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<ul><li><keyword id="3275685" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="dunzo">Dunzo</keyword>'s #NariWithSign is inspired by the popular Instagram page '<keyword id="8854641" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="dude-with-sign">Dude With Sign</keyword>'.</li><li>The aim of the campaign is to talk about some stereotypes that women face everyday.</li></ul>Have you ever felt immense frustration when you are out for a dinner date, and at the end, the waiter presents the bill to your partner, who is a man? Or have you felt helpless when you have been told to do something just because you are a woman?<br /><br />Haven't all of us been in situations in our lives that we feel we would not have had to face, had we not been women?<br /><br />As we come closer to March 8, globally celebrated as <keyword id="6696937" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="International-Womens-Day">International Women's Day</keyword>, we will come across many conversations around the need for equality, diversity and inclusion, conversations that frankly should be happening throughout the year. However, we need to start somewhere, and it is good to see brands take up the responsibility of breaking <keyword id="1262447" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="gender-stereotypes">gender stereotypes</keyword> through their campaigns, in the hope of bringing about an attitudinal change in our society. <br /><br />
<div type="image" title="Dunzo5" msid="74435135" hostid="261"></div>

<br />This year, to get people talking about stereotypes that women have to face everyday, online delivery platform Dunzo has come up with a campaign, ‘Don’t Make Women Say It - #NariWithSign’. Inspired by the hugely popular Instagram page ‘Dude With Sign’ who holds up postcards with single line protests ranging from ‘Stop replying-all to company-wide emails’ to ‘Seinfeld is way better than Friends’, Dunzo’s campaign is all about bringing forth ‘unsaid assumptions and prejudices about women pervading the moral and cultural climate of our times.’<br /><br /><div type="image" title="Dunzo4" msid="74435043" hostid="261"></div>

<br />What Dunzo is protesting against on the postcards are highly relatable things that most women have to face, almost on an everyday basis. What makes the creatives good are that most of the protests on their cardboards are things all of us would have faced over the years.<br /><br /><div type="image" title="Dunzo3" msid="74435146" hostid="261"></div>

<br />Over the course of the month, Dunzo plans to post pictures on all its Social Media platforms, of women holding up these signs. This will be a combination of creatives that are created in-house, as well as those which are crowd-sourced. The brand says that the campaign is its efforts towards driving progressive and inclusive thinking. And while at it, their aim is to turn a few heads, change a few minds, and spark a few smiles. <br /><div type="image" title="Dunzo2" msid="74435159" hostid="261"></div>

<br />Speaking about the campaign, <keyword id="653988" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Sai-Ganesh">Sai Ganesh</keyword>, Head Marketing &amp; Creative, Dunzo said, “As a brand, Dunzo has always strived to shed light on serious subjects but with an easy-to-relate and humorous lens. In fact, many of our users who are women have told us how much Dunzo has changed their life - from buying sanitary pads late at night to lending a helping hand during a busy week by taking care of everyday chores. #NariWithSign is our homage to women and the steps we still have to take to become a truly equal society - online and offline!”<br /><br />

Dunzo’s Women’s Day campaign, #NariWithSign is trying to ‘turn a few heads, change a few minds’

