When you empower under-performing toxic people because they are loyal to you, you erode the respect of your team, disempower your healthy high performers (who will leave) and undermined the mission.
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Author Archives: R. Michael Brown
April is ‘Military Brat’ Month – Let’s Honor Them
By R. Michael Brown, Marketing Consultant, Freelance Writer & Military Brat
April was designated as a recognition month for children of U.S. military service members that grew up in the military, moving from base to base, all over the world. Military brats are different from their civilian counterparts.
Imagine:
- Having to change countries, states, schools, athletic teams, friends, and your house every three to four years while you’re trying to be a kid?
- Watching your parent deploy for months at a time, sometimes not even knowing where they are going because it’s a secret. But often you know it’s to a dangerous place, including war zones.
- Waiting for and reuniting with your deployed parent, usually at the flight line (military airport), over and over again. Each time you hope they get off the plane.
- Keeping few material possessions because when you move a lot, you can’t have a lot. You live “light.”
- Caring for a wounded warrior, your parent, that was hurt, possibly for life, while in action.
- Living in base housing or just off-base and hoping and praying the military staff car doesn’t stop at your house with a military chaplain and officer to inform you that your parent is missing-in-action (MIA), a prisoner-of-war (POW), or killed-in-action (KIA).
Anyone that says that the children don’t serve in the military, along with their parents, don’t know what they are talking about. These kids also sacrifice for their country as their parents serve.
Over 2 million US military brat children have had a parent deployed since 9/11. Half of them have experienced two or more deployments.
The term “military brat” is a badge of pride worn by generations of kids who traveled the world with their parents, moving into adulthood with the knowledge that they have the strength to handle anything. They are fiercely patriotic.
Military brats naturally develop organic strategies and tactics to deal with their situation. It makes them:
Brave
Resilient
Adaptable
Tenacious
A BRAT.
So this month I’ll be honoring the military brat. Hope you follow along and honor them too.
Please share this post…
The Radioactive Diamond Battery That Will Run For 28,000 Years
BY CAROLINE DELBERT
It’s powered by nuclear waste, but still safe for humans.
In two years, one startup says you’ll be able to buy its diamond nuclear-powered battery. Even cooler: The battery will last for up to 28,000 years.
We know—that sounds wild. The potential game-changer comes from the U.S. startup NDB, which stands for Nano Diamond Battery, a “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery” its research scientist founders say can give devices “life-long and green energy.”
Could NDB’s bold claim actually become a reality?
To build its nano diamond battery, NDB combines radioactive isotopes from nuclear waste with layers of paneled nano diamonds. Diamonds are a rare thing to begin with, but they are extremely good heat conductance makes them even more unusual in the realm of construction of devices. Micro-sized single crystal diamonds move heat away from the radioactive isotope materials so quickly that the transaction generates electricity.
Scientists presented the first known diamond nuclear voltaic (DNV) battery concept using waste graphite from a graphite-cooled nuclear reactor. The radioactively contaminated graphite could last thousands of years, with the heat-conducting diamonds pulling that energy away into electricity alongside it the whole time. NDB’s concept is the same, but with layers and layers of the diamond and radioactive waste panels to equal higher total amounts of energy.
You’re probably wondering what the catch is.
Travel Inspired Painting
Painting landscapes is how I started. At first I was inspired by my world-wide travel for my job.
But since I started painting, inspiration comes from so many unique places. I’ve learned that creating art on a regular basis causes you to see things differently.
A Man Lives in 2 Tiny Houses on a Private Island in Florida
In 2017, Tim Davidson was given 60 days to move out of his family’s vacation home in Florida.
Davidson had been living in the vacation home in Sarasota, Florida, for about a year when his family decided it was finally time for him to get a place of his own.
Initially, Davidson considered buying a traditional-size home.
While he was house hunting, he realized that a large home meant unused space, unnecessary belongings, more taxes, and more money.
Davidson just wanted the necessities: a bedroom, living area, small kitchen, and access to the outdoors.
A tiny home felt like a perfect solution.
BrownieBytes has a question: If he’s on an island, why didn’t he position the houses so he has a water view? Very odd fellow…
— Read on www.insider.com/man-lives-two-tiny-homes-private-island-florida-2021-3
Feeding Frenzy
Watch this shark chase fish and beach himself. Click the Instagram link below.
Where Are Those Shoes You Ordered? Check the Ocean Floor | WIRED
More containers have fallen off ships in the past four months than are typically lost in a year. Blame heavy traffic and rolling waves.
