#I have like zero followers so I am basically just tweeting to add to twitter data

[and-let-it-run]

So I definitely created a twitter just so I could follow the NWSL teams during the challenge cup because their content was amazing... but now I am keeping it because I just follow so many sports teams and players so if you ever want to see basically the same thing as this blog but in twitter form, check me out:

(Twitter: @Caronacation)

[realtalkingpoints]

What happened with FB Notifications this weekend, and why do I care…???

By Staff realtalkingpoints blog

January 27, 2020 

So what did happen with Facebook (FB) notifications this weekend?  Anything?  If you look for news coverage as I have, of a major news event involving FB, you can’t find it.  I found one or two articles referencing ‘degraded performance’ in obscure publications I’ve never heard of before, and only after searching several search engines. Two articles… on something that I’m sure affected thousands, and thousands of users.  So why did some people post about their FB notifications being blank?  Why is that even a big deal, I mean, can’t you shut those off in settings anyway? What’s the big deal?

Not everyone has seen this subtle suppression technique in action, and perhaps most who haven’t, are using social media differently than those of us who have.  To turn it back a step or two, let’s talk about conservatives complaining they are being suppressed on social media.  You’ve heard this complaint, right?  Usually one of your Trump supporter friends, who’s quickly dismissed by their liberal friends as dreaming up conspiracy theories, and just brushed off because it’s publicly acceptable to not like them, ‘cuz, Trump... So, those people.  Conservatives, claiming they are being shadow banned or deboosted or censored on social media.  

I am one of those people. I will go on social media and discuss politics, usually with people who don’t agree with me.  I will openly express support for our president, Donald Trump, and make more enemies than friends in doing so.  And I will support other ideas, movements, and policies that define conservatism, by participating in conversations initiated by politicians and news personalities all over popular social media platforms.  I’ve been doing this for years, motivated not by the argument itself, but by the concern that the conservative perspective was under-represented in these online discussions, and by the realization that these online discussions were becoming the epicenter of the political discussion itself.

At the heart of it, it’s a demographics problem.  In general, conservatives are older. Not that there aren’t young conservatives, or old liberals for that matter.  But in general, most college kids want to protest something…  And tell them that college should be free, and of course most of them will agree.  As they get older, and many achieve success in career, family and finance, many of them begin to realize the value of the conservative principles they had rebelled against.  As in the college tuition for example.  Once they have struggled through the weight of the debt, and finally paid it off, there is a sense of accomplishment, and a greater understanding of the value of the dollar.   Perhaps they still hate debt, and that’s a good thing. But they have learned through experience, that debt is a temptation dangled throughout life, that can be conquered, but must be entered into carefully, and weighed against the benefits it will afford.  There might also be the eventual realization that our banking system relies on loans and interest, and the requirement that loans be paid back, so banks can make more loans and provide liquidity to the economy.  The wisdom of these experiences has simply not been achieved by the younger, ‘why can’t it be free’ ideologues.  

Ask yourself, how many 18 year-olds don’t know how to use the internet?  The answer is basically zero.  Now ask the same question of 75 year-olds?  It’s definitely not zero.  Perhaps a large percentage over 75 is technically using the internet, but many are using it only sparingly, to do email, mail order and basic browsing. The fact is, we still have several generations who grew up, went through their education, and much of their career before the internet was even invented.  Many of them are intimidated by the internet, perhaps rightly so, but they are definitely not participating in political debates on FB.  My basic understanding of mathematics suggests that the online discussions were more heavily influenced by younger, more liberal perspectives than their conservative counterparts, based on the demographics of the participants.  And as I became more and more involved in these conversations, it seemed obvious to me that this was in fact the case.  The conservative perspective was simply not getting the same representation on these platforms.  It was probably around the same time, that I also realized the social media conversations were driving the television news cycles, not the other way around.

Consider a news anchor or TV journalist with a twitter account.  Perhaps they have a show that comes on at 8 pm.  But they get a news scoop at 11 am.  Historically, viewers would hear about it at 8pm.  Today, it’s tweeted out almost as it happens.  By 8pm showtime, the news has been tossed about by everyone who approves, disapproves or is suspicious of.  I’d theorize, that the 8pm broadcast still benefits from the social media discussion.  It’s more informed and refined, having been both challenged and expanded upon as like minded followers along with oppositional personalities weigh in on the discussion.  The conversation moves forward at the speed of the internet, as passionately informed ideologues share their best arguments in support of, or in opposition to the conflict of the day.  The argument may well be settled by 8pm, regardless of how it gets reported on the individual networks.  The conclusion for me is easy.  News travels faster on social media, than on TV news broadcasts.  And this is revolutionizing news itself.  

So what does all this have to do with notifications?  Why are some people upset about not receiving notifications, and how does it relate to conservatives who think they’ve been censored?  Notifications are what you get when someone likes, shares, or responds to your comment on social media.  Think of an account you follow, that posts discussion of news events.  It appears in your news feed, and you can interact with it. You can like it, share it on your account for your followers, or you can comment on the issue being discussed. Liking, seems to be the least consequential interaction you can engage in.  When you like a post, or a comment, the ‘author’ of that post or comment will usually get a notification that it was liked.  The more likes, the more notifications, and the author gets a sense of community approval or indifference to their thoughts.  I’m sure the biggest accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers often do turn off their notifications, because it’s a given that they will receive hundreds or thousands of interactions every time they post, and to receive notifications of every one would be overwhelming.  But for the average user, notifications of likes are a positive reinforcement to their opinions.  It lets them know that they have accomplished an understanding of the issues being discussed and have expressed something that others agree with.  So why is not getting notified of likes, such a big deal?  We haven’t got there yet…

The effect that the notification suppression has on social media is at least two fold.  Many believe that it is used as a form of punishment by social media platforms to persuade accounts away from posting about topics they don’t want on their platforms.  I remember seeing a song parody by conservative social media personality Steven Crowder. (video here)  I had already experienced the notification suppression (along with other shadow banning techniques), but had struggled to find discussions from other conservatives that this was actually happening (resulting in the all too frequent ‘you’re a conspiracy theorist’ accusations).  Thankfully, Steven Crowder had turned the song into a gripe about all the suppressions and de-platforming that his video podcast had gone through. Their parody of “Man of constant sorrow” included an adapted chorus line that went something like ‘notifications don’t work for days’.  And then I knew.  It was happening, it was real, it was on purpose, and it was a punishment for content the platform developers disagreed with.  I wasn’t crazy.  Or if I was, then so was Steven Crowder, and I was in good company.  

But the effects of suspended notifications goes beyond a superficial punishment for content the platform disapproves of.  When applied to the comments of a deep debate, it has a chilling effect on the discourse being exchanged.  Take Russia collusion for example.  Some of us who followed the developments closely, realized long ago that the claims being made by leftist liberal media about the President’s alleged treasonous Russian contacts just didn’t add up.  Imagine a social media post about Russia collusion, and a discussion took shape in the comments.  Maybe there was breaking news, and the possibilities of what it could mean were being brainstormed for the first time, right there on FB.  Crowdsourcing at it’s finest.  But it was a work day, so average Joe quickly shared his thoughts in the comments section while eating breakfast.  Joe’s thoughts sparked a lightbulb in another participant who replied to Joe’s comment with the missing link to Joe’s idea.  When Joe checked his phone at work, he got the notification, read the reply, realized the missing link, added another comment with his conclusions, and a new part of the mystery was solved.  Much of Russia collusion was unraveled just like that. The major account they were both following, absorbed the developments, polished the theory, and it was ready for the 8pm news broadcast.  The information exchange had moved ahead at the speed of the internet.

So what if, Joe never got that notification…  Joe checked his phone, but there was no indication anyone had interacted with his comment.  Maybe Joe interacts with lots of posts and doesn’t have time to circle back and check them all for replies.  He relies on the notifications to tell him when it’s happened.  The next time he went on the social media site, he interacted with other posts on other topics, and never realized the missing link to complete his theory was waiting for him in the comments section, where he had participated earlier.  He never knew, so he never looked, and the discovery was never made.  By suspending the notifications, they interrupted the conversation and curtailed the exchange of information.  Whether by accident or by design, the platform developers and admins have realized that by suspending notifications, they can suppress the exchange of ideas and content.  Interrupt the dialog, and it will at the very least, slow the development of ideas and analysis.  And notification suppression likely has effects that we have not yet realized. Remember, they have all the data. They know how notification suppression effects the entire community when used in different capacities, and they are using it more and more.

So today, Saturday January 25, 2020, my notifications page on FB went blank.  I had experienced many inconsistencies with my notifications in the past.  Times when notifications for specific conversations seemed to roll in days after the actual interactions happened (perhaps what Steven Crowder was referring to in his song parody).  Also notifications about comments that don’t show up in the thread the notifications came from.  I’m sure there’s others.  Lots of games being played by the overlords with their precious notifications.  But never had my notifications page been completely blank.  Until today. And knowing the unique importance of notifications, I became quite concerned.  I posted immediately on FB, and other social media sites.  I asked if anyone else had blank notifications pages on FB.  The answers came in rather quickly.  Yes, yes, yes.  Many friends on FB said they had similar experiences today or had seen posts from their friends that were experiencing the issue.  Other platforms generated input that it was happening on FB in the UK, and seemed like a wide scale problem.  Of course many assumed it was the usual ‘technical glitch’ that so often explains the unexplained phenomena on the internet.  Yet another friend made curious observation, that I had been suspicious of.  He said something to the effect ‘all my friends who engage in partisan politics on FB are complaining about notifications today’.  It hadn’t affected his notifications, but he felt he had noticed a correlation among those claiming they had.  He thought it was affecting those who regularly espouse their political views on the platform.  