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Osgood Perkins' new horror film, Longlegs, has received considerable buzz, largely due to its masterful marketing campaign.</li><li>It stars Nicolas Cage as the titular devil-loving killer and Maika Monroe as the FBI agent on his tail.</li></ul><p>"Longlegs" <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2024/07/longlegs-review/678966/">may or may not be</a> the scariest movie of the decade, depending on who you ask, but it's certainly in the running to be the most talked-about one.</p><p>The satanic horror movie set in 1995 stars modern scream queen Maika Monroe (of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-horror-movies-of-all-time-ranked-by-critics-2019-10">"It Follows"</a> fame) as Lee Harker, a preternaturally perceptive, introverted FBI agent thrust into a case that's stumped the bureau for decades. </p><p>Over 30 years, 10 different, seemingly unconnected families have been killed the same way: Fathers brutally murder their wives and children before killing themselves. The only commonalities are that each family has a daughter with a birthday on the 14th of any given month, and indecipherable coded letters signed by someone calling themselves Longlegs are left at each crime scene.</p><p>A team at the FBI, led by Agent Carter (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sex-and-the-city-characters-we-want-hbo-max-revival-2021-9">Blair Underwood</a>), has deduced that Longlegs, though not physically present for the murders, is the person somehow responsible for making the fathers kill. After Lee intuitively figures out what house another culprit is hiding in earlier in the film, she's brought on to help crack the Longlegs case.</p><p>The film has been building hype for months thanks to the studio <a target="_blank" href="https://www.indiewire.com/news/general-news/longlegs-marketing-osgood-perkins-1235019292/">Neon's terrific marketing</a>. The campaign smartly gave away nary a plot detail and held back any glimpses of Nicolas Cage's spectacularly unhinged serial killer Longlegs. Now, it's finally in theaters, allowing eager horror fans into the world that writer-director Osgood Perkins crafted.</p><p>The tense, disconcerting film evokes a sense of dread for much of its runtime, creeping toward a twisty, blood-soaked ending that fills in most of the blanks but leaves a few other key questions unanswered.</p><p>Here's a complete breakdown of how the movie ends, including what Perkins and the cast have said about it in interviews with Business Insider.</p><p><strong><em>Warning: Major spoilers ahead for "Longlegs," including a detailed description of the ending.</em></strong></p><h2 id="347165ac-ece0-4616-82f3-ba3ebb7686aa">What happens in 'Longlegs?'</h2><div type="image" title="Little girl in a red jacket and pigtails, with Longlegs in the background" height="5584" width="7445" msid="111695025" hostid="261" sizebytes="828342"></div><p>"Longlegs" is split into three parts. For the purposes of this explainer, I'm considering the entirety of Part Three (titled "Birthday Girls") the ending.</p><p>In Part One ("His Letters"), viewers are introduced to Lee (Monroe) and learn about the Longlegs killings as she's brought onto the case and begins investigating. We also meet Agent Carter's family, including his wife and young daughter, Ruby, who invites an awkward and obviously socially stunted Lee to her birthday party.</p><p>It quickly becomes clear that Lee and Longlegs have a twisted history between them, as Longlegs leaves her a birthday card, allowing her to cipher the other crime scene notes he left at the homes of the murdered families. However, the nature of their connection is kept a secret until the end.</p><p>Generally, you'd expect a movie about a serial killer to build a finale that involves a confrontation between the killer and the hero, but Perkins pulls a fast one. Instead, Longlegs (whose real name is revealed to be Dale Ferdinand Cobble) is captured a little over halfway through the film's runtime, which is the first time the audience sees his face. </p><p>It is, in a word, hideous. He's a strung-out-looking, aging glam rocker-type who's essentially deformed himself with bad plastic surgery, botox, and fillers, looking a bit like a melting candle.</p><p>Cobble is arrested in the middle of Part Two ("All Of Your Things") after Lee visits her creepy mom Ruth (Alicia Witt) at her childhood home and finds a Polaroid she took of Longlegs when he first visited Lee when she was a little girl, on January 13, 1974, the day before her ninth birthday.</p><p>Part Two also confirms what most watchers had probably already guessed: Lee was the little girl we saw in the movie's opening scene, being confronted by Longlegs when he drives up to her house in a station wagon.</p><p>In this part, Lee and Carter also go to the Camera family farm, where one of the murders happened in 1975. There, they find buried beneath floorboards a deteriorated, life-sized doll that looks like Carrie Ann Camera, the daughter who was the sole survivor of that attack. </p><p>Carrie Ann (played as an adult by Kiernan Shipka) has been housed at a psychiatric facility and catatonic in the 20 years since the murders, only emerging from her unresponsiveness when Longlegs visits her — right before Lee and Carter stop by. Speaking to Lee, Carrie Ann tells her that she'll do whatever "the man downstairs" tells her to do, including jump out the window. She also suggests she's seen Lee before, or someone who looks like her, at her house and that Lee has also forgotten something about her own past.</p><h2 id="d426662b-6fdd-480d-ad1f-e47292eae972">How does 'Longlegs' end?</h2><p>Part Three is when all hell finally breaks loose. Longlegs (aka Cobble) is apprehended by the FBI. Agent Carter is satisfied and believes the arrest will allow the murdered families to have justice. But an increasingly uneasy Lee remains convinced that, as she theorized early on, Longlegs wasn't killing these families alone — he had an accomplice. When she goes in to interrogate Cobble herself, he speaks mostly in riddles and refuses to tell her directly who he is working with.</p><p>Finally, he cryptically tells Lee to "ask her mommy," gives a last "Hail Satan" for good measure, and then smashes his face open on the table in front of Lee, killing himself.</p><div type="image" title="Left: The back of a woman's head in &quot;Longlegs.&quot; She has a brunette ponytail. Right: The back of a man's head with long frizzy hair" height="1436" width="1915" msid="111695022" hostid="261" sizebytes="366734"></div><p>A furious Carter confronts a traumatized Lee, admonishing her for remaining convinced of her accomplice theory and informing her that Carrie Ann Camera killed herself earlier that day. Carrie Ann's death seems to suggest that Longlegs' algorithm of killings was completed, as only one day (that day, the 13th) was missing from the pattern — but that's a red herring.</p><p>Lee and another FBI agent, Agent Browning (Michelle Choi-Lee), go to her mother Ruth's house to bring Ruth in for questioning, given Cobble's comments before his death. When Lee goes into the house to find her mom, Ruth, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/immaculate-ending-explained-demon-baby-sydney-sweeney-2024-3">dressed as a nun</a>, kills Browning with a shotgun. When a stunned and horrified Lee goes to confront her mother, Ruth is standing with the gun aimed at a life-sized doll that looks exactly like Lee as a child.</p><p>Realizing her mother was working with Cobble, Lee tells her that she can stop and that Cobble is gone. Ruth replies, "You got him. Now he's free. And you're free too, baby girl." She shoots the Lee doll in the head, and black smoke emanates from the place where the doll's head once was — and simultaneously, from a disoriented Lee's head right before Lee passes out.</p><p>As Lee is unconscious, viewers get an explanation of what the hell has been going on, courtesy of Ruth monologuing over a montage sequence of past events.</p><p>According to Lee's mom, Longlegs, a devil-worshipping dollmaker, visited them when Lee was a girl in 1974. Her mother interrupted them, at which point Longlegs told her, in a sing-song voice, that if she let him in now, it would be "nice," but if she didn't, he'd come back as many times as he'd like.</p><p>Instead of allowing Lee to be taken by the devil, who is present in the dolls that Longlegs creates, Lee's mother makes a bargain with the killer: She'd help him do Satan's work, murdering other families by delivering dolls to them crafted to look like their daughters, dressed as a nun and under the guise of the doll being a gift from the church. </p><p>Satan would do his soul-corrupting work through the dolls to get the fathers to kill, and Lee's mom would simply have to be there to watch the deaths happen. Ruth says this deal allowed Lee to grow up, unlike those little girls in the other families.</p><p>When Lee awakens, she's alone in her mom's house. An eerie voice — possibly the devil himself — tells her she's "late for Ms. Ruby's birthday party." Realizing something terrible is about to happen, Lee rushes to Carter's house to find him, his wife, and Ruby there, with Ruth and the Ruby-like doll she's just delivered to them. It's clear that the family is under the devil's spell. </p><p>Carter tries to fight against the compulsion and fails, stabbing his wife to death in the kitchen. He emerges and goes to attack Ruby before Lee shoots and kills him to stop him. Lee's mom produces her own knife to finish the devil's work by killing Ruby, reiterating that she's doing this all for Lee — "just like I've always done" — and that she'll do it "again and again," despite Cobble's death.</p><p>Apparently realizing her mom is a full-on Satan worshipper now and a lost cause, a distraught Lee shoots Ruth in the head to save Ruby. She also attempts to shoot the Ruby doll, but the gun won't fire.</p><p>"You're real scum," Lee says to the doll. And then, the movie ends.</p><h2 id="c18d9277-1015-4a41-8401-bbe85345f3e8">'Longlegs' leaves many unanswered questions</h2><div type="image" title="Maika Monroe as Lee wearing a white button up top and covering her mouth in shock in &quot;Longlegs&quot;" height="1538" width="2051" msid="111695026" hostid="261" sizebytes="42402"></div><p>As much as is answered by Ruth's monologue in the final act (like who Longlegs' accomplice is, how and why the other families died, and what the deal is with those creepy dolls), there are still lingering questions.</p><p>For one, it's not clear why Longlegs or the devil initially targeted Lee. Her family situation is different from all the other targeted families. Most obviously, her dad doesn't appear to be present at all, and the dad is a key component of all the rest of the killings.</p><p>One theory might be that it has something to do with Lee's semi-psychic abilities — perhaps that made her attractive to the devil. But the film doesn't clarify that, and then again, there's no indication her preternatural intuition even existed at that point. Maybe it was her encounter with Longlegs and the devil that sparked it.</p><p>Also, during the interrogation scene right before he smashes his own face to a pulp, Longlegs remarks that Ruth was "the seventh she to be given the same choice — crimson or clover." This suggests that Ruth may not have been the first Satanic recruit brought on to the devil's mission in this manner. But again, there's no follow-up there.</p><p>One more pressing question relates more directly to the ending: What was up with that black smoke emanating from the Lee doll's head and adult Lee's head once the doll was destroyed?</p><p>BI asked Perkins — and he's not telling.</p><p>"I don't think I should say," the filmmaker said when asked what the black smoke was. "I think that that's for you guys to worry about. I mean, I know, but I'm not going to say."</p><p>Monroe, who plays Lee, confirmed that she believes the black smoke is "up to interpretation."</p><p>In a separate interview, Witt, who plays Ruth, gave her own idea of what she thinks the black smoke was.</p><p>"It's darkness. It's darkness that's in there, and then it gets released," Witt said.</p><p>This interpretation is also backed up by a line Longlegs says earlier in the movie, in a flashback, when he's making the Carrie Ann Camera doll.</p><p>"I know you're not afraid of a little bit of dark. You <em>are</em> the dark," he says as he puts a sheet over the doll's head.</p><h2 id="c0869f21-8343-4e8c-aaeb-99454012f486">This ending wasn't always Perkins' plan</h2><div type="image" title="Blair Underwood as Agent Carter covering his face with a tissue while wearing an FBI agent jacket in &quot;Longlegs&quot;" height="1553" width="2070" msid="111695021" hostid="261" sizebytes="77596"></div><p id="c0869f21-8343-4e8c-aaeb-99454012f486">Underwood, who plays Agent Carter, gives a quietly devastating performance in his final scene in the film. In it, Carter, under the control of the devil in the doll, visibly fights against the compulsion to kill his family. He told BI that he had no idea when he initially signed on to the movie that his character was a goner since Perkins hadn't finished the final scene when they spoke.</p><p>"Oz…said the script wasn't quite finished, but he had two or three ideas of where he was going to go with it," Underwood said.</p><p>Once he finally saw how his story would wrap up, Underwood was thrilled to have such a meaty moment.</p><p>"When he finished it, he sent me the scene and said, 'What do you think?' I was like, 'Dude, I love it. I love this, man. I get to play,'" he added.</p><p>Perkins explained that his intent when he starts out on a script is always to start with the end.</p><p>"There's always the intention to figure out the ending and then map yourself backward," he told BI. "It never really quite goes that way, and I always find myself careening toward, 'Oh, fuck. Here comes the climax, and here comes the crisis, and here comes the thing, and I hope it's enough.'"</p><p>"But in this case, it felt like the inevitable thing that was hiding in plain sight, right?" he added. "Anybody watching the movie, certainly a second time, is going to be like, 'Well, of course that's how that goes.'"</p><div type="image" title="A woman named Ruth Harker holding her daughter in bed in &quot;Longlegs&quot;" height="1939" width="2586" msid="111695023" hostid="261" sizebytes="76204"></div><p>The big climax, Ruth's monologue, also got an overhaul. According to Perkins, they filmed a few scenes where Ruth said everything directly to Lee on camera, but they scrapped that plan when "it proved to be too long and too not-dynamic."</p><p>The ultimate scene that made it in — a montage of events with Ruth speaking over it — came in the editing room, where Perkins and the film's editor patched it together from existing footage.</p><p>In the end, the "stylized sort of bedtime story" way Ruth reveals the truth to Lee (and the audience) fits perfectly with what the movie is about, in Perkins' eyes: a mother telling a lie to their child.</p><h2 id="318c59a0-45af-406f-aad7-47c6a5dcbf05">Will there be a 'Longlegs' sequel?</h2><div type="image" title="Maika Monroe, a woman with a brunette ponytail, plays Lee, staring at a wall of written symbols in &quot;Longlegs&quot;" height="1830" width="2440" msid="111695028" hostid="261" sizebytes="78752"></div><p>Any horror fan knows that where there's a box-office hit, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/horror-movies-sequels-original-2018-10">there's almost inevitably a sequel</a>. For now, Perkins is satisfied leaving things exactly where he left them.</p><p>"The good news about making a movie is that you get to say it's over," he said when asked if he's thought about what happens to Lee and Ruby after the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/best-movie-endings-of-all-time-ranked-2020-9">abrupt ending</a>. "To me, a movie is a completed movement, and you get what you get. If you want to extrapolate forward, amazing."</p><p>That said, when asked directly whether there wouldn't be a sequel, given his feelings about endings, he hinted it <em>was</em> a possibility.</p><p>"Any sequel or any subsidiary project wouldn't be like starting at the end and going forward," Perkins said. "It would be something else: prequel or another movie in the universe of 'Longlegs,' or something very unexpected."</p><p><em>"Longlegs" is in theaters now.</em></p>

