The president of the Caseys convenience store chain based in Ankeny says they learned during restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 that customers like to help themselves.

Caseys president, Darren Rebelez, says people like to pick out their own slice of pizza or other food items. When we made the shift to full service our guests did not like that, Rebelez says. Although we had people with masks and gloves on handing them their food they didnt like having to wait they were accustomed to doing it themselves.

During a conference call to report quarterly earnings, Rebelez says he visited several stores, but didnt take a poll. I dont have any empirical data to share with you in terms of a percentage of like it, or dont like. All I can tell you is people were complaining when we made the change. People were happy when we changed it back, according to Rebelez.

Chief financial officer Bill Walljasper says they did see the impact in food sales. As we moved from a full service to a self-service model depending on the category thats a self-service we see an uptick from ten to 15 percent on a category, Walljasper says. So, definitely that seems to be an overwhelming desire to have that self-service. At least in our market area.

Walljasper says convenience stores are designed to get people in and out quickly and that was one of the issues with full service. Caseys has 2,154 stores in Iowa and seven other states

(Photo from Caseys website)

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Casey's finds during pandemic restrictions customers would rather help themselves - Radio Iowa

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Nearly a billion pounds of beef move through the JBS processing plant in Grand Island, Neb., every year. Except this year: Over the last two months, the company has had to slow production as meatpacking plants around the country have been roiled by coronavirus outbreaks.1

In late March, Nebraska state health officials, fearing such outbreaks, urged Governor Pete Ricketts to temporarily close the plant.2

After Ricketts rebuffed them, stories of missing hand sanitizer and soap, no personal protective gear, and insufficient safety precautions began to leak out of the plant, which as of April had 260 confirmed Covid-19 cases that can be tied back to it. Its difficult to know how many more among its 3,000 workers have been infected since then, because Ricketts has refused to disclose official plant numbers. Across the country, rural areas that contain meatpacking plants with outbreaks of Covid-19 have rates five times those of other rural areas.3

In a daily briefing on April 23, Ricketts dismissed those who thought the largely immigrant meatpacking workers in his state deserved relief by warning, Think about how mad people were when they couldnt get paper products.4

President Donald Trump issued an executive order five days later recognizing meat as a scarce and critical material essential to the national defense, adding that he would ensure a continued supply of protein for Americans under the Defense Production Act of 1950. Rickettsundeterred by the outbreaks in his state and emboldened by the White Houseissued a press release declaring May as Beef Month in Nebraska.5

Politically, this shows that meat is indispensable, said University of Notre Dame professor Joshua Specht, whose 2019 book Red Meat Republic recounts the history of American beef production. Shortages of meat will personalize the pandemic for everyone, and that is a major political problem when youre trying to say the country is open for business.6

The Covid-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragility of American supply chains, and nothing demonstrates that more acutely than the price spikes, depleted meat aisles, and imposed rationing on a food that weve come to expect in limitless quantities. The brutality of effectively sacrificing human beings to keep those aisles well stocked might be the breaking point in what was already the liveliest debate inside food: the future of beef in the American diet.7

Industrial beef is the most polluting, the most carbon-emitting, and the most resource-intensive form of protein. A 2018 study published in the journal Nature recommended that the average US citizen cut beef consumption by 75 percent if we want to keep the global temperature rise to less than 2degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In the context of Covid-19, University of Minnesota biologist Rob Wallace has made the connection between global industrial livestock farming and the proliferation of superviruses.8

If youre reading this, youve probably already heard that you should be cutting down on beef. But Trumps and Rickettss decisions show that with beef so embedded in American culture, its not going anywhere without a fight.9

JBS: This Nebraska meatpacking plant processes nearly a billion pounds of beef a yearand is a Covid-19 hot spot for its workers.

Rickettss warning of riots if big government comes for our beef echoes the claim by former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka that the Green New Deal is a harbinger of authoritarian communism. They want to take away your hamburgers, he bellowed in a speech at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference. This is what Stalin dreamt about but never achieved. Gorka made it explicit: To threaten the primacy of meat in the American diet is to threaten a pillar of what it means to be a free American.10

Sebastian Gorka: The former Trump adviser warned, They want to take away your hamburgers. (CC 3.0)

Gorkas ravings about government-mandated burger confiscation sound like some nefarious plot by the same postmodern cultural Marxists decried by the Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. In 2018 he revealed on the wildly popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast that he was following an extreme form of the now trendy high-fat, high-protein paleolithic and ketogenic diets: just beef and water. Thanks to the carnivore diet, as he called it, Peterson said hed lost 50 pounds, cured his 30-year gum disease, and seen his lifelong depression cease. Meat, manIm telling you, meat, reads an endorsement of the diet beneath an Instagram photo of him solemnly cutting through a steak.11

Jordan Peterson: Claims he lost 50 pounds, and cured depression and gum disease thanks to a carnivore diet. (CC-BY-SA-2.0)

Peterson first emerged in the public consciousness after protesting a Canadian policy about observing gendered pronouns, which he claimed as evidence of creeping authoritarian rule. He subsequently rode that wave of free-speech martyrdom to a best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life, full of banal self-help infused with social Darwinism. Peterson addresses feelings of real alienation in his audience, but instead of locating the structural sources of their misery, he harks back to an imaginary past when men could be men, before Western civilization became preoccupied with social justice and feminism. In recent years hes become a kind of soothsayer for the mostly young white male demographic that is the subject of worried fascination in the current age of homegrown extremism.12

Its been 30 years since Carol J. Adamss landmark The Sexual Politics of Meat connected the subjugation of animals with the subjugation of women. Studies have shown that men are less likely to embrace eco-friendly practices because we perceive them as feminine; a recent survey of men in the United States found that they were less likely to wear a protective face mask during the pandemic because they viewed them as a sign of weakness.13

Petersons promotion of the carnivore diet was met with scornful incredulity and ridiculed as a self-defeating attempt to own the libs. But defenders of the diet pushed back, reminding us that humans are meant to eat meat and that it provides essential nourishment in the wasteland of the standard American dietdefined by high-fructose corn syrup, refined grains, and industrial seed oils.14

We shouldnt project our politics onto people who are half-dead, trying to get their lives back. Thats what his daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, 28, told me when I asked her about the politics of promoting an all-beef diet in the 21st century. She put her dad on the diet after it helped her with a crippling autoimmune disease and has since rebranded it as her very own Lion Diet.15

You have to reach a certain level of desperation to try it, she admitted. But because of how the media has been portraying Dad, the diet has been unfairly associated with the alt-right. Assigning people a conscious political identity based on their diet would be unwise; Adolf Hitler, famously, was a vegetarian.16

Adrienne Rose Bitar: Diet books replicate the 19th century religious form of the Jeremiad. (Cornell University History Dept )

