Hasta La Gadget!

This week, NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio posted to Twitter a magnificent photo that shows the moon passing between NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory and Earth.

“Almost unbelievable that this is a real photo,” Mastracchio wrote.

The internet responded by having itself an absolute field day.

Some took to Twitter to debate the authenticity of the picture. Others decided to show the NASA astronaut exactly what “unbelievable” really looks like, photoshopping the original picture into oblivion.

From an orbiting hamburger to Donald Trump’s noggin, here’s a look at some of the clever ― and 100 percent fake ― memes that spun out of Mastracchio’s very real post.

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PHILADELPHIA ― All 14 of the Democratic women currently serving in the U.S. Senate took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night to show support for their party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) was the first to speak, introducing herself as “the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right.” Mikulski said Clinton will be the next president of the United States but needs support from across generations, and touted Clinton’s work on Social Security and fair pay when she was a senator herself. 

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, thanked Clinton for calling her several times “in the middle of an intense campaign” to check in on her treatment.

“Her words gave me strength during one of the toughest tests of my life,” McCaskill said. “She has intelligence, she has the work ethic, and most importantly, she has the heart to lead this country.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who delivered the keynote speech at the convention Monday evening, returned to the stage for one last jab at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“Hillary Clinton knows how to fight back against dangerous, loud-mouthed bullies,” she said, adding that Clinton doesn’t “run to Twitter to give people ugly nicknames.”

“Hillary just keeps on fighting for the people who need her most,” she continued. “That’s Hillary ― she’s battle-tested and she’s the fighter working families need in the White House.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) capped off the remarks, saying, “We, the Democratic women of the Senate, stand shoulder to shoulder with Hillary Clinton.”

Watch the senators’ remarks in the video above.

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Hillary Clinton was relieved when FBI Director James Comey, in his Colin-Powell-Before-the-UN hazing moment, and through some strange extra-legal contortions – sir, intention is not a prerequisite for violation of section 793 of the federal penal code (Title 18)) – let the Democratic nominee for President off the criminal hook. He did so even though Comey presented sufficient evidence against Clinton for the Justice Department to convict her and her subordinates of felonious gross negligence, intentional or not.

Team Clinton was doubly relieved that they have in Republican Presidential nominee, Donald Trump, a candidate sufficiently unschooled in the nuances of the Clinton email scandal to reach for wild conspiracy theories (e.g., Republican Comey was in on some Clinton-Lynch-Obama Democratic plot, rather than just circumspect for legal and slightly self-serving career reasons).

After the Comey non-indictment indictment, these two factors seemed enough to give Mrs. Clinton an easy general election triumph. She dodged a uranium-tipped bullet, perhaps the only bullet that could have caused enough Independents and Bernie backers to question her character, competence, and judgment and try their luck with Jill “Not Hill” Stein (Green Party) or Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party). I do not think many of these voters were or are going to switch to the similarly unpopular Mr. Trump. But depressed numbers for Clinton would buttress the colorful real estate tycoon in swing states with strong Trump demographics (white, male, middle and working class, non-college-educated).

Several weeks after “the Comey primary,” I see things differently. Mr. Comey, in publicly rebuking Mrs. Clinton for her “extreme carelessness” in handling classified information, opened up a giant can of killer worms, which will slowly bore into the Clinton firmament, no matter how clumsily Trump handles this gift from the political Gods. That is, Mrs. Clinton might have earned a pyrrhic battle victory in her convoluted email and server scandal (which, by its Byzantine nature, gives Mrs. Clinton sundry fallback excuses), while the table is set for her to lose the mother of all Clinton corruption wars.

The evidence showing clear-cut, stupid-proof, quid-pro-quo between Bill and Hillary Clinton donors and candidate Hillary Clinton is getting too obvious to ignore. The case of Rajiv Fernando, founder of Chicago-based high-frequency trading firm Chopper Trading, is the tip of the approaching iceberg. Thanks to State Department emails obtained by watchdog group, Citizens United, as well as investigative work by ABC News, we now know that Mr. Fernando gave up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation and tens of thousands more to assist Mrs. Clinton in paying off her 2008 campaign debt, while also acting as a major Clinton donation bundler.