'Longlegs,' a Satanic horror movie starring Nicolas Cage, is being called one of the scariest films. Here's what happens in its blood-soaked ending.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>My husband and I are both full-time educators. </li><li>He wakes up at 2:30 a.m. every day to have at least five hours to himself. </li></ul><p>My husband and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sjsu.edu/people/christine.ma-kellams/"><u>I</u></a> are both full-time educators with two children at home — I'm a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/college-professor-couldve-told-my-students-parents-2023-3"><u>college professor</u></a> and he's a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/substitute-teacher-facts-life-pay-work-hours"><u>substitute teacher</u></a> — but our concept of free time is the biggest divider between us. </p><p>My husband gets up at 2:30 a.m. every day to have four to five hours of alone time that he treats as nonnegotiable, during which he'll read, work out, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/guides/health/fitness/best-golf-clubs"><u>golf,</u></a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/chimpanzee-using-instagram-video-2019-4"><u>scroll on Instagram</u></a>. I rise just in time for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.insider.com/mom-outfit-sweatsuit-drop-off-kids-without-getting-fully-dressed-2023-10"><u>school drop-off</u></a> for our 6 and 13 year olds and treat alone time as a luxury, not a necessity.</p><h2>He watches football on weekends</h2><p>On the weekends, his plans largely involve the NFL scoreboard or how long it takes to make it through nine or 18 holes of golf.</p><p>My plans entail a deep-dive investigation starting on Thursday for activities our kids can do over the weekend. Whenever I'd show up to an event alone, my friends would ask where he was.</p><p>"Golfing, maybe?" I'd say. "Or watching TV?" I'm not trying to be coy; I really don't know because his time is his, and my time is a communal commodity. So these days, the women I've known the longest know better than to ask — either that or they've found themselves in the same boat.</p><h2>I teach gender differences</h2><p>The irony of all this is that I teach about gender differences.</p><p>In my undergraduate classes, I teach mostly Gen Zers in their early 20s with nary a domestic commitment in sight — no marriage certificates legally binding their estate to another, no small humans who depend on them for survival. We discuss the many flavors of sexism — hostile, benevolent, institutional — before we get to the findings that even the single, childless college kids in the room can understand: the unequal division of labor in most households.</p><p>If a sure sign of adulthood is realizing that the toothpaste we used growing up didn't magically appear but that someone had to go out and get it, then we must not all be adulting equally. Some of us grow up to become the person who stocks the toiletries, and our other halves get to revert to the joyous oblivion of childhood, when things they need appear whenever they need them.</p><p>So while my husband makes fun of me for the number of Amazon Prime packages that show up on our doorstep — whose contents I cannot even remember thanks to their frequency, a phenomenon so common, it may now come with the human condition — he neglects the fact that these deliveries only come because I spend my free time running inventory checks on everything — from whether we have enough flour for holiday baking to adequate deodorant for keeping everyone's smells in check.</p><h2>It's no surprise that our free time is not treated equally</h2><p>But if time is money, then surely the gender-wage gap is as much about time as it is about pay. If women still make <a target="_blank" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/03/01/women-still-make-82-cents-on-the-dollar-compared-to-men-study-finds/?sh=1c40e0902b5f">82 cents to the male dollar</a> and pay more for goods and services — the so-called "<a target="_blank" href="https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8a42df04-8b6d-4949-b20b-6f40a326db9e/the-pink-tax---how-gender-based-pricing-hurts-women-s-buying-power.pdf">pink tax</a>" — then it's no surprise that at home, a woman's hour isn't treated the same as a man's.</p><p>Still, I consider myself one of the lucky ones: After making dinner, my husband quickly shoos me from the kitchen. Every day, I look forward to that golden post-dinner hour when my man is wiping counters and loading dishes, and I'm hiding in our room, alone, pretending to be him.</p>

My husband and I both work. His time is his, and mine is always spent with the kids. 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Ron DeSantis blamed local and federal prosecutors for upending the GOP primary.</li><li>"It's sucked out a lot of oxygen," the Florida governor said of Trump's legal woes.</li></ul><p>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says that prosecutors upended the GOP presidential primary. He has a point. But the harsher truth is that despite all the hype, DeSantis was just bad at this.</p><p>Now, the once-vaunted Trump primary foe sounds like an NFL quarterback who complains about officiating after his wide receivers dropped potential game-changing passes and he threw costly interceptions. </p><p>"I would say if I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn't been indicted on any of this stuff," DeSantis told the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody. "I mean honestly, I think from Alvin Bragg on, I've criticized the cases, I mean someone like a Bragg would not have brought that case if it was anyone other than Donald Trump, someone like that is distorting justice, which is bad, but I also think it distorted the primary."</p> <p>DeSantis added that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-indictment-total-charges-counts-2023-8">Trump's legal woes</a>, "sucked out a lot of oxygen."</p><p>Hindsight is, of course, twenty-twenty, but in retrospect, it's clear that DeSantis made some pretty critical errors that have nothing to do with Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, or Fani Willis.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.natesilver.net/p/ron-desantiss-electoral-track-record">As Nate Silver previously wrote</a>, DeSantis really could just be a pretty average politician who ran one extraordinarily good race. There's also still a chance I eat my words and DeSantis pulls off a historic comeback. But he's also really not one for fairytale endings.</p><h2>DeSantis' problems began before he even launched.</h2><p>Before he even launched his campaign, The Florida governor made two critical decisions that already and will continue to be picked apart. Neither of these have anything to do with Trump's indictments.</p><p>First, DeSantis made the decision to wait to formally announce his presidential campaign until after the Florida legislative session ended. </p><p>At the time, it somewhat made sense. DeSantis and his Republican allies in the legislature could ram through a bevy of conservative priorities that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-session-will-give-desantis-more-victories-ahead-presidential-run-2023-3">the governor could then brag about</a> to prospective primary voters. The problem was simultaneously, in fact before DeSantis even won his resounding reelection, former President Donald Trump was hammering him. Trump and his allies <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-pac-has-now-spent-more-attacking-desantis-than-backing-gop-midterm-candidates/">spent months assaulting</a> virtually every aspect of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/04/19/ron-desantis-trump-2024-election-polls/">DeSantis' record</a> with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-says-he-wont-fight-trump-over-high-schoolers-photos-2023-2">nary a response in return</a>. </p><p>When DeSantis finally started to return fire, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-doubles-down-against-trump-nickname-winner-new-york-post-2023-3">his volleys didn't pack the same weight</a> compared to the haymakers the MAGA-side continued to land. National polling shows that what was once a close race in the aftermath of DeSantis' midterm rout quickly started to turn into a double-digit Trump lead.</p><p>Second: DeSantis had an unfortunate pickle because he didn't hold federal office. He had raised hundreds of millions of dollars for his reelection. But legally, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.abc12.com/news/politics/ron-desantis-has-raised-more-than-100-million-for-his-reelection-bid-could-he-use/article_8a4243fe-20bb-516b-ba43-7e20530564b5.html">he couldn't just transfer the money over</a>. So instead, he outsourced most of the decisions to an allied super PAC. In theory, this could have worked. DeSantis even wooed an advisor close to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, himself a potential 2024 hopeful, to run the outfit.</p><p>No Republicans have voted yet, but we can safely label that decision to be a disaster. </p><p>As The Washington Post <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/16/desantis-super-pac-collapse/">recounted in embarrassing detail</a>, DeSantis' super PAC was plagued by allegations of mismanagement. Even top officials discussed publicly<a target="_blank" href="https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/ron-desantis-super-pac-acknowledges-campaign-behind-donald-trump/"> how difficult it was</a> for the Florida governor to break through. The operation's early designs for an expansive and expensive ground game through Super Tuesday states later pivoted to a hail mary on the Iowa caucuses. And amid that final play, top officials continue to resign sparking more headlines about the woes in DeSantis world.</p><p>These two decisions are not alone.</p><h2>His issues didn't improve once he finally joined the field.</h2><p>It wasn't Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's choice for DeSantis to spend years <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/desantis-threatens-to-build-a-state-prison-next-to-disney-world-2023-4">tormenting Disney</a> to the point that even some conservative <a target="_blank" href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3976584-the-memo-republicans-worry-desantis-has-erred-in-disney-feud/">donors grew queasy</a>. But DeSantis did. Nor did Bragg choose to formally announce the campaign in an audio chat with Elon Musk, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-reaction-to-desantis-twitter-spaces-announcement-2024-gop-primary-2023-5">a glitch-filled rollout</a> that looked like amateur hour at its finest. DeSantis did that too.</p><p>Special counsel Jack Smith has no responsibility for DeSantis' actions on Capitol Hill. Despite being a former congressman, the governor had few allies in Washington. Smith also didn't tell DeSantis to blow off his own state's delegation to the point that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/04/19/how-trump-ambushed-desantis-in-d-c-00092761#:~:text=Just%20ask%20Steube%2C%20who%20told,his%20multiple%20attempts%20to%20connect.">no one bothered to check in on a congressman</a> who fell from his roof. </p><p>Trump, on the other hand, wined and dined lawmakers at Mar-a-Lago like a college coach in desperate need of signing major recruits. Trump's efforts led to his campaign's frequent trolling of DeSantis as the former president strategically released endorsements <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-iowa-state-fair-troll-desantis-florida-lawmakers-caucuses-2023-8">timed to inflict embarrassment and pain.</a></p><p>True, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is responsible for Trump's mugshot. But she didn't encourage DeSantis to hire a media team that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ron-desantis-responsible-widely-condemned-anti-lgbtq-video-2023-8">produced videos</a> that seemed better suited to the deep fringes of the internet. She also didn't encourage the governor, or for that matter, any of the other presidential candidates, to continue to attack each other instead of Trump. As anti-Trump Republicans feared, the pre-primary debates became a repeat of 2016 where everyone</p><p>The beauty of DeSantis' lament is that we will never know what the primary would have been like without Trump's four indictments and 91 charges. </p><p>Perhaps, he's right that Republicans rallied to their fallen leader so quickly that the opportunity for any opposition was squelched before it had the chance. However, if this is true, it can't account for former UN ambassador Nikki Haley's rise. As DeSantis has fallen, Haley has shot up, especially in the key early state of New Hampshire.</p><p>There's also a third option: the Nothing Matters lane. As many Republicans have pointed out, why would their voters settle for an imitation when the original was so readily available? <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html">As polling has made abundantly clear,</a> many Republicans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. Just like his hero Andrew Jackson, Trump wants to ride a wave of recrimination into the White House. (Jackson, though, actually kind of did have the <a target="_blank" href="https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/10/22/the-1824-presidential-election-and-the-corrupt-bargain/">election stolen from him.</a>)</p><p>In this view, Republicans see a way to right their perceived wrong. Handing the keys to DeSantis or for that matter anyone else wouldn't satiate this lust for revenge. Only Trump can fulfill that.</p>