But it would be equally unwise to ignore the embrace of red meat by the far right. Diet books were among the best-selling literature of the 20th century. More than simply offering guidance on which foods to eat and which to avoid, they remain a way to construct grand narratives about who we are. Self-help gets trashed as being an opiate of the masses, said Adrienne Rose Bitar, the author of Diet and the Disease of Civilization. But very few dieters see themselves on an individual quest for bodily perfection. Rather they recognize societal problems like obesity or diabetes and think that theyre going to do their own small part, however impossibly, to create a better world.17

Rogan and alt-right icons like Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones are already established in the dude self-care space, selling skin serums and supplements that might otherwise be considered ladylike. In recent years soy boy has eclipsed cuck as a term to deride the tofu-loving, beta-male archetype. The same return to a past, forgotten glory of men that is central to the appeal of people like Peterson and the nostalgic project of making America great again can also be found among advocates of low-carb regimes like the paleo, keto, and carnivore diets, which stress a return to the natural and traditional foodways of a healthier past.18

Conservative radio host Dennis Pragers faux university PragerU released a video last year titled How the Government Made You Fat, in which the low-carb cardiologist Bret Scher critiques the US Department of Agricultures food pyramid. The antiBig Government message is clear: You are responsible for your own health. Dont rely on the government to take care of you. For the One America News Network correspondent and former Pizzagate enthusiast Jack Posobiec and the far-right commentator Stefan Molyneux, praising meat-heavy, low-carb nutrition is a way to draw a contrast with the crypto-vegetarian piles of birdseed at the public schools their children attend, and Molyneux speculated it could be a communist plot. For others, eating meat is a way to police the boundaries of masculinity. In 2017 the far-right Canadian commentator Faith Goldy asked whether our fridges were the reason men were all of a sudden signing up for womens studies classes. Alex Joness former sidekick Paul Joseph Watson wondered if soy was making Western men more likely to adopt left-wing beliefs. Anthony Johnson regularly hosts paleo nutritionists as part of his premier manosphere gathering, the 21 Convention.19

Even the onetime steak salesman Trump did some nutritional virtue-signaling when it was revealed that he regularly enjoyed two Big Macs at dinner. His former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski quickly clarified to CNN that Trump never ate the bread, which is the important part. The National Cattlemens Beef Associationwhich lobbied for meatpacking plants to remain open during the pandemicdispatched its former senior director of sustainable beef production research, Sara Place, to assure the conservative media host Glenn Beck that methane emissions from cow farts were fake news and that cattle are part of the climate change solution.20

Faith Goldy: The fault is not in ourselves, but in our fridges. (CC 3.0)

Contemporary right-wing politics survives on a diet of grievance, persecution, and misdirection. In the right-wing mind, feminists and social justice warriors have been joined by the CEOs of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, creator of the Beyond Burger (the demand for alternative meat has skyrocketed but has not surpassed the demand for beef during the pandemic), Bill Gates, animal rights activists, Greta Thunberg, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to carry water for the vegan agenda. Modern society has created the least masculine men in history, reads one tweet by the Internets mysterious self-described meat philosopher Carnivore Aurelius. Another proclaims, The Carnivore Diet is the red pill that wakes you up to reality. In these circles, the war on meat is a war on men. Red meat is the red pill.21

Even before the current once-in-a-century public health crisis, it was an anxious time to try to eat healthy. Chronic afflictions like obesity, cancer, heart disease, and diabetescommonly referred to as diseases of civilizationpersist at rates bordering epidemic levels. As populations around the world modernize and adopt something closer to the standard American diet, health outcomes worsen. Our understanding of nutrition hasnt helped.22

The Australian historian Gyorgy Scrinis coined the term nutritionism for a paradigm that allows food corporations to rebrand and remarket ultraprocessed food as health food. In 2007 he identified a nutritional loss of legitimacy that had opened the door to the construction of new nutritional worldviews.23

The paleo diet (the defining diet of the era, according to Bitar) is one example. Drawing on evolutionary biology and the caveman mystique, paleo mimics what was supposedly available to preagricultural humans, with a meat-heavy, grain-free, minimally processed diet. Its what we ate before everyones health went to shit, to quote John Durant, the author of The Paleo Manifesto. The framing is instructive. All diet plans are an attempt to mediate the transition from an agricultural, pastoral lifestyle to an urban, industrialized oneand the distance thats put between us and our food. Existential anxiety over what that change has done to our food and thus ourselves is what unites all diet literature.24

Diet books replicate the 19th century religious form of the jeremiad, Bitar said. They say we are fat, we are ugly, we are sinnersbut together we can lose the weight and regain our understanding of what nature and God can bring. In an essay for the food studies journal Gastronomica, historian Michael Kideckel noted that this understanding of food invariably launders a reactionary view of history.25

In this philosophy of the past, Americans must rediscover a primitive instinct from a time when women did more work within the home, immigrants and indigenous people were even more marginalized, and fewer people saw culture and tradition as the product of specific human decisions, Kideckel wrote. For Durant, our collective health went to shit when women left the kitchen, outsourcing the cooking to corporations. Their traditional role was always an important one and shouldnt be trivialized, he said in a 2017 interview.26

Dieting has been considered a feminine pursuit for so long that when Weight Watchers first marketed to men in 2007, said Tulsa University professor Emily Contois, the tagline was Real men dont diet. But the first diet plans emerged during the mid- to late 19th century, when the ideal man came to be embodied in muscular selves, nations, empires and races, wrote the essayist Pankaj Mishra, who drew parallels between the 19th centurys ideas of manliness and those that contaminate politics and culture across the world in the 21st century.27

Lord Salisbury: Inventor of the eponymous steak. Civilization is harmful to your health. (History Dept. Cornell University)

The earliest diet to go by that name was a meat-heavy, proto-low-carb plan credited to a wealthy Londoner named William Banting, who in 1863 published the pamphlet Letter on Corpulence. It was such a best seller that Bant became a synonym for diet. Dr. James Salisbury, the inventor of the steaks, was another diet pioneer. He experimented with periods of eating only a single food like bread, oatmeal, baked beans, or asparagus before landing onwhat else?beef. It was the food that is most easily digested and that we can subsist on exclusively the longest, wrote Elma Stuart, a follower of Salisburys, in her book What Must I Do to Get Well?28

Diet theorist Mose Velsor: better known as Walt Whitman, inveighed against confections, sweets, salads, things fried in grease.

