double standard IS a double standard.

From TheVerge:

A new Instagram account is using closeup images of nipples to test the photo-sharing app’s notoriously strict policy on female nudity. The account, @genderless_nipples, publishes user-submitted photos of both male and female nipples, drawing attention to what many see as a clear double standard in Instagram’s moderation policy.

“Men are allowed to show their nipples, women’s get banned,” the account’s bio reads. “Support ALL genders! Let’s change this policy!”

Instagram and Facebook have come under strong criticism in recent years for aggressively censoring female nudity — sometimes to the point of absurdity. Facebook has used its policy to censor famous works of art, historical images, and photos of women undergoing mammograms. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, even removed a photo of a cake because it looked like female breasts, as The Daily Dot notes.

The social media sites are entirely ambivalent about male nipples, however, as activists have been quick to point out. A 2015 campaign encouraged women to photoshop male nipples on their topless photos, in a test of Instagram’s censorship policy, while the #freethenipple movement calls on women to post topless photos in an ongoing effort to destigmatize the female breast.

All of the photos on @genderless_nipples are closeups, with submitters’ names and genders remaining anonymous. From this vantage point, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish male from female, which is entirely the point.

In an email to The Huffington Post, the account’s creators, Morgan-Lee Wagner, Evelyne Wyss, and Marco Russo, said they decided to launch the page during the US presidential election. (The account was originally launched under the @genderlessnipples handle, which was later hacked. It has since been restored.)

“During that period, so many horrible things were said by candidates, and their supporters, about woman rights and gender equality, that we decided we should do something about it,” the students wrote. “And what better way to start spreading a message of gender equality than pointing out the rules of social networks?”

It appears that the effort has already run afoul of Instagram’s community standards. A post published on Monday to @genderless_nipples said that one of its images was removed from the site. According to the account, it was a photo of a male nipple.

“Instagram, you can’t even tell the difference between male and female nipples; who could!?” the caption reads. “So why even bother banning female nipples if they can be so similar?”

How Domino’s Pizza Reinvented Itself

I spent the last 18 months researching and writing a book on how organizations and leaders can do extraordinary things, even if they operate in pretty ordinary fields. You don’t have to be a programmer in Silicon Valley or a gene splicer in biotech to unleash exciting innovations and create huge value. Instead, you can rethink what it means to be in the retail-banking business, or the industrial-distribution business, or the office-cleaning business. Yet little did I know that some of the most extraordinary innovations I’ve seen would take place in the pizza business.

A few weeks ago, I spent a day in Detroit as part of a CEO Summit organized by Business Leaders for Michigan, an association of the state’s biggest companies. The event’s kickoff speaker was Patrick Doyle, CEO of Domino’s Pizza, which is headquartered in nearby Ann Arbor. I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than a riff on the company’s most popular toppings, but what I heard were riveting and compelling lessons about making radical, deep-seated change in a traditional, slow-to-change business. Doyle’s talk was titled, “How to Transform a Legacy Company into a Technology-Enabled, Nimble, Category-Disrupting Machine” — and it delivered.

The scale of the changes at Domino’s are remarkable. Doyle became CEO in 2010, after some troubled years, when the company’s growth was slow and its stock price was stuck, a lame $8.76 per share. Today, Domino’s is the second-largest pizza chain in the world, with more than 12,500 locations in more than 80 countries, and a share price approaching $160. It has moved from being the butt of late-night jokes to becoming a favorite of the stock pickers on CNBC.

How have Doyle and his colleagues unleashed so much change in such a short period of time? First, by reminding themselves of the business they’re in. Domino’s is not just in the pizza-making business, the CEO emphasizes, but in the pizza-delivery business, which means it has to be in the technology business. “We are as much a tech company as we are a pizza company,” he told the audience, pointing out that of the 800 people working at headquarters, fully 400 work in software and analytics.  All that technology has changed how customers order (using the Domino’s app, or directly via twitter, or even by texting an emoji); how they monitor the status of their order; and how Domino’s manages its operations.

Second, Doyle explains, Domino’s had to reinvigorate the brand. Even if delivery was the essential part of its business, the pizza mattered too—and the pizza was bad. Soon after he took over, the company launched an ad campaign that has become legendary for its boldness, sharing comments from focus groups about what people thought of the product: “worst pizza I ever had”; “the sauce tastes like ketchup”; “the crust tastes like cardboard.” Doyle appeared in the ads, accepted the withering criticism, and promised to “work days, nights, and weekends” to get better.