FB has been vocal about their displeasure with the politics playing out on their platform.  They have made public commitments to crack down and dissuade certain types of political content, including political ads during the election cycle.  So was this notification suppression, a deliberate attempt to punish politicos for opining on FB?  If it was a deliberate act, their timing was likely no accident either.

Today was the beginning of the President’s legal defense arguments in the Senate impeachment hearings. Today was the first day, that the President actually got to defend himself via legal representation on national TV in the impeachment charade that’s been going on for months now.  It was right after sharing a video of his legal team delivering devastating remarks and embarrassing the Democrat hoaxers that my notifications suddenly went blank.  Was my sharing a political video embarrassing Democrats, related to my notifications disappearing?  Was this the notifications punishment that FB has used so many times before but on a bigger, more obvious scale?  Were they exercising their leverage to interrupt the conversation and curtail the flow of information?   Where are the news stories about this?  I looked and looked and found very little. Did they choose today because they knew most news outlets would be focused on impeachment and therefor unlikely to spend much time on a silly FB glitch?  Surely, there were zillions of political posts on FB in recent days, as the Democrats delivered their case to the Senate.  Did they choose today specifically to send a different message? The day that the President mounts his legal defense is the day FB decides to punish users for political content…???  

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVEkDRgytCU)

[larriefails]

28 is not a Larry number - a masterpost

Since @theystudyrainbows has decided to put all the Larrie delusions on this number in one handy masterpost, why not debunk it all in one go?

Even the introduction is a mess. The 28 is not “a One Direction fandom mystery” at all. It’s Louis’ jersey number that he was assigned at Doncaster Rovers and that he has since then adopted. But then again, Liam’s kidney and the Belfast canceled concert are not mysteries either

How decent of you to say that some of these are coincidences, considering literally all of the following is bullshit

The fact that “too many people to name” contributed to write this drivel makes my heart ache

Harry has no connection to the number 28 whatsoever

The problem with you attempting numerology is that there are only 9 possible digits (as the addition of two numbers can never be zero). So, you clown yourselves because it leads to this

Eleanor was born on July 16th 1992:

7+1+6+1+9+9+2 = 35

3+5 = 8

Oh no!

But also, Zayn was born on January 13th 1992:

1+1+3+1+9+9+2 = 26

2+6 = 8

(: Ya see how that’s just not good?

Not only that, but also, as I said, Harry has no connection to the number 28, but for shits and giggles

Kendall Jenner was born on November 3rd 1995:

1+1+3+1+9+9+5 = 29

2+9 = 11

1+1 = 2

So.. basically this is worthless information that you pulled out of your ass. Or I could easily claim that 28 is an Elounor or a Hendall number

You also use this method to count Harry and Louis’ X Factor numbers, but as we’ve established, there are only 9 options, the odds are stacked for this coincidence

How is that 28? That’s 82.. A completely different number. In the UK the date is written day/month/year. So the “same gig” was the 8th day of the 2nd month. 82. It’s very funny that, since you’re Italian and live in the UK (both countries that use the day/month/year system) you’ve written every date so far that way, but now that you want to say this other random date is connected to 28, you switched to month/day/year.

Also, where is the year in this equation? We’ve been using the entire date so far, but now we’re only focusing on the day and month? (and switching order?) That seems very convenient. Almost like, if you try hard enough, any date can add up to 28 in some way?

November 17th 2011, Louis and Eleanor’s anniversary: 11+17=28! Oh no! DRATS! It’s still an Elounor number!

And now we’re just ignoring the month and only focusing on the day. And not only that, but ignoring half the time they were there (the 27th) to only focus on the 28th. That is, once again, very convenient

But continuing with your own ridiculous logic. We know that Louis and Eleanor went to V Fest together in 2011, because Eleanor said so on twitter when Sugarscape wondered if the “brown haired girl” holding hands with Louis at V Fest was her

V Fest was on August 20th and 21st 2011. What do you know? 20+8 = 28! Damn... this is getting suspicious. Louis!!! Did you get the 28 for Eleanor? :)

This is a whole ass facepalm. I’m going to link the video here just so it’s verifiable how unhinged y’all are

He literally turns for 1 millisecond, and is looking in the general area of his right because that’s where everyone else in the band is standing. The fact that y’all still do this shit is so embarrassing for your life and your soul

But why don’t you tell the truth? That y’all decided their anniversary was the 28th and then created this completely impossible to prove “receipt”? How is it proof of anything if it came AFTER y’all had decided the 28 was their anniversary? Your circular logic knows no bounds

Harry has not used the 28 number AT ALL. Louis hasn’t used the 28 as his jersey number “often,” he started using it in 2013 when it was assigned to him by the Doncaster Rovers when he was signed as a semi professional player

This is from goal.com, one of the most important sources of soccer information in the world X

The article is from September 2013 and John Ryan, the chairman of the Rovers, explains that 28 was HIS number, that HE used for a match. Soccer players have assigned numbers throughout the season, and the number 28 had been retired from the line up after John Ryan used it in 2003. He decided to bring it back to give it to Louis. And Louis was signed as a soccer player professionally with that number. That’s why it’s important to him, you bag of nonsense. This was his life long dream in the club he loved. He probably spent hours and hours daydreaming about being signed professionally to play soccer and when he finally accomplished that, it was with the number 28, so of course it’s gonna be important to him!

Find ONE INSTANCE of Louis using the number 28 before the summer of 2013. ONE. You won’t! The tattoo came after that, him wearing it on his jerseys came after that. According to Larrie Lore Harry and Louis started dating in 2011 (apparently September 28th 2011, go figure), but for two full years neither of them did anything related to the number 28 whatsoever!

Why didn’t Louis wear the 28 in his first charity match in 2012?

The fact that he wore 17, which is his and Eleanor’s anniversary. LMAO can you say ouch? Furthermore, Louis didn’t CHOOSE the 28, it was ASSIGNED to him because it was the symbolic number the chairman had used back in 2003. It was a retired number that no player had used for 10 years, and they decided to give it to him as a gesture. Man, that would be a HUGE coincidence if out of 40 something available numbers in a soccer line up, Louis had wanted exactly the one that was retired and meant a whole lot for the chairman, instead of the chairman offering it to Louis, like LOGIC says. Another HUGE coincidence that he had not bothered with the 28 at all up until that point and then started having it everywhere. But I thought Larries hated those?

After this you list all the times Louis has used the 28, which there are a lot, but all come after 2013, I don’t want to add more pointless screenshots here. Doncaster Rovers jersey (from 2013 on), dodgeball jersey (2015), in ears (2015), tattoo (2015), BTY music video (2017), LTHQ’s first IG username (2017), his playlist (2018/2019)

How is that... 28? That’s 90028. And this isn’t a date, where you can just pick the number apart as you wish. This is a zip code for a secret show the Rolling Stones played in LA in 2015

Not only that, but Harry (and this is hilariously tragic for you) was ACTUALLY AT THE GIG! THAT’S WHY HE POSTED THE PHOTO!

Posting the screenshot with the date so you can see. May 21st 2015. Article by the LA Times X

This is Harry at the actual gig with Mick Jagger you absolute MORON X

And this is Harry wearing a Rolling Stones shirt the day after the gig because he’s that much of a fanboy

Y’all the second hand embarrassment is K I L L I N G me. CRYING TEARS OF BLOOD OVER THE FACT THAT THIS WAS WRITTEN IN ACTUAL SERIOUSNESS

Why is “professional” in scare quotes?? I can’t believe that you just added 1+2+3+4+5+6+7. Oh my god. I can’t believe I have to say this but *whispers* those are consecutive numbers. They just used consecutive numbers... And why would Harry’s HQ account managed by the team that’s “oppressing them” use a secret code with their beloved 28? How does that make ANY sense?

The article is wrong. He wore TWENTY-SEVEN Gucci suits. I can’t believe that’s a sentence I just typed, but alas

1- Basel, 2- Copenhagen, 3- Hamburg, 4- Milan, 5- Bologna, 6- London I, 7- Hong Kong, 8- Bangkok, 9- Rio de Janeiro, 10- Mexico City I and II (same suit), 11- Houston, 12- Fort Lauderdale 13- Nashville, 14- Hershey, 15- Philadelphia, 16- Toronto, 17- MSG I, 18- DC, 19- Detroit, 20- Indianapolis, 21- Chicago, 22-St. Paul, 23- Denver, 24- Seattle, 25- San Jose, 26- LA I, 27- LA II

In 60 concerts, he also wore Charles Jeffrey 4 times, Saint Laurent 3 times, Palomo Spain 2 times, a custom kilt, Harris Reed 5 times, Clavin Klein 6 times, Alexander McQueen 7 times, Givenchy 4 times. Just so you don’t think I’m purposefully missing out on a suit to make it 27. The article probably counted Mexico’s suit twice. But it’s not 28 suits, it’s 27. The Mexico suit was the same both nights

I would love to know how this would be relevant to Larry or how this would mean the number 28 is important to Harry. Does he have OCD? I don’t get it

Here we have another round of “I will MAKE IT FIT 28 IF IT KILLS ME!”