Ron DeSantis blames Trump's criminal indictments for changing the GOP primary. The Florida governor has also just run a bad race.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Tuesday's elections show Republicans can win in high-turnout elections and likely benefitted from expanded voting laws. </li><li>Republicans had big wins in <keyword id="11918128" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="virginia" source="Orion">Virginia</keyword> after Democratic lawmakers made voting easier.</li></ul><p>On Tuesday, Republicans <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/5-reasons-why-democrats-should-be-worried-about-2022-2021-11">clobbered Democrats across the board in Virginia</a> and came within three percentage-points of knocking out a Democratic governor in New Jersey - both in states where Democratic lawmakers have expanded access to the ballot and made it easier to vote over the past two years. </p><p>Tuesday's results were both a victory and a wake-up call for Republicans. Contrary to the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/03/gop-trump-baseless-election-fraud-claims-518603">false claims spread by former President Donald Trump and his allies</a> that US elections are beset with fraud, the results affirm that American elections are secure and enable both parties to win fair and square.</p><p>It also shows the state's Republicans can win in a high-turnout election and may have even been benefactors of the expanded access voting reforms they opposed. </p><p>In Virginia on Tuesday, the GOP <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-governor-election-terry-mcauliffe-vs-glenn-youngkin-live-results-2021-11">flipped control of the governorship</a>, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-lt-governor-race-hala-ayala-vs-winsome-sears-results-2021-11">lieutenant governorship</a>, the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-attorney-general-election-mark-herring-jason-miyares-live-results-2021-11">attorney general's office</a>, and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-house-of-delegates-elections-live-results-updates-2021-11">five seats in the House of Delegates</a>, putting them in striking distance of winning the chamber altogether, and completing a sweep of the biggest offices on the ballot. </p><p>Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who lost his bid to hold the governor's office again on Tuesday, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-gov-mcauliffe-says-he-has-broken-us-record-for-restoring-voting-rights/2017/04/27/55b5591a-2b8b-11e7-be51-b3fc6ff7faee_story.html">restored voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians</a> with felony convictions by executive order in 2016, with numerous other states including Florida, Kentucky, Iowa following his lead and rolling back their strict felony disenfranchisement laws. </p><p>And when Democrats won back control of Virginia's state legislature in 2019, they quickly went to work making it easier to vote. </p><div type="image" title="Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin , left, and his wife Suzanne, second from left, greet supporters during a rally in Chesterfield, Va., Monday, Nov. 1, 2021." height="1000" width="2000" msid="87542257" hostid="261"></div><h2>Virginia Republicans won under rules shaped by Democrats. </h2><p>In April 2020, Gov. Ralph Northam <a href="https://www.governor.virginia.gov/newsroom/all-releases/2020/april/headline-856055-en.html">signed a slew of bills</a> to repeal the state's previous strict voter identification law, automatically register Virginians to vote when they do business at motor vehicle offices, establish 45 days of early in-person voting, allow absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to three days after the election, and made Election Day a state holiday. Republicans voted against the bills with the exception of the absentee voting extension.</p><p>This year, Virginia Democrats went further <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/02/26/971366621/virginia-is-poised-to-approve-its-own-voting-rights-act">in passing a state-level Voting Rights Act</a> that enshrines new civil rights protections into law. </p><p>"Virginia has made a number of significant strides to make their election process more accessible and more secure. And I think that should give folks even greater confidence in the integrity of Virginia elections," David Levine, a former election official in Richmond, Virginia and election integrity fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told Insider.</p><p>In New Jersey too, Gov. Phil Murphy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-jersey-governors-race-phil-murphy-jack-ciattarelli-live-results-2021-11">nearly lost to his Republican opponent</a> in a nail-bitingly close election after <a href="https://www.nj.com/news/2021/03/murphy-just-made-it-easier-to-vote-in-nj-amid-national-voting-rights-debate-hes-backed-by-stacey-abrams.html">signing a bill establishing 10 days of in-person early voting</a> in the state earlier this year.  </p><p>And next door in Pennsylvania, where some Republicans <a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-act-77-lawsuits-20211011.html">are now trying to undo the expansion of no-excuse mail voting</a> they passed almost entirely along party lines in 2019, the GOP <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/11/02/us/elections/results-pennsylvania.html">won two key statewide judicial races</a>, including a state Supreme court election, with mail voting. </p><p>Tuesday's election results <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/there-is-no-evidence-that-voting-by-mail-gives-one-party-an-advantage/">confirm a wealth of academic research</a>, including <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/14/new-research-undercuts-idea-that-absentee-voting-changes-2020-benefited-democrats/">of the 2020 election</a>, that such reforms can boost turnout but don't substantially favor either party. </p><p>"One of the things that I'm hopeful occurs is that people recognize that trying to limit right <keyword id="11940459" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="voting-rights" source="Orion">voting rights</keyword>, trying to threaten the integrity of the legitimacy of elections themselves, and trying to cast false aspersions about the elections process is not only bad for democracy, but...bad politically, too," Levine said. "Perhaps I am naive, but I would like to think that strategies that reinforce democracy are strategies that are worth pursuing right by major political actors."</p><div type="image" title="New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, second from right, and his wife Tammy Murphy talk with poll workers before voting in Red Bank, N.J., Tuesday, June 8, 2021." height="1000" width="2000" msid="87542258" hostid="261"></div><h2>Neither party can bet on high turnout to win. </h2><p>Tuesday's results also continue to show that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/upshot/nonvoters-2020-presidential-election.html">high voter turnout doesn't necessarily benefit Democrats</a>, as the GOP base has taken on more blue-collar and rural voters who turn out to vote less reliably than college-educated whites. </p><p>"There are folks who believe that higher turnout is politically beneficial to them, and maybe there are other folks that believe lower voter turnout is politically beneficial to them," Levine said. "And I'm hopeful that these elections are just the latest to indicate that that's a fallacy." </p><p>Democrats' election losses and closer-than-expected wins weren't because their voters didn't show up: McAuliffe won over 190,000 more votes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/virginia-governor-election-gillespie-northam">than Northam in 2017</a>, and Murphy <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-jersey-governors-race-phil-murphy-jack-ciattarelli-live-results-2021-11">earned over 100,000 more votes on Tuesday</a> than in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-jersey-general-elections">his 2017 gubernatorial run.</a></p><p>But Republican voters, motivated by <a href="https://www.vox.com/2021/11/3/22761425/joe-biden-approval-virginia-new-jersey">dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden</a> and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-youngkin-virginia-republican-victory-voter-policy-education-economy-trump-2021-11">by local issues like education in places like Virginia</a>, showed up in far greater numbers. </p><p>In Virginia, Glenn Youngkin won 85% of <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-presidential-election-2020-live-vote-counts-results-2020">Trump's 2020 vote share in the state</a> while McAuliffe won 66% of Biden's. And in New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli won 64% <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-jersey-presidential-election-2020-live-vote-counts-results-2020">of Trump's 2020 vote share</a> in the state as Murphy won 48% of Biden's. </p><p>In stark contrast to Trump's defeat in November 2020, Republicans responded to Tuesday's election <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-republicans-silent-voter-fraud-claims-youngkin-virginia-election-2021-11">with nary a peep about the election being corrupted by voter fraud</a>, no complaints about Virginia's new voting laws undermining election integrity and being unfair to the GOP, or even vague pronouncements about the need to address "irregularities" or "restore faith" in the electoral process. </p><p>"I don't pretend to be an expert on Virginia voting law, I can say it was a free and fair election in Virginia. Virginia's set up a system that seems to be working," top GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?515873-1/senator-graham-holds-news-conference-democrats-spending-bill&amp;livelive">said at a Thursday press conference</a> on Capitol Hill. </p><p>Now it remains to be seen whether successful Republicans like Youngkin, who stopped short of calling the 2020 election stolen but <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/08/politics/glenn-youngkin-virginia-governor-race-trump-2020-election/index.html">campaigned on bolstering election integrity</a> and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/05/youngkin-virginia-governor-election-audit-machines-515166">floated an audit of all the states' voting equipment</a>, get in the way of their own party's clear success under more expansive voting rules. </p><p><em>Bryan Metzger contributed reporting. </em></p>