He and his colleagues worked to spice up the company’s image as well as its products. Once the pizza got better, Doyle announced plans to open a Domino’s in Italy—a move that was nothing if not daring. (Starbucks still doesn’t have coffee shops in Italy, although there is talk of opening them in 2017.) He also worked with crowd-sourced auto designers to create a Domino’s delivery car, the DXP, a colorful, cool-looking, modified Chevrolet Spark (an article called it a “cheese lover’s Batmobile”) with just one seat, and a warming oven with room for 80 pizzas.

“Transportation is a core part of the business,” Doyle explained, so it makes sense for Domino’s to create a “purpose-built pizza-delivery vehicle.” (The company is also experimenting with robotic delivery, and delivery by drones.) There is substance to all of these initiatives, but it’s pretty obvious they’re also designed to modernize the company’s image, to create a sense of style and a sense of humor to accompany the mushrooms and pepper.

I could go on about the innovations at Domino’s, but Doyle’s most important lessons are about the mindset required for organizations to do big things in tough fields. Two of the great ills of executive life are what he calls, borrowing from behavioral economics, “omission bias” and “loss aversion.” Omission bias is the tendency to worry more about doing something than not doing something, because everyone sees the results of a move gone bad, and few see the costs of moves not made. Loss aversion describes the tendency to play not to lose rather than play to win. “The pain of loss is double the pleasure of winning,” he argues, so the natural inclination is to be cautious, even in situations that demand creativity.

Leaders who want to shake things up have to be comfortable with the idea that “failure is an option,” Doyle concludes. In a world of hyper-competition and nonstop disruption, playing it safe is the riskiest course of all. That’s a recipe for reinvention that makes for good pizza and big change.

Bill Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine. His latest book, Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways, was published on September 20. Learn more at williamctaylor.com.

Liftware’s Level electronic utensil helps people with Huntington’s feed themselves

Liftware, a company known for its Steady electronic spoon designed to help individuals suffering from hand tremors or Parkinson’s disease eat, is back with its second product, the Level. Like the Steady, the Level is an electronic eating utensil, and is the first product released by Liftware since its acquisition by Google and integration into Alphabet’s Verily Life Sciences division last year.

The Level is meant to help those who have limited hand and arm mobility — such as individuals suffering from Huntington’s disease — keep a utensil at a proper angle to more easily eat food. The Level uses a variety of sensors to keep the head of the utensil at the intended angle by tracking its movement and bending the flexible joint to avoid spilling or dropping any food. Instead of steadying the utensil to counteract tremors, like the Steady, the Level bends at the neck to keep the head angled correctly, no matter how you move it.

It’s probably not a perfect system for those who are afflicted with limited mobility, but it certainly looks to be better than conventional cutlery. Like the original Steady, the Level uses interchangeable attachment heads to allow it to function as a fork or spoon (the attachment heads aren’t cross-compatible between the Steady and Level models, however). Liftware claims that the battery lasts for around an hour of continuous use, or “approximately 3 meals” before needing to be recharged, which can be done using the included adaptor.

Price-wise, Liftware sells the Level in a $195 starter kit, which includes the Level base, a soup spoon attachment, and charging adapter. Additional attachments, including a fork head that isn’t included with the starter kit, run for $34.95, which seems a bit expensive given that the attachment doesn’t actually contain any technological components. The Level is available for preorder from Liftware’s website, with orders estimated to be delivered by December 23rd at the latest.

Amazon Go is grocery store with no checkout line

Amazon has gone after bookstores, retail chains and electronics shops. Now it’s taking on grocery stores, with a twist.  

Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) unveiled in a video a new physical store on Monday that sells a mix of “grocery essentials” and ready-made meals. But the key selling point is what it doesn’t have: checkout lines.

The video shows how customers check in at the entrance of the store with a new app called Amazon Go, then grab whatever items are needed. Amazon claims it can track the items automatically through a combination of computer vision and deep learning technologies. When you’re done shopping, you just walk out.

The first store is located in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered.

For years, there have been rumors the e-commerce company would expand its dominance from digital to physical shopping. Amazon began experimenting with physical bookstores a year ago, but Amazon Go may mark its boldest bet on bricks-and-mortar yet.