In exchange for his fundraising prowess, Fernando secured a coveted spot on the powerful International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) and concomitant access to our nation’s highest-level intelligence. It’s a position for which the “wealthy commodities broker” had zero experience or knowledge. The blatant quid pro quo was confirmed in a September 11, 2009 email from Fernando to then Clinton deputy chief of staff (now campaign vice chairwoman), Huma Abedin: “If there is any way I can be a part of the list of the final 25 I would be grateful. Please let me know if there is anything you need me to do.”

Shortly after trying to have an ABC reporter arrested for legitimately asking him questions about this cozy arrangement, Mr. Fernando resigned from the ISAB, though he remains a big Clinton donor and is – in a laughable twist – a Clinton superdelegate.

Democratic Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, a ferocious critic of high-frequency trading (HFT), as well as the crony capitalism at the heart of the Democratic Party’s superdelegate system, likely had access to the Fernando information late in the Democratic campaign. However, the Vermont Senator weirdly chose to talk in generalities about Mrs. Clinton’s Wall Street connections, rather than isolate the depths of the Clinton pay-to-play corruption.

Meanwhile, mainstream media are loathe to broach the topic in depth, lest they do the dirty work for a candidate they genuinely hate, and feel threatened by, Mr. Trump. So, continue to expect the usual litany of lead stories about the latest Trump tweet.

Meanwhile, as the State Department stalls the delivery until after the general election of thousands of emails that likely document Clinton quid pro quo, I expect more sordid stories to leak. Expect to hear about shady Clinton dealings surrounding UrAsia Energy, Uranium One, Canadian logging concerns, gay-friendly Saudi Arabia, the uber progressive Sultan of Brunei, and for-profit concern Laureate International Universities (whose dirty contributions make Trump University’s creative shenanigans seem like Montessori School). As someone who covered for-profit education scandals for years at Forbes, I can assure you that the $16.4 million that Bill Clinton received as honorary President of deceitful Laureate (whose investors include big Democratic Party and/or Hilary donors like George Soros, Paul Allen and Steve Cohen) is more than coincidental. It’s corrupt.

The mainstream media is all over Trump University, but nary a peep about Laureate. Nevertheless, based on these pay-to-play arrangements, sixty-four members of Congress just called on the IRS, FTC, and FBI to investigate violations of its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status by the foundation run by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

As we draw closer to November, “Clinton Cash” allegations will move from being written off as right-wing conspiracies, or Bernie Bro fantasies, to inescapable wrongdoing that a “reasonable prosecutor” would feel compelled to prosecute. When the public fully digests this far greater corruption, likely after the fall election, Mrs. Clinton might not be so lucky a second time around.

It is no surprise that this far greater corruption will likely be tied up with that predictable Clinton albatross: emails. With the wholesale hijacking of the Democratic National Committee’s email database and concomitant dissemination of the DNC’s racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic voice and email communiqués via WikiLeaks, an inescapable and unshakeable narrative of Democratic cyber incompetence, dirty deeds, and pay-for-play corruption has emerged. Not that the DNC leak scandal stopped Mrs. Clinton from hiring chief enabler of the breach, and the corruption, and Mrs. Clinton’s coronation, former DNC Chairwoman Debbie “I See Nothing!” Wasserman Schultz.

However, as if the DNC Wikileak scandal was not enough, an even stranger and more threatening meme has also appeared. On Wednesday, July 27, Mr. Trump jokingly mused that if the Russians had indeed hacked the DNC’s servers maybe they could find Hillary’s 30,000 deleted emails. You know, those emails that were ostensibly about yoga and Chelsea’s wedding.

It was a typical Trump throwaway line, but Mrs. Clinton’s earnest storm troopers did not take it so. In their literal-minded overreaction to a clear joke, they fell right into Mr. Trump’s trap, confirming that maybe there were work-related communiqués in that tranche of destroyed emails. Maybe there were emails that subtly documented a quid pro quo between the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton State Department. Maybe there were more emails of a top-secret nature.

