Writing about Life in the digital age

Let's begin by synchronizing our watches. We are in the Eastern time zone.

The legislative session is over, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is about to give his wrap-up press conference. The reporters trudge into the gallery, grumbling, as reporters like to do, about traffic and editors. Someone gives the "10 seconds" signal, and Trudeau strides to the podium. He gives a nod and starts ticking off his accomplishments. The first is self-praise for cutting taxes on the middle class and raising them on the one percent. "We've given nine out of 10 families more money each month to help with the costs of raising their kids," Trudeau says.

Justin Trudeau introduced a bill that would make marijuana legal – but what will that look like, and what will it mean for the U.S.?
It's strange to witness: He speaks in a modulated, indoor voice. His dark hair is a color found in nature. At home, there is a glamorous wife and three photogenic children, still not old enough to warm his seat at next week's G-20 summit or be involved in an espionage scandal.

When Trudeau moves on to his feminist bona fides (women and minorities make up more than half of his Cabinet), he pauses for a moment, but does not lose his train of thought. His words are coherent and will not need to be run through Google Translate when he is done (except if you want to translate his French into English)....

Speaking in early December at a ceremony to honor Harry Reid’s retirement from the US Senate, Hillary Clinton took aim at a target that would have been totally unfamiliar to audiences as recently as the summer of 2016: fake news.

She spoke of “an epidemic” of the stuff that has “flooded social media” over the past year and “can have real-world consequences.”

This was reported largely as commentary on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which had recently led to an alarming armed standoff at DC’s Comet Ping Pong restaurant. But it was also pretty clearly an allusion to her own recently failed presidential campaign, especially because she spoke favorably of the idea of bipartisan legislation to curb foreign propaganda news, arguing that “it is imperative that leaders in both the private and public sector step up to protect our democracy and innocent lives.”...

To run for president, you need to possess a certain je ne sais quoi when it comes to communicating messages that can provoke people to take action.

So regardless of which side of the aisle you sit on, your brand can take a lesson from each of the master marketers who remain in the race. The candidates clearly know how to engage their base.

Below are some of the top strategies and tactics of Decision 2016, which can be applied easily to your organization’s social channels to gain traction and win over some very loyal constituents....

The Dutch inventors say that their machine can filter 95% of ultra-fine particles and 100% of fine particles out of the air. It cleans 80,000 m³ of air per hour within a 300-meter radius and up to a height of 7km.

"It's a large industrial filter about 8 metres long, made of steel ... placed basically on top of buildings and it works like a big vacuum cleaner," said Henk Boersen, a spokesman for the Envinity Group, which unveiled the system at an energy conference in Amsterdam.“ A large column of air will pass through the filter and come out clear,” Boersen told AFP at the conference.

The Envinity Group is a tech start-up that aims to improve the future for people, animals and the environment in a sustainable manner. Many businesses and countries are already interested in the cleaner, according to the group....