Republican victors on Tuesday likely benefited from laws making voting easier that the GOP opposed

<ul class="summary-list"><li>I came out as a trans woman in 2020. The next year, I traveled across America to find myself.</li><li>The desert has a particularly therapeutic quality for me. There, I recognize just how much anxiety I carry in public.</li></ul><p>I came out as a trans woman in 2020. I traveled across America traversing the barren deserts of the West to find myself — to find <em>Victoria, </em>the new woman I was becoming — in 2021. Now, as I try to settle down into a normal life, one lived as myself in a normal little house with a normal desk job and normal worries, I cannot shake the feeling that I need to escape again.</p><p>I do truly love to visit the desert; it has a therapeutic quality for me. On my travels in 2021, I drove my van all across the country, sleeping in it on mountaintops, generally disappearing from the grid, and aimlessly discovering lands in national forests for fun. I was as self-sufficient as I could be, living off crates of food and gallon-jugs of water stored inside my mobile bedroom, knowing that anything I could get myself into, <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/41563/disaster-on-cuyama-peak-how-i-nearly-destroyed-my-van-alone-in-the-wilderness">I could get myself out of</a>. </p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott's white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert under the starry sky." height="5891" width="3933" msid="90579048" hostid="261"></div><p>I recently moved to Reno, Nevada, for the same reasons I fell in love with the desert. Two hours from my house, down the self-proclaimed Loneliest Highway in America, is one of the final respites of dark skies in the 21st century; it's a 245-mile stretch of unpreserved, unimportant land bordered by a military bombing range and dotted with some forgotten ghost towns. </p><p>Unlike most other dark sky sites remaining in the country — such as the beautiful Gila National Forest of New Mexico, or the environmentally important Big Bend National Park in Texas — this stretch of land on US 50 remains so gloriously free of light pollution simply isn't worth doing anything with. </p><p>Unlike the federally-recognized lands where the full extent of the Milky Way still shines bright, these desert plains and mountain ranges wedged between the neon-lit casinos of Reno and the Great Basin National Park are largely desolate. Traffic headed West from Utah generally takes I-80 through the Northern half of the state, and travelers from Reno to Vegas use US 95. </p><p>US 50 is for people nowhere to go and no one to see. </p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott's white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert." height="1367" width="2048" msid="90579052" hostid="261"></div><p>The last eastward expedition I took, I drove until the highway signs threatened 57 miles until next service. I found the next turnoff, chose a dirt road, and headed north, unaware of what I would find. At first, I felt the calm of the desert at its finest. I'd picked a great road because there was nary a soul to be seen; every time I stepped out of the van and shut off the clattering diesel, the only sound in the entire world was my own breathing.</p><p>As the skies grew more and more threatening, a slight feeling of unease gnawed at me. I ignored it until I was miles deep down soft clay roads and rain pattered on the windshield. </p><p>For once in my anxious life, my worries were justified. If it poured now — as it was starting to — I'd be stuck roughly 40 miles from the highway, sunk into the clay. I hadn't passed a single soul since I left the pavement two hours before, and cell signal was nonexistent. </p><p>There were two brief moments of realization as I raced to turn my van around. One: I am such an anxious person that I cannot distinguish a valid gut feeling from the background radiation of my nervous existence. Two: I must beat the rain. </p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott's white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert." height="1367" width="2048" msid="90579053" hostid="261"></div><p>I went to the Grand Canyon last year. It's stunning beyond what photos or words can convey, and its enormity is beyond what I could process. But it never felt <em>special </em>like the desert does in my mind. I had an appreciation for the beauty of it, but I didn't feel the cathartic relaxation I do when I arrive at an unremarkable desert plain somewhere off of the uninhabited stretches of US 50. </p><p>As I stood there among other tourists, I felt the same surface-level anxieties I feel every day. They only abated slightly when I walked out onto a rock overhanging the cliff edge, letting myself feel a fear greater than the ever-present dread I have of other people.</p><p>That's because as long as anyone is around, whether I'm at the Grand Canyon or in the coffee shop, I'm scared to be <em>me </em>in the world we live in. I only realize that the fear is there at all when it finally lifts; it's omnipresent and all-consuming, because I've lived with it for what feels like my entire life. </p><p>Only out in the desert completely alone, finally free of it, can I see the burden I've been dragging around.</p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott and her white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert." height="1367" width="2048" msid="90579055" hostid="261"></div><p>When I came out as a trans woman, I ascribed this constant dread to being early on in my transition and worrying I was failing at whatever performance of gender seemed beyond my grasp. I'm now two years in, happier with how I look and more satisfied with my life than ever before, but I'm also less certain that the dread will ever fade.<em> </em></p><p>Existing as a transfemme in 2022's America, constantly defending against attacks <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/nearly-240-anti-lgbtq-bills-filed-2022-far-targeting-trans-people-rcna20418">on our personhood</a> and our <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/conspiracy-theorist-alex-jones-show-rep-marjorie-taylor-greene-calls-violent-physical">ability to exist in society as ourselves</a>, feels like I'm doomed to constant paranoia and waiting for the other shoe to drop. When will someone decide I'm the next convenient target, and what will I do to stop them?</p><p>Of course, it's never happened. Despite the fact that you could tell the time by how frequently I've been clocked as a trans woman since moving to Reno, no one has <em>done </em>anything about it. I tell myself that I'm probably being melodramatic and making my own self-obsession seem like a valid concern, especially when so much <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/us/black-transgender-women-attacks-trnd/index.html">violence against trans women happens to women of color</a>.</p><p>But I've been bitten by my own self-doubt before. I drove 40 miles into a thunderstorm, writing my fears off as the manifestation of clinical anxiety, and then it rained. </p><p>If you can't tell whether the distant clouds are going to build into a storm, is it foolish to fear them? Or is it simply the safest thing to do?</p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott's white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert under the starry sky." height="3798" width="5690" msid="90579057" hostid="261"></div><p>Rihanna's "S&amp;M" blasted through the speakers of my van as I raced away from the encroaching clouds, passing the ruins of some old mining town in the remote sands off of US 50 with about 10 miles to until I hit the pavement. I'd reached a moment of fight-or-flight, and I'd chosen to fight <em>by</em> flight. I didn't have the hubris to take on God in the shadow of His mountains under a pouring sky, but I figured I could outrun Him.</p><p>I floored it across unimproved mining roads, wet bits of clay bouncing off my van as the sky darkened, and my body had never felt so nimble. All of my fears about the worst-case scenario had come to fruition as my wipers flicked away rain<em>, </em>and I was booking it down roads I'd only ever seen once in my life, frantically scrambling through dried riverbeds and power-sliding my van through corners I couldn't see around. I was at the limits of what a 26-year-old woman in a 26-year-old van could accomplish.</p><p>But I was calm, humming along with Rihanna at 50 mph as I dodged eroded shoulders and wayward boulders. All my fear evaporated when one goal became clear: Go. My van, my safety, and my ability to make it out of here were suddenly between God and my right foot, and I had faith in my right foot. </p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott's white 1995 Toyota Hiace in the desert." height="1367" width="2048" msid="90579059" hostid="261"></div><p>There was still freedom in living in the vacuum of desolation, even when it could mean my demise; there was no transphobia in a thunderstorm. The only part of being Victoria Scott that mattered in that moment was how fast I could drive. </p><p>I want to control my destiny more than anything. I cannot stand walking to the bar down the street in fear, trying to figure out which of the group of men that just called me a slur I need to fear the most. Constantly evaluating and adapting threat models to every moment of my life feels necessary, yet I have no proof it actually is. I'm staring at clouds I can't judge yet.</p><p>Yet I'm <em>so </em>tired of being called brave for taking hormones and getting out of bed every day. I can do valiant things, but dealing with the base realities of my existence is not bravery. I'm not facing everyday life with courage. I just want to get my damn coffee and hang out with my friends at a bar, because "Victoria Scott" is neither a statement nor an inherently political one. </p><div type="image" title="Victoria Scott in the desert." height="1367" width="2048" msid="90579060" hostid="261"></div><p>I want to engage with my fear on <em>my </em>terms. If people hate me, they should do it for reasons of my own making; if a rogue low-pressure zone wants to flood me into oblivion, it should be because I drove myself into its path on purpose. </p><p>I'm not sure any of this taught me a lesson or a helpful note — at least, not one that can change the landscape of the country I live in overnight. I don't know how to fix the broken political system through which we funnel hate and death; I would simply like to pass and stop thinking about my gender in the damn coffee shop. I'd like to stop throwing myself into dangerous situations, either intentionally or unwittingly, just to feel like I have control over my own life again. </p><p>Above all, I only want to be brave when I choose courage, because no one deserves a life where every day is a fight to stay alive.</p>

