title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Cellular telephones are radio transmitters and receivers, much like a walkie-talkie. However, the cell phone communicates only with a repeater inside a nearby cell tower installation. At that installation, the devices take in all cell calls in its geographic area and repeat them out to other cell installations which repeat the signals onward to their destination telephone (either by radio or landline wires). Radio is used also to transmit a caller's voice/data back to the receiver's cell telephone. The two-way duplex phone conversation then exists via these interconnections.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: To make all that work correctly, the system allows automatic increases and decreases in transmitter power (for the individual cell phone and for the tower repeater, too) so that only the minimum transmit power is used to complete and hold the call active, "on", and allows the users to hear and be heard continuously during the conversation. The goal is to hold the call active but use the least amount of transmitting power, mainly to conserve batteries and be efficient. The tower system will sense when a cell phone is not coming in clearly and will order the cell phone to boost transmit power. The user has no control over this boosting; it may occur for a split second or for the whole conversation. If the user is in a remote location, the power boost may be continuous. In addition to carrying voice or data, the cell phone also transmits data about itself automatically, and that is boosted or not as the system detects need.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Encoding of all transmissions ensures that no crosstalk or interference occurs between two nearby cell users. The boosting of power, however, is limited by the design of the devices to a maximum setting. The standard systems are not "high power" and thus can be overpowered by secret systems using much more boosted power that can then take over a user's cell phone. If overpowered that way, a cell phone will not indicate the change due to the secret radio being programmed to hide from normal detection. The ordinary user can not know if their cell phone is captured via overpowering boosts or not. (There are other ways of secret capture that need not overpower, too.)


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Just as a person shouting drowns out someone whispering, the boost in RF watts of power into the cell telephone system can overtake and control that system—in total or only a few, or even only one, conversation. This strategy requires only more RF power, and thus it is more simple than other types of secret control. Power boosting equipment can be installed anywhere there can be an antenna, including in a vehicle, perhaps even in a vehicle on the move. Once a secretly boosted system takes control, any manipulation is possible from simple recording of the voice or data to total blocking of all cell phones in the geographic area.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: A StingRay can be used to identify and track a phone or other compatible cellular data device even while the device is not engaged in a call or accessing data services.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: A Stingray closely resembles a portable cellphone tower. Typically, law enforcement officials place the Stingray in their vehicle with a compatible computer software. The Stingray acts as a cellular tower to send out signals to get the specific device to connect to it. Cell phones are programmed to connect with the cellular tower offering the best signal. When the phone and Stingray connect, the computer system determines the strength of the signal and thus the distance to the device. Then, the vehicle moves to another location and sends out signals until it connects with the phone. When the signal strength is determined from enough locations, the computer system centralizes the phone and is able to find it.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Cell phones are programmed to constantly search for the strongest signal emitted from cell phone towers in the area. Over the course of the day, most cell phones connect and reconnect to multiple towers in an attempt to connect to the strongest, fastest, or closest signal. Because of the way they are designed, the signals that the Stingray emits are far stronger than those coming from surrounding towers. For this reason, all cell phones in the vicinity connect to the Stingray regardless of the cell phone owner's knowledge. From there, the stingray is capable of locating the device, interfering with the device, and collecting personal data from the device.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: The FBI has claimed that when used to identify, locate, or track a cellular device, the StingRay does not collect communications content or forward it to the service provider. Instead, the device causes a disruption in service. Under this scenario, any attempt by the cellular device user to place a call or access data services will fail while the StingRay is conducting its surveillance. On August 21, 2018, Senator Ron Wyden noted that Harris Corporation confirmed that Stingrays disrupt the targeted phone's communications. Additionally, he noted that "while the company claims its cell-site simulators include a feature that detects and permits the delivery of emergency calls to 9-1-1, its officials admitted to my office that this feature has not been independently tested as part of the Federal Communication Commission’s certification process, nor were they able to confirm this feature is capable of detecting and passing-through 9-1-1 emergency communications made by people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech disabled using Real-Time Text technology."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: By way of software upgrades, the StingRay and similar Harris products can be used to intercept GSM communications content transmitted over-the-air between a target cellular device and a legitimate service provider cell site. The StingRay does this by way of the following man-in-the-middle attack: (1) simulate a cell site and force a connection from the target device, (2) download the target device's IMSI and other identifying information, (3) conduct "GSM Active Key Extraction" to obtain the target device's stored encryption key, (4) use the downloaded identifying information to simulate the target device over-the-air, (5) while simulating the target device, establish a connection with a legitimate cell site authorized to provide service to the target device, (6) use the encryption key to authenticate the StingRay to the service provider as being the target device, and (7) forward signals between the target device and the legitimate cell site while decrypting and recording communications content.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: The "GSM Active Key Extraction" performed by the StingRay in step three merits additional explanation. A GSM phone encrypts all communications content using an encryption key stored on its SIM card with a copy stored at the service provider. While simulating the target device during the above explained man-in-the-middle attack, the service provider cell site will ask the StingRay (which it believes to be the target device) to initiate encryption using the key stored on the target device. Therefore, the StingRay needs a method to obtain the target device's stored encryption key else the man-in-the-middle attack will fail.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: GSM primarily encrypts communications content using the A5/1 call encryption cypher. In 2008 it was reported that a GSM phone's encryption key can be obtained using $1,000 worth of computer hardware and 30 minutes of cryptanalysis performed on signals encrypted using A5/1. However, GSM also supports an export weakened variant of A5/1 called A5/2. This weaker encryption cypher can be cracked in real-time. While A5/1 and A5/2 use different cypher strengths, they each use the same underlying encryption key stored on the SIM card. Therefore, the StingRay performs "GSM Active Key Extraction" during step three of the man-in-the-middle attack as follows: (1) instruct target device to use the weaker A5/2 encryption cypher, (2) collect A5/2 encrypted signals from target device, and (3) perform cryptanalysis of the A5/2 signals to quickly recover the underlying stored encryption key. Once the encryption key is obtained, the StingRay uses it to comply with the encryption request made to it by the service provider during the man-in-the-middle attack.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: A rogue base station can force unencrypted links, if supported by the handset software. The rogue base station can send a 'Cipher Mode Settings' element (see GSM 04.08 Chapter 10.5.2.9) to the phone, with this element clearing the one bit that marks if encryption should be used. In such cases the phone display could indicate the use of an unsafe link—but the user interface software in most phones does not interrogate the handset's radio subsystem for use of this insecure mode nor display any warning indication.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In passive mode, the StingRay operates either as a digital analyzer, which receives and analyzes signals being transmitted by cellular devices and/or wireless carrier cell sites or as a radio jamming device, which transmits signals that block communications between cellular devices and wireless carrier cell sites. By "passive mode", it is meant that the StingRay does not mimic a wireless carrier cell site or communicate directly with cellular devices.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: A StingRay and a test phone can be used to conduct base station surveys, which is the process of collecting information on cell sites, including identification numbers, signal strength, and signal coverage areas. When conducting base station surveys, the StingRay mimics a cell phone while passively collecting signals being transmitted by cell-sites in the area of the StingRay.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Base station survey data can be used to further narrow the past locations of a cellular device if used in conjunction with historical cell site location information ("HCSLI") obtained from a wireless carrier. HCSLI includes a list of all cell sites and sectors accessed by a cellular device, and the date and time each access was made. Law enforcement will often obtain HCSLI from wireless carriers in order to determine where a particular cell phone was located in the past. Once this information is obtained, law enforcement will use a map of cell site locations to determine the past geographical locations of the cellular device.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: However, the signal coverage area of a given cell site may change according to the time of day, weather, and physical obstructions in relation to where a cellular device attempts to access service. The maps of cell site coverage areas used by law enforcement may also lack precision as a general matter. For these reasons, it is beneficial to use a StingRay and a test phone to map out the precise coverage areas of all cell sites appearing in the HCSLI records. This is typically done at the same time of day and under the same weather conditions that were in effect when the HCSLI was logged. Using a StingRay to conduct base station surveys in this manner allows for mapping out cell site coverage areas that more accurately match the coverage areas that were in effect when the cellular device was used.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: The use of the devices has been frequently funded by grants from the Department of Homeland Security. The Los Angeles Police Department used a Department of Homeland Security grant in 2006 to buy a StingRay for "regional terrorism investigations". However, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the "LAPD has been using it for just about any investigation imaginable."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In addition to federal law enforcement, military and intelligence agencies, StingRays have in recent years been purchased by local and state law enforcement agencies.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In 2006, Harris Corporation employees directly conducted wireless surveillance using StingRay units on behalf of the Palm Bay Police Department—where Harris has a campus —in response to a bomb threat against a middle school. The search was conducted without a warrant or Judicial oversight.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) confirmed that local police have cell site simulators in Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, Missouri, New Mexico, Georgia, and Massachusetts. State police have cell site simulators in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Local and state police have cell site simulators in California, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Maryland, and New York. The police use of cell site simulators is unknown in the remaining states. However, many agencies do not disclose their use of StingRay technology, so these statistics are still potentially an under-representation of the actual number of agencies. According to the most recent information published by the American Civil Liberties Union, 72 law enforcement agencies in 24 states own StingRay technology in 2017. Since 2014, these numbers have increased from 42 agencies in 17 states. The following are federal agencies in the United States that have validated their use of cell-site simulators: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Drug Enforcement Administration, US Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, US Marshals Service, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, US Army, US Navy, US Marine Corps, US National Guard, US Special Command, and National Security Agency. In the 2010-14 fiscal years, the Department of Justice has confirmed spending "more than $71 million on cell-site simulation technology," while the Department of Homeland Security confirmed spending "more than $24 million on cell-site simulation technology."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Several court decisions have been issued on the legality of using a Stingray without a warrant, with some courts ruling a warrant is required and others not requiring a warrant.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Police in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, admitted after much speculation across the country that they had made use of a Stingray device provided by the RCMP. They also stated that they intended to make use of such devices in the future. Two days later, a statement by Edmonton's police force had been taken as confirming their use of the devices, but they said later that they did not mean to create what they called a miscommunication.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Privacy International and "The Sunday Times" reported on the usage of StingRays and IMSI-catchers in Ireland, against the Irish Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC), which is an oversight agency of the Irish police force Garda Síochána. On June 10, 2015, the BBC reported on an investigation by Sky News about possible false mobile phone towers being used by the London Metropolitan Police. Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe refused comment.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Between February 2015 and April 2016, over 12 companies in the United Kingdom were authorized to export IMSI-catcher devices to states including Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Turkey. Critics have expressed concern about the export of surveillance technology to countries with poor human rights records and histories of abusing surveillance technology.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: The increasing use of the devices has largely been kept secret from the court system and the public. In 2014, police in Florida revealed they had used such devices at least 200 additional times since 2010 without disclosing it to the courts or obtaining a warrant. One of the reasons the Tallahassee police provided for not pursuing court approval is that such efforts would allegedly violate the non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that police sign with the manufacturer. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed multiple requests for the public records of Florida law enforcement agencies about their use of the cell phone tracking devices.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: Local law enforcement and the federal government have resisted judicial requests for information about the use of stingrays, refusing to turn over information or heavily censoring it. In June 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union published information from court regarding the extensive use of these devices by local Florida police. After this publication, United States Marshals Service then seized the local police's surveillance records in a bid to keep them from coming out in court.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In some cases, police have refused to disclose information to the courts citing non-disclosure agreements signed with Harris Corporation. The FBI defended these agreements, saying that information about the technology could allow adversaries to circumvent it. The ACLU has said "potentially unconstitutional government surveillance on this scale should not remain hidden from the public just because a private corporation desires secrecy. And it certainly should not be concealed from judges."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In 2015 Santa Clara County pulled out of contract negotiations with Harris for StingRay units, citing onerous restrictions imposed by Harris on what could be released under public records requests as the reason for exiting negotiations.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In recent years, legal scholars, public interest advocates, legislators and several members of the judiciary have strongly criticized the use of this technology by law enforcement agencies. Critics have called the use of the devices by government agencies warrantless cell phone tracking, as they have frequently been used without informing the court system or obtaining a warrant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has called the devices "an unconstitutional, all-you-can-eat data buffet."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: In 2016, Professor Laura Moy of the Georgetown University Law Center filed a formal complaint to the FCC regarding the use of the devices by law enforcement agencies, taking the position that because the devices mimic the properties of cell phone towers, the agencies operating them are in violation of FCC regulation, as they lack the appropriate spectrum licenses.