Let’s see the different tactics that you used

Adding day and month

Taking only the day

Adding day month and year. Except you left out the 2 in 2017. Because otherwise it wouldn't add up. I can’t deal with thisodnadmsla

Harry performed track 2, meaning, his lead single that he was still promoting, Sign of the Times, and 8 Ever since NEW YORK because... he was performing in... New York...

Only the day. Wow, you actually repeated tactics once!

Adding two completely different dates together, that have absolutely no correlation. How are Sweet Creature, Harry’s promo single, and the music video for a different single, related in any way? What? Why not Kiwi’s music video? Why not Two Ghosts music video? Why not the release of either of those singles to radio? Can you make it any more obvious that you’re just pulling this completely out of your ass?

You repeat tactics again, except it’s the most ridiculous tactic of adding all the numbers in the date except the 2 of the year and it’s for “Harry posted link to Twitter to Sign of the Times music video PREVIEW.” Oh my god

And now you’re counting days between two dates, because that’s not unhinged. I’m guessing you mean the April 14th not 24th, but that also wasn’t the date? It was the 13th? It depends on the time zone you were in?

For someone who, according to you, plans with such precise care to match to 28, he didn’t wait until it would be 28 days for everyone. It’s not even because it was tweeted at midnight UK since this is like 3/4 AM UK time. In fact, it wasn’t midnight anywhere relevant (or anywhere, in general since it was at .54 minutes). So not only is this ridiculous, it’s also incorrect

1. That’s not a fan, that’s his cousin, but Larries know barely anything about Harry if it can’t involve Larry so I’m not surprised you don’t know

2. Imagine him asking “please, make the password add to 28“ to his staff. I have tears in my eyes picturing it

3. I CAN’T BREATHE. Y’all are BLIND on top of INCREDIBLY STUPID. That’s THE DATE

That’s his Hamburg concert, which you can tell because of his suit, which was on MARCH 25TH 2018 (he posted the pictures the day after)

AKA 250332018 which is what the password says

You not only confused an 8 with a 9, but also created numbers out of thin air because of a pixel smudge and failed to realize it was the FUCKING DATE. WHICH DOESN’T EVEN ADD TO 28! 2+5+3+2+1+8= 21

This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing written in this post, which is already one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read. Can you imagine Harry counting to 28 in his head in the middle of the concert? I can’t y’all, this is too much. You’re A GROWN WOMAN. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I also found it incredibly suspicious that you didn’t outright link the video which you do throughout the post, and turns out it is because he didn’t pause for 28 seconds (what is this fucking sentence?)

He stops playing and singing at 2.40. Then speaks until 2.43. Then the “pause” which is just him trying to get the audience to stop screaming until 3.07 when he says (I can’t really make it out) “now you” or something like that. And then he says “for your eyes...” and lets the audience sing at 3.09. Literally none of these timestamps add to 28 and he had no way of counting to 28 since he was silencing people the entire time. And just like when he switched “I have love you since we were 18″ to “I have loved you since I was 16″ hitting his own chest, or when he said he fell in love to What Makes You Beautiful, you missed the entire point of this bit, which is Harry’s LOVE FOR HIS FANS

He has loved us since he was 16, he fell in love to us to What Makes you Beautiful, and he was letting us sing that part of the song every concert. He “paused” to shush the nonsensical screams, then he would give the audience the cue and let them sing. Several times he dedicated the song to specific fans in the audience, people with cancer, little kids, a fan that had neck surgery. By making it about Larry, you stripped it from its actual meaning and Harry’s love for his fans. But you always do shit like that

Regardless, he didn’t pause for 28 seconds. Wrong

And you end the post with the most anticlimactic possible tone

Here’s the video

Harry is talking about anniversaries because he’s reading a sign from the audience... about.. anniversaries

Y’all are the definition of clowns. All that fuss for the 28 and THIS is your proof?

[miximax-hell]

There have been people, some truly wonderful souls, who have followed my blog during my long period of absence. For that, thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t deserve that kindness. With that out of the way, hello! Once again, it’s been so long... And that’s exactly we won’t delve in the past now. Let’s get right to it!

Today’s miximax is one that can barely be recognised at all unless you’re specifically told who the vessel and aura are. So, just in case my handwriting is THAT awful, we’ll be talking about Sakuma’s miximax today! For him, I’ve chosen a wonderful character that is, quite literally, part of the history of videogames as a whole. After the news about a new Smash coming soon, the promise of Metroid Prime 4 for Switch, and the very successful (AND SPANISH) remake of Metroid II, it feels like a great time to bring Samus Aran into the battle! The coolest intergalactic bounty hunter there ever was makes for a very simple-looking miximax, but it was still quite tough to draw because of RUST. Ah well. No one to blame but myself.

Anyway, I think this deserves a proper explanation, so let’s see why these two make for a fantastic combo! For more on that, please check under the cut. As usual.

Well, you’ve made it this far, so let’s delve a little in the past now. ww Just yesterday, I finally finished writing my graduation thesis!! That means I’m finally free... for a little while. Just enough to enjoy half a month of debauchery AND SPEND TIME WITH MY GIRLFRIEND, WHOM I MISS VERY MUCH. Oh, and my internship ended about two and a half weeks ago, too. While I am free in that sense as well, I can’t say I’m a scriptwriter and game designer right now, which kinda sucks. But they might still hire me...! And I’m ruminating some exciting ideas of my own. I highly doubt the company I worked for will be interested in them, but, well, it’s worth a shot. And good practice, in any case. So, yeah! I hope you’ve all been well!

Anyway, let’s get right to it. A single paragraph of my life struggles was enough. ww

This is still a fairly small blog with less than 100 followers. And it will always be because of how niche it is. ww Not only that, but most of said (active) followers aren’t even friends of mine, but the aforementioned kind souls who, somehow, grace me with their presence here. That means that, for example, if I were to go on Twitter to talk about my projects for this blog (as I’ve done a couple of times in the past), only one or two of my friends would give a crap about it. And that’s assuming they see those specific tweets at all! Otherwise, the reactions I get are non-existent unless I’m specifically mentioning someone. And even that is far from being failproof. So, whenever I want to share my ideas with someone, develop them through conversation or brainstorm, there’s only one person I can rely on: my lovely girlfriend. She’s patient and super supportive of my work. Bless her soul. I’m so in love with her.

Anyway, thanks to how much I’ve ranted to her about SakuSamus, I’ve already typed down most of what needs to be said about why I think these two work so well together. I can also get away with mostly copying and pasting what I already told her over Skype and simply adjusting it a bit to make it more readable as a blog post and adding some extra details. ww So, let’s get to it!

Coming up with proper combinations for this blog can sometimes be a chore and require a lot of overthinking. However, as the wonderful @miyukiko​ would say, great ideas suddenly come to you sometimes. This had a bit of both. I'll try to skip the uninteresting bits of the creative process, but this is the important part.

Now that we've seen Sakuma in Ares and he's obviously won a lot of... prominence, if you may put it that way, it felt like a good time to take a closer look at him. Sakuma is a forward, and a pretty talented one, at that. When he becomes captain in the Ares timeline, though, his team comes to rely on him on a much deeper level too. Or so it seems, at least. To top it off, his descriptions in the original games say that he helps Kidou and acts as a strategist that coordinates the team. That’s pretty much the base we can build upon.

As a forward, he seems pretty thorough and tries to stay cool and calm, since that's the kind of soccer they play at Teikoku. And, from what we've seen in Ares, as a captain, he worries so much about his team's well-being and about being a good leader for them. You know, the usual "Am I fit to be captain?" thing that IE loves so much. ww

But there's a lot of bad stuff about Sakuma, too.

For one, despite his cool act, when he loses it, he loses it good. We all know how he reacted when he was part of Shin Teikoku and how extremely mad he would get with Kageyama, for example. Also, when he does lose it (and, arguably, even when he’s still somewhat sane), he's very self-destructive.

I think that's somehow linked to his fears: he simply doesn't want to be left alone. He panics when Kidou leaves Teikoku and, again, loses it completely. When his insanity reaches that kind of point, nothing else seems to matter, so he goes all out even if it can cost him his life. Or his legs, at least.

Related to that, and this is much more relevant in terms of sheer gameplay, he is extremely dependent of others.

He's supposed to be some super cool ace striker, but absolutely all of his shots are combo hissatsus no matter what timeline or age you’re looking at. Koutei Penguin 2gou and 3gou, Twin Boost, Death Zone, Deep Jungle... They all need 2-3 people, and, usually, Kidou's involved.

So, tough as it is to say, if Sakuma isn't by Kidou's side, he's subpar. And if he's all alone, he's basically worthless. And to add insult to injury:

He usually depends on people who aren't even forwards to score goals.

He is turned into a defender as an adult because, as I said, he's subpar as a forward if he's alone.