The desert and fear: How a trip to nowhere showed me the depths of my anxiety as a trans woman in America

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/albargan/14529665131/in/photolist-o8WkeM-k6vEE-84C4T6-o7cdoQ-iv9HCD-8pSuyk-nRKrz7-azpvoH-72YHyk-6Ts5wG-5hNdmk-3FkxS-3FkxR-7uuJHg-cwxgqS-bCvmNL-5xD91C-949KdS-aycath-ay9tHH-cwxXB1-eE1KC-5kSLKT-fFMZEf-7dCwNB-9RHqwU-oYWK9h-qZbhtW-3muS2P-bX3BhT-5Hz22M-5As2tQ-5Hz2bz-6nFPUL-5Zpzmc-aiykCR-j7UgkQ-scdG3c-6bGcfG-aziGho-7dCwZk-7dCxax-7dCwVp-7dCx6v-7dGqVy-duXhZK-9V2BdX-9kNGzC-pUr67e-a6rV6k">Abdullah AlBargan/Flickr</a></span></p><p class="caption">Is the tide turning on better-burger chains?</p></div><p></p></div></div>The hamburger is the quintessential American food.</p><p>It has reigned supreme in the fast-food industry for decades, as evidenced by the success of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/shake-shack-growth-2014-12">Shake Shack</a>, Five Guys, and Smashburger.</p><p>But it seems the burger might be past its prime. </p><p>American tastes are turning toward exotic flavors and cuisines not normally associated with American food.</p><p>"<span>Americans increasingly are looking for real flavors," <span>Kara Nielsen, culinary director of brand-building firm Sterling Rice Group, told <a href="http://www.qsrmagazine.com/reports/9-fast-food-trends-2015?page=2">QSR Magazine</a>. </span></span></p><p>The success of Chipotle is a clear indicator, rising from a regional Colorado chain to global burrito behemoth in little over a decade. Fast-food chains are noticing, implementing <a href="http://time.com/money/3825215/fast-food-spices-sriracha-ghost-pepper-trends/">their own flavorful twists</a> on standard items in an attempt to grab a hold of the trend.</p><p>Even so, the amount of burger chains featured on Zagat's recent <a href="https://www.zagat.com/b/the-hottest-fast-casual-chains-in-14-u.s.-cities">national fast-casual survey</a> is surprisingly low: only three out of 14 restaurants named focus on burgers. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Hollis Johnson/Business Insider</span></p><p class="caption">The Tex-Mex chain Chipotle has exploded onto the restaurant scene in the past decade, with nary a burger in sight.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>So, what's happening? Is it perhaps better-burger market saturation?</p><p>"<span>The challenge [burger] concepts will face over the next few years is that this is a one-product show right now, and there may be a time when people might get tired of it," says Mark Godward, president of WD SRE, a restaurant operations and consulting firm, <a href="http://www2.qsrmagazine.com/articles/features/134/gourmet_burger-1.phtml">told QSR</a>.</span></p><p><span>Of those surveyed for Zagat, <a href="https://www.zagat.com/b/whats-the-next-shake-shack-our-first-ever-fast-casual-survey-results-are-in">51% report</a> consuming burgers most frequently - but Mexican food is catching up, at 44%. <br /></span></p><p><span>And New York City, birthplace of the celebrated Shake Shack, is churning out new fast-casual chains that could one day rival the Danny Meyer-founded burger chain. </span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Facebook/Num Pang</span></p><p class="caption">Num Pang's spicy and fresh banh mi sandwiches are a far cry from a classic burger, filled with cilantro, carrots, and chili mayo.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><span>Num Pang, a Cambodian-style sandwich restaurant, opened in 2009 and is enjoying enormous success, with six locations in the city and two more planned for this year. </span></p><p><span>Luke's Lobster, started by a former investment banker, opened the same year and has now expanded to six states and Washington, DC, raking in over <a href="http://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/lukes-lobster-from-craigslist-to-crab-rolls.html">$11 million in 2013</a>.</span></p><p><span>And DC-based Sweetgreen, offering healthy salads made with sustainable ingredients, has grown from one location to 33 in the past eight years and shows no signs of stopping. </span></p><p><span>Are burgers going away? Definitely not; the burger is an American classic. But as <a href="http://nrn.com/blog/why-chanticleer-holdings-buying-burger-concepts">an article from National Restaurant News</a> points out, the burgeoning better-burger industry is stronger regionally than nationally. Why? Burgers are a distinctly American food, and each region in the country has its own tastes and preferences.</span></p><p><span>But Americans are looking for new foreign flavors across the board. </span></p><p><span> </span><span>Perhaps the better-burger industry has reached "peak burger" saturation as more exotic foods take hold of the fast-casual market. So while the burger is here to stay, it may not be at the top much longer. </span></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-changes-burger-fast-food-hamburger-cheeseburger-2015-8">McDonald's is changing its burgers to make them tastier </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="swcmh5djqSkx7S78oTVGWeqfuzK_Fu-P" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Watch out, Shake Shack - the future of fast food isn't about burgers