Salisbury saw his book The Relation of Alimentation and Disease as a way to address the character and capabilities of Western men. Civilization, he wrote, was damaging their physical and moral health, making them more likely to sin and shirk responsibility. He may have been influenced by Mose Velsor, a columnist for the New York Atlas, who in the 1850s worried that city life was producing a generation of soy boys. When Velsors columns were rediscovered and republished in 2016 as Guide to Manly Health and Training, they bore the authors real name: Walt Whitman. Healthy manly virility, he wrote, was being depleted. To foster a more pure-blooded race, Whitman recommended an end to confections, sweets, salads, things fried in grease. Instead he advocated eating fresh meat with as few outside condiments as possible.29

The connection between eating meat and the superiority of Western men was drawn out further in an 1869 essay The Diet of Brain Workers by the neurologist George Miller Beard. What have the natives of South America, the savages of Africa, the stupid Greenlander, the peasantry of Europe, all combined, done for civilization, in comparison with any single beef-eating class of Europe? he wondered. Beard is better known for his theory that the Euro-American brain was so powerful that it could overwork itself into a condition called neurastheniastress or exhaustion. In his 1881 book American Nervousness, he wrote that the affliction that came to be known as Americanitis was caused by the technological advancements of modern civilization. One such advancement was the mental activity of women.30

To cure Americanitis, Beard prescribed that men harden themselves by working on cattle ranches, of course. Theodore Roosevelt would epitomize this transformation in American masculinity. He gained a reputation in the New York Assembly as an effeminate jane-dandy but returned from his time on the frontier with the stoic, aggressive cowboy bravado that would define and plague American masculinity for at least 100 more years.31

As president, Roosevelt popularized the term race suicide to describe the fear that excessively fertile immigrants would outbreed their racial betters. Calling it an unpardonable crime, in a 1914 article, Twisted Eugenics, he castigated women who chose to attend college or use contraception instead of focusing on repopulating the white race. Its not unlike the present-day fears of white genocide or the great replacement that youll find in the tweets of Iowa Representative Steve King or in the white nationalist literature uncovered on Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Millers e-mail server.32

Toughening up on the frontier also meant interaction with Indigenous tribes. Even Salisburys beef remedy was inspired by his observations of Native Americans. There is no reason why we of civilized communities should not live to an even greater age than man does in the wild state, he wrote. But its unlikely that Salisbury ever witnessed the healthy wild state of beef eaters, because cattle are not indigenous to North America.33

Beefs journey to the top of the American diet began with the near extinction of bison and the genocide and forced removal of Indigenous tribes who subsisted on hunting that animal. Cattle ranching becomes central to the dispossession of Native lands and the takeover of western ecosystems, Notre Dames Specht pointed out. Cattle are a tool of, and a justification for, taking that land.34

At the same time that American manhood was redefined as the strong, silent type roaming the western frontier, beef became hypercommodified, readily available and relatively inexpensive for the first time in history. The idea that beef is something you eat all the time is the product of industrial agriculture, its a product of cities, and its a product of the expansion of commodity markets, Specht continued.35

To have a seemingly limitless supply of beef was such a global novelty that it became a badge of Americanness. Immigrants would write home and say, Life in America is hard, but at least I get red meat all the time, Specht said. We can but wonder how the largely immigrant workforce at the JBS plant in Grand Island felt about receiving 10pounds of free ground beef as a coronavirus bonus.36

W here do you go these days to mingle with some of the thought leaders advocating for beef to remain a central part of the American diet? Out west. Last August, over 150 people came together for three days at the University of San Diego student center for the eighth annual Ancestral Health Symposium, a big-tent conference that encompasses paleo, keto, and carnivore people along with anyone else who wants to examine current health challenges through the context of our ancestral heritage, according to the Ancestral Health Societys website. Its a heterogeneous community with plenty of internal debate, but its members share an intense skepticism of the medical, nutritional, and scientific establishment and a celebration of real, natural, traditional food.37

This is the Wild West, man. This is the fringe that the mainstream poaches from, a sturdily built, sandy-haired chiropractor from Los Angeles told me as we looked out at a room of lean, mostly white attendees outfitted for functionalitywicking athletic shirts, yoga pants, five-toed shoes, Xero sandals, blue-light-blocking shades, and slick metal water bottles. He wasnt wrong. The ancestral health community has been on the front lines of reclaiming healthy fat from unfair criticism; despite critiques of the community as overly patriarchal, some feminists have praised ancestral diets as a respite from a culture that equates beauty with thinness, to quote Bitar. If you know about collagen peptides, circadian rhythms, gut microbes, or the dangers of inflammation, these people may have had something to do with it.38

Yet there remains the fact that humans must change our relationship to meat, especially beef, if we are to avoid ecological catastrophe, let alone improve the lives of meatpacking workers or help the animals themselves. But if meat is of essential value to human health, we seem to be in an existential bind, trapped between our perceived nutritional needs and the capacity of our ecosystem and labor force to meet them. In Can Seven Billion Humans Go Paleo? the writer Erica Etelson wondered, If theres not enough animal protein to go around without cooking the planet, who should be first in line? Thats the mostly unasked question at the heart of the meat debate: one of power and ethics, not fat and protein. Thats also the dilemma that many people grapple with (this soycialist writer included) as they eat the occasional burger, steak, or oxtail.39

Ive been called right wing for saying meat is healthy, said Diana Rodgers, a farmer and dietitian. Its very political, but it shouldnt be. Youre either a less-meat environmentalist or you eat a lot of meat and dont care about the environment. Rodgers was in the midst of debunking the EAT-Lancet Commissions planetary health diet, which aims to accommodate the growing global population and planetary limits. The guidelines allow for only one serving of red meat per weeka death sentence to the people in this small auditorium. Rodgers disclosed that the General Mills meat snack company Epic Provisions had paid her way to the conference to help promote her upcoming book and documentary Sacred Cow (the nutritional, environmental and ethical case for better beat, according to her website), which was cowritten by Robb Wolf, the author of the best-selling The Paleo Solution.40

Allan Savory: Former soldier, ecologist, rancher, and originator of the controversial holistic management approach to soil conservation. (CC-by-sa-4.0)

Rodgers argues that beef is the ideal food for the health of the planet because of the potential for holistic range managementan approach to cattle rearing popularized by Zimbabwean rancher Allan Savory and his namesake institute. To oversimplify, cattle are strategically moved around a plot of land in a way that mimics the millions of bison that grazed for thousands of years in North America. This grazing technique restores grasslands and revitalizes soil in a way that allows for substantialmaybe even earth-savinglevels of carbon sequestration. While holistic range management (and the prospect of carbon-neutral burgers) makes intuitive sense and has serious momentum, its also highly polarizing.41

There are credible scientists on either side of the Savory debate, including David Briske and Richard Teague, two professors in the same department at Texas A&M University. Savorys past as an officer in the Rhodesian Army hasnt done him any favors among his critics, who portray him as a delusional iconoclast with no respect for scientific rigor. But to his proponents, which include a growing list of farmers around the world, Savory is a misunderstood sage. The complexity and dynamism of his methods cannot be fully appreciated in summary form.42