We will likely never know. But no matter how much the Clinton News Network (CNN) and its lockstep biased brethren at MSNBC, PBS, The New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation and NPR tries to muddy the waters by making this a matter of Trump’s temperament, the stench of corruption and incompetence has stuck to Mrs. Clinton’s otherwise historic Presidential campaign. Any direction that Team Clinton now turns, they are seen as either incompetent or duplicitous or both. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump smiles his Cheshire grin.

Please remember that James Comey never fully absolved Hillary Clinton for her “extreme carelessness.” Foreign powers could have accessed Mrs. Clinton’s private server. Comey just could not prove it. In other words, it was unprecedented luck, not competence that shielded our nation’s top secrets under Mrs. Clinton’s sloppy State Department tenure.

Even with this troubling backdrop, even though this is the year of the outsider, I still believe that the deeply flawed Hillary Clinton will win in November. This is in part because of the occasionally random statements of the unhelpfully conspiratorial Donald J. Trump, who almost never fails to let a colossal Clinton cock-up go to waste. If Mr. Trump becomes more rhetorically disciplined and policy savvy, as he is showing signs of doing, this equation could change.

But, for now, given the strong push Mrs. Clinton is getting from popular surrogates like Barack and Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Liz Warren, and Bill Clinton, combined with the vaunted Democratic ground game, I expect her to sneak out a victory. After all, the political-media-money-entertainment establishment has too much on the line to allow a genuine disrupter – who directly threatens their cozy, obsequious and unholy relationship to power, privilege, and prestige – anywhere near the White House. Moreover, as Chicago politicians like Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton well know, patronage can silence many critical voices.

Regardless, Inauguration Day, 2017 will be Mrs. Clinton’s high water mark. I am sensing an ensuing Dilma Rousseff moment that will hit Mrs. Clinton’s first term like a tsunami, as her Bernie-driven promises of free college tuition, minimum wage increases, and various forms of redistribution get scuttled and she, in a reprise of her husband’s troubled tenure, spends precious time and political capital trying to save herself from the slammer.

Something to ponder as you decide whom to pick for President.

— James Marshall Crotty

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An unhappy customer may seem like an irrelevancy, but an unhappy customer is a symbol. What you may not know is that for every customer who complains there are 26 customers who don’t say anything. This means you’re losing far more customers than you think.

Winning back an unhappy customer is relatively easy. Protecting your online reputation through winning back unhappy customers should be a top priority. When people see how you treat your target audience they’re more likely to buy from you. It’s a great way to build your brand.

So how do you go about dealing with that unhappy customer?

Listen to What the Customer has to Say

Begin by hearing the customer out. Listening is the most important part of the entire process. You shouldn’t assume they’re wrong or they don’t know what they’re talking about. Hear them out and let them vent, even if it involves a lot of four-letter words.

The best way to approach an unhappy customer is to spend your time looking at things from an objective point of view. Resist the temptation to cut them off or to argue back.

Listening to them will allow them to get the aggression out of their system. And this strategy will allow you to generate more B2B sales for the rest of this year.

Try to Identify with Their Issues

Empathizing with your unhappy customer may seem difficult, but it’s a necessary step before you try to apologize. Customers are rarely unhappy with anything less than a perfect level of service, which is a major problem for companies that are coming up short.

Let’s say someone is unhappy about the pros and cons of selling a structured settlement. They’re thinking about how you didn’t say this or that. The answer is to empathize and say how annoyed you’d be if the same thing happened to them. This sort of talk leads nicely into an apology.

It’s not necessarily simple to empathize with a problem, especially if that problem happens to be stupid, but you have to do it for the sake of your brand.

Find the Solution

No business can afford to upset customers, but groveling doesn’t actually solve the problem. By all means, spend your time talking to customers about how you won’t do something again, but this all has to culminate in some form of solution. Think about how you can right the alleged wrong.

Take note, your customer isn’t going to tell you exactly what they need to do. Most of them will be so blinded by their own rage they won’t be able to think of a solution. You need to find the solution through asking questions.