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="http://www.gettyimages.com/license/604493160">Steve Jennings/Getty</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>The revolt by Google employees over an AI cloud project that helps the Department of <keyword id="6354810" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="defense">Defense</keyword> analyze drone footage has changed the company's course on military contracts. </strong></li><li><strong>It also put Diane Greene, Google cloud chief, in an awkward position.</strong></li><li><strong>Google hopes to win big, lucrative government contracts for its cloud computing business, giving it a foothold alongside Amazon and Microsoft. </strong></li><li><strong>But, thanks to the employee uproar, Greene and the rest of Google's management appear to have let their workers push them around.</strong></li></ul><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You can't blame Google employees, who thought they were working for an Internet search giant, for putting their foot down over having their work potentially co-opted into modernizing weapons for the Pentagon. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They signed on to work on Chrome, Android or Gmail, not on technology to assist military drones hovering over battlefields. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Following a months-long internal revolt about Google's involvement to providing artificial-intelligence tools for military uses, management last week bowed to pressure and promised, in its way, to never help the military build weapons.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While the Google peaceniks scored a victory, Google may have made a moral choice that could doom the company to  forever be an also-ran in the enormously important cloud computing market.</span></p><h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">Management backs down</span></h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The decision </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-diane-greene-honor-military-contract-no-follow-ons-2018-6"><span style="font-weight: 400;">placed Diane Greene, </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">leader of Google's fledgling, but coming-on-strong cloud computing business unit in a difficult situation. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As we previously reported, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Thursday published </span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-principles-ai-tech-2018-6"><span style="font-weight: 400;">a list of governing principles </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">on how the company plans to work with AI technology in the future. Those principles include a promise not to build applications that can be used as weapons or cause harm to humans. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But that wasn't the end. Greene followed Pichai soon after with her own public blog. She clarified that Google would not bail on Project Maven - the project with the Pentagon that caused the uproar and a key feather-in-its-cap contract with the DoD. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But she also promised that Google "will </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">not be pursuing follow on contracts for the Maven project" once the current contractual commitment expired.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"While this means that we will not pursue certain types of government contracts," Greene wrote, "we want to assure our customers and partners that we are still doing everything we can within these guidelines to support our government, the military and our veterans. For example, we will continue to work with government organizations on cybersecurity, productivity tools, healthcare, and other forms of cloud initiatives."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Greene also described the current Maven project as a "limited contract" that Google entered into in September 2017 that "involved drone video footage and low-res object identification using AI" in which "saving lives was the overarching intent."</span></p><h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">When business clashes with employees</span></h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Greene's comments underscore the tricky balance facing Google, particularly in its cloud business, as it seeks to compete with Amazon, Oracle and Microsoft for lucrative government contracts.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">At the same time that demand for cloud and AI services skyrocket, Google must placate a workforce with strong opinions on the ethical applications of these technologies. As it turns out, they are also unafraid to buck management when they disagree. </span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Justin Sullivan/Getty Images</span></p><p class="caption">Google CEO Sundar Pichai</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos must be tickled by Google's decision not to vigorously compete for Pentagon projects that don't align with Google employees' ethics.  </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Amazon's cloud services have worked with US intelligence services for three years there's been nary a peep from his employees. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Had Google's managers decided to defy the wishes of their workers, the military might have still viewed the company's workforce as a security risk. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A senior defense official </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-04/google-staff-ai-revolt-puts-pentagon-cloud-deals-in-jeopardy"><span style="font-weight: 400;">told Bloomberg </span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">that because of the political views of Google's employees, the company came to the bidding process with "baggage." The official added that this made the company "less attractive as a partner."  </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Facebook/Life at Google</span></p><p class="caption">Google employees</p></div><p></p></div></div>Just how much of a loss is this market to Google's cloud business? T</span><span style="font-weight: 400;">he Feds spend </span><a href="https://federalnewsradio.com/budget/2017/05/federal-spending-on-technology-could-reach-95-billion-in-2018/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">$95 billion on technology a year</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, with the Pentagon spending nearly half of that</span><a href="https://about.bgov.com/blog/pentagon-spending-tech-may-peak-46-4b-2019/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">, $46.4 billion.</span></a></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now consider this: Google's claim to fame over Amazon has been its state-of-the-art AI tech. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And in the shadow of this decision to curtail Google's involvement with the Pentagon for AI tech, Amazon is on the verge of securing a massive $10 billion contract from the Pentagon. This is a hotly contested contract that is looking likely to be awarded to Amazon, a single cloud computer vendor, s<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-trump-wins-pentagon-contract-2018-4">sources have told Business Insider. </a></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But other vendors including Oracle <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-schmidt-google-department-of-defense-deals-2018-4">and Google </a>are already getting into position to file formal protests and demand the contract go to more than one player.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Even if such protests prevail and the Pentagon uses multiple cloud providers for its $10 billion prize, Google new position on military contracts, on top of worries over its workforce, might see it left out of the prize.</span></p><h2><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bigger implications for Google's cloud</span></h2><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cloud companies must comply with stringent regulations on safety and security in order to get a Pentagon contract. Contractors doing business with the Department of Defense must also comply with the same stringent security standards.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While Google may successfully certify its cloud to these standards, all of this turmoil is nerve wracking not just on the DoD but also its contractors, who may feel safer going with the same cloud providers the Pentagon uses. It's difficult for Google to be simultaneously serving the defense industry, while kicking them in the shins for what they do.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters/Lindsey Wasson</span></p><p class="caption">Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos</p></div><p></p></div></div>And the DoD ecosystem is also a bellweather. If a cloud provider is secure enough for the Pentagon, other companies feel assured that this cloud will protect their data, too.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">On the plus for Google, it is in a unique position to be able to take this stance. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Certainly, Google is unlikely to feel much financial pain over the loss of the military contracts. Thanks to the company's advertising bonanza, hardly anyone will miss the measly few billion dollars they would have generated.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"While (the Project Maven controversy) is a headline risk,"  Dan Ives, an analyst with GBH Insights, told Business Insider, "we do not view this as significantly moving the needle for Google."</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">And yet, Google's goal has been to make its cloud business as big or bigger than its ad business by as soon as 2020,<a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/urs-holze-talks-google-cloud-beat-search-2015-11"> execs have previously said.</a></span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What may be even harder to calculate is the loss of prestige to Google cloud. </span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Critics of the protest and Google's decision to back down will ask what was ultimately achieved?</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">By all indications, Amazon, IBM and Oracle are lining up to supply AI and cloud tech to the military. Google's backtracking has given conservatives fodder to attack the company for not helping to protect the nation.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In an opinion piece, Michael Bloomberg, the media mogul and former New York City mayor </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-06-06/google-s-decision-to-ditch-project-maven-is-a-grave-error"><span style="font-weight: 400;">lashed out at Google for not contributing to the nation's security</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. He wrote: "One of the roles of senior management is to do the right thing, even if it provokes criticism. That's especially critical when our collective security is at stake." </span></p><p class="tagline">Get the latest Google stock price<a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/stock/GOOG-Quote"> here.</a></p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-duplex-home-assistant-full-conversations-make-appointments-reservations-2018-5">Google's new AI can impersonate a human to schedule appointments and make reservations</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

Google's employee uproar has forced cloud boss Diane Green to ditch a lucrative business - and Amazon must be loving it