By eliminating much of the staff needed to operate a store, Amazon keeps costs lower than traditional competitors. It’s also in a strong position to bring together data on its customers shopping habits online and offline to make better suggestions in all situations.

However, Amazon’s move deeper into physical retail shops comes in a sensitive political climate. The company could be perceived as being a threat to some of the 3.4 million Americans who work as cashiers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Amazon and its founder Jeff Bezos for “getting away with murder tax-wise” and having “a huge antitrust problem.” Will the President-elect add “job killer” to the list of criticisms?

Amazon’s effort to launch a new kind of retail store predates the rise of Donald Trump.

“Four years ago we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout? Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go?” the company says on an informational page about Amazon Go.

For now, Amazon is starting slow. The first store is only open to Amazon employees and will not be an option for the general public until early next year.

Vancouver Tax on Foreign Homebuyers Raises Costs for One Couple by Almost $113,000 Overnight

When the Canadian province of British Columbia imposed a 15% tax on foreign home buyers in Vancouver this summer, Frank Daams and Sabine Bosklopper faced an unenviable choice.

The American couple could walk away from a deposit worth the equivalent of roughly $38,000 on the Vancouver home they were planning to buy and risk being sued by the seller, or they could dip into their retirement savings for the nearly $113,000 they would need to cover the tax.

“At the end we decided we can make that happen,” Mr. Daams said of their decision to use their retirement savings. “We picked from the better of two evils.”

The couple, in Canada because of a company transfer, unexpectedly found themselves caught up in a global crackdown on foreign home buyers. A surge in prices has driven the cost of a typical home up by 25% in Vancouver and 20% in Toronto over the past year alone, through October. Canada’s national housing agency issued its strongest warning yet in October on the state of the housing markets, saying rapid price growth in Toronto and Vancouver has now spread to other cities.

Policy makers in Canada—along with their counterparts in Australia and the U.K.—attribute some of the price surge to an influx of buyers from countries such as China who are helping to drive up demand for housing.

The Canadian government has tightened mortgage rules multiple times since 2008. In October, it said it would close a capital-gains tax loophole for foreign buyers and would expand a “stress test” to ensure new homeowners with mortgage insurance can afford higher interest rates.

‘Is it fair to charge a guy like me, that actually has a work visa under [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and is here to just go work, versus people who are investing heavily in Vancouver and driving this market crazy?‘

—Frank Daams, an American who bought a home in Vancouver

The regional government in British Columbia has put a tax on any buyer in metro Vancouver who isn’t a permanent resident or a citizen of Canada. Similar policies were introduced several years ago in Hong Kong and Singapore.

The British Columbia government has said it introduced the tax in response to affordability concerns in Vancouver. The tax is meant to help manage housing demand, and revenue from the tax is earmarked for affordable rental and housing programs in the region, the government said.

It is difficult to know how effective such taxes have been in cooling home prices in Canada and abroad, in part because they were introduced amid a raft of other housing measures. Home prices in Hong Kong began to cool last year but increased again this past summer, prompting policy makers last month to raise taxes for most residential transactions.

Sales in Vancouver fell nearly 39% in October from a year earlier, extending a run of declines in recent months, yet prices continue to rise.

The only government study that specifically addresses foreign buyers by citizenship found that 234 Chinese buyers completed home purchases in metro Vancouver from June 10 to June 29, accounting for most of the purchases by foreigners and about 5% of sales overall.

Mr. Daams, whose U.S.-based construction firm transferred him to Vancouver a little over a year ago to head its Canadian operations, argues that as the holder of a three-year permit to work in Canada, he shouldn’t fall under a tax provision aimed at curbing foreign investment.

“Is it fair to charge a guy like me, that actually has a work visa under [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and is here to just go work, versus people who are investing heavily in Vancouver and driving this market crazy?” Mr. Daams asked.

Things turned out better for Irish citizen Kirsty Engleke. She and her American husband, who both work in the film industry, signed a contract earlier this year to buy a condominium in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood for the equivalent of more than $450,000. The deal was supposed to close in September, but a request from the seller to move the date meant the sale went through just three days before the foreign-buyer tax came into effect.