That makes Sakuma a very interesting case: in a universe that is all about the power you get from of your teammates, what he lacks is individuality. ...Especially when you consider that his only motivation to play soccer seems to be to play with Kidou. www

As he is, he's the absolute definition of support character. Pretty sad, if you ask me. (Oh. And many of his in-game hissatsus are very dirty and the referee complains more often than not about them. That counts too. ww)

So, here comes the difficult question: who can give Sakuma the strength, the individuality and, partially, the safety that he needs to be relevant without killing himself? After thinking about it for quite a long time, I felt like he could really use the power of Samus Aran.

(Not to go all BuzzFeed on you guys, but the answer would’ve surprised you if I hadn’t said it from the very beginning. ww)

On a technical level, Samus is strong af. Not only has she survived to and successfully finished every mission she's embarked on (as far as I’m aware), but she's pretty much exterminated full races, DESTROYED PLANETS and killed the same evil pterodactyl alien... thing that wants her dead like 11 times by now.

And what's more: she's done all of this completely alone. (Except maybe for Other M. I haven’t played that game yet, but it looked like there were more people, idk) All in all, she's a beast. But that's not all, of course. There are many heroes who go and do their thing alone. It could've easily been Lara Croft too, for example--at least in the original games.

Sakuma, as I said, seems to be driven by a will to be with Kidou and is very much dependent of other people. And when things go wrong and he loses it, he is... spiteful, to say the least. And I don’t know if you guys were aware of this, but Samus is 120% salt. I read a post about the hatred between Ridley and Samus that when Ridley was announced for Smash and all, but I sadly can’t find it right now. If any of you guys know that post, please let me know and I’ll add the link here because it was SO GOOD.

According to my limited knowledge on the Metroid Series, Samus fights three main things: metroids (you never saw that one coming, I'm sure), space pirates, and Ridley (who is the leader of the space pirates, but is not a space pirate because I, too, would listen to my Evil Pterodactyl Lord if he were to give me orders).

Long story short, the space pirates and Ridley killed Samus’s parents. She was adopted by people from a civilization called the Chozo, but the space pirates killed the Chozo too. And when Samus found a baby metroid that saw her as its mother, the space pirates and Ridley kidnapped the metroid and it eventually died because of them.

Samus doesn't fight for the greater good. Samus fights because she's fucking pissed.

But, unlike Sakuma, she uses that rage against the right people and in the right way: she is still salty as hell, but she stays cool, kicks ass, makes everyone go boom, and she's out. She does what Sakuma does, but better. Even when she's pissed. Oh, and she does things the way they should be done: with legal permission, without turning evil and stuff. And she's super respected and feared because of it, which is precisely what a captain and a forward should be like, respectively.

And the icing on the cake?

In IE3, when Sakuma has levelled up enough, he learns how to use Space Penguin. also, Samus has a visor thing that can replace Sakuma's patch and that sounded cool to me

Anyway, that would be the gist of it! As I said earlier, I’m not the biggest Metroid connoisseur in the world: I’ve only beaten Fusion and Zero Mission, and I’m currently playing Prime and Return of Samus. As such, excuse me if some other game I haven’t played debunks all I’ve said, but I haven’t found any traces of such a thing. ww

However, despite my few experiences with Metroid games, Samus is a character I love and have very fond memories of. This series represent what I love the most about the video game genre: that sense of continuous and hard-earned improvement that only comes from experiences that are constantly giving you new abilities (and even new looks) to reflect your progress. It’s similar to RPGs, a genre I love as well, but RPGs reward you more for personal progress and dedication, such as grinding for levels, and not (usually) so much for just pushing forward and defeating bosses.

Last (and least), for those who have made it this far, here’s a little something you might be interested in knowing: I’ve been inactive here, but I’m still constantly trying hard to come up with interesting ideas for miximaxes! And I think I have found some cool stuff for both Kidou and Shishido, so feel free to tell me on which of those you’d like me to work on next. They’re both very challenging to draw and fiddle with, but I’m always happy to shift my priorities in any way you guys want me to. ww

[stone-man-warrior]

April 20, 2021: 6:28 pm:

==============================================

Please send help to Josephine county Oregon.

Please send medical services.

Please send US Military, read this account to learn why that is necessary,

Bring your own hospital, all of the medical providers are occupied and controlled by the British/SAG/Canadian terror army, US citizens are killed at the hospitals and clinics.

===================

This happened in my inbox from the idiot SAG terror operative who is trying to discount what I am reporting, this note came from the same anonymous asshole who mentioned the Knights Templar yesterday.

My response to that yesterday is a good explanation, covers the basic things that are in place, and took place over time, to attack USA and other parts of the world.

==============

I decided not to go the Pain Specialists to verify weather or not the call about having been banned from medical treatment there that I received yesterday. The way the phones are hijacked by the terror army here in southern Oregon, there is no way to be certain that the calls people receive are originated from the phone number shown on the caller ID, and, there is no way to be certain that outgoing calls actually reach the numbers dialed. Actors in special terror call centers interfere and manipulate all of the communications of all kinds. That’s why no one in Oregon was able to reach help when the slaughter was at it’s height years ago. There still is no way to reach helpful people.

I decided at about 3:00 am not to go, as the situation has become too dangerous, the caller said my appointment had been cancelled because “the Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon don‘t want to be held liable for my leg condition.” That is an counter intuitive statement, as I really need life saving antibiotic medicine. Even though the place is a front for terror activities at the SAG leadership levels, the fake doctors there still do prescriptions, so, now I have absolutely zero optimism about finding life saving antibiotic medicine. At 3:00 am this morning, I was having the most painful reaction to the poison injection attack so far, I have not slept in a number of days, only rested my eyes, but the pain is too intense for sleep, so, that is when I decided I could not endure the ride to Medford to go to my appointment, or be turned away at the front door, as those were the possibilities, without consideration of what kind of physical attack plan they may have had in mind at Pain Center of Southern Oregon.

Currently, I am experiencing pain levels in my right leg and foot that are nearly comparable to the spinal cord tear that I experienced in 2012 when the terror army ran me over with a truck, and the Sheriff refused to come question the driver when I called 911 and then called the sheriff office. The driver of the truck parked and stayed at the Philips residence for many hours, in view, after running me over that day.

The poison is very painful. Extreme pain.

Right now, a ten day supply of Amoxicillin, or other suitable antibiotic, is what would save my life. Without some antibiotics, I think there is a good chance I will die of infection, as the poisons are not leaving my body, the sores remain open wounds, and the small amount of infection is growing rapidly. It’s become too painful to try to massage wound areas for moving blood in anticipation of healing as a result.

There are no antibiotic medications available in USA without a doctors prescription. An antibiotic would begin to lessen the pain with the first dose.

Something to relieve swelling would also be helpful, but some antibiotics are required at this point in my post poison attack injury, more than two months without remedy or improvement.

The medical professions have the antibiotics locked up tighter than a bulls ass in fly season. There is no way to get anywhere near them without a doctor.

This:

The poison that was injected, remains inside my leg, is saturated into the muscle tissue. I have hydrogen peroxide, and so far I have used about 4 quarts in the two months in effort to eliminate infection with daily, sometimes hourly rinsing of the wounds with peroxide.

The wounds are such that the peroxide does not readily penetrate the scab area, so, I gently use my fingers to move the peroxide around, to get it to go into the sores, and that activity of using my fingers to move the peroxide makes a very big froth of foamy white material, it’s nothing like the usual peroxide result where some infection bubbles out of a wound, this that happens as I explained is a lot like shave cream sort of amounts of foam froth.

It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.

So, if I continue to push that foamy froth around, or add more peroxide and use my fingers to gently rub that into the wound, then, tiny particles of skin are coming off of my leg around the wound where the frothy peroxide is at. The tiny skin particles are very small, about 1/32 inch square-ish. When that happens, it’s as if the peroxide has become foamy paint remover, and my skin is the paint.

That, buuuurrrrrrrnnnnnsssss.... real bad, add expletives here.

The burning sensation from the skin coming off has prevented me from using the peroxide some of the time, however, the peroxide is all that I have available for fighting against the infection, so, I just have to accept that it’s going to hurt, and try not to use my fingers to rub the peroxide, not even a gentle touch is tolerable once the skin starts to peel away.

So, maybe that information will help someone else. I am not the only person who has been attacked with this kind of COVID Corona poison attack. It’s clear to me that the terror army developed the poison combination to achieve maximum pain, and minimize what can be done to stop the advance of infection.

As it is, the toes feel ice cold, so, apply some heat to warm them up, then, even a tiny bit of warm radiated heat that gets close to the shin produces pain that is not bearable.

Warm the frozen toes, suffer of burning fire at the shin.

I say the bastards tested different poisons on kidnapped US citizens and recorded the results based on how the kidnapped prisoners responded to a verity of different poisons. I am convinced for many reasons that the terror bastards torture US Citizens in effort to produce the most painful poison attack substance combination that they were able to, and are likely continuing to torture victims to find even more painful poisons that can be injected on an attack, where diagnosis and identification of the substances is increasingly more difficult.

Screen Actor Guild rock stars doing experimental torture with injected poisons on the children they are kidnapping.