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: On December 4, 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) filed a federal lawsuit against the Customs and Border Protection and the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agencies. According to the ACLU, the union had filed a Freedom of Information Act request in 2017, but were not given access to documents. The NYCLU and ACLU proceeded with the lawsuit under the statement that both CBP and ICE had failed, "to produce a range of records about their use, purchase, and oversight of Stingrays." In an official statement expanding their reasoning for the lawsuit, the ACLU expressed their concern over the Stingrays current and future applications, stating that ICE were using them for "unlawfully tracking journalists and advocates and subjecting people to invasive searches of their electronic devices at the border."


title: Stingray phone tracker

text: A number of countermeasures to the StingRay and other devices have been developed, for example crypto phones such as GSMK's Cryptophone have firewalls that can identify and thwart the StingRay's actions or alert the user to IMSI capture.


title: Slow cooker

text: A slow cooker, also known as a crock-pot (after a trademark owned by Sunbeam Products but sometimes used generically in the English-speaking world), is a countertop electrical cooking appliance used to simmer at a lower temperature than other cooking methods, such as baking, boiling, and frying. This facilitates unattended cooking for many hours of dishes that would otherwise be boiled: pot roast, soups, stews and other dishes (including beverages, desserts and dips).


title: Slow cooker

text: Slow cookers achieved popularity in the US during the 1940s, when many women began to work outside the home. They could start dinner cooking in the morning before going to work and finish preparing the meal in the evening when they came home.


title: Slow cooker

text: The Naxon Utilities Corporation of Chicago, under the leadership of electrical engineer Irving Naxon (born Irving Nachumsohn), developed the Naxon Beanery All-Purpose Cooker for the purposes of cooking a bean meal. Naxon was inspired by a story from his mother which told how back in her native Lithuanian town, his grandmother made a traditional Jewish stew called cholent which took several hours to cook in an oven. A 1950 advertisement shows a slow cooker called the "Simmer Crock" made by the Industrial Radiant Heat Corp. of Gladstone, NJ.


title: Slow cooker

text: The Rival Company from Sedalia, Missouri, bought Naxon in 1970, acquiring Naxon’s 1940 patent for the bean simmer cooker. Rival asked inventor Robert Glen Martin, from Boonville, Missouri, to develop Naxon’s bean cooker into a large scale production model which could cook an entire family meal, going further than just cooking a bean meal. Martin also designed and produced the mass-production machines for Rival’s manufacturing line of the Crock-Pot. The cooker was then reintroduced under the name "Crock-Pot" in 1971. In 1974, Rival introduced removable stoneware inserts, making the appliance easier to clean. The Crock-Pot brand now belongs to Newell Brands.


title: Slow cooker

text: Other brands of this appliance include Cuisinart, GE, Hamilton Beach, KitchenAid, Magic Chef, West Bend Housewares, and the now defunct American Electric Corporation.


title: Slow cooker

text: A basic slow cooker consists of a lidded round or oval cooking pot made of glazed ceramic or porcelain, surrounded by a housing, usually metal, containing an electric heating element. The lid itself is often made of glass, and seated in a groove in the pot edge; condensed vapor collects in the groove and provides a low-pressure seal to the atmosphere. The contents of a crock pot are effectively at atmospheric pressure, despite the water vapor generated inside the pot. A slow cooker is quite different from a pressure cooker and presents no danger of an abrupt pressure release.


title: Slow cooker

text: The "crock", or ceramic pot, itself acts as both a cooking container and a heat reservoir. Slow cookers come in capacities from to . Because the heating elements are generally located at the bottom and often also partway up the sides, most slow cookers have a minimum recommended liquid level to avoid uncontrolled heating. Some newer models have coated aluminum or steel "crocks" which, while not as efficient as ceramic at retaining heat, does allow for quicker heating and cooling as well as the ability to use the "crock" on the stove top to brown meat prior to cooking.


title: Slow cooker

text: Many slow cookers have two or more heat settings (e.g., low, medium, high, and sometimes a "keep warm" setting); some have continuously variable power. In the past, most slow cookers had no temperature control and deliver a constant heat to the contents. The temperature of the contents rises until it reaches boiling point, at which point the energy goes into gently boiling the liquid closest to the hot surface. At a lower setting, it may just simmer at a temperature below the boiling point. While many basic slow cookers still operate in this manner, newer models have computerized controls for precise temperature control, delayed cooking starts and even control via a computer or mobile device.


title: Slow cooker

text: To use a slow cooker, the cook places raw food and a liquid, such as stock, water, or wine, in the slow cooker. Some recipes call for pre-heated liquid. The cook puts the lid on the slow cooker and turns it on. Some cookers automatically switch from cooking to warming (maintaining the temperature at after a fixed time or after the internal temperature of the food, as determined by a probe, reaches a specified value.


title: Slow cooker

text: Heating element heats the contents to a steady temperature in the range. The contents are enclosed by the crock and the lid, and attain an essentially constant temperature. The vapor that is produced at this temperature condenses on the bottom of the lid and returns as liquid, into which some water-soluble vitamins are leached.


title: Slow cooker

text: The liquid transfers heat from the pot walls to its contents, and also distributes flavors. The slow cooker's lid is essential to prevent the warm vapor from escaping, taking heat with it and cooling the contents.


title: Slow cooker

text: Basic cookers, which have only high, medium, low, or keep warm settings, must be turned on and off manually. More advanced cookers have computerized timing devices that let a cook program the cooker to perform multiple operations (e.g., two hours high, followed by two hours low, followed by warm) and to delay the start of cooking.


title: Slow cooker

text: Because food cooked in a slow cooker stays warm for a long time after it is switched off, people can use the slow cookers to take food elsewhere to eat without reheating. Some slow cookers have lids that seal to prevent their contents from spilling during transport.


title: Slow cooker

text: Recipes intended for other cooking methods must be modified for slow cookers. Quantities of liquids may need adjustment, as there is a little evaporation, but there should be enough liquid to cover the food. Many published recipes for slow cookers are designed primarily for convenience and use few ingredients, and often use prepared sauces or seasonings. The long, moist cooking is particularly suitable for tough and cheap cuts of meat including pork shoulder, beef chuck and brisket. For many slow-cooked dishes, these cuts give better results than more expensive ones. They are also often used to cook while no one is there to care for it, meaning the cook can fill the pot with its ingredients and come back several hours later to a ready meal.


