The one with the better marketing wins... until-

 This week I'm thinking quite a bit about how people respond to raw data, and facts vs. well-thought out "messages" and marketing. Grant Cardone, the author of 'The 10x Rule' writes about how we can think of everything as sales, and the main goal of anything is to get us to buy. Whether that be to buy into an opinion, a cultural movement, a product, or anything else that man can be swayed unto. Apple has had massive success due to incredible marketing, though I would argue that their products are never going to be first best. It's overpriced garbage once you get a look at specs, reliability, durability, and what it can do in comparison to many many other phones. The thing that makes Apple somewhat unique is how proprietary they have made everything. If Hauwei or Samsung users wanted to use iOS on their system they would have do a lot of legwork to even make it work, including removing the processor from the motherboard on their phone and replacing it with an Apple branded mobile processor. 

And yet, if someone were to try this, most technicians that are 'apple-certified' are trained to tell you it's impossible and would probably be cheaper to just buy an apple device outright. This is so that Apple can continue to win you with their sparkly marketing, and their high recommends even though they haven't even changed anything about their phones for close to 10 years, other than taking away the auxiliary port and complying with EU law by switching to a non-proprietary USB-C port. The fact is, the people that are making the technological strides and leaps are very often spending much less of their budget on marketing, and actually spending their money on engineering. Anybody in business will tell you that this is not such a great idea, as you need to make sales. I would start to consider that it is not so much a failure in business planning, but an investment into the long-term. If we take a look at some of the most wealthy countries, alongside those that are most indebted to other countries, it's very much linked to who houses industry and manufacturing within their borders. The U.S has off-shored everything they can as fast as they can, and what we are left with is insurmountable debt and ghostly dilapidated ghost towns while those in the big cities continue to get fed great marketing and sparkling ads for the next great pair of sunglasses, or new "smart device" and think nothing of where that smart device comes from and who made it. 

All this to nest the current struggles in the middle-east within the frame that looking only at the marketing of an organisation is pitiless and you're probably being lied to. Everybody is evil in war, and especially in the middle-east, war crimes are very practiced and normalized. 

Bitter winds - log 2

 Hope... started to become foreign, as if the furious bite of the bitter winds drove it away, leaving only purple bruised lips behind to make sure I remembered how numb I had come. 

No sign of Luther. Andromeda was moaning softly in her sleeping bag. Our bodies had nearly stopped creating heat, and our stomachs were beginning to shut down, the absence of food creating a void within the three of us. Calix and I shared a sleeping bag. 

But it was not enough. The last hope was the final flare we sent up, but the likelihood of us making it out of here alive was starting to grow as dim as the cloudy sky above us. 

It would be merciful to send a hungry bobcat our way. 

Chapter 1: Deep freeze - log

What no one realizes about lighting a fire in subzero temperatures is that even branches can get frozen, and it's a bit like boiling water. It'll start, but the colder the water is, the harder it is to get hot. In this cold bitter wind, it was more like -30 degrees. The chances of starting an open fire were close to nill, Calix had just gone to create more stitching out of wood fibers to continue the process, Andromeda was on her way back to the river to collect fresh water that flowed underneath the layers of snow and ice we had dug out previously. Today was much colder than it was yesterday. Yesterday we could get a fire going, today we've only failed. Our hands started to feel the cold numbness that slowed down the joints and ligaments in the fingers as we tried again and again to settle in for food, the dry meat that we brought along figuring we'd only be out for a few days was already down to crumbs, and what we had left was a couple cans of fruit that were nothing but ice at this point. One would need to thaw them in order to eat any nutrients and stay remotely warm here. 

Drinking the fruit slop that came out of those cans was like consuming a chunky pear and aluminum-flavored tea, except you could taste the rust and the charcoal carcinogenic blackness through the cans, and the weirdness that fruit has when you freeze and unfreeze it multiple times. None of us knew whether it was safe to eat, but at this point, we were getting desperate. Desperate for warmth. Luther had been gone for what felt like ages, being a hunter and having some gear with us he thought that the best chance was to find a reindeer or moose to facilitate surviving just long enough out here. Sometimes when we were in between sleep and waking we thought we heard the distant cracks of gunshots, seeming to suggest that something was on its way, but he never showed up to get some help to haul the loot, and we had already said that we should keep the campsite as close to us as possible and that those who were out foraging or searching would be able to find the site again based on the smoke from the fire. 

I'm starting to grow afraid.