===============================

I suppose I will make a comment about the Derick Chauvin trial outcome:

I have not been interested in any of it. To me, none of that trial or the man the is said to have been killed is real, it all looks like it was produced by Lester Holt’s production team to me at nbc/Universal/Comcast, all of it from the time that Mr. Floyd was taken into custody and kneeled on, the trial charade, and later tomorrow and in the coming days we will see yet more of the nbc/Universal/Comcast production directed by Lester Holt. There are numerous indications that the Floyd Death/Chavin Trial were directed and produced by Lester Holt specifically. With interview of interested national security personnel I could show many subtle places where Mr. Holt was sort of... saluted ... by other Twitter news media personalities over the course of the trial. And, now that I have seen those “salutes” during the trial, I think more similar communication can be found in the video presentations of the time when the Floyd murder was still fresh, “demonstrations” happening everywhere. Find some tweets today that feature someone saying “Let me clear my throat”, and there you have a clue to other “salutes” that can be found. Another place is Sean Hannity and the Trump interview, where Hannity’s voice is not quite right, seems like someone else did a voice over for parts of Hannity’s speaking ... there is a “salute” sort of vibe going on with that, the way I am reading the information. There is a lot more of those little indicators that add up, but mean nothing in aggregate.

If Mr. Floyd was a real person, and really was killed the way we are told, then, it happened before 2008, and so did the trial. Real, or fake, I say all of that happened before 2008, the murder and the trial, and was already presented on Beta Twitter once before, the whole thing.

The only thing I care to point out in absence of a national security interview to talk about potential connection to personal details in Oregon, is about the Judge, and about his instructions to the jury at the time they were sequestered.

The Judge pointed out, specified, that “This trial is a very important one” etc, and so on, when he instructed the jurors about the rules they were to follow.

That statement about the importance of that particular trial was made as if other trials are less important.

That is not acceptable from a Judge.

That, and, the statement draws attention of the jurors to activity occurring outside of their sequestered, isolated positions.

All trials are equally important, as are the people involved in them.

I would further point out that the Dereck Chauvin trial is exemplary of good reasons why there should never be televised coverage from within an ongoing trial. The results could have been explosive ones. nothing good has ever resulted of televised coverage of trials from within the court hearings.

=====================================

9:01 pm:

Other:

I suppose this is a good a time as any that I should document more about my visit to the Walmart the other day:

What I did not mention, is that I was attacked by three people while at the Walmart. The attack was different than any other attack I have experienced there, as it happened in the store aisles, rather than at the checkout area. I don’t recall having been attacked in the store aisles in more than fifteen years, and back then, attack at the Walmart had no limits, they were killing people everywhere in the store back then.

I mentioned that I used a restroom, it was the one in the back of the store, at the end of the cat food aisle. When I came out, I encountered a Walmart Blue Vest who was entering the restroom as I was exiting. Then, I pushed my shopping cart toward the checkout, I was done shopping, and in the cat food aisle there were two people releasing a lot of nitrous oxide in the aisle, a man and a woman. I lit my lighter and those two launched away, one went in the direction of the hardware department, and the other went towards the dairy area. Over the store PA system, I overheard an immediate call for evac: “Evac to hardware...” there was more said, was inaudible, sounded like “Evac to hardware frame” so, I don’t know what that means beyond hardware department. I did not hear mention of evac for the other one that went towards the dairy department.

In the main aisle that is perpendicular to the cat food aisle across the width of the store, were many pallets of products all in the aisle and stacked in a not so tidy fashion, the items were stacked tall in some places, many cardboard boxes, many on pallets, all there in the aisle that leads from Auto Service to Grocery departments. More stuff than is usual, and what was strange about those items in the aisle that day was that there was no one doing store inventory work. That is what makes the items on pallets different than other times, when they stack items in the aisle, there is usually many Walmart Blue Vests doing restocking of the shelves, but those people were not there while I was at the store.

There, in that long aisle where the items on pallets were at, as I walked there through the cat food aisle, a man appeared from behind the shelf, then saw me, and quickly turned around and went back in the direction he had come from. Another person came into the aisle, and said loudly: “I want my chair Rick”. to that I responded: “I don‘t think they sell furniture here” as the person was close to me when she spoke.

The man who turned around also spoke as he walked out of view, He said: “I’m his nurse” to someone else, maybe over a communication device, I did not see who he may have been speaking to.

I went on my way towards the checkout, and in that aisle where all of those pallets of goods was at, that man who turned around came back, attacked me so fast that I have almost no recollection of what happened. I defended with my trusty fingernail clippers, and as I recall, the man had a hammer in his hand, was trying to strike my foot with the hammer as I began to defend.

The man was decapitated in defense.

That man, was wearing a disguise. He may have been wearing a Pixel Suite inside of the Walmart. The attack was a blur in the midst of all of those boxes in the aisle.

I suspect the man was Paul Leppert of Pain Specialists of Southern Oregon, and is the real reason that I was refused service, my appointment cancelled.

Paul Leppert: WM, about 70 years old, bald, about 5′ 10″, 150 pounds.

Paul Leppert has an interest in WWII, Vietnam, Korean War details. He often has anecdotes about his experience in war, talks a lot about his “Flack Jacket” and things that happened when he was wearing one, and times when he was not wearing one. He tells about war stories while I am in the exam room trying to get some medical attention. Paul Leppert should have a number of scars on him where he was ran through with his own sword, in defense, while in the exam room for a doctors appointment, perhaps as many as five such scars that healed, each wound from different appointments, each time, Leppert entered the exam room with the sword. I was able to take the sword, and turn it around many times. Leppert has his own hospital there at the Pain Specialists and he gets the very best medical services there are, so, he keeps coming back to life every time I fight him, like a cockroach.

Leppert and other terror soldiers often use a “third arm”, it’s a sling that looks like an arm, the weapon is held behind the back with the real arm, while the “third arm” fake one is held in front, usually has a clip board or other prop attached for drawing attention before the assailant swings the sword. (see photos of Secret Service, or, of a Cheech Marin movie where he used the third arm also)

So, there ya go.

That’s what happened.

[ark-of-eden]

R is drunk and raving (not in the party way).

(R:) Additionally, I’m procrastinating like a fucking champion at working on fic construction, so you know the best use of my time is going off about random social media crap on the internet.

tl;dr: Putting all commentary in tags on Tumblr makes R cry and shit thousands of words into the Internet.

Every social media site inevitably develops sets of unwritten social conventions. Some of them actually make sense as being derived from meatspace etiquette and therefore you don’t really have to stress about remembering them as long as you play nice like a decent creature.

And some of them just don’t make any fucking sense that I can see. Folks on Twitter using a deliberately space-limited form of media to write a page’s worth or more in a string of 30+ rapidfire tweets? This is just how it’s done over there? (Tweetlonger exists but for some reason these massive chain-tweeters never seem to use it. Same with posting the whole thing in a long-form site like LJ/DW/Tumblr and just linking it to a tweet.)

And Tumblr has things that I literally had to put effort into learning after I migrated here, and after I learned about them I frankly decided to ignore them because I couldn’t see the point in them. Tumblr has this bizarre allergy to commentary and, likely derived from that, the practice of instead commenting by putting it all in awkward tags that render the tagging system not especially useful and are harder to get to if you’re actually interested in an individual’s thoughts about a thing and not just the twelfth instance of the same post crossing your dash in a day or two. It’s not like you can’t engage with people, because asks and messaging and such exist, but like...there’s this strong sense that it’s Terribly Ill-Mannered to weigh in with your own impressions right there, in the body of the post, typing your own words in that seductive, wide-open text box that appears all on its own when you go to reblog something. The properly-socialized Tumblrite eschews that tempting text field and instead posts weird sentence fragments in tag form (interspersed with actual tags that might serve to usefully categorize the post’s content), to the extent that some people can add on a good couple paragraphs of material down among the hashtags where others need to go looking for it on purpose if they want it. (I, at least, haven’t been able to find a plugin or something that automatically expands full tags on all posts so that I don’t have to fuck around with extra interface elements to get to them. I admit that I haven’t looked super hard, though.)

Preserving the original form of the OP’s post is a noble practice that I heartily support, but how is adding commentary a problem if you’re only adding a separate thing, not taking away or altering anything in the original...? This was already a practice/convention/code of social interaction on Tumblr when I got here, so I was never in the front row to witness this element taking shape. I suppose it must have made good sense at the time, but every time I see ten people reblogging the same post with no additions and a paragraph of tags appended to it, it’s like a splinter in my brain that has been digging into me for years now.

And I’m not hating on people who do that! I get that that’s The Way It’s Done Here and I am the deviant weirdo for continually adding comments directly onto things that I reblog. Tags are where individuality lives here, unless you’re producing your own original posts, which I guess other people are then supposed to reblog without commentary so that you have to go hunting after all the reblogs individually if you want to get an actual sense of what these people were all thinking when they reblogged your thing. It all just seems...so...WORK INTENSIVE, refusing to use site functions as they were intended??

Look, I absolutely know that my commentary is not the work of incisive genius that unfailingly adds value to every post I find worthy of my attention. We’re pretty much solid shitposting on this blog. Because I’m a little loaded at the moment and that gives me a handy excuse to run my fingers like an idiot (plus I put that readmore up there, so if your eyes are actually consuming these words, you have only yourself to blame for being here), let me run down relevant history of how we got here.