title: Slow cooker

text: Cheaper cuts of meat with connective tissue and lean muscle fibers are suitable for stewing, and produce tastier stews than those using expensive cuts, as long slow cooking softens connective tissue without toughening the muscle. Slow cooking leaves gelatinized tissue in the meat, so that it may be advantageous to start with a richer liquid.


title: Slow cooker

text: The low temperature of slow-cooking makes it almost impossible to burn; even food that has been cooked too long. However, some meats and most vegetables become nearly tasteless or "raggy" if over-cooked.


title: Slow cooker

text: Food can be set to slow-cook before leaving for the day so it is ready on return. Many homeowners with rooftop solar panels switch to slow cooking because it draws under 1 kW of power and can therefore be powered entirely by 1-2 kW panels during the day. Some models include timers or thermostats that bring food to a given temperature and then lower it. With a timerless cooker it is possible to use an external timer to stop cooking after a set time, or both to start and stop.


title: Slow cooker

text: Cooking the meal in a single pot reduces water waste resulting from cleaning multiple dishes, and the low cooking temperature and glazed pot make cleaning easier than conventional high-heat pots.


title: Slow cooker

text: Some vitamins and other trace nutrients are lost, particularly from vegetables, partially by enzyme action during cooking and partially due to heat degradation. When vegetables are cooked at higher temperatures these enzymes are rapidly denatured and have less time to act during cooking. Since slow cookers work at temperatures well below boiling point and do not rapidly denature enzymes, vegetables tend to lose trace nutrients. Blanched vegetables, having been exposed to very hot water, have already had these enzymes rendered largely ineffective, so a blanching or sauteing pre-cook stage leaves more vitamins intact. This is often a smaller nutrient loss than over-boiling and can be lessened to an extent by not removing the lid until the food is done.


title: Slow cooker

text: Slow cookers do not provide sufficient heat to compensate for loss of moisture and heat due to frequent removal of the lid, e.g., to add and remove food in perpetual stews, (pot-au-feu, olla podrida). Added ingredients must be given time to cook before the food can be eaten.


title: Slow cooker

text: Slow cookers are less dangerous than ovens or stove tops due to their lower operating temperatures and closed lids. However, they still contain a large amount of foods and liquids at temperatures close to boiling, and they can cause serious scalds if spilled.


title: Slow cooker

text: Slow cookers should not be used to cook dried kidney beans and other legume seeds. These foods contain the highly toxic lectin phytohemagglutinin, making as few as four raw beans toxic. This lectin is only deactivated by long soaking, then boiling in fresh water at for at least thirty minutes. Information published by the United States Food and Drug Administration states that slow cookers should not be used to cook bean containing dishes. Commercially canned beans are fully cooked and are safe to use. Pressure cooking also deactivates the lectins.


title: Market environment

text: Market environment and business environment are marketing terms that refer to factors and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful customer relationships. The business environment has been defined as "the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behaviour of individuals in the organisation."


title: Market environment

text: The internal environment "consists of those relevant physical and social factors within the boundaries of the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behavior of individuals in that system". This includes all departments such as management, finance, research and development, purchasing, Business operations and accounting. Each of these departments influences marketing decisions. For example, research and development have input as to the features a product can perform and accounting approves the financial side of marketing plans and budget in customer dissatisfaction. Marketing managers must watch supply availability and other trends dealing with suppliers to ensure that product will be delivered to customers in the time frame required in order to maintain a strong customer relationship. These internal factors can be controlled by the organization to a certain extent. Internal environmental factors are in control of business organization.


title: Market environment

text: The external environment "consists of those relevant physical and social factors outside the boundaries of the organization or specific decision unit that are taken directly into consideration." The external environment can be further broken into micro and macro environments.


title: Market environment

text: The micro-environment consists of customers, partners, and competitors. The most important aspect of micro-environment is the customer market. There are different types of customer markets include consumer markets, business markets, government markets, globalization international markets, and reseller markets. The consumer market is made up of individuals who buy goods and services for their own personal use or use in their household. Business markets include those that buy goods and services for use in producing their own products to sell. This is different from the reseller market which includes non-business activities that purchase goods to resell as is for a profit. These are the same companies mentioned as market intermediaries. The government market consists of government agencies that buy goods to produce public services or transfer goods to others who need them. International markets include buyers in other countries and includes customers from the previous categories.


title: Market environment

text: Partners include marketing intermediaries, financiers, and advertising agencies. Marketing intermediaries refers to resellers, physical distribution firms, marketing services agencies, and financial intermediaries. These are the people that help the company promote, sell, and distribute its products to final buyers. Resellers are those that hold and sell the company's product. They match the distribution to the customers and include places such as Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy. Physical distribution firms are places such as warehouses that store and transport the company's product from its origin to its destination. Marketing services agencies are companies that offer services such as conducting marketing research, advertising, and consulting. Financial intermediaries are institutions such as banks, credit companies and insurance companies.


title: Market environment

text: Competitors are also a factor in the micro-environment and include companies with similar offerings for goods and services. To remain competitive a company must consider who their biggest competitors are while considering its own size and position in the industry. The company should develop a strategic advantage over their competitors.


title: Market environment

text: The final aspect of the microenvironment is public, which is any group that has an interest in or effect on the organization's ability to meet its goals. For example, financial public can hinder a company's ability to obtain funds affecting the level of credit a company has. Media public include newspapers and magazines that can publish articles of interest regarding the company and editorials that may influence customers' opinions. Government public can affect the company by passing legislation and laws that put restrictions on the company's actions. Citizen-action public include environmental groups and minority groups and can question the actions of a company and put them in the public spotlight. Local public are the neighborhood and community organizations and will also question a company's effect on the local area and the level of responsibility of their actions. The general public can affect the company as any change in their attitude, whether positive or negative, can cause sales to go up or down because the general public is often the company's customer base. And finally those who are employed within the company and deal with the organization and construction of the company's product.


title: Market environment

text: The macro-environment refers to all forces that are part of the larger society and affect the micro-environment. It includes concepts such as demography, economy, natural forces, technology, politics, and culture. The purpose of analyzing the macro marketing environment is to understand the environment better and to adapt to the social environment and change through the marketing effort of the enterprise to achieve the goal of the enterprise marketing.


title: Market environment

text: Factors affecting organization in Macro environment are known as PESTEL, that is: Political, Economical, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal.


title: Market environment

text: Demography refers to studying human populations in terms of size, density, location, age, gender, race, and occupation. This is a very important factor to study for marketers and helps to divide the population into market segments and target markets. An example of demography is classifying groups of people according to the year they were born. These classifications can be referred to as baby boomers, who are born between 1946 and 1964, Generation X, who are born between 1965 and 1980, millennials, who are born between 1981 and 1996, and Generation Z (also known as zoomers), who are born between 1997 and 2012. Each classification has different characteristics and causes they find important. This can be beneficial to a marketer as they can decide who their product would benefit most and tailor their marketing plan to attract that segment. Demography covers many aspects that are important to marketers including family dynamics, geographic shifts, workforce changes, and levels of diversity in any given area.


title: Market environment

text: Another aspect of the macro-environment is the economic environment. This refers to the purchasing power of potential customers and the ways in which people spend their money. Within this area are two different economies, subsistence and industrialized. Subsistence economies are based more in agriculture and consume their own industrial output. Industrial economies have markets that are diverse and carry many different types of goods. Each is important to the marketer because each has a highly different spending pattern as well as different distribution of wealth.


title: Market environment

text: The natural environment is another important factor of the macro-environment. This includes the natural resources that a company uses as inputs that affects their marketing activities. The concern in this area is the increased pollution, shortages of raw materials and increased governmental intervention. As raw materials become increasingly scarcer, the ability to create a company's product gets much harder. Also, pollution can go as far as negatively affecting a company's reputation if they are known for damaging the environment. The last concern, government intervention can make it increasingly harder for a company to fulfill their goals as requirements get more stringent.


title: Market environment

text: The technological environment is perhaps one of the fastest changing factors in the macro-environment. This includes all developments from antibiotics and surgery to nuclear missiles and chemical weapons to automobiles and credit cards. As these markets develop it can create new markets and new uses for products. It also requires a company to stay ahead of others and update their own technology as it becomes outdated. They must stay informed of trends so they can be part of the next big thing, rather than becoming outdated and suffering the consequences financially.


title: Market environment

text: In order to understand the different spending patterns, marketers need to also take into consideration about the development of digital technology and its effect on market growth and employment. It is key for a marketer, especially in a digitally-dominated market, to anticipate demand in order to capitalize on potential market growth. Technology has developed to the extent where purchase patterns can be analysed in order to forecast future demand.


title: Market environment

text: The political environment includes all laws, government agencies, and groups that influence or limit other organizations and individuals within a society. It is important for marketers to be aware of these restrictions as they can be complex. Some products are regulated by both state and federal laws. There are even restrictions for some products as to who the target market may be, for example, cigarettes should not be marketed to younger children. There are also many restrictions on subliminal messages and monopolies. As laws and regulations change often, this is a very important aspect for a marketer to monitor. As laws and regulations change often, they create barriers that can hugely influence the way in which companies can market their business across the digital community in particular. When conducting business in the United Kingdom, the government is committed to ensuring the best possible platform to start and grow a UK digital business, therefore Internet Governance becomes a vital force in the management and control of the growth of the internet and its usage.