“We got really lucky,” Ms. Engleke said. She said the couple would otherwise have been forced to walk away from their deposit because the nearly $68,000 in tax was more than they could afford.

Canada was home to roughly 40,000 Americans on work permits at the end of 2015, according to the most recently available Canadian government statistics. An additional 280,000 people from other countries had Canadian work permits at the end of that year.

Toronto lawyer Barry Appleton said he thinks Americans and Mexicans have a strong case to fight the tax under the North American Free Trade Agreement, which requires governments to treat investors from member countries as favorably as domestic investors.

A lawsuit filed by Vancouver lawyer Luciana Brasil in September alleges the provincial government acted outside its jurisdiction and infringed on federal government powers when it targeted home buyers’ nationality. The lawsuit is under consideration by British Columbia’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether it can proceed.

Mr. Daams and his wife signed a contract on their home July 20, just days before British Columbia announced the 15% foreign buyer tax. They canceled a planned vacation in an effort to close the deal before the policy came into effect, but delays on the seller’s side made that impossible, Mr. Daams said. At one point, the couple joked about putting the house in the name of their then 6-month-old son, who was born in Canada.

Real-estate agents and buyers have expressed frustration that buyers were given only a week’s notice before the tax came into effect and that it was applied to deals that were already in progress.

“I’m not against the law,” Mr. Daams said. “I mean, they can do what they want in the end. I’m just really against the way they implemented it.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/vancouver-tax-on-foreign-homebuyers-raises-costs-for-one-couple-by-almost-113-000-overnight-1480766410?emailToken=JRrzdv56ZX+ThdA9b8wi3VsjabQWBvXMWlrHaXfMf0bLrnHUruTkx6IwitGqsG61XgNg7tEf4nV6TjrKnHEvUsiL3rl5nBKvfGRFqpyB2xzOM0Dem1WWOLNF7eyNpnEs6bdWAA5RbdgPmBik4UGq8I4DQwA

deadmau5 to Instruct Private Music Production Lessons With MasterClass: Exclusive

What makes deadmau5 so great? Is he born with some kind of gift? Is he inherently greater than the millions of sound geeks that walk the Earth? Not at all, and he’d probably be the first to tell you. deadmau5 has risen to great heights simply because he is relentless, dedicated, and refuses to settle for what’s easy.

deadmau5 is one of dance music’s greatest sound engineers. He’s mastered the crafts of sound creation, experimentation, and electronic exploration. He’s spent decades honing these skills, and now, he’s filtering years of experience, trial, and error into an online video instructional series for you, your sister, your friend, your dog, and anyone else who cares to learn for a one-time fee of $90, thanks to the efforts of online educational group MasterClass.”Kids, DJs … anyone can compose music with just a computer,” he says. “My MasterClass is a no bullshit look into what it takes to make great music, and it’s not just buying millions of dollars worth of gear. I’m going to show my students how to play with sounds and mix melodies they can share with the world. I’ve never done something at this depth before.”

 deadmau5

Zimmerman joins an illustrious group of instructors on the MasterClass roster. Christina Aguilera uses the online classes to teach singing, Kevin Spacey is on board to teach acting, Usher is coaching performance, Serena Williams with tennis, and so on in a star-studded array. Deadmau5 is a brilliant choice for the latest MasterClass series. No bumbling how-to videos here — save those for YouTube.

Pre-enroll for deadmau5′ Music Production MasterClass now online, and check the official trailer below.

This is Amazon’s grocery store of the future: no cashiers, no registers, and no lines

Amazon plans to break into physical retail in a new way.

The online retail giant revealed a concept for a physical store in a video published Monday.

The store, called Amazon Go, doesn’t work like a typical Walmart or supermarket — instead, it’s designed so that shoppers will use an app, also called Amazon Go, to automatically add the products they plan to buy to a digital shopping cart; they can then walk out of the building without waiting in a checkout line.

The idea is that Amazon’s machine-learning technology can automatically identify when a product is added to your cart, so you don’t have to do it yourself. When you leave the store, Amazon automatically charges your Amazon account.

The stores will sell ready-made food, staples like bread and milk, and other grocery products. Amazon says its stores are about 1,800 square feet, so they are relatively small compared with big supermarkets.

Amazon internal plans show it could build 2,000 grocery stores across the US in the next decade.

The first Amazon Go store is scheduled to open to the public in Seattle early next year.