LJ was home for a good long while. Then shit got seriously messed up and Dreamwidth was created as a better LJ, so we migrated all our stuff over there. And journaling sites along those lines still feel like a native environment. I, in particular, am the most long-winded piece of shit we know and I am honestly incapable of talking about anything of worth in short form. It’s a sickness and I just sort of have to own it. :/ But that’s why journaling sites are a good place for me to live, because that’s where people go when they have the inclination to read meandering scrawls about the depths of other people’s lives or whatever.

We went to Twitter for a good while because all the cool people we knew from LJ were going there for some unfathomable reason. These people wrote things that were complex and fascinating to read, so all of them jumping ship to a place that limited them to 140-character chunks made no damn sense, but we loved those people and wanted to trust that they knew what the hell they were doing. And they probably did, and a couple of us were actually okay with Twitter, but I, being the long-winded shitpiece, spent a lot of time frustrated and kind of overstimulated.

Then things started going to hell more and more consistently for me personally (and us generally by extension, but that’s unnecessary detail). Bunkering down specifically to protect people that you care about from the fallout of your crazy is a fairly common thing for mentally-ill people to do, I think. So I’d shut up online until I felt stable enough to talk to people again. Those periods lasted a few days, then a week or more, then a month, then eventually I stopped talking entirely. I missed the LJ/DW format, but in the past I’d written about life events and things I was thinking about and such, so...at the time, all I really had to write about was the bad stuff. So LJ/DW was basically unusable as well.

I literally came here to be as shallow as I could possibly manage. Tumblr had a rapid, chaotic flow similar to Twitter, but could hold longer content like LJ/DW. We’ve never really used the site’s full functionality at any point, though. For at least a year, all we were following was the most lightweight, zero-calorie entertainment that we could find. (We actually came here for Flight Rising content, so there was a lot of that.) Being engaged with fandom in any consistent respect is an extremely recent thing.

And I’m not saying that fandom hasn’t got depth and complexity because it absolutely does and that’s one of the beautiful things about shared fan experiences. I kind of got into that sort of fandom by accident after getting here and rediscovering Transformers. But the unvoiced policy that I’ve always had here is to avoid the Too Real and dodge serious topics whenever possible. Thus, no gender theory, no neurodivergence or multiplicity, no nonhumanity, no religion or UPG, nothing with real substance behind it that bared real vulnerabilities. (Apparently this was a good move anyway because the nonhuman and multiplicity situation here on Tumblr is a bit of a clusterfuck? I honestly wouldn’t know, as I haven’t made a lot of effort to link up with those folks.) That’s still the policy. That might remain the policy forever until I reach some vaguely-defined threshold of sanity that makes me worthy of talking about those things in places and formats that other people can interact with.

And I’m sorry for all this talk about mental illness, but it’s simpler just to explain things clearly. I likely won’t go into any more detail about it on Tumblr. Or anywhere else, because I care about people even if I’ve never met them or talked to them at all and I still want to keep it all in the bunker to protect good people from the crazy. Sometimes, all you can do is just prevent the damage from spilling out into other people’s lives, and that’s the place that I usually operate from.

I’m still pretty drunk, so I’m allowed to ramble from too much truth serum, but all of that explanation was to get around to saying that the format of online communication that is most intuitive to me is the long, oversharing gut-spill of random people talking about things that are really meaningful to them - not in the sense of elaborate philosophy or artsy epistles to the cosmos, but just people being super real about things that are meaningful to them and going into lots of detail about them because gushing about things you love is great. And it’s possible to get that sort of discussion and gushing in Tumblr fandom, and I love it because it reminds me of better times, and the fact that I love it is WHY IT MAKES ME SO GODDAMN FRUSTRATED that Tumblr culture is basically stifling discussion and feedback and RESPONSE to things that people find interesting!!

Like, here’s how I see it. Unlike on LJ/DW, where you were limited to hyperlinking to a cool post in one of your own posts if you wanted your readers to go check it out, on Tumblr, if you find a super cool thing, you can pull it directly into your space and let other people experience it directly, exactly as you experienced it. But the thing is, I also subscribe to the My Blog My House concept. If I pull a thing into my “home,” I do it because there’s something homelike about it; it belongs in my home for some specific reason. I don’t take “ownership” of an item in the sense that I’m claiming it in place of its creator, but I’m taking ownership of it in the sense that it’s part of my Stuff now and it’ll get my fingerprints all over it and be blended into the general morass of Stuff that I recognize as my home. I don’t just pull random crap into my home for no reason at all.

And I just figure that other people are similar in the sense that they reblog things for distinct, unique reasons, not in the sense that they have some master plan for their blog content (some do, but it’s not necessary), but just that they have compelling reasons why they pick certain bits of content out of the larger river of their dashboard and put it in their own space for people to experience with them. I follow people based on the interesting things that they find interesting. I’m interested in why they’re interested in those things. They seem like interesting people to me because they’re interested in what they’re interested in.

But the WHY is a really important part of the equation for me. Did this person reblog that photo because they’ve been to that place themselves, because they like that kind of tree, because they reblog photos with that color scheme every Thursday? Did that person reblog that piece of art because they love that character, because they’re studying that art medium, because it reminded them of something funny they saw somewhere else? People attach their own context to things that they latch onto. It’s so freaking weird to me that people have to hide their interpretations or impressions in tags here on Tumblr, making them unimportant and optional in the process of sharing things they like with others. (Okay, people also share a lot of things they hate, but reasons for outrage are still part of the context that one adds to content.)

I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE SHOWING ME. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT MAKES IT IMPORTANT TO YOU. I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT MAKES YOU THINK AND FEEL. Even if it’s a blurb about how giant robots fuck or a cute kitten video, I NEED TO KNOW THESE THINGS.

Not in excruciating detail or with insightful analysis or even a lot of text at all. Mostly, the things that people put in tags are things that, to me, are a really crucial part of the experience of being able to go into someone’s “home” and see the Stuff that they chose to put in it. Reducing oneself to a glorified signal repeater is...okay, I guess, though it turns a Tumblr blog into a kind of faceless stream of other people’s material a lot of the time. The personal touch is what makes it all interesting. And I’m just unutterably frustrated that, somewhere along the line, it was decided that personalizing an experience by sharing one’s own impressions of it became rude enough that polite society decided that it had to be hidden away in tags. I want all of it, so I do go looking for it, but omg it requires MORE EFFORT and BURNING CALORIES and BODILY MOVEMENT and WAAAAH, you know what I mean. :P

And possibly Tumblr society is right and it’s done for a good, decent purpose and I’m being pigheaded and uncool by insisting on doing things my way without bothering to try and understand the local customs. I’m not usually that much of an asshole, but I am about this, for some reason. And I admit that my craving for those personal touches could very well spring from how utterly isolated and lonely I am, so maybe normal people really don’t need all the extra info and actually do just want mostly-impersonal streams of content. And that’s fine, since I know I’m kind of a weirdo even on my best days.

I’m pretty sure that that was all that I really wanted to say. I’m probably overreacting about the whole comments-in-tags thing. Like I said, it’s kind of an irrational irritation. Also, I need to stop before I write myself sober and no longer have an excuse for all of this. If you actually read all of that, you are an awesome, generous person and I’m pretty damn certain that I love you even though I have no idea who you are.

[alternativepi]

How to make the eWoggle

Note on costs: Some people have commented on the cost of this project. Please remember that this ‘eWoggle’ is based around a fully functioning computer called a Raspberry Pi, which costs from £4.65. As the woggle is a computer it can be used for all of the things a computer is used for: surfing the net, playing games, checking your email, building a robot, etc. 

Okay, so while you are wearing it on your uniform you won’t be able to use it for some of these things but when you get home, plug in a keyboard and mouse and plug it into your TV and you’re away!

So don’t think of this as an expensive woggle, think of it as a very, very cheap computer!

INTRODUCTION

This ‘eWoggle’ is based around the Raspberry Pi computer. You may not have heard of it, but the Raspberry Pi is the third biggest selling type of computer in history!

You can find out more about what a Raspberry Pi is here:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/what-%20is-a-raspberry-pi/

Before we go any further I should explain that I am not a computing expert by any means. As a special needs teacher, I have had to teach some basic computing and to help me with this I did one of the early ‘Picademy’ courses run by the Raspberry Pi Foundation (an educational charity funded from sales of the computer). If you are a teacher and would like to use the Raspberry Pi in your teaching at any level (or any key stage) then I highly recommend this course:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/training/picademy/

As someone who has tinkered with the Raspberry Pi for a number of years, including helping to organise and run a Cubs District Digital Maker Camp (contact me on Twitter for more info), I tend to have lots of Pi-related bits and bobs lying around. From some of these, I decided to make a woggle.

For this project, you will need four main components, the Raspberry Pi computer itself (from £4.65), the ‘screen’ made of LEDs (called a scroll pHAT HD - £12.50), the actual woggle and a power-bank (£1) to run it on. As you read through the project you will see that there are other optional extras but these are the basics.

