Driving phone conversations

This post is published in three parts. Please click on the link below for Part 2. For those of us who hold compassion as a central value, and perhaps are actively working to create a more compassionate world, one of the most frustrating and demoralizing experiences is having to deal with uncompassionate people. These are people who, despite being made aware of widespread suffering or of their harmful impact on those around them, seem not to care and to prioritize their own self-interest over the well-being of others. Ironically, though, our frustration with those who are disconnected from their compassion is often precisely what causes us to disconnect from our own compassion. We may struggle to feel charitable, to maintain a sense of goodwill toward these individuals, and we may therefore interact with them in a way that brings about the opposite effect of what we want. For example, perhaps you explain to someone that eating more vegan foods supports the well-being of animals … [Read more...] about Compassion Privilege: Why Caring People Are Sometimes Unkind

Darius Marder ’s Sound of Metal went into 2019’s Toronto International Film Festival without a distributor. Now, a year-and-a-half on, it’s a six-time Oscar nominee and perhaps the most hard-fought of all of this year’s crop of Best Picture candidates. Joe Utichi meets Marder and stars Riz Ahmed and Paul Raci to take stock of a film that transformed its key players in ways they hadn’t expected. They say Oscar loves a narrative, and they don’t come much more inspiring than Sound of Metal ’s. Even before he got his debut feature to set, Darius Marder spent more than a decade honing his tale about a heavy metal drummer and recovering addict who loses his hearing, butting up against the many hard realities of filmmaking that told him a movie like this could not work. As he did it, he learned more and more about deaf culture, and heard moving stories about people pursuing recovery in dedicated deaf sober houses. In Riz Ahmed, he found an actor willing to immerse so fully … [Read more...] about How ‘Sound Of Metal’ Changed Everything For Riz Ahmed, Darius Marder & Paul Raci, Even Before It Earned Six Oscar Nominations

Spotify’s first gadget has landed. Car Thing , a Spotify-only, voice-controlled device for the car, is launching today in limited quantities to invited users. It’s a dedicated, Bluetooth-connected device for controlling Spotify without the need for a phone screen, which seems to be meant for people who drive older cars without built-in infotainment systems or phone connections. Before getting to the device details, let’s focus on the basics. Car Thing is only being released as a “limited product launch,” so you can’t buy one outright. Instead, you can sign up for the waitlist and hope Spotify reaches out. It’s only available for US customers, and you have to subscribe to Spotify Premium to qualify. Another thing to know: if you’re chosen to try Car Thing, the device is free, but you have to pay for shipping. Spotify declined to comment on how many units it’d be giving away. The company’s also billing the gadget as an “exploration,” so it’s unclear how serious the team is about the … [Read more...] about Spotify’s Car Thing debuts as a limited release for selected US users

WooCommerce is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, accounting for almost a third of all online stores . However, while this platform is undoubtedly intuitive, it’s fair to say that its popularity is driven by the sheer amount of plugins that help customize the platform to better meet store owners’ needs . One of the specific pain points for store owners is the default product pages that come with a standard WooCommerce install. In most cases, store owners are looking for new ways to optimize these pages to: Increase sales. Improve the customers’ user experience. Or improve sales-boosting metrics like average order value, conversion rates, and more. Thankfully, with the right plugins, you can extensively customize the WooCommerce product page to improve all of these. By customizing your WooCommerce product pages, you’ll be able to improve your customer experience, provide customers with more useful information, and offer more visually appealing display … [Read more...] about Plugins to Customize WooCommerce Product Pages