title: Market environment

text: The final aspect of the macro-environment is the social environment, which consists of institutions and basic values and beliefs of a group of people. These values can also be further categorized into core beliefs, which passed on from generation to generation and very difficult to change, and secondary beliefs, which tend to be easier to influence. As a marketer, it is important to know the difference between the two and to focus your marketing campaign to reflect the values of a target audience. With entering into an age where technology has a key role in the forming of social beliefs and values, cultural diversity has developed within the world of digital communities. (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). These digital communities consist of many groups of demographics that involve different levels of Internet usage and versatile behaviour with online purchasing.


title: Market environment

text: When dealing with the marketing environment it is important for a company to become proactive. By doing so, they can create the kind of environment that they will prosper in and can become more efficient by marketing in areas with the greatest customer potential. It is important to place equal emphasis on both the macro and micro environment and to react accordingly to changes within them.


title: Market environment

text: There are a number of common approaches how the external factors, which are mentioned in the definition of Kroon and which describe the macro environment, can be identified and examined. These factors indirectly affect the organization but cannot be controlled by it. One approach could be the PEST analysis, which includes political, economic, social and technological, whereas other variations (PESTLE or PESTEL analysis) include environmental and legal factors. A second approach is to use a SWOT analysis which stands for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat.


title: Market environment

text: The meso-level is settled between the macro- and the micro- level. This field deals with the design of the specific environment of the enterprises. It is of decisive importance that the layout of the physical infrastructure (transport, communication and power distribution systems) and of the sector policies, especially of the education, research and technology policy, are oriented towards competitiveness. In addition, the design of the trade policy and systems of rules (for example: environmental norms and technical safety standards), which contributes to the development of national advantages of competition, is relevant. Like on the micro-level, on the meso-level new patterns of organisation and steering must be developed. The state shall give impulses and mediate between enterprises, associations, science and intermediate institutions. "The design of locations becomes like that a continuous process on the basis of the efforts of enterprises, science and state as well as of the determined cooperation of private and public agents".


title: Market environment

text: Environmental scanning is one of the essential components of the global environmental analysis. Environmental monitoring, environmental forecasting and environmental assessment complete the global environmental analysis. The global environment refers to the macro environment which comprises industries, markets, companies, clients and competitors. Consequently, there exist corresponding analyses on the micro-level. Suppliers, customers and competitors representing the micro environment of a company are analyzed within the industry analysis. Older sources suggest environmental scanning as an alternative name for horizon scanning (HS), whereby newer sources rather see environmental scanning along with trend monitoring, trend research and strategic early warning as predecessors for HS.


title: Market environment

text: Environmental scanning can be defined as 'the study and interpretation of the political, economic, social and technological events and trends which influence a business, an industry or even a total market'.


title: Market environment

text: The factors which need to be considered for environmental scanning are events, trends, issues and expectations of the different interest groups. Issues are often forerunners of trend breaks. A trend break could be a value shift in society, a technological innovation that might be permanent or a paradigm change. Issues are less deep-seated and can be 'a temporary short-lived reaction to a social phenomenon'. A trend can be defined as an ‘environmental phenomenon that has adopted a structural character'.


title: Market environment

text: Environmental scanning is an ongoing process and organizations are always refining the way their particular company or business goes through the process. Environmental scanning reinforces productive strategic plans and policies that can be implemented to make the organization get the maximum use of the business environment they are in. Environmental scanning not only helps the business find its strengths in its current environment but it also finds the weakness of competitors, identifies new markets, potential customers and up and coming technological platforms and devices that can be best used to sell/market the product or service. Environmental scanning helps a business improve their decision-making process in times of risk to the external and internal environments the business is in.


title: Market environment

text: When scanning the environment, the organization need to look at all the influences of the company. The scanning process makes the organization aware of what the business environment is about. It allows the organization to adapt and learn from that environment. When the company responds to an environmental scanning process it allows them to easily respond and react to any changes to both the internal and external business environment. Environmental scanning is a useful tool for strategic management as it helps them to create and develop the aims and objectives of the company which assists with the production of the company or organization.


title: Market environment

text: When looking at the weaknesses of the organization's placing in the current business environment a formal environmental scanning is used. A common formal environmental scanning process has five steps. The five steps are fundamental in the achievement of each step and may develop each other in some form:


title: Market environment

text: The sources used for market learning can be split into two categories: external and internal information sources. The external sources can emerge from market research or from verbal communication such as 'word of mouth'. Other examples of external information sources include personal contacts, customers, and commercial databases. Internal information comes from within the organization. Some examples of internal information include internal reports, sales staff, internal databases and memoranda from committees and meetings.


title: Market environment

text: Environmental scanning isn't always as effective or useful in an organizational setting for several reasons. The volume of the information received through the scanning process can be disadvantageous when attempting to translate and make sense of the information as some information may get overlooked or just missed entirely. Because of the volume of information its hard to decipher what is important or not so management and key information may be missed. Another way vital information can be missed is if the information is unordered and unorganized. Due to ever changing environment all information runs under a time limit of validity. Another barrier to environment scanning is the interpretation of information that has been collected. Undetermined sources can cause confusion and irrelevance to the process. Current research shows that the analysis of the market environment has challenges to predict or foresee upcoming market changes. The reason is that market scanning frameworks often suggest to observe a broad range of categories without offering detailed guidelines for what aspects to emphasize or ignore. In consequence, even firms that scan their market environment continuously get blindsided by disruptions.


title: 2022 Iowa gubernatorial election

text: The 2022 Iowa gubernatorial election was held on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Iowa. Incumbent Republican Governor Kim Reynolds won reelection to a second full term in a landslide, defeating Democratic nominee Deidre DeJear.


title: 2022 Iowa gubernatorial election

text: First elected as lieutenant governor in 2010, Reynolds assumed the governorship on May 24, 2017, following the resignation of Governor Terry Branstad to take office as the U.S. Ambassador to China. She was elected in her own right in 2018 in what was considered a minor upset, before dramatically increasing her vote share in 2022.


title: 2022 Iowa gubernatorial election

text: Reynolds flipped seven counties that had voted Democratic in the previous gubernatorial election, including multiple urban counties. The counties flipped were: Black Hawk, Clinton, Des Moines, Dubuque, Jefferson, Lee, and Scott.


title: Kim Min-jung (actress)

text: Kim made her acting debut in 1988, at six years old, in the MBC Best Theater episode "Widow". She then starred in numerous television dramas as one of the most in-demand and praised child actresses of her generation. As she grew up, she would become one of a set of Korean child actors who successfully transitioned into adult roles. Kim's more notable TV series include "Ireland", "Fashion 70's", "New Heart", "Strike Love", and "The Thorn Birds". She has also appeared in films such as "Flying Boys", "Forbidden Quest", and "The Scam". In 2018, Kim was cast in Kim Eun-sook's romance melodrama "Mr. Sunshine".


title: Dril

text: @dril is a pseudonymous Twitter user best known for his idiosyncratic style of absurdist humor and non sequiturs. The account, its author, and the character associated with the tweets are all commonly referred to as dril (the account's identifier on Twitter) or wint (the account's display name), both rendered lowercase but often capitalized by others. Since his first tweet in 2008, dril has become a popular and influential Twitter user with more than 1.7 million followers.


title: Dril

text: Dril is one of the most notable accounts associated with "Weird Twitter", a subculture on the site that shares a surreal, ironic sense of humor. The character associated with dril is highly distinctive, often described as a bizarre reflection of a typical male American Internet user. Other social media users have repurposed dril's tweets for humorous or satiric effect in a variety of political and cultural contexts. Many of dril's tweets, phrases, and tropes have become familiar parts of Internet slang.


title: Dril

text: The author behind dril remained unknown for years, with the few available details about the author's life fueling speculation about his identity. In 2017, a piece from "New York" suggested the author’s identity, which was later confirmed by dril himself.


title: Dril

text: Beyond tweeting, dril has created animated short films and contributed illustrations and writing to other artists' collaborative projects. His first book, "Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection" (2018), is a compilation of the account's "greatest hits" alongside new illustrations. In 2019 he announced the launch of a streaming web series called "Truthpoint: Darkweb Rising", an "InfoWars" parody co-created with comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen for Adult Swim. Writers have praised dril for the originality and humor of his tweets; for example, poet Patricia Lockwood called dril "a master of tone [and] character".


title: Dril

text: Before the Twitter account, dril was a poster at the Something Awful forums under the name "gigantic drill". According to former Something Awful admin David Thorpe, dril was "just a guy who was posting funny stuff on there", but never one of the site's featured front page writers. Dril posted his first Tweet—the single word "no"—on September 15, 2008.


title: Dril

text: Dril then remained silent on Twitter for nine months before his second tweet—"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog."—and has posted regularly in the years since.


title: Dril

text: Initially, little was known about the anonymous author of the dril account. When asked about the account's anonymity during a private Q&A in 2017, dril responded "i am an almost 30 year old man and i could not really care less about the platform i use to convey dick jokes." Jacob Bakkila, one of the writers behind the @Horse_ebooks Twitter account, claimed in 2013 that dril had once hired him for a project. Bakkila told "BuzzFeed" that dril's author was a graphic designer living somewhere in the New York metropolitan tri-state area. "BuzzFeed"s John Herrman and Katie Notopoulos speculated that dril may be a collaborative project or that Bakkila himself was behind dril. Bakkila denied the rumor that he was dril, adding that dril was "a friend" who had contributed to the @Horse_ebooks sequel, "Bear Stearns Bravo".