If there is a middle ground between the dystopian reality of the beef industry and the unsettling vision of a world without animal agriculture posited by Impossible Foods CEO Pat Brown, holistic range management could be just that. It doesnt seem right that the Norwegian billionaire couple behind EAT-Lancet, Gunhild and Petter Stordalen, are allowed to prescribe diets for the rest of the world while they fly around in a private jet with their own carbon footprint unregulated. I was open to the possibility that the Shake Shack burger I ate the night before was not a personal moral failing but actually a righteous rebellion against the 1 percent. That would make life easier. Then an audience member asked Rodgers if there would be enough land to support a large population on the beef-heavy diet she recommends. She assured him there would be.43

And it could sustain the same population or more as an agrarian-based economy?44

Rodgers was visibly flustered. What I can tell you is that theres too many of us, she replied. Do we want lots of people fed like crap, or do we want healthy people? Our current system is completely failing and producing sick people and killing our environment. So regenerative agriculture is actually the only solution we have moving forward. And, you know, theres too many people.45

Perhaps Rodgers should have chosen an other title for her lecture than Feeding the World a Healthy and Sustainable Dietand other opponents than EAT-Lancet and Impossible Foods. At least their visions attempt to account for the worlds population as it exists. Only 3percent of the beef produced in the United States is designated as grass-fed; even less is raised by Savorys method. Any hypothetical solution in which factory farms transform into holistically managed ranges will ultimately have to confront the multinational agribusiness industry that has been consolidating power for decades. Eating beef is political, whether we want it to be or not. But what was most troubling about Rodgerss answer was her too many people declaration: In those thought experiments, its always the less powerful who count as extra. Its not necessarily right wing to say that meat is healthy, but to quickly revert to claims of overpopulation calls up the darkest strains of both the conservation movement and ancestral health diet literature.46

In 1975 a doctor named Walter Voegtlin self-published his foundational text, The Stone Age Diet, which told a story similar to Rodgerss about the lack of sufficient animal protein to feed a surplus population. Voegtlins solution included limit[ing] reproduction to superior types of individuals and practicing euthanasia of imperfect newborns. Rodgers and others who advise people to eat more meat surely dont endorse that approach, but its worth highlighting how similar their framing is: For some to thrive, others must disappear.47

The Blonde Buttermaker: This former vegetarian liberal has become an animal-fat-obsessed white nationalist.

I kept Rodgers and Voegtlin in mind toward the end of an interview with Tristan Haggard, the proprietor of the popular keto-carnivore YouTube channel Primal Edge Health, which is also the name of his diet brand. A gregarious former vegan, he had spent much of our two-hour Skype call building his case that the plant-based-food movement evolved out of the eugenics movement and is behind a conspiracy to depopulate the world by feminizing men through industrialized vegan kibble. His mantra, Eat meat, make families, is a response to what he sees as the growing cultural degeneracy of modern city life. Instead of being concerned with how you can feed your family or protect your community, men are taught about how cool they might look in a dress, Haggard said. Thats why he fled California to raise his family on a farm in the Andes Mountains in Ecuador. Now he lives like a 21st century primal maneating grass-fed steak, drinking raw milk, and creating content for his subscribers and clients about the dangers of modern soycial engineering.48

I told Haggard I had just heard Rodgers recite the same Malthusian talking points he attributes to vegans. Im glad you brought that up. Its important to read with nuance, he said. While he recognized that overpopulation arguments are usually directed at his neighbors in the Global South, hes appeared on the white nationalist publishing company Arktoss channel to talk up the carnivore diet as part of the fight against globalist hegemony, and hes also rushed to the defense of the Nazis kicked out of the farmers market in Bloomington, Ind. It seems that for Haggard, regardless of your political leanings, if youre on the side of more meat, youre part of the resistance.49

Haggard touts small-scale, local agriculture as a weapon against the globalists, yet he calls climate change a word game and factory farming a straw man argument. His fun-house mirror of inconsistent, repellent, and altogether weird beliefs is not uncommon among prominent followers of Weston Price, the godfather of the ancestral health movement. In 1939, Price published a flawed but compelling ethnography, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, describing traditional preindustrial diets from the Alps to the Andes. He found several constants, the most important of which are the vitality of animal fat and the degeneration of peoples health after exposure to the Western industrial diet. Today his followers have translated his work into contemporary diet guidelines. Rather than eschew any specific food group, they focus on minimally processed food and old-world farming and food-preservation techniques.50

In the vendor room at the Ancestral Health Symposium, I spoke with a disarmingly friendly volunteer from the Weston A. Price Foundation about the pleasures of bone marrow and roasting vegetables in duck fat and another who was in the midst of shooting a documentary about grass-fed beef. The foundation is best known for Nourishing Traditions, the best-selling cookbook by its founder, Sally Fallon Morell, which popularized Prices work. While the pandemic has shown the importance of local, organic farms, which Prices followers have supported for years, theyre still easily dismissed as cranks because of their opposition to the scientific and medical establishment, as demonstrated by their commitment to unpasteurized dairy.51

Unfortunately, thats not the most controversial claim the foundations leaders have made. In 2018, Morrell wrote on her blog that the Earth stopped warming in the late 1990s and now is in a cooling trend, so we dont have to feel guilty for driving an SUV or eating bacon. The foundation doesnt have an official position on climate change, and when some of her followers protested in the comment section, she replied that the discourse around global warming reminded her of the relentless propaganda against animal fats. Like Haggard, she seems willing to embrace anyone sympathetic to her cause.52

In 2015, Morrell appeared on Red Ice Radio, a Swedish media platform that the Southern Poverty Law Center called one of the most effective white nationalist outlets on the Internet. Before it was banned from YouTube, Red Ice unveiled a cooking and lifestyle show hosted by a neo-Nazi domestic goddess named the Blonde Buttermaker. In an interview on the white nationalist channel NoWhiteGuilt, she spoke of how influential Prices work had been on her journey from former liberal vegetarian to animal-fat-obsessed white nationalist. In the wrong hands, emphasizing ancestral wisdom can be reinterpreted as a permission to embrace ethnonationalism.53

But Prices research does have value if read critically. In Diet and the Disease of Civilization, Bitar analyzes his work using the anthropologist Renato Rosaldos concept of imperialist nostalgia, in which agents of colonialism long for the very forms of life they intentionally altered or destroyed.54

Nowhere was such nostalgia more evident than during the symposium presentation by Paul Saladino, a young, charismatic, and totally shredded carnivore MD. Saladino described the uphill battle in consciousness to convince the world that plant fiber is unnecessary for human consumption. Repeating the ancestral health movements dictum that Indigenous cultures prized fat as a symbol of health and fertility, Saladino encouraged the audience members to swap their kale salads for rib eye and organ meats. He closed by invoking an Andean tribal saying, Wiracocha, which he translated as I wish you a sea of fat.55