SINCE THE END of November, this is some of what has sunk to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean: vacuum cleaners; Kate Spade accessories; at least $150,000 of frozen shrimp; and three shipping containers full of children’s clothes. “If anybody has investments in deep-sea salvage, there’s some beautiful product down there,” Richard Westenberger, chief financial officer of the children’s clothing brand Carter’s told a conference recently.
You can blame the weather, a surge in US imports tied to the pandemic, or a phenomenon known as parametric rolling.
All told, at least 2,980 containers have fallen off cargo ships in the Pacific since November, in at least six separate incidents. That’s more than twice the number of containers lost annually between 2008 and 2019, according to the World Shipping Council.
— Read on www.wired.com/story/where-shoes-ordered-check-ocean-floor/
How to Tap Into Emotions and Boost Your Content Marketing
Making a purchase is 85% emotional and 15% logical – this article breaks down how you can use content marketing to tap into your customers’ emotions.
Emotions are an integral part of our everyday life. So if you have chosen the work as a content marketer you need to know how to discover these emotions, and uncover their raw ingredients. Embrace them, dig deeper and offer a way out the other side.
We are always trying to understand why some content goes viral and rises to the top – and some flops. Up until now we have focused on the content itself – optimizing it for search and sharing, then desperately hoping it will get some attention.
But what about your readers’ emotional needs? The sense of belonging, ego, self-expression and obligation. There are ways to “tap” into these emotions and they should be a part of every content marketing strategy.
You have about 2 seconds to get people’s attention – that’s your first couple of sentences. My hope, for example, is that you were drawn in by my first sentence and lured down the page. Now, the rest of my job is to engage you, to continue to feed your emotions, and move you along in two ways:
- If the goal is increased brand awareness, relationship building, and sharing of valuable and practical information, then I am looking to compel and engage the emotions of my readers to the extent that they will want to share.
- If the goal is moving the visitor into the next phase toward a purchase, I will be using sales psychology and neuroscience to stimulate the emotional responses necessary to achieve certain actions (solving his/her problem or relieving the pain through purchasing the product or service I am selling).
— Read on www.jeffbullas.com/tap-emotions-boost-content-marketing/
Ex-Google Employees Build New Search Engine Down The Road From Google
By Rebekah Dunne
You may have read about the social media platform built for good recently; well, how do you feel about a search engine created for privacy?
Sure, you have the likes of DuckDuckGo that offers additional privacy protections, and Mozilla Firefox, which has built-in cookie jars to prevent third parties from sharing your information, but this particular search engine is offering something that no other platform does.
Neeva is dedicated and extremely strict about operating its platform without ads.
“Search is the gateway to the world’s information, and with Neeva, we want to help you experience the Internet in a new way—free of distractions, prying eyes and frustration.”
BrownieBytes has a Question: Are you willing to pay $5-$10 a month for a subscription?
R. Michael Brown
The brand wants its users to see search results that aren’t dictated by advertisers.
So, if Neeva has ditched the ads, how is the search engine made available? The platform will operate on a subscription basis, costing users between $5-10 per month.
See More [SEJ Search Engine Journal
Article Table of Contents
- Built And Run By Ex-Googlers
- How Does Neeva Work?
- What Data Does Neeva Collect?
- How Does Neeva Use This information?
- So, How Is This Different?
- How Is This Different To Google?
- Do We Need Another Search Engine?
- Citations
Neeva isn’t available yet but you can check it out.
Explore Neeva and join their waitlist
Let BrownieBytes know what you think in the comments!
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Homebuyers Are Heading to Florida During Covid, but Nearly as Many Are Moving Out – WSJ
By Candace Taylor
Thanks to hurricanes, heat and red-hot home prices, the state’s population growth hit its lowest rate since 2014 during the pandemic.
David Gewirtz never got used to the heat, even after 15 years in Florida.
Still, Mr. Gewirtz, who grew up in New Jersey, and his wife, Denise Amrich, liked their adopted hometown of Palm Bay, Fla., and probably would have stayed if it weren’t for the “brutal” hurricanes.
“Staring at those tracker maps for weeks before a hurricane hits starts to create a stress level,” said Mr. Gewirtz, a technology columnist in his early 50s. “It’s three weeks of wondering whether you’re going to have a house at the end.”
The couple evacuated their home in the path of 2017’s Hurricane Irma, kept driving until they got to Oregon and decided to stay.
— Read on www.wsj.com/articles/people-moving-to-florida-during-covid-11615463911