title: Dril

text: On November 16, 2017, a Tumblr post identifying dril's author by his real name went viral. Other posts identifying dril's author existed as early as 2014 on Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit, but these earlier posts had not gone viral or been publicized in the media. The 2017 post identified dril through "informed guesswork" founded on other clues, including a LinkedIn page associated with "Bear Stearns Bravo" and a writing credit on "Hiveswap", an adventure game set in the universe of Andrew Hussie's long-running webcomic "Homestuck".


title: Dril

text: The Tumblr post was described by the press as a "doxing": an unwelcome broadcasting of private personal information online. The post was met with backlash and dismay among Twitter users, many of whom voiced a preference for keeping dril's personal identity a mystery and preserving the author's privacy. According to Jozefien Wouters, writing for the Belgian news magazine "Knack":


title: Dril

text: The author addressed the doxing on his Patreon page, writing "everything's normal. i guess im 'doxxed' now. sorry. it's fine. i donr really give a shit." In a Reddit "ask us anything" interview, dril confirmed that he had worked on "Hiveswap". He said the personal impact of the doxing had been minimal, adding that people had been "surprisingly normal" and he had no "sordid past" to hide, but also described being outed as "my Cross to bear" and said "theres nothing scandalous enough there to make it worth publicizing and looking like an ass hole while doing so."


title: Dril

text: In August 2018, dril announced that he was transferring the publishing rights of his tweets to Paul Dochney, whom he called his "Agent And Master", for the purpose of publishing his first book. Some reporters subsequently identified dril as Dochney. In a 2020 Reddit AMA, dril commented, "i doxxed myself so amazon would give me permission to publish my other book last year. im some guy named paul dochney who cares big whoop," seemingly confirming his identity as Paul Dochney.


title: Dril

text: The author behind the @dril account writes in character, using an avatar of a blurry image of Jack Nicholson smiling and wearing sunglasses. Although there is no clear narrative, dril's "voice" or "character", generally understood to be male, is consistently recognizable. Writer Alexander McDonough called dril a "grinning Jack Nicholson with severe persecution and self-esteem issues, poor physical health, and a bizarre love/hate relationship with cops." Bijan Stephen at "The Verge" likened dril to an online version of the "wise fool" stock character.


title: Dril

text: Critics have described dril's voice as an amalgamation of ordinary Internet users, most of all those who are arrogant, obsessive, ignorant, or hapless. Professor of English literature Roger Bellin describes the character of dril as "generally a recognizable type: a self-important buffoon who's often raging out (show yourself, coward), or other times preening (buddy, they won't even let me), over some bit of nonsense that we're all meant to realize is absurdly unimportant." "Vice" reviewer Rachel Pick describes dril as "a bumbling, maladapted fool ... a pudgy, oily man, frequently in a state of undress, who doesn’t go through life as much as he is spilled across it." According to "The A.V. Club"s Clayton Purdom, dril is a sort of patron saint of Internet users, or "your uncle's search history come to life and filtered through a scabrous comic sensibility, and ... possibly the most popular, beloved man on the entire internet (after, maybe, The Rock)." Will Shaw of "The Oxford Student" noted the familiarity of dril's "naive appeals to moderation" and "flame war posturing", and said dril the character "is the internet's collective id, given form", while the writer behind @dril is "the internet equivalent of the Beowulf-poet; we may never know who he really is, but we recognise when he is being channelled." Christine Erickson at "Mashable" said dril's character was like "a spambot equivalent to the kind of crazy that Clint Eastwood portrays". At "Kotaku", Gita Jackson called dril a "joke account that also inadvertently catalogues ... every way to be mad online".


title: Dril

text: In a lecture given at the University of Pennsylvania, American poet Patricia Lockwood described dril as a literary alter ego of Twitter users and the Internet in general. Comparing the account's persona to Ignatius J. Reilly, the protagonist of John Kennedy Toole's novel "A Confederacy of Dunces" (1980), Lockwood cited dril as an example of new possibilities in first-person narrative that could be explored online. Lockwood said of dril:


title: Dril

text: Dril's tweets are, in the words of Jordan Sargent at "Gawker", a series of "quietly seething and unhinged avant-garde scribblings". His tweets are deliberately peppered with odd typos like misspelled words, grammatical mistakes, punctuation errors, and eggcorns. Yohann Koshy in "Vice" said dril's writing "reads like obscene nonsense verse—the syntax mutilated, the humour irredeemable". In the preface to his first book, dril called his writing style "Prestige Short Prose". Pick suggested that the phrase was likely "meant to make fun of the snobby lit theory types who want to make Dril out to be some highbrow art project", but she concluded it was an apt term to describe dril's style of "part art form, part jokes to read on the toilet". Pick also compared dril's writing to the surreal one-liner jokes of Jack Handey and the flash fiction short story "". Jonah Engel Bromwich, in "The New York Times", said dril was a major influence on the spread of dialogue, written in the same method as screenwriting, as a comedic writing style on Twitter.


title: Dril

text: Dril has been identified as one of the "most revered" and "quintessential" accounts associated with the "Weird Twitter" scene, a loose subculture of associated users who share a surreal, ironic, subversive sense of humor. dril was one of many Weird Twitter personalities who migrated to Twitter from Something Awful's FYAD board and carried over the forum's in-jokes and tone. Like others on Weird Twitter, dril's tweets have been described as having a dadaist sensibility. Writing for "Complex", Brenden Gallagher compared dril to a musician who refuses to sell out or an auteurist indie filmmaker, as Twitter's version of "the enigmatic figure that even [an art form's] best known practitioners look to with reverence". Sean T. Collins described dril's humor as a "blend of fist-on-the-table bluster, abject confusion and burned-toast syntax", noting the influence of surreal humor found in Monty Python (especially the sketches from their show "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and Terry Gilliam's animations) and Adult Swim shows like "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" and "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" Collins called dril's tweets "a new way to be funny, with a rhythm and vocabulary all their own. I love it."


title: Dril

text: Most of dril's writing is understood to be absurd, surreal, ironic, or nonsensical. An article about dril in "The Oxford Student" singled out this 2011 dril tweet as the account's guiding "manifesto":


title: Dril

text: Providing an ostensibly out-of-character statement to "BuzzFeed" for an oral history on "Weird Twitter" in 2013, dril commented on the nature of his work and motivation:


title: Dril

text: Dan Hitchens at Christian journal "First Things" noted, in an article about the use of irony on social media, that "[m]uch of the art of Twitter consists in appearing to put forward a position while giving the impression that you might be kidding", citing American author David Foster Wallace's warnings about the pervasiveness of irony in modern culture. According to Hitchens, dril is the "cult account that towers above the rest" in his mastery of irony, and dril's "inspired errors in spelling, logic, and decorum can only be produced by a clever creator, but the creator never lets the mask slip. Half the joke is our joint awareness of @dril's lack of self-awareness."


title: Dril

text: Although dril's content is typically absurd or nonsensical, some have noted an undercurrent of satire or social commentary in dril's tweets. Surveying Weird Twitter for "Complex", Gallagher commented that dril's "vicious satire of conservatives, gamers, conspiracy theorists, and other less savory aspects of the Internet is always on point, always hilarious, always in character." Fellow Weird Twitter user @rare_basement said dril's "trolling [of] Penn State fans during the molestation scandal was so brilliant, always on the right side of the issue, but super funny and subtle about it." Although dril does not avow an explicit political identity, the account's politics are generally identified as leftist, an alignment common among Weird Twitter users. However, the abstraction and vagueness of dril's tweets have allowed them to be spread and repurposed by people of varying ideologies across the political spectrum. Celebrities, journalists, and former members of both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations follow dril, and even the far-right "Breitbart News" has quoted dril on its Twitter feed.


title: Dril

text: References to dril's tweets have become part of the vernacular of Internet slang. Some of dril's distinctive phrases have become so ubiquitous that they are used even by those who are unaware of the phrases' origin. Although dril's biggest influence is on Twitter, his tweets are also popular on other social media platforms—for example, meme-aggregating groups on Facebook commonly share his content, and several Tumblr users and trends have referenced and been influenced by dril. There was a "Know Your Meme" guide to dril in 2014, at a time when "KYM" pages for individual Twitter users were comparatively rare.


title: Dril

text: A common piece of conventional wisdom on Twitter holds that it is possible to find a dril Tweet that corresponds to virtually any situation or statement, leading to the saying "There's always a dril Tweet." As an example, the dril Tweet below has been widely referenced after a person apologizes for making a dramatically offensive and obviously incorrect statement:


title: Dril

text: As described by Purdom, finding the dril tweet that matches an event or statement has become an online parlor game, made possible because dril had "rendered a tightly written comedic exaggeration of every daily outrage and conflict from the news cycle in which we find ourselves trapped." Purdom also found that dril's early preoccupations and sensibility had an outsized, "Velvet Underground-like influence on the tenor of the internet to come." By the end of 2017, the staff of "Deadspin" declared that "comparing everything to @dril" was a trend that "should die" in 2018, asserting that dril himself remained funny but dril comparisons had become an overused, lazy trope, because too many Twitter users were relying on dril references "as a substitute for an actual joke." Until 2021, dril's first tweet, "no", was used by dril as his "pinned tweet", a feature of Twitter that allows one tweet the user considers to be particularly important to be "pinned" out of chronological order at the top of a Twitter feed. Despite, or because of, its lack of context, it has amassed thousands of likes and retweets. According to Will Oremus at "Slate", the popularity of the "no" tweet is an example of how "The metadata is the message" on social media, as metrics like retweets provide important context and carry independent meaning, akin to a laugh track on TV.