Start by asking questions that don’t warrant specific answers about their experience and what they think went wrong. A lot of people only look for their complaint to be acknowledged. They won’t want anything more than that. But with open-ended questions you can find out if you can do anything.

Even if you can’t fulfill their request just acknowledging their problems can be enough to retain that customer and continue growing your startup fast.

Take Care of the Issue Right Now

If you’re serious about helping customers solve their problems you should aim to act as soon as you can. Handling the problem as soon as possible will ensure your customer feels like they’re the main priority. Allowing situations to drag on and on will make the situation worse.

With any luck, you should take care of the situation within a couple of hours. This will ensure that the problem doesn’t drag and the customer is impressed by how much you seem to care.

As previously mentioned, a lot of customers don’t expect anything to actually happen they just want to have their problems acknowledged.

Conclusion – Stop it from Happening Again

Problems happen because of something on your end. Sometimes customer complaints are monumentally stupid and you don’t need to take any further action. But sometimes customers will bring up perfectly valid flaws within your corporate structure.

You should be thankful these customers have spoken up because they can prevent you from losing even more customers. There are so many companies that have managed to lose their customers and they don’t know why because none of them spoke up. Listen to their feedback and act on that feedback.

Your company should be permanently evolving and changing. Through doing this you can always give the best possible customer experience!

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Alex Horwitz figured out how to get tickets to Hamilton, the hottest show on Broadway.

He wrote a documentary called Hamilton’s America, which weaves the life of the real Alexander Hamilton into the story of the contemporary stage phenomenon. He sold the documentary to PBS, where it will premiere Oct. 21.

And it worked. He saw the show.

Why didn’t we think of that?

“Yes, that is why I wrote it,” jokes Horwitz, a New York screenwriter whose previous TV subjects have included the notorious Whitey Bulger and Nicki Minaj. More seriously, he admits, he has gotten “far too many” ticket requests from friends, casual acquaintances and total strangers who heard he now had a connection.

But in a sense, he says, Hamilton’s America may help ease the frustration of all those people who can’t acquire or can’t afford tickets to Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s live show at the Richard Rodgers Theater.

“We give you some of the Hamilton experience,” he says, “and maybe that will help tide you over until next year, when the situation should ease a little. There will be at least two touring companies and it will open in London.”

At the same time, he says, Hamilton’s America “will give you some things that audiences won’t see at the Richard Rodgers.

“Because we’ve got more time, we can explore Hamilton a little more fully than Lin can do in the show. We can also show you the reaction of the current President, and his family, after the show was performed at the White House.”

What he personally took from his three-year immersion in Hamilton’s life, says Horwitz, is that “Hamilton was a fascinating and incredibly important figure.

“He was brilliant. He was fiery. He had some great ideas. He also had some terrible ideas.

“But that’s true of most of the Founding Fathers. They were big personalities. They were loud. They argued. They said despicable things about each other. They behaved admirably and yet many of them owned slaves.

“Hamilton was involved with all of them, of course. This film touches on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, but there were so many others we just didn’t have room to include. It could have been a 10-part miniseries, because there’s that much material in Hamilton’s life.”

The idea he says, “was to make a film about politics that’s not political. We’re neutral. We want to show his life, the good and the flaws. We’re also making two movies at once, since we’re showing the making of Lin’s Broadway production at the same time. It’s kind of a perfect storm.”

After three years, Horwitz (above) admits he’s ready for a rest from Hamilton, though he won’t rule out returning to that world in the future.

And incidentally, back to the ticket thing, he says the popularity of Hamilton could mark an interesting shift in the whole role of Broadway theater and music.

“Theater used to be popular culture,” he says. “Back around the turn of the 20th century, the highest aspiration was to be an opera star.

“Then the movies came along and people wanted to be movie stars,” and live theater gradually lost its place as everyday entertainment for the masses. For most people, it became a once-in-a-while thing, an occasional break from the movies or, later, television.

“But for a long time,” Horwitz points out, “stage music was still our popular music, the top-40 of its day. With Hamilton, maybe we’re seeing things go back toward that a little bit.”

Even if you can’t get a ticket to the show. Yet.

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