For ease, I have divided these instructions into three parts:

Setting up the Raspberry Pi and Scroll pHAT HD

Making the physical woggle

Coding the woggle

Please do feel free to contact me with any comments or suggestions about this page and I can make corrections improvements as needed. You can tweet me @mvnorwood 

1: SETTING UP THE RASPBERRY PI AND THE SCROLL PHAT HD

The ‘screen’ that the writing appears on is an ‘add-on’ for the Raspberry Pi. These add-ons give extra functionality to the Raspberry Pi and are called HATs - Hardware Attached on Top - and the smaller sized ones are called pHATs.

There are many different HATs for all sorts of purposes from building robots to allowing you to control the computer by waving your hand in the air! This eWoggle uses the Pimoroni Scroll pHAT HD which comes in several colours and can be bought here:

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/scroll-phat-hd?variant=2380803866634

Pimoroni are a fantastic company who are ever so helpful when you contact them.

You will notice that the Scroll pHAT HD comes with a ‘female header’ which needs to be soldered on. The female header is a kind of ‘socket’ that allows the Raspberry Pi to be plugged into the pHAT. People who know me will also know how cack-handed I am! There is no way I have the skills to solder something like this so I cheat and use this:

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/gpio-hammer-header?variant=35643318026

This lets you use a hammer to attach the header rather than a soldering iron! Instructions for using the hammer header jig can be found here (or use a youtube video):

https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/fitting-hammer-headers

You also need to set up your Raspberry Pi. For this project, you need to use the ‘mini’ version of the Raspberry Pi called the Zero and you have three options, either:

The Raspberry Pi Zero £4.65 (basic model - no WiFi or Bluetooth) or

The Raspberry Pi Zero W £9.30 (has wifi and Bluetooth but no header) or

The Raspberry Pi Zero WH (WiFi and Bluetooth and a header already soldered in place) £13.00

If you are using the hammer header kit recommended above, then you already have a male hammer header ready to hammer on to the Pi, so I recommend that you buy the second option, the Raspberry Pi W which can be bought here:

https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi/products/raspberry-pi-zero-w

It looks like this (1p coin shown for reference):

You now need to attach the hammer header. Hitting things with a hammer is fun, especially if you’re a Scout!

Using the special ‘jig’ is essential. This video shows that it makes attaching the header child’s play:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sej_SHZpZI

Here is my jig set up ready to use:

Take great care and be gentle with the hammer. You don’t want to damage the Pi.

Okay, so you should now have a Pimoroni Scroll pHAT HD and a Raspberry Pi Zero W both with ‘headers’ (pins or sockets) attached.

An optional extra that I use is a ‘diffuser’. A diffuser is just a piece of plastic that is a little opaque. It makes the LEDs on the pHAT easier to look at and read. It is not essential but only costs £3 and can be found here:

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/phat-diffuser

Take a careful look at the photos on that page to see how to attach the diffuser to the pHAT correctly using all of the nuts supplied.

When you use a computer you are probably used to using an ‘Operating System’ like Windows or OSX or even ChromeOS (like me). The Raspberry Pi can run many different operating systems (including a special version of Windows 10) but the most common system to run is Raspbian. Raspbian is based on Debian which is a version of the Linux Operating System that you may have heard of.

You may be used to your Operating System being stored and run from a Hard Drive (or sometimes an SSD).On a Raspberry Pi the Operating System and other files are stored and run from a microSD card just like the ones used to store music, video and photos on a mobile phone.

You will need to either buy a NOOBS microSD card with the Raspbian Operating System already on it or make your own following instructions on the Raspberry Pi website ( https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/raspberry-pi-setting-up/3  ). 

To program the Pi with the code you will need to plug it into a TV, keyboard and mouse. Any TV with HDMI will do, and any mouse and keyboard with USB. Be aware that the Zero version of the Pi uses micro USB so you may need an adaptor.

All of the instructions needed for setting up your Raspberry Pi ready to use can be found here:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-zero/

2: MAKING THE PHYSICAL WOGGLE

Every Scout knows that there are many ways of making a woggle: leather, plastic, paracord, wood, tin cans, etc. This eWoggle is no different. This is part of the project where you can really experiment and make it your own.

Here is my eWoggle with the Scroll pHAT HD attached:

...and here it is with the Scroll pHAT HD removed:

...and here it is turned over so you can see the Raspberry Pi computer attached to the back of it (rear of Scroll pHAT also shown):

There are two parts to the woggle: a case for the Pi and the woggle bit!

Raspberry Pi cases can be made from all sorts of things - I have used Lego and on another occasion coffee stirrers and masking tape! If you want to see some great examples of cases then look here:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/will-nvidia-jetson-nano-replace-raspberry-pi/

If you are making a case, keep it simple as it will be hidden behind the woggle.

As already explained, I am a bit cack-handed so I cheated and used a pre-made case instead of making one. This is optional. The case I used is the Zebra case as it can easily be adapted. It can be found here:

https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-cases/products/zebra-zero-for-raspberry-pi-zero-wood

Another easily adaptable and excellent case is the PiBow Zero which can be found here:

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pibow-zero-w

The advantages of both of the cases above are that they are made up of layers. So to create your woggle you can either add a ‘woggle layer’ to the top (which I did) or replace the top layer with a ‘woggle layer’.

I looked around to find something to make my ‘woggle layer’ out of and found this:

I cut out a piece of this box and used scissors and a drill to shape it into the woggle layer. Make sure you include a hole that allows you to push the Scroll pHAT onto the pins (these are properly called GPIO pins) of the Raspberry Pi. 

However, once I screwed my woggle to the top of the case, I was unhappy with the way it looked. So I tried sanding it, but this only made it look worse. I then decided I should paint it. The only spray paint I had was pink. This resulted in a truly vomit-worthy woggle! So finally, I found a roll of wood-effect sticky back plastic I had knocking about (£1 from Poundland) and achieved the just acceptable result shown above (I did tell you I was cack-handed).

I am sure that you are far more creative than me and can create something that is more bling than boring. Maybe use stickers, sequins, fluffy bits, gems, googly eyes, etc.

The next time I make an eWoggle I think I will have a go at cutting it out of real wood.

Finally, I added a power pack to run my woggle. The lead for this passes under my shirt to the pack in my trouser pocket. This power pack only costs £1 from Poundland. You may be sceptical but I have many of these pound-power-packs and they will run a Pi Zero for many, many hours. I have used them in many projects including robots and a TARDIS and find them pretty reliable.

The picture below was taken after five hours of testing the power-pack and, as you can see, it was still going strong!

3: CODING THE WOGGLE

First things first, get used to using your Raspberry Pi. If you have used Windows, Mac or Chromebook computers then it really isn’t that different (if you have used Linux then you probably don’t need this guide!) To get to grips with the Pi follow this great guide:

https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/raspberry-pi-using

You will find that the Pi Zero is very slow at intensive tasks like surfing the net. That is because this version of the Pi is designed more for building things like automated cameras or alarm systems or robot lawnmowers. If you want a Pi for playing games, surfing the net of running Office then use the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (£34.00) which is excellent for these tasks.

Remember that the microSD card you have for the Pi Zero will work in any other Pi including the Raspberry Pi 3. You can swap microSD cards between Pi.

As you can see from the photo below, the Pi has a desktop much like any other computer with the taskbar at the top (like on a Mac):

In the photo above the black cable is the HDMI cable that goes to the TV, the left-hand white cable goes to the keyboard which has a mouse plugged into it and the right-hand white cable is the micro USB power cable. The Pi in the picture is already coded - your one will not have any green LEDs lit yet.

Note: when I’m coding I obviously power my Pi from a phone charger plugged into the mains. I do not want a battery running out half way through!

The easiest way to code the Scroll pHAT HD is to use the Python programming language.

I am not a coder. I have a really basic understanding and use this to ‘cheat’ by mashing together and adapting code that has already been created by others. Anyone who is creative will tell you that this is not cheating but what all creatives do, they put together ideas, techniques and concepts that already exist but in new and original ways to create something new. I would really encourage you to do the same rather than just blindly copy my code (which isn’t really my code as I adapted it from other peoples’). By all means, start with my code and the other examples (see below) but then try to make something new by tweaking it.

A great starting point for coding the Scroll pHAT HD is to follow the beginners’ instructions on the Pimoroni website. However, I recommend doing the actual coding using Python 3 (IDLE) from the programming menu rather than typing straight into the terminal. The ‘Getting started’ guide can be found here:

https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/getting-started-with-scroll-phat-hd

Next, you should probably look at the GitHub page for the Scroll pHAT HD which can be found here:

https://github.com/pimoroni/scroll-phat-hd

You will find a ton of help on the GitHub page, possibly too much!

The next thing to do is to download the ‘examples’ folder from the GitHub page to your Raspberry Pi / eWoggle. You will need to sign into WiFi to do this. Note also that Chromium (a version of the Google Chrome web browser runs very slowly on the Pi Zero. This is normal - see the earlier note on this)

The examples folder is full of demo programmes. I suggest that you play about with these: use Python 3 (IDLE) to open some of them and run the code to see what happens. Read the code and see if you can work out what is going on.

I built my code from two of these example programmes:

simple-scrolling.py

swirl.py

This photo is for illustration, don’t try to copy the code from it!