title: Dril

text: Other social media users frequently quote, recontextualize, or remix dril tweets for their own satirical purposes, and some accounts are even exclusively dedicated to this purpose. One such account, @EveryoneIsDril, shares screenshots of tweets by other people that look like dril's typing mannerisms. Another, "wint MP" or @parliawint, attaches dril tweets styled like teletext closed captions to images from BBC News of British politicians and journalists speaking. Although seemingly niche, the wint MP account garnered 14,000 followers by May 2017. tom dissonance, the creator of wint MP, attributed the account's success to its functioning as a joke on multiple levels, and for multiple audiences: "there are people who get the in-jokey references; there's a broader level of people who get politics and dril, and understand the significance of one commenting on another; and beyond that there are people who just appreciate an official figure in a suit saying something ridiculous. It's an onion of silliness." Koshy commented that wint MP "stands out from traditional forms of satire because it has no normative force. It recommends nothing about the way things should be. The political field it presents is slack-jawed, demented, putrid and amoral – there is no value beyond the scope of its image."


title: Dril

text: Not all satirical riffing on dril is political in nature; for example, the account @drilmagic attracted thousands of followers presenting mashups of dril tweets and cards from the game "". Ben Wilinofsky, a card player who contributed to @drilmagic, said the account and its format became a success because ""Magic" has a very self-serious lore that is great foil for an account that so often has the self-serious in its crosshairs." Several attempts have been made to create AI text generators (often manually curated) that create messages in the style of dril tweets.


title: Dril

text: There are several people whose voices on social media are often compared to dril's—the musician and actor Ice-T is one—but Donald Trump is likely the most common comparison. Commentators have frequently compared dril to Trump (and vice versa), particularly Trump's voice on Twitter and other social media platforms. According to Purdom, "Both are aging, endlessly aggrieved white men who seemingly do not understand core components of the internet, yet they perfectly embody its anonymous rage, its ability to turn people into lunatics being swarmed and eaten alive by enemies and trolls."


title: Dril

text: In a 2016 article for "New York" magazine, Brian Feldman argued that Trump should choose dril as his vice-presidential running mate—a position that was later filled by then-Governor of Indiana Mike Pence—because the writer perceived commonalities between dril's "incoherent, libidinous, authoritarian comment-spam" and Trump's own campaign tweeting. In a joke about Trump's use of social media, journalist and MSNBC host Chris Hayes said that protestors should yell at Trump to log off to "see if they can get him to recreate that @dril Tweet", a reference to the following:


title: Dril

text: Eve Peyser, in a "Gizmodo" article declaring the 2016 presidential election was "the Weird Twitter election", had earlier compared the same dril tweet to the "tone, structure and message" of a Trump tweet. David Covucci at "The Daily Dot" coined "Dril's Law", an adage stating that "[f]or every single thing Donald Trump has tweeted, Dril did it earlier and better." Covucci also asked: "What if Donald Trump is @dril? Would it be any stranger than Donald Trump being president of the United States?" Responding to Covucci's question, Anna North wrote in "The New York Times" that "another explanation" for the similarity between dril and Trump "seems more likely: Donald Trump's Twitter presence isn't absurdist, it's just absurd."


title: Dril

text: The tweet describes an argument or similar situation in which one participant has clearly been "owned" but refuses to acknowledge it or to take a break, instead doubling down and insisting beyond any credibility that they have not been owned.


title: Dril

text: Shortly after it was posted, Twitter users began to use screenshots of the corncob tweet to point out when a person refused to acknowledge losing an argument or suffering some other humiliation. By 2017, the word "corncob" by itself had become common slang on Twitter for this purpose. "The Ringer"s Kate Knibbs observed that, while "corncob" as slang remained limited to communities on Twitter, the "corncob" archetype is universal and identifiable throughout contemporary culture. According to Knibbs, "the "condition" of being a corn cob—of allowing yourself to be defined by and reduced to a piercing insistence that a perceived slight has not diminished you—[has] spread far beyond a small corner of Twitter." Among public figures whose behavior was described as fitting the "corncob" archetype, Knibbs listed Donald Trump, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, actress Louise Linton, Kim Kardashian's friend Jonathan Cheban, Kanye West (noting his numerous outbursts and 2016 song "Famous"), and Taylor Swift (noting her 2017 song "Look What You Made Me Do").


title: Dril

text: The term "corncob" became controversial after the reference was used in a meme with leftist criticisms of then-Senator (and later Vice President) Kamala Harris. The political commentator Al Giordano asserted, citing a dated Urban Dictionary definition of "corncobbed", that "[e]very cretin who has spread this meme needs to reckon with how it uses 'corncob', a rape culture and homophobic term popular among dudebros", confusing the word with the slang term "cornhole". Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress and an advisor on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, called on a Twitter user—an Ohio State student—to "denounce" the corncob meme. Various news publications reported on the story, and noted that the fast pace of Twitter discourse and unusual slang and in-jokes meant that a misunderstanding risked embarrassment and mocking. Amelia Tait, writer of an "internet dictionary" column in the "New Statesman", even wrote that Giordano had "exposed [himself] as ignorant of online culture" and had, himself, been corncobbed.


title: Dril

text: The term resurfaced in March 2019, when the official campaign account for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used it to ridicule Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by superimposing an image of a corncob onto Ocasio-Cortez's face. In turn, dril replied to McConnell's account with a link to an instructional YouTube video on how to express a dog's anal glands.


title: Dril

text: dril tweets often refer to his relationships with family members—particularly an unnamed wife/ex-wife, and numerous sons—in a manner reminiscent of father figures in American sitcoms like "Married... with Children". Tom Whyman for "The Outline" described dril as "at once married and divorced (from the same essential 'wife')". Jia Tolentino, a staff writer for "The New Yorker", credited dril as an originator of the "large adult son" trope. The trope, which Tolentino described as commonplace across social media and especially online sports journalism, involves particular observations of hapless male behavior that is "endlessly excusable: though [the large adult son] does nothing right, he can do no wrong." The character of dril repeatedly refers to his "sons", who are usually involved in the kind of "classic large-adult-son behavior" Tolentino describes as "alarming, with a whiff of the surreal". The sons are compared to Trump's sons, particularly Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, as well as Mike Huckabee's sons. dril's regular posts about his disastrous marriage have also been compared to the wife guy stereotype that became popular in the late 2010s, of a man who gains attention on social media for posting about his wife, although dril's posts on the subject predate the emergence of this stereotype.


title: Dril

text: Besides the character's family, other fictitious recurring characters in dril's tweets are an internet user named 'digimonotis', with whom dril is locked in a flame war after a prior falling-out, and "the boys", a group of friends with similarly bizarre personality characteristics to dril.


title: Dril

text: In June 2016, dril drew controversy for a tweet that used triple parentheses around the name of the corporate mascots of the cookie company Keebler:


title: Dril

text: Triple parentheses, or "echoes", are used online by the alt-right as an antisemitic symbol to highlight the names of Jews. Journalist Jay Hathaway wrote that most of dril's followers understood the tweet to be an ironic joke exploring the uncertain "etiquette around this very 2016 expression of bigotry ... Can a non-Jew apply the (((echoes))) to his own name as a show of allyship? Is it OK to use the parentheses in a joke at the white supremacists' expense? There’s no clear consensus."


title: Dril

text: As the "(((Keebler Elves)))" tweet spread, some far-right accounts praised dril, interpreting the tweet as a covert signal of genuine antisemitic views. Others criticized the tweet as bigoted, even if the intent was ironic, or at least in poor taste. In response to the controversy, dril alternated between dismissing those who believed he was an antisemite and making sarcastic promises to become "less racist" with the help of donations. Writer Alexander McDonough said dril's "refusal to clarify his views speaks to his trust in his audience to 'get' his jokes" and to dril's confidence in his privacy. "Likewise," McDonough wrote, "[dril's] audience trusts him to make pointed satire that crosses boundaries but is never hateful. The joke is always on himself or an entrenched elite, dril never punches down." According to McDonough, the controversy did not seem to have any long-term impact on dril's popularity. In the Jewish magazine "Tablet", Armin Rosen called the tweet "an obviously satirical performance of anti-Jewish bigotry" and "the only funny anti-Semitism meta-controversy in the history of the internet."


title: Dril

text: In addition to his tweets, dril has many visual art side projects and collaborations with other artists. dril has made several animations, including a short film titled "COW-BOY" and a fictional series about the attempts of "South Park" co-creator Trey Parker and Green Day drummer Tré Cool to rename the month of April "Treypril/Trépril" and "one policeman's mission to stop them at any cost." dril has expressed interest in creating further animated films, but said he would prefer to work on projects separate from his "dril" identity.