Wiracocha was also used to describe Spanish conquistadors, whose white skin was foamy like fat. Its a coincidence that reveals the historical revisionism pervasive in this community. Throughout the weekend there were photographs of healthy, happy, well-fed preindustrial Indigenous groups. But there was no acknowledgment that the rise of cattle ranching depended on eliminating the means of subsistence for Indigenous tribesor that the destruction of foodways has been a deliberate strategy of colonial powers. The slideshows simply showed beautiful people victimized by the forces of nature, whose wisdom was now bestowed on us. A young woman asked Saladino what he would say to someone curious about the carnivore diet. Welcome to the tribe, he replied.56

A sympathetic look at this confused yearning for tribal belonging would take into account what Bitar discovered as the main recurring theme in paleo diet books. Surprisingly, it has little to do with food or nutrition. Our ancestors enjoyed a balanced life of working, playing, relaxing, and worshipping. They felt closeness to one another and everyone had purpose, Bitar said, quoting from Living Paleo for Dummies. Its a human need as basic as food: meaning and connection, especially in a country defined by loneliness and living through a second gilded age of economic inequality.57

This was made even clearer during the last presentation I attended, by a naturopath named Nasha Winters. She informed us that in the past three years, American life expectancy rates declined. The diseases of civilization now have companyopiate addiction, alcoholism, and suicide, the diseases of despair.58

Nowhere is the degeneration of the quality of life in the United States more acute than in the communities surrounding the meatpacking plants that dot rural areas. Americans do need better diets, but we also need to realize that while consumer politics might be transformative for individuals, as public policy, it amounts to window dressing. As University of CaliforniaSanta Cruz professor Julie Guthman noted in her book Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism, the artificially low price of food has long functioned as a replacement for a living wage and a social safety net, and it comes with serious environmental and public health consequences.59

Over the past 100 years, from Upton Sinclair to Michael Pollan, many Americans have been curious about how the sausage is made. But what most of them really want to know is whether they can keep eating it. The public became concerned with the conditions inside meatpacking plants not out of a concern for workers health but out of worry for what meat shortages might do to their own. Sinclairs famous regret was that he aimed for the publics heart with The Jungle but hit them in the stomach instead. He hoped that exposing the horrifying conditions in meatpacking plants could spark a socialist uprising, but all he got was the Meat Safety Act of 1906.60

The logic that consumer prices are the highest good in terms of social policy, thatcomes from beef, said Joshua Specht. Any movement to reduce meat consumption must address the role that cheap beef has played in providing meaning and nourishment to the masses, or else that ground will be ceded to the Sebastian Gorkas and Donald Trumps of the world.61

The coronavirus pandemic and the looming global ecological crisis are collective problems that individual solutions wont be able to solve. But as Bitar writes, the best way to approach the question of diet is not to call out ignorance but rather to understand myths. When we examine these myths, we can see them truly as the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and, perhaps, a story for which we can write a better plot. As difficult as it is to forecast what America will look like after the pandemic, it could be enough of a ground-shifting historical event to spawn new storiesabout why we eat, what we eat, and what we must change to survive.62

Food is so much about who we are and who weve been. To just change that overnight is not really that easy, actually, said Specht. But food isnt just a building block for who we are, its a building block for the kind of society we want to live in. If we can ground our food system in a more rigorous understanding of history, perhaps then we can remake it as a reflection of the society we want to live in. That would be the real red pill, waking us to a new reality.63

More here:
How Red Meat Became the Red Pill for the Alt-Right - The Nation

TUCSON, Ariz. These days we are trying to touch as little as possible especially if theres an extra chance its going to be a little bit germy. Thankfully, theres technology to the rescue.

Watching a toilet seat lift itself can be sort of hypnotic but its more than a novelty. Since the virus hit and people started thinking more about what they touch, Benjamin Plumbing Supply has been selling more and more touchless technology.

Tina Roesler says people are buying toilets that do more than lift their lids, some of them clean themselves.

A lot of this combination of hygiene and high tech comes from Japan.

It used to be something that people who travel to Japan knew about or people who followed high tech gadgets knew about but now, more and more people realize there's a big swell of sports players who like investing in the toilets that are customized to them as far as height and warmth and oscillating levels and all that.

She says at first the high demand item was to clean yourself. When toilet paper got scarce, bidets that help you rinse off --- that area instead became hot sellers.

Now the trend to touchless has people realizing the sort of hands-free faucets theyve seen in commercial buildings can be in their homes, but without the industrial look.

Tina Roesler says, You can find a price point around $400 and up. And some of the toilets go in the thousands. But again, it's personalized, it's customized, it's a room you spend a lot of time in, and it leans on the side of hygiene which - that cost is incalculable. If it keeps you from getting a deadly germ then it's worth any price.

Go here to see the original:
The Rebound: COVID concerns fuel boom in touchless technology - KGUN

Many organisations view customer engagement as a key USP to distinguish themselves from their competition. However, as the number of communication channels and devices increases manifold, so does the challenge of engaging them effectively to deliver contextual, consistent and personalised service. The Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization market helps companies enrich customer interactions, optimise their workforce and thereby improve business processes. By doing this, they benefit from greater customer loyalty, improved performance and revenue and lesser risks and operating costs.

The comprehensive overview of the global Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market has recently been published by Research Trades to its extensive database. It compiles exhaustive information that has been sourced by using data exploratory techniques such as primary and secondary research. Due to the usage of scientific investigation methods, it offers an accurate analysis of business perspectives.

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Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market Market Top Leading Vendors:-

Verint, Calabrio, Aspect, Avaya, Genesys

Customer Relationship Management is the biggest driver of the Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization market. Customer relationships are the main competitive differentiator making it absolutely essential for companies to engender loyalty. An actively engaged customer is far more likely to participate with the organisation through multiple channels including online self-help tools, mobile Apps, community participation or user group involvements. They would be more willing to provide feedback if asked, utilise the products and services to the fullest and also make valuable suggestions on how to improve them.

Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market Market segmented By Service Type

Hardware

Software

Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market Market segmented By Applications

BFSI

Manufacturing

Healthcare

IT And ITES

Utilities

Others

It has been curated by using extensive research methodologies such as primary and secondary research methodologies. It takes a closer look at different dynamic aspects of businesses such as trends, technologies, tools, and methodologies of the global Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market. It has been analyzed using industry analytical techniques such as SWOT and Porters five techniques. It helps to identify the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities within the businesses.

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Objectives of this research report:

In This Study, The Years Considered To Estimate The Size Of Customer Engagement Centre Workforce Optimization Market Market Are As Follows:

History Year: 2015-2019

Base Year: 2019

Estimated Year: 2020

Forecast Year 2020 to 2026

If you need anything more than these then let us know and we will prepare the report according to your requirement.

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Research Trades is a prime destination for your business aptitude and analytical solutions because we provide qualitative and quantitative sources of information that are proficient to give one-stop solutions. We skillfully syndicate qualitative and quantitative research in exact proportions to have the best report, which not only gives the most recent insights but also assists you to grow.