28. Victoria's Secret is Out

2. Donald and Ivana's Affair (with Pizza Hut)

<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div><em>The following post is an excerpt from the book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451687753/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1451687753&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=SCAXFKQ2VR3EM7XP">Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone</a> by Marky Ramone.</em><br><br>Every time I ran into [my friend] Dee Dee at CBGB in the winter of '78, he told me I ought to join the Ramones. As if you could just do that, like joining the Y or the ACLU.</br></br></p>
<p>He said the band was having trouble with Tommy, their drummer, and I was actually a little upset to hear that. I didn't want the original lineup of the Ramones to break up. I was a fan. But I didn't put much stock in what Dee Dee said. He was a nut and known to exaggerate.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It takes a nut to be involved with two psychotic women at once. About a year before, he was living in an apartment with Connie, a violent stalker, prostitute, and drug addict. Dee Dee was also having a fling with Nancy Spungen, the schizophrenic girlfriend of Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious. When she came home to find Dee Dee in bed with Nancy, Connie grabbed an empty beer bottle, smashed it, and stabbed Dee Dee in the ass with the jagged edge.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But when Johnny Ramone asked to meet with me about joining the band, the whole proposition turned real. I arrived at Max's with Marion, and we took seats across from John and Roxy in a booth up front. I was impressed with John. He seemed to have a handle on the Ramones' business matters and a vision of how to get the band through this difficult transition. Joey wasn't exactly up to it, and Dee Dee would have sent the whole thing into the toilet.</p>
<p dir="ltr">John laid down some rules. Maybe they were more like guidelines.<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Whatever they were, the Ramones didn't get high before playing. Me neither. Dress on and off the stage was leather jackets, jeans, and sneakers. I was already wearing all that and had been forever. Dee Dee always counts off the songs. Definitely. I know. We don't go away on tour for more than a month. Sounds good. We travel together, and girlfriends are welcome. Marion can come. Thanks.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The only confusing thing was the audition. There would be one at the Ramones' rehearsal studio. But John discussed the rules and regs like my being a Ramone was already a done deal. Then I thought, Whatever they call it, I'll blow it away.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>On our way out of Max's, Marion and I put our heads together. We had heard through the grapevine that the Ramones already auditioned several drummers, maybe more. Marion's take was the Ramones knew from the start that I had the experience they needed, but in the back of their minds they preferred a nobody they could boss around. It was hard to get all that in the same package, so over time they realized I was their man.</p>
<p dir="ltr">From what I had heard, Dee Dee wasn't the only one rooting for me. Tommy was, too. In fact, Tommy was the one who first suggested me. Beyond whatever had happened between him and the other Ramones, Tommy still loved the band and wanted it to continue. What better way to do it than with an experienced professional drummer who knew the ropes?</p>
<p dir="ltr">When I walked into Performance Studios on East Twentieth Street in Manhattan and sat down, Tommy was sitting at a drum set behind the set I would be using. It was an unusual way to run an audition, a show, or anything musical unless maybe you were in the Grateful Dead. I asked him what all this was about.</p>
<p dir="ltr">"Don't worry about it," Tommy said. "Just in case you need a little help."</p>
<p dir="ltr">"Thanks," I said. "I got it."</p>
<p dir="ltr">I shot Tommy a little smile. I really did have it. The songs "I Don't Care," "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker," and "Blitzkrieg Bop" were on the jukebox at CBGB, on my stereo, and in my world. I had listened to them again <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">before coming down, and that was enough. It wasn't like learning "From a Dry Camel." But they were great songs, and I was like Sheena and her friends-all hopped up and ready to go. Even so, I appreciated Tommy's concern. He literally had my back.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Dee Dee counted "One, two, three, four!" and we launched into "I Don't Care." It was one of the purest rock-and-roll songs written after the year 1962. With a deliberate, powerful beat underpinning a progression based on E, F, G, A, it was a song a novice could learn on but never tire of playing: not caring about the world or the girl was the entire message served up in two lines, repeated over and over like a punk mantra.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The song clocked in at a minute forty seconds. We were locked in as a band within the first ten of those seconds. Thirty seconds in, the audition-if there ever was one-was over. We were relaxed and smiling. Rehearsal had begun.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I had my work cut out for me. Recording for the new album, Road to Ruin, was set to begin in less than three weeks. We'd be doing shows immediately after. We were scheduled to do fourteen songs for the album, and the Ramones' live set was twenty-four songs. <br><br>So I had almost forty songs to learn, minus the three for the audition, in about the length of a honeymoon. The Ramones handed me a pair of cassette demo tapes with all the songs. I stopped in at Sam Ash on Forty-Eighth Street and picked up a set of drum pads. <br><br><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>When I got back to the apartment on Ocean Avenue, I hooked up a pair of headphones to the boom box I had gotten with the Voidoids advance. Right next to it, I set up the pads. And that's where I spent most of the next eighteen days.</br></br></br></br></p>
<p dir="ltr">My favorite song on the Road to Ruin demo was "I Wanna Be Sedated." It was catchy and huge even in stripped-down form on a cheap cassette tape. <br><br>It was pop but without sacrificing hardness. Lyrically, being sedated could mean any number of things, but at its simplest level it was about needing a drink. The song captured being on the road just about perfectly. Of course, I had never been on the road with the Ramones, but I would be finding out what that was like soon enough.</br></br></p>
<p dir="ltr">I also really liked "I Just Want to Have Something to Do" and "Go Mental." "Mental" was faster than most Ramones songs-and faster than<span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">most songs, period. It felt like what it was about: sitting in a hospital bed and losing your mind. The album's one cover song, "Needles and Pins," was written by Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono back in 1963. <br><br>The original single was done by Jackie DeShannon, but the Searchers had more success with it the following year, giving it an early-Beatles feel. The chord changes and subject matter-heartbreak and holding back tears-were right up the Ramones' alley.</br></br></span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div>We recorded at Media Sound in Manhattan. I was prepared, but everyone there totally expected that of me. I understood my role from the get-go. I was not a ringer, mercenary, hired gun, or session player. I was a member of the band who could nonetheless deliver what a ringer, merce- nary, hired gun, or session player could deliver. But I wanted to take it a step further. I wanted to help take the band's sound to the next level.</p>
<p dir="ltr">There was a lot of heavy competition out there. Not so much from the punk bands. I considered the Ramones the originators of punk, so in that sense there was no one to compete with. But the Ramones were a punk rock band with the emphasis on rock. In rock, there were a lot of big boys with heavy drums: AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, and Van Halen. Van Halen were the new kids on the block, and someone the Ramones might not even have considered. Yet their self-titled album had just come out and it was worth considering.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Van Halen stood out from the corporate rock clones being churned out monthly by the music industry. Eddie Van Halen loved Page, Beck, and Clapton but squeezed his influences out of his black-and-white-striped red Charvel with a new, wild hammer-on style of playing that was melodic, smooth, and raucous all at the same time. Alex Van Halen's drums were huge, sounded huge, and were locked in perfectly with his brother's play- ing as well as bassist Michael Anthony's. The band didn't take itself very seriously. They were kind of campy, thanks especially to lead singer David Lee Roth, who brought his Las Vegas A-game to the show. The album was a fun listen and made me think.</p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p dir="ltr">The idea for Road to Ruin, I thought, was not to be Van Halen or anyone else. The idea was to be a heavier Ramones. We had our fans and would keep aiming to please them. And we had our punk/new wave <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">competition-the Clash, the Police, the Cars. But there was no harm in letting the metalheads and all their cousins know that the Ramones could rock a stadium if they needed to.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr">To begin with, I tuned my snare a lot tighter than Tommy's and used larger cymbals. I wanted to get more projection and impact from the sound. There were a bunch of other factors involving microphone placement, levels, and even the way I struck the kit that would give the songs a bolder, more muscular feel. The beauty of the situation was that I had a great producer who worked closely with me to get that sound: Tommy. He hadn't just passed me a golden baton. He was clearing the track for me. Tommy was there alongside me every step of the way.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The very first song we tracked was "Sedated." I speeded up the tempo a bit from the demo. The song itself didn't feel right sedated. It had to be manic and in need of sedation. I added a few fills here and there that helped distinguish the parts, plus a critical fill in the break. It sounded nice when we did it. Then it jumped out of the monitors and had all of us smiling.</p>
<p dir="ltr">During recording, I noticed Joey had a funny habit. He would touch a spot somewhere-the mixing console, a chair, a microphone stand-and then touch it again. And again. And again. It didn't matter. His vocals were great, and he didn't need to do them again and again and again. It was just a little weird.</p>
<p dir="ltr">I<span style="line-height: 1.5em;">got to meet and talk to the full Ramones entourage, including Seymour Stein of Sire Records. Seymour was already my boss from the Voidoids, but he especially loved the Ramones. He appreciated the way they took the chord changes and vocal approach of the doo-wop era and spit it back out as their own-harder, faster, and a little warped. Seymour was knowledgeable, easygoing, and quiet.</span></p>
<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div></p>
<p dir="ltr">His wife made up for the quiet part. Linda Stein was a short, loud, opinionated, outgoing quintessential New Yorker. She started out as a schoolteacher-probably one you would never want to be caught throwing a spitball at. She learned the music business from her husband, and the Ramones were lucky to have her managing their business.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Danny Fields was the other half of the Ramones management team.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Danny had started out doing publicity for the Doors and later was instrumental in signing the Stooges and MC5 to Elektra. In 1975, he brought the Ramones to the attention of Sire. Danny was the hands-on manager for the group, plying connections at rock magazines, booking venues, getting the band radio interviews. Together, the Steins and Danny Fields spearheaded a professional organization behind what looked like four punks in street clothes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It was this professional team that asked me about changing my name. I was off to a good start, but we weren't going to be Marc Bell and the Ramones. My new last name was a done deal, but I needed a first name that ended in a long-e sound. Rocky Ramone was either too suggestive of the Sylvester Stallone movie or made me sound like a gangster. Timmy, Jimmy, and Willie Ramone and a dozen others made me puke. And just adding a y to Marc came out to Marcy, which was not only a girl's name but happened to be the name of the discount store Marcy's, across the street from Erasmus High School. The fewer reminders of high school, the better.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So I said, "Let's go with Marky, with a k." My grandmother called me Marky as a kid, and the name was made famous by Marky Maypo. In the fifties and sixties, Maypo was one of the big three hot cereals, along with Farina and Wheatena. Mickey Mantle was a pitchman for Maypo, literally crying if he didn't get a bowl of the stuff. Marky Maypo was the goofy, whinny, cartoon mascot wearing a cowboy hat. For the sake of nostalgia, I could live with that. So Marky, like the cereal, stuck.</p>
<p dir="ltr">There was no need to change my name legally. My bills would still come to Marc Bell. And so would my paychecks. The Ramones team let me know that I would be receiving a nice check every week, on time, from our accountant Ira Herzog. The check would come whether we were on the road or off. When we toured, there would be extra per diem payments based on the shows we did. This was all a load off my mind and off Marion's. Moving into Manhattan was on the horizon.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451687753/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=1451687753&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thebusiinsi-20&amp;linkId=SCAXFKQ2VR3EM7XP">PUNK ROCK BLITZKRIEG: MY LIFE AS A RAMONE</a> by Marky Ramone and Richard Herschlag.  Copyright © 2014 by Mark Steven Bell. Published by Touchstone, a Division of Simon &amp; Schuster, Inc. Reprinted by permission.</em></p>

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