title: Dril

text: Dril worked on "Bear Stearns Bravo", an interactive video series that was the sequel to the Horse ebooks Twitter account. For the November 2014 issue "Paper" magazine, which famously featured Kim Kardashian on the cover, dril contributed an article on how to "break the Internet". Dril designed the cover of the 2016 vaporwave/funk album "Cyber-Vision" by Drew Fairweather ("Drew Toothpaste"), best known for the webcomics "Toothpaste for Dinner" and "Married to the Sea". Dril wrote for "Hiveswap", a 2017 video game based on the webcomic "Homestuck". "Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff and the Quest for the Missing Spoon", a book based on a story within a story in "Homestuck", lists dril as a contributing author and artist alongside "Homestuck" creator Andrew Hussie and "Gunshow" author KC Green. Dril was one of several artists who contributed illustrations for the card game "The Devil's Level", based on the Twitter account da share z0ne.


title: Dril

text: In October 2019, dril announced that he and comedian Derek Estevez-Olsen were launching a web series called "Truthpoint: Darkweb Rising" for Adult Swim. The show, a parody of "InfoWars", streams from Adult Swim's website on Wednesdays at midnight. In the series, dril is depicted wearing a mask. In February 2021, dril, Estevez-Olsen, and collaborator Pierce Campion released the short "Virtual Prison" as a pilot for a potential series on Adult Swim.


title: Dril

text: In February 2021, dril announced that he had begun developing a side-scrolling video game in his spare time, having done all the coding and artwork by himself until that point. With the working title "copgame", the project "follows the quest of a silent protagonist who stumbles upon the gift of immortality in a dangerous future where Top Influencers and corrupt hollywood guys maintain a cruel grip on society."


title: Dril

text: In January 2017, dril opened a Patreon account for fans to make monthly payments in support of his tweets and various future projects, including "video, illustration, and long-form writing." On the Patreon, dril described his plans for two book projects: an elaborate art book "with a narrative adjacent to the 'Mythos' surrounding my posts" and a "best of"-style compilation of tweets as a coffee table book with bonus content. By October 2017, the account received $2,200 a month from fans.


title: Dril

text: Dril published his first book, "Dril Official "Mr. Ten Years" Anniversary Collection", in August 2018. The book compiles the account's best tweets from its first ten years, as selected by the author, along with new original illustrations. A second book, "The Get Rich and Become God Method", was published in 2020.


title: Dril

text: Over time, dril has grown from a relatively obscure Twitter account with a small cult following to a widely followed, well-known account on the site. In October 2012, dril had only 23,000 followers. That number had grown to 166,000 by December 2014, and then 567,000 by May 2017. As of January 2021, dril had reached 1.6million followers. Unlike most comedians with large Twitter followings, dril became popular without a public reputation or career outside of the platform.


title: Dril

text: Following dril has often been described—sometimes in a half-serious or tongue-in-cheek manner, other times sincerely—as one of the few good uses of Twitter. In November 2017, shortly after the doxing incident, dril was called "arguably the most iconic Twitter account in the history of social media [and] practically internet royalty" in "The A.V. Club" and "one of the internet's most unlikely treasures" in "Slate". In December 2019, Katie Notopoulos of "BuzzFeed News" called dril "Without a doubt [...] the most important person on Twitter of the 2010s."


title: Dril

text: Dril's writing has been praised by a variety of public figures, including poet Patricia Lockwood; comedian and actor Rob Delaney; writer and "The New Yorker" staff writer Adrian Chen; and "Reply All" hosts PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman. In 2019, British writer Tom Whyman argued (in earnest) that dril should be considered for the Nobel Prize in Literature as "the one true poet of the internet age"; in Whyman's view, recognizing dril's writing as literature would be equivalent to historical shifts in the definition of "art" prompted by avant-garde works by artists like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol.


title: Dril

text: @dril is frequently listed among the funniest or best Twitter accounts. In 2012, "The Daily Dot" cited dril as one of the funniest accounts on Twitter and noted that reading dril's "[d]arkly funny ... odd, provocative, and clever" tweets "simultaneously brings a sense of head-scratching wonder and slightly uncomfortable chortles." Max Read, then an editor of "Gawker", named dril one of the publication's "heroes" of 2013 in a year-in-review piece. According to Read, dril's writing stood out in a paranoid web landscape overrun by spambots and covert corporate marketing:


title: Dril

text: "Paste" included dril on its lists of best Twitter accounts every year between 2013 and 2016, and the comedy site "Splitsider" (later merged into "Vulture") named dril one of the funniest accounts of 2017. For a March 2019 feature commemorating the 30th anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web, "The Verge" listed @dril among the greatest websites, people, and technologies in web history. Later that year, "The A.V. Club" ranked dril sixth on its list of the "best, worst, and weirdest things" on the Internet in the 2010s.


title: Dril

text: Individual dril tweets have also been lauded by the press. At the occasion of Twitter's tenth anniversary, both "GQ" and "Newsweek" named this dril tweet among the best and/or funniest tweets of all time:


title: Dril

text: The same tweet had also been listed among the site's funniest by "BuzzFeed" in 2014. The "corncob" tweet was listed as the 8th most "canonical" tweet of all time in 2017 by "Mic", whose Miles Klee wrote it was "categorically impossible" to select the single best dril tweet. Another dril tweet—"IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL"—was ranked among the site's "greatest" by "Thought Catalog" in 2013. "Slate" counted one of his tweets among the best sentences written in 2017, ranking dril alongside such writers as Umberto Eco, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anne Carson, Mohsin Hamid, Jennifer Egan, Durga Chew-Bose, John Darnielle, and Daniel Dennett.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL) is an Indian central securities depository, based in Mumbai. It was established in August 1996 as the first electronic securities depository in India with national coverage. It was established based on a suggestion by a national institution responsible for the economic development of India. It's demat accounts now hold assets worth $4 trillion.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: NSDL provides services to investors, stock brokers, custodians, issuer companies, Saving account current account Business corresponding etc. through its nationwide network of Depository Participants or DPs and digital platforms.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: Although India had a vibrant capital market which is more than a century old, the paper-based settlement of trades caused substantial problems such as bad delivery and delayed transfer of title. The promulgation of the Depositories ordinance in 1995 paved the way for the establishment of National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), the first depository in India. Now, NSDL is one of the largest Depositories in the World. It has established a state-of-the-art infrastructure that handles most of the securities held and settled in de-materialized form in the Indian securities markets.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: Securities are held in depository accounts, which are similar to holding funds in bank accounts. Transfer of ownership of securities is done through simple account transfers. This method does away with all the risks and hassles normally associated with paperwork. Consequently, the cost of transacting in a depository environment is considerably lower as compared to transacting in physical certificates.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: NSDL introduced the concept of 'Demat' to India. In less than 8 years of its existence, NSDL enabled India securities markets to implement T+2 settlement. Indian markets are now implementing T+1 settlement in phased manner.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: NSDL Group comprises National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML) and NSDL Payments Bank Limited respectively. NDML and NSDL Payments Bank are two subsidiary companies of National Security Depository Limited (abbreviated as NSDL). It provides services related to demat of securities, transfer and settlement of securities in Indian Securities Market.


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: Protean e-Gov Technologies Limited (earlier known as NSDL e-Governance Infrastructure Limited) is a separate company. It offers services related to issuance of PAN cards and also acts as central record-keeping agency for National Pension System (NPS).


title: National Securities Depository Limited

text: NSDL has more than 2.80 Crore demat accounts as on June 30, 2022. The market share of NSDL in value of demat assets is more than 89%. NSDL demat accountholders are present in more than 99% of pin codes in India and 189 countries across the globe. It contributes to majority of the settlement in the Indian securities markets and has more than 89% share in the total value of assets held in demat form in India.


title: Ethan Page

text: Julian Micevski (born September 20, 1989), better known by his ring name Ethan Page, is a Canadian professional wrestler currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he is a member of The Firm.


title: Ethan Page

text: Page is best known for his work in Impact Wrestling and is noted for his partnership with Josh Alexander as The North (formerly Monster Mafia). He and Alexander have won multiple tag team championships in several independent promotions, and are two-time Impact World Tag Team Champions, with their first reign the longest ever reign in the history of the championships. In AEW, Page currently teams with Scorpio Sky as the Men of the Year, re-using the name he previously had before when tagging with Michael Elgin. Both men are also aligned with American Top Team's Dan Lambert.


title: Ethan Page

text: Micevski began his professional wrestling training under the tutelage of Rip Impact and Ernie Moore in 2006. He has stated he did not learn much during this time, instead gaining the larger part of his early experience on the road while traveling with Michael Elgin, whom he credits as his mentor. He made his professional wrestling debut on November 12, 2006 at a Pure Wrestling Association event in Brantford, Ontario as Julian Logan in a four-way match, which was eventually won by Indy Soldier.


title: Ethan Page

text: On December 30, 2013, Page and Elgin as Men of the Year (MOTY) defeated Kung Fu Manchu (Louis Lyndon and Marion Fontaine) and Zero Gravity (Brett Gakiya and CJ Esparza) to capture the AAW Tag Team Championship at "One Twisted Christmas". He began wrestling for Evolve in 2014. At Evolve 84, he faced Zack Sabre Jr. for the Evolve Championship in which he came up on the losing end. During the summer of 2017, Page teamed up with A. C. H. as the Troll Boyz. On September 22 at Evolve 92, Troll Boyz defeated the Lethal Enforcers (Anthony Henry and James Drake) to win the Evolve Tag Team Championship. On September 23 at Evolve 93, the Troll Boyz lost the titles to Doom Patrol (Chris Dickinson and Jaka). On September 28, it was revealed that he is no longer with Evolve.