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CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT CENTRE WORKFORCE OPTIMIZATION MARKET 2020 RAPIDLY INTEGRATING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES TO ENHANCE THE BUSINESS FUNCTIONS...

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused millions of Canadians to lose their jobs or have their hours cut, but the situation for women is especially dire. In what has been dubbed the She-cession, Women have seen proportionately steeper job losses than men. In May, Statistics Canada reported that 1.5 million women lost jobs over March and April, a 17% drop in employment from February levels.

Why has this time been more economically difficult for women? There are a few reasons. Women are more likely than men to be employed in part-time or precarious work, make less money than men do, and work in sectors that were impacted early on by the pandemic. Women occupy only 31% of senior management positions in North America, and as a result, there are more women in non-leadership positions that are more at risk of being eliminated. Women also make up about half of Canada's workforce, so an economic recovery is not possible without them being able to work again.

The mission of Dress for Success is to empower women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie have been making changes to go virtual, as they anticipate being busier than ever with serving their clients needs during this catastrophic pandemic.

Their Suiting Program, where volunteers and staff assist women in selecting professional attire for job interviews and workplaces, has been adapted to become completely contact-free and virtual. The programs new moniker is Pick & Pack: Virtual Professional Clothing Assistance Program. How does it work? Clients receive a form to use for measuring themselves in addition to a form for stating their colour and style preferences. The client then has a virtual appointment with a volunteer or staff via GoToMeeting/Webinar. Preferences are discussed further in that appointment, and the client is shown what has been picked for them based on those initial forms.

If none of the clothes selected for that appointment are suitable for the client, the staff and volunteers pick other clothes based on their conversation. The clothing is then packed in a bag. Clients in Simcoe County can pick up clothes from the Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie office, and clients in Orillia can have the clothes delivered to them. Once the clothes are received, a follow up phone call with the client is made to make sure the clothes fit and are appropriate for them to wear. There is a large selection of business-casual clothing available in sizes 0-26, as well as non-slip shoes, steel-toed boots, and un-used scrubs.

Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie is also adapting their Breakfast Club program to a virtual model, which will be beginning in July. The 9-week program will run online via Go To Meeting/Webinar, with one meeting each week for all their clients. The content of the meetings will be delivered via PowerPoint presentations, videos, webinars run by volunteers, and with the guidance of the facilitators. Topics covered will include goal setting, professionalism, communication skills, confidence, motivation, mental health and self-care, personal branding and job interviews.

The COVID-19 pandemic has already been and will continue to be a difficult time for employment. Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie is more committed than ever to ensuring that women in Simcoe County have the professional clothing, confidence and support network they need to help them thrive and succeed in obtaining employment.

Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie is going to be settled in to a new location as of August 1st. The new address is 320 Bayfield St. Unit 79, Barrie, ON L4M 3C1. Please note that clothing donations are on hold until September. Lists of what we do and do not accept with regards to clothing is available at our website on the donate page.

For more information on Dress for Success Orillia and Barries programs, contact program coordinator Samantha Sceviour at samantha@dfsorilliebarrie.org or 705-252-9200.

Interested in volunteering with Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie? Contact volunteer coordinator Agnes Pec at agnes@dfsorilliabarrie.org.

Continued here:
Dress for Success Orillia and Barrie is Helping Women Virtually - simcoe.com

Imagine the most relaxing place you can think of. Envisioning your living room? Probably not. The truth is, most of us would prefer to be on a tranquil getaway right now (or, like, any time) rather than dealing with our current reality.

Say it with us: Theres no place like Thailand, theres no place like Thailand, theres no place like Thailand

Assuming you, also, failed to click your ruby red heels and magically arrive at the wellness destination of your dreams, were bringing you the next best thing, courtesy of Tourism Authority of Thailand: Thai-inspired, self-care practices to create your own at-home wellness retreat (and make your living room feel a tiny bit more like that tranquil oasis).

Thai culture has values that are very in tune with body and mind, heart, soul, and spirit.

Thai culture has values that are very in tune with body and mind, heart, soul, and spirit, says Karina Stewart, founder and chief wellness director at Kamalaya Wellness Sanctuary & Holistic Spa in Thailand. When [those values, the warmhearted people, ancient healing traditions, extraordinary cuisine, and mindfulness practices] come together, there are not many places in the world that can compare.

Of course the tropical climate, diverse flora and fauna, and gorgeous architecture also help make Thailand a top wellness destination, she says. But just because you cant teleport all of Thailands beauty into your living space doesnt mean you cant tap into some of those vacay vibes. Enter: Your very own at-home wellness retreat.

While we could probably all go for a Thai massage right about now, moving your body on your own can achieve almost the same effect. Thai massage therapists include a lot of stretching in their actual massage, Stewart says. A healthy stretching regime, where every joint of the body is stretched on a regular basis, happens when we do yoga, pilates, Tai Chi, or Qigong.

Look up a soothing Tai Chi flow to help you replicate that post-massage Zen feeling. Plus, Khun Sasi, an applied Thai traditional medicine doctor at Kamalaya, says even just changing your posture every 15 to 30 minutes while youre sitting at your computer can help energy flow more freely through your body, according to traditional Thai wisdom.

Yes, eating counts as a form of self care, and Stewart says nourishing your body, Thai-style, is all about simple, plant-forward dishes made with fresh fruits and vegetables and plenty of herbs and spices. Adding fresh herbs and spices into our cuisine has an amazing impact on our rejuvenation, in our digestive health, in our immune health, on our emotional balance, and on our mental clarity, she says.

Meal prepping not exactly part of your ideal staycation? Brew an herbal teaanother Thai stapleto sip on whenever you want to relax. Sasi recommends boiling one cinnamon stick and two to three cardamom seeds for 15 minutes, then adding either the juice of one lime (if youre feeling constipated, this works wonders, says Sasi) or half a teaspoon of organic honey (she counts this as a bloat-buster) for a soul-soothing, wellness-supporting brew.

Prioritizing your own needs is important for your mental well-being, but caring for others can sometimes be a major boon for your mood. In Thailand, peoples social network is very strong, Stewart says, which translates to more compassion and warmheartedness. So call a relative you havent spoken to in awhile, write a letter to a friend, or simply wave to your neighbor. Even if it only boosts your mood for a few minutes, thats still a self-care win.

Meditating with an ocean view sounds amazing, but taking a few minutes to focus on your breath can happen pretty much anywhere. Mindfulness practices are a very big part of Thai culture especially with regards to Buddhism, Stewart says. It is regulating stress, helping us sleep, calming our emotions, and also showing us how to be more self aware. And with that we are able to observe ourselves and make better choices in our day to day lives.

Throw on a video or audio track of ocean waves crashing, and carve out some time to sit quietly with your eyes closed. Bonus points if you light a sea salt-scented candle to really soak in the serenity vibes with every deep breath.

Dont wait until youre on a wellness retreat to get in tune with your body. According to Stewart, Thai people are known for listening to their bodies, especially through the understanding of yin and yang energy, adopted from the Chinese. By balancing hot and cold energy, Stewart explains, you can encourage your body to come back to center. And who couldnt use a little more balance in their life?

You can use foods to tap into that energy by sipping on a cooling beverage like coconut water or mint tea when youre feeling hot or irritable (they dont call it being hot-headed for nothing), or cooking with warming spices like cinnamon or ginger when youre feeling down or just straight-up chilled from too much AC.

And with that, were off to stretch, call our mom, and plan our future IRL vacay to Thailand.

Sponsored by Tourism Authority of Thailand

Photo: Getty Images/Cavan Images

Original post:

Missing your travel plans? These home self-care practices will make you feel like youre on a Thailand retreat - Well+Good

School communities must stick together. The current pandemic is a testament to this.

Through a cohesive campus community, it is possible for students to be safe and healthy, with no compromise to their academic progress.

It goes beyond shifting education online. International schools in Asia are making daily deliveries of schoolwork, even laptops, tablets and Wi-Fi hot spots. Teachers hold daily virtual Zoom sessions with students. Administrators meet daily to check on the academic and emotional well-being of students. Digital learning tools from Google Hangouts to Microsoft Teams are being implemented full force.

Everyone is doubling down to keep learning going.

With team spirit and support, schools are proving that they can remain focused despite lockdowns, with the added benefit of students and faculty learning the true value of community.

A recent study by National University of Singapore psychology researchers Francesca Wah and Tick Ngee Sim also found that teamwork impacts academic performance.

Source: Jerudong International School

Wah and Sim recruited 1,005 students from three government-aided, co-educational Singapore primary schools to see if a common goal of winning encourages students to perform better at tasks. They found that children of all abilities who competed in groups against other teams for rewards such as actual prizes and verbal praise achieved higher scores. Students also said they prefer a team-learning approach to an independent-study approach.

Co-operation plays a key role in cultivating social connectedness, said Wah.

These unprecedented times call for nothing less. Here are four international schools in Asia with supportive campus communities keeping students inspired and engaged.

At International School Ho Chi Minh City (ISHCMC), community comes first.

The investments it has made over the past three months to safeguard students and faculty as well as adapt to COVID-19 is exemplary in its depth and breadth.

This stems from ISHCMCs deep-rooted culture of care to balance academic outcomes with the social and emotional needs of the community given the current environment.

Source: International School Ho Chi Minh City

With the support of an experienced Student Support Service team, a number of Wellbeing Guides were developed aimed at keeping parents and students engaged and empowered through challenging times. Emotional support is available to caregivers and learners virtually as needed.

This holistic response is well-received by ISHCMCs students and parents alike. They are grateful to have compassionate leaders at ISHCMC who have offered stability to keep the community spirit alive. This is particularly true for Grade 12 students, who are about to embark into a post-COVID-19 world.

ISHCMC Secondary School Principal Will Hurtardo said, We are defined as humans not by the situations put in front of us but by the way we face them, respond to them and overcome them. More than ever, you have faced adversity with courage and resilience in a way we find truly humbling. The future is full of optimism and hope because you are the people shaping it.

Read more about how ISHCMCs Class of 2020 responded during school closures and their success stories getting accepted to the top universities around the world.

At Jerudong International School, community spirit is at the centre of everything that students do.

For instance, the Middle Years (Years 7-9) community follow the Way of the Meerkat.

Meerkats are renowned for working together, and older meerkats mentor the younger ones. Middle Years students are encouraged to think about the role they each play in creating a community at JIS and influencing Junior School students.

Source: Jerudong International School

In the Upper Years (Years 10-13), the curriculum focuses on the core values of JIS: resilience, positive relationships, thinking, healthy living and mental health. These values help to create an engaging and cohesive learning experience for all.

JIS Wellbeing Captains also receive Mental Health First Aid training and are free to organise events such as Random Acts of Kindness Day and Mental Health Day.

Through its Polio Points programme, students get to earn points by achieving their schools aims. If a student achieves all of the aims, JIS then donates money to UNICEF to pay for one Polio vaccination (sponsored by Aetna) last year, their efforts paid for 8,265 polio vaccinations in developing nations.

These initiatives show the holistic approach JIS takes to instill global citizenship in its students. At JIS, its always an encouraging environment for students to reach out to others and to think about how their actions have a positive impact on their peers.

It did not take long for Bangkok Patana School to act to keep its campus community safe. From mandating temperature scans and providing masks, this international school put its students and facultys safety first and foremost.

And once international schools in Asia are allowed to open again, Bangkok Patana will continue to prioritise the safety of its pupils by abiding the Thai governments safety guidelines.

Source: Bangkok Patana School

Bangkok Patana also prepares students for future challenges through a broad range of subjects explored within the International Baccalaureate (IB) and outdoor learning.

For instance, Year 3 students get to learn in an Outdoor Classroom where they interact with nature, plan gardens and create their own tropical fruit, vegetable and herb patches. Secondary students learn to look beyond their personal needs and make a positive impact on society at large via community service, gaining valuable experience and networking opportunities in the process.

Through this process, students gain a greater understanding of their responsibility to contribute to the global sustainability movement.

Singapore American School (SAS) is an international school with heart.

To keep their community safe during the pandemic, they closed their campus and decided to integrate distance learning into their curriculum.

Source: Singapore American School

Alongside temperature checks, temperature screening slips are issued to ensure that all students, parents and educators are healthy before coming to campus.

Student wellbeing is paramount and the schools eco-conscious campus also shows their community how sustainability helps to build a better world.

Their campus sits by a two-acre natural rainforest that their science classes use as a living laboratory, and they have one million kilowatt-hours of electricity running through their campus solar panels.

Through this commitment to sustainability and student safety, SAS is setting an example for schools around the world.

*Some of the institutions featured in this article are commercial partners of Study International

ISHCMC: Empowering students to drive the sustainability agenda

3 international schools in Asia that prepare students for future success

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schools in Asia that stick together during a pandemic - Study International News

League of Legends streamer Albert Boxbox Zheng adored chess in elementary school, but stopped playing when he was around nine. One day, after hearing about some grandmaster chess guys stream popping off, he dropped into Nakamuras channel to watch him play blindfolded. I wrote in his chat afterwards, like, That was amazing. Then he saw my name in the chat, and was like, Is that the BoxBox? Nakamura fished Zheng out and asked him to come on stream and play against him.

He blew my mind with how deep chess goes, says Zheng.

Nakamura challenged Zheng to a game, but Nakamura would start without a queen. Zheng thought, Theres no way he can beat me without a queen. Of course, Nakamura crushed him. Nakamura began removing more pieces, starting the game with fewer and fewer, until, Zheng says, I finally won when he basically had nothing. I was hooked.