title: Ethan Page

text: On May 22, 2015, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla held its annual one night Dynamite Duumvirate Tag Team Title Tournament (DDT4), where he teamed with Josh Alexander as Monster Mafia. They defeated World's Cutest Tag Team (Joey Ryan and Candice LeRae) in the first round winning the PWG World Tag Team Championship in the process. Monster Mafia were eliminated from the tournament and lost the titles to the Beaver Boys (Alex Reynolds and John Silver) in the second round.


title: Ethan Page

text: Micevski worked a number of matches for Ring of Honor in 2014 as Ethan Gabriel Owens. On April 18, he defeated Zizou Middoux in a Future of Honor match. On April 25 in a match taped for ROH TV, he was defeated by Silas Young. On June 6, the first night of Road to the Best in the World was held in Collinsville, Illinois. He was defeated by Tommaso Ciampa. On June 7, the second night of Road to Best in the World was held in Collinsville, Illinois. He defeated Zizou Middoux in the opening match. On July 18, night two of the Summer Heat Tour was held in Cincinnati, Ohio. He lost a four-way match which was won by R.D. Evans. The match also included Matt Taven and Moose. On July 26 in a match taped for ROH TV, while teaming with longtime tag team partner Josh Alexander as Monster Mafia, they fell in defeat to then ROH World Tag Team Champions ReDRagon (Kyle O'Reilly and Bobby Fish). On September 6 at All Star Extravaganza VI, Moose and Evans defeated Monster Mafia, The Decade (Adam Page and B. J. Whitmer), Caprice Coleman and Takaaki Watanabe in a four corner survival tag team match.


title: Ethan Page

text: Micevski made his Impact Wrestling debut on the November 30 episode of "Impact!", portraying a character named Chandler Park, who is the storyline cousin of Joseph Park. On the January 4, 2018 episode of "Impact!", Park defeated Jon Bolen in his first match with the company. On the January 18 episode of "Impact!", after being destroyed by Kongo Kong as a part of Kong's feud with Abyss, Park would be removed from TV.


title: Ethan Page

text: Now using the Ethan Page ring name and gimmick, he returned on the October 4 episode of "Impact!" by interfering in a match between Rich Swann and Matt Sydal, costing Swann the match and aligning himself with Sydal, re-establishing himself as a heel. On the October 16 episode of "Impact!", Page made his in-ring debut, where he defeated Trevor Lee. At Bound for Glory, Page and Sydal lost to Swann and Willie Mack. In early 2019, Sydal parted ways with Impact Wrestling, thus ending their alliance.


title: Ethan Page

text: On the April 12 episode of "Impact!", Page reunited with his former tag team partner from the independent circuit, the debuting Josh Alexander as the two reformed Monster Mafia, now called The North and made their in-ring debut as a team by defeating jobbers El Reverso and Sheldon Jean. On July 5 at the Bash at the Brewery 1 event, The North defeated The Latin American Xchange (Santana and Ortiz) to win the Impact World Tag Team Championship for the first time. They would retain the titles for over a year, until they lost it against The Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin). The North regained the titles at Bound for Glory, but lost it again a few weeks later against The Good Brothers (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson).


title: Ethan Page

text: In preparation for his departure from Impact Wrestling at the end of his contract, a storyline began where Page began to blame Alexander for their losses, causing the breakup of the North. Page made his final appearance at Hard to Kill, where he was "killed" by his alter-ego, The Karate Man, in a cinematic match.


title: Ethan Page

text: After leaving Impact Wrestling, Micevski signed a three year contract with All Elite Wrestling (AEW). On March 7, 2021 at Revolution, he made his debut as the mystery entrant in The Face of the Revolution Ladder match in a losing effort, going under the Ethan Page ring name. On the March 29 episode of "", Page formed an alliance with Scorpio Sky. Shortly afterwards, they began feuding with Darby Allin and Sting, but were defeated in a tag team match at Double or Nothing. On the June 18 episode of "Dynamite" (taped June 6), Page and Sky, now going by the Men of the Year, defeated Allin in a two on one handicap match. On the July 14 episode of "Dynamite", Page was defeated by Allin in a coffin match, ending the feud. The Men of the Year would later align themselves with Dan Lambert of American Top Team, and from then on, accompanied Lambert while he cut his promos. This continued until the September 15 episode of "Dynamite", where The Inner Circle's Chris Jericho interrupted Lambert and a match between the Men of the Year and Jericho and Jake Hager was set for the September 24 episode of "Rampage", in which they were victorious.


title: Ethan Page

text: In the lead up to All Out 2022, Page was recruited by Stokely Hathaway along with Lee Moriarty, Colten Gunn, Austin Gunn, and W. Morrissey. On the September 14 episode of AEW Dynamite, the name of his group was revealed to be "The Firm" and that they were MJF's "retainer team" helping him whenever he would need them.


title: Ethan Page

text: Micevski is married and has two children with his wife. He also holds black belts in karate and taekwondo.


title: Ethan Page

text: He is an avid toy collector and often posts his toy hunt videos on his Official Youtube Page under his pro-wrestling moniker.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The Norwegian royal families are the families of either previous or present Norwegian monarchs. The current family who holds the throne are members of the House of Glücksburg and ascended the throne after the election of Prince Carl (regal name Haakon VII) during the dissolution of the Swedish-Norwegian union in 1905.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: In Norway there is a distinction between the Royal House ("kongehuset") and the royal family ("kongelige familie"). The Royal House includes only the monarch and their spouse, the heir apparent and their spouse, and the heir apparent's eldest child. The royal family includes all of the sovereign's children and their spouses, grandchildren, and siblings. The current royal family, and Royal House, maintains a high approval rating among the Norwegian people.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The Norwegian monarchy traces its history and origin back to the unification and founding of Norway, as well as Norway's first king, Harald I of the Fairhair dynasty. With the introduction of the Norwegian Law of Succession in 1163, the legal framework established that only one monarch and one royal family was, through succession, allowed to rule.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: Norway, Sweden and Denmark had joint monarchs during the Kalmar Union in the late Middle Ages, and Norway remained in union with Denmark after Sweden left the union in 1523. Following the reformation a joint Danish-Norwegian state was established 1536-37, which was ruled from Copenhagen by the House of Oldenburg until Norway was ceded to Sweden at the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 following Denmark-Norway's defeat in the Napoleonic Wars. Norway was briefly independent with its own king in 1814, but forced into a new union with Sweden under the rule of the House of Bernadotte.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: Upon becoming independent in 1905, Norway decided through a referendum to remain as a monarchy, with its first monarch being the Danish-born King Haakon VII, whose family consisted of the British Princess Maud and their son Olav. It is King Haakon's descendants that today make up the current royal family of Norway.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: Through marriages and historical alliances, the Norwegian royal family is closely related to the Swedish and Danish royal families as well as being more distantly related to royal families of Greece and the United Kingdom.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The current king Harald V descends from all of the four kings belonging to the House of Bernadotte (1818-1905) that preceded the House of Glücksburg on the throne and is the first Norwegian monarch to be a descendant of all previous Norwegian monarchs since 1818.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: Members of the Royal Family (people who are in the royal bloodline or who have become a member of the family through marriage but are not in the Royal House) are:


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The coat of arms of Norway is one of the oldest in Europe and serves both as the coat of arms of the nation and of the Royal House. This is in keeping with its origin as the coat of arms of the kings of Norway during the Middle Ages.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: Håkon the Old (1217–1263) used a shield with a lion. The earliest preserved reference to the colour of the arms is the King's Saga written down in 1220.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: In 1280 King Eirik Magnusson added the crown and silver axe to the lion. The axe is the martyr axe of St. Olav, the weapon used to kill him in the battle of Stiklestad in 1030.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The specific rendering of the Norwegian arms has changed through the years, following changing heraldic fashions. In the late Middle Ages, the axe handle gradually grew longer and came to resemble a halberd. The handle was usually curved in order to fit the shape of shield preferred at the time, and also to match the shape of coins. The halberd was officially discarded and the shorter axe reintroduced by royal decree in 1844, when an authorized rendering was instituted for the first time. In 1905 the official design for royal and government arms was again changed, this time reverting to the medieval pattern, with a triangular shield and a more upright lion.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The coat of arms of the royal house as well as the Royal Standard uses the lion design from 1905. The earliest preserved depiction of the Royal Standard is on the seal of Duchess Ingebjørg from 1318. The rendering used as the official coat of arms of Norway is slightly different and was last approved by the king 20 May 1992.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: When used as the royal coat of arms the shield features the insignias of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav around it and is framed by a royal ermine robe, surmounted by the crown of Norway.


title: Norwegian royal family

text: The royal coat of arms is not used frequently. Instead, the king's monogram is extensively used, for instance in military insignia and on coins.


title: Richard Boyd Barrett

text: Richard Boyd Barrett (born 6 February 1967) is an Irish People Before Profit/Solidarity politician who has been a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency since the 2011 general election. Boyd Barrett is a former member of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council. He is also chair of the Irish Anti-War Movement and has been cited on war issues in the Irish media.


title: Richard Boyd Barrett

text: Richard Boyd Barrett was adopted as a baby. He was raised as a Roman Catholic in Glenageary, County Dublin, by his parents, David Boyd Barrett, an accountant, and his wife, Valerie. He attended St Michael's College in Dublin. He holds a master's degree in English literature from University College Dublin.