Nakamuras impressive, lightly trollish chess gimmicksblindfolded matches, matches without queens or rooks, solving as many puzzles as he can in five minuteshave spurred Twitchs top personalities to try the game for themselves. Instead of looking down his nose at these pro gamers who come to him for guidance, he exudes respect for Lengyel (legendary character), who has three million followers, or Saqib Lirik Zahid, who has 2.6 million followers (honored by his visit). Now, top Hearthstone, Fortnite, and Valorant streamers are sliding into Nakamuras DMs asking for coaching. Nakamura has in turn developed his own streaming persona, somewhere between a proud dad and a laughing supergenius.

On stream, Nakamura has described his new role as Twitchs chess ambassador as his calling. In retrospect, he says, it makes sense; after winning his first championship in 2005, Nakamura says he went over to the hotel lobby to play blitz, or speed, games against random audience members until two or three in the morning. (Nakamura is now the top blitz player in the world.) Ive always wanted to bring it to the masses, he says. In his chat, viewers tell Nakamura that they hadnt played or watched chess since they were kids, but were intrigued by their favorite streamers newfound interest.

When I work with streamers, Im trying to get them to have fun, but also these aha! moments, says Nakamura. Moments where they see little combinations or little tricks, thats really the goal. Theyre not going to be great, but if they can learn something from it and theyre having fun, for me, that means Im doing a good job.

Nakamuras mission to bring a populist movement to chess runs up against the games marked culture of elitism. Theres a tendency among some chess devotees to look down on streamers learning, and sometimes making mistakes, so publicly. Zheng has been shocked at how antagonistic his Twitch chat gets when he streams chess; sometimes, he cant even look at it. League is known for toxicity. Chess, surprisingly, is even worse, he says, describing the phenomenon as backseat gaming.

There are a lot of people who are miles better than meI dont deny thatwho get mad that me, a new player, cant pick up the game and instantly be an expert at it, says Zheng. People will shove and yell moves down my throat. Not only is it annoying, oftentimes its wrong and very aggressive.

"Ive always wanted to bring chess to the masses."

Hikaru Nakamura

Chess mastermind and Twitch streamer Alexandra Botez, a Woman FIDE Master, who has also seen huge growth in her channel, says that elitism extends to the broader chess community, too. Your worth is really determined by your ranking, especially in the tight-knit circles of people who dedicated their lives to chess. Shes watched on as a lot of other top chess players have tried streaming on Twitch without seeing anywhere near her or Nakamuras success. She attributes it to Nakamuras ability to engage with Twitch culture on its own terms, memeing with viewers and gamely replying to their questions. Other top players prefer to remain distant, viewing Twitch as a platform rather than a cultural organism.

See the rest here:

The Grandmaster Who Got Twitch Hooked on Chess - WIRED

This week we return to notation to allow readers a better understanding of how the pieces move and capture, how to react when the King is in check and how to bring a chess game to its conclusion. The best way to do this is by going through the motions of solving the puzzle.

The aim of chess is not to swap pieces. Rather, it is to checkmate the King. The King cannot be removed from the chess board during a practical game. Every other piece or pawn can be captured and removed. Checkmating the King means placing the King in a hopeless position. The word checkmate is also used in situations pertaining to life. In chess, checkmate is when the King is unable to escape, similarly in life.

When check is announced, you have to leave everything you are doing and attend to it. You can block a check, move your King out of check, or capture the piece that is announcing the check. The goal of all chess puzzles is to checkmate your opponents King no matter what moves he makes. You have to administer checkmate in the required number of moves.

Some chess puzzles are created from actual chess games and some are chess compositions. I prefer the ones from actual games. In some compositions, we can reach a position that cannot be reached in a chess game. Chess puzzles are automatically verified so that the solutions are correct and complete. Sometimes a shorter solution to a puzzle exists.

My chess colleague Loris Nathoo has the rare ability of finding a shorter solution to a puzzle. He works on the puzzle on Sundays and presents me with the solutions. The two puzzles in Diagram 1 and Diagram 2 are taken from actual grandmaster games.

In Diagram 1, it is Black, played by Vitaly Chekhover, to play and win. The game was played at Leningrad in 1934. Black plays Re1+ (+ is an abbreviation for check). The Rook goes down on the back rank and calls check. White has to attend to this check immediately. He cannot take the Rook with his Rook which is stationed at d1 because White will lose his Queen with check. So White is forced to play Kf2. Black plays Re2+. White cannot capture the black Rook since it is protected by the black Queen. White is forced to retreat to f1 or g1. When he does, the black Queen will take the g pawn and it is checkmate since the white King cannot evade the check.

In Diagram 2 Vishy Anand is playing the black pieces. The game was contested at Salonika in 1984. It is Black to play and win. Black plays Ra1 if Rxa1 (x means capture) Nf2+. To prevent checkmate, White has to capture the Knight with his Queen which gives black a decisive advantage.

The rest is here:

An Introduction to Chess: More notes on notation - Stabroek News

The Rwanda Chess Federation (Ferwade) general assembly on Sunday, June 14, elected a new executive committee to help steer the ship for an interim period of 12 months.

This came after the general assembly last week agreed to hold elections using any viable virtual platform due to limitations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Elections to usher in a new leadership team could not be held in April when the outgoing team's four-year term ended because of the Covid-19 lockdown.

The last poll was held in April 2016.

The totally new team has Ben Tom Zimurinda as president, Valentin Rukimbira, vice president, Elysee Tuyizere, secretary general, and Eddy Christian Nkuyubwatsi as treasurer.

The outgoing team was led by Kevin Ganza, deputised by Rugema Ngarambe. Niyibizi Alain Patience and Christella Rugabira were secretary general and treasurer, respectively.

During the meeting before Sunday's poll, it was agreed that an interim leadership team be set up. Its job is to urgently, among others, help ailing clubs get their houses in order before another poll can be called in a year's time.

Zimurinda's team is tasked with designing a roadmap that clearly defines desired outcomes and the major steps needed to succeed.

"I thank everyone who voted. But I also wish to make it clear that taking on such responsibilities is not about prestige. It's a struggle," Zimurinda told the general assembly.

Zimurinda knows that his team has a huge task. But he is undeterred.

For the federation to function as a legal entity, at least three member clubs must be fully registered. But only one, Vision Chess Club, currently fulfills requirements. There must be at least three registered clubs for a proper election to be held.

So much will, therefore, depend on how the new leadership team manages to rally people with divergent opinion and interest as well as bringing clubs back to life.

"We will need to come up with an action plan, and that's urgent. In not more than 30 days we must have a clear roadmap."

Besides contending with the problem of dormant clubs, Zimurinda must also mind major characteristics of good governance such as transparency and accountability if he is to succeed in steering the ship in the right direction.

jkaruhanga@newtimesrwanda.com

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Chess: Interim executive team elected to run federation for a year - The New Times