You will notice that in the code for many of these programs (including mine) there are many lines that begin with the hashtag ‘#’. When a computer is interpreting code written in the Python programming language it ignores anything that begins with #.

Lines beginning with a hashtag are used for two purposes. The first is to write instructions and comments to help human users understand the code. These instructions and comments will be ignored by the computer which is useful as the computer wouldn’t understand them as they are not written in the Python programming language. The second use is to ‘switch off’ a piece of code or switch it ‘on’ by removing the hashtag. For example, in many of the example programs, there is the following line of code that will turn the writing on the Scroll pHAT upside-down. 

# scrollphathd.rotate(degrees=180)

This line of code has a # before it. If you want the writing to appear upside down (because in your woggle design you are using the pHAT upside down) then all you need to do is remove the # before this line of code.

Another thing to note about using Python is the indents at the beginning of some lines of code. An indent is the empty space you get at the start of a line when you press the tab but. These indents are very important in Python code as they tell the computer which lines belong together. So don’t ignore these indents!

The code that I used for the eWoggle can be found here:

https://alternativepi.tumblr.com/post/184293088491/the-code-i-used-for-the-ewoggle

You will need to adapt this. Don’t try to type it all out! Copy and paste the code from the two example programs described above.

FINALLY

Now that you have some code that works with your eWoggle and you have some text scrolling nicely across it, you will want to lose the keyboard, mouse and TV!

This is sometimes referred to as running the Pi ‘headless’.

Basically, you want to set up your Pi so that when you plug it into a powerpack it will automatically load your code and start running it as part of the startup process.

There are many ways of doing this. One is to edit something called the rc.local file and a newer way is to use something called crontab. I’m nearly fifty so I opted for the older, tried and tested method of rc.local and the link below has excellent instructions for how to do this. Note: the ampersand (&) at the end of the line of code referred to in the instructions is absolutely essential. Without it, you will get into all kinds of bother and may even have to start all over again!

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/linux/usage/rc-local.md

These instructions are fairly basic. You will need to go into ‘Terminal’ to use them and use the ‘nano’ text editor whilst in ‘Terminal’. If you need further instructions on this then Google is your friend :) (or DuckDuckGo)

As with everything to do with using a Raspberry Pi, if in doubt ask! There is a HUGE community of people out there who are very willing to help so long as you are prepared to put some effort in and do some learning yourself. the Pi was created originally with the intention of helping people to learn. The Pi community are out there waiting to help you to learn. They will answer your questions readily and quickly but don’t expect them to do it for you!

You can contact me on Twitter using @mvnorwood but don’t bother trying to contact me here on tumblr as I rarely use it.

You will find lots of lovely people willing to help you on the Raspberry Pi help forums that can be found here:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/

You can find out more about the fantastic Raspberry Pi community here:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/community/

Consider going along to a local ‘Raspberry Jam’ where you can very quickly find out what it’s all about.

Pimoroni, who are the British company who make the Scroll pHAT HD, also have an excellent online community forum which can be found here:

https://forums.pimoroni.com/

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS:

Your woggle is now a computer! It is merrily scrolling whatever text you have coded across its ‘screen’.

But why stop there?! There are literally a million other things your woggle could do with some different code or even by adding a little more hardware. Here are some ideas you might want to explore further:

Make your woggle ‘tweetable’. If it has access to WiFi it can be coded to display tweets with a particular hashtag or tweets to/from a specific Twitter user.

Add Bluetooth headphones or speaker and a couple of buttons and you can make an MP3 player woggle!

Turn your woggle into a clock that tells the current time.

Add a temperature sensor and get it to display the temperature.

Turn it into a ‘fart detector’. Whoever smelt it, dealt it? ( https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/fart-detector )

Add a button that turns the display on or off without turning off the Pi

There are so many things you can do with a Raspberry Pi. Some of my favourites can be found here:

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/mvnorwood/raspberry-pi/

Do you fancy making an easy robot spider, or Pi-der? Then here are my easy instructions for that:

https://alternativepi.tumblr.com/post/159197715941/building-mr-nancy-the-raspberry-pider-robot

Finally, have fun, don’t get stressed and ask for help.

Happy coding and Happy Scouting!

[ncmagroup]

by GARY VAYNERCHUK

  For me, I’m only interested in one thing. The thing that binds us all together. No matter who you are or what your profession is – whether you’re an entrepreneur or in sales or a designer or a developer – no matter what you do, your job is to tell a story.

That is never going to change. The way you build your business and the way you make a real impact is by great storytelling.

This is REALLY important.

We all need to reverse engineer what’s actually happening in our world to win. My whole career has been predicated on reverse engineering – Understanding what I think is going to happen in the next 24-36 months and then figuring out how to work backward from there to map out the path to capitalize on it.

My biggest problem right now, in general, is that I feel that the far majority of people in business organizations and media companies all across the board are storytelling in 2017 like it’s 2007. It’s all I think about.

HOW TO TELL A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA

I spend an enormous amount of my time trying to figure out how to storytelling in micro-moments because it’s apparent that we’re living in an ADD culture – where everybody is short on the only commodity that matters in this life – our TIME.

The notion of storytelling hasn’t changed but the mediums through which we tell the stories to have. With the advent of social and ever-evolving consumer attention, you now have to tell a story in new and interesting ways, be it 6 seconds or 60.

I’m obsessed with the idea of finding ways to tell a story that grab your attention the moment you take out your phone and scroll through various social platforms. That’s the game we’re playing. That’s what you have to focus your energy on.

We don’t sit on the couch with a remote in our hands, bound by the TV Guide schedule, with only a few channels to choose from. Whether you like it or not, we live in a world where there are obnoxious amounts of information getting thrown at us and unlimited amounts of outlets to consume that information which is entirely accessible on our own time. We live in a completely on-demand culture and as consumers and marketers, we need to recognize that.

The media landscape has completely changed.  We live in a world where people only watch TV when they want to and can consume entire seasons of their favorite shows in one night.

And that’s just entertainment consumption. What about our communication?

How many people reading this article are upset when somebody calls them?

The mediums have changed. We would much rather have you send a text or a tweet or a Snap to communicate because we can get to it on our own time. It’s the new model of storytelling and whether we like it or not, it’s not going anywhere. It reminds me of a recent article that explains this transition. Or the fact that Facebook and WhatsApp process more than 60BN messages a day. Over 3X that of even standard SMS!

And so, to tell a great story, the number one thing you have to do is evoke a reaction. The end.

GREAT STORYTELLING ON INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK, SNAPCHAT, AND YOUTUBE

In a world where there’s an enormous amount of social content, if you don’t make someone stop what they are doing and create a response, you are going to lose. Whether that’s an action or an emotion, the true test of storytelling is how you feel or what you do after you consume it.

A few months ago I bought flowers for the entire NYC VaynerMedia office. It wasn’t a holiday and therefore it was entirely unexpected so it evoked a feeling of surprise and delight. People were pleased and the reaction was a mix of happiness, positivity and a boosted morale. If that day was Valentine’s Day it might have been a little bit more expected and the story would have been more cliche and therefore wouldn’t evoke as much of a response. It’s all about the setup, the punchline, and hacking people’s expectations.

In a sea of a million stories, a great one is going to make you react.

When I sit here and evaluate the differences between blockbuster Hollywood and social media, I think about context. The actual story can be quite similar but you have to consider the room you’re telling it in.

If you’re telling a story from a park bench to three old guys playing chess you’re going to present it a little differently than you would be sharing that same story in an auditorium at Radio City Music Hall. It all depends on the room you’re in and the context with which it lives.

Do people want fireworks and embellishments and fancy set design because they have paid $190 a ticket and dressed up and went to Broadway or are they willing to accept the 60-second story on social media in between checking emails or walking to lunch?

HOLLYWOOD VS SOCIAL MEDIA

In Hollywood, you’re making a two-hour movie that’s going to be played on a big screen in a theater. And that’s the room of context. In social, you’re making something that is good enough for someone to stop scrolling through their feed and watch on their phone. You have to consider the environment in which your content will be consumed and how should that impact your creative approach?

If you look at the current Hollywood landscape, you will see that there are countless movies spending hundreds of millions of dollars that don’t make a return. Of course, there are major winners like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings but most movies just don’t do that well.

Unless you are Steven Spielberg, you better think twice. Spending $300M if you make back $900M dollars is a good idea.

It’s just that spending $180 million dollars to make back 40 is a bad idea. Which is why for most of us, who aren’t J.J. Abrams and George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg who don’t have those budgets, are better off thinking about how we can start small and build up.

I think we should be smart about how much we spend and build from there. It’s just practicality, but the value is different.

If you can create a blockbuster movie and captivate the audience for three hours (or 30 years in the case of Star Wars) then you have absolutely won! It’s one pillar piece of content that has created a brand and incentivized generations who are going to spend $16.00 per ticket for every new movie and buy ancillary t-shirts, mugs and hats because they have bought into the story and associated IP.

But you can also convert or delight or surprise or impress or educate on a much smaller scale. It can be a 30 second moment, not a 3-hour movie.

The next thing to consider is intent.  At VaynerMedia, our motto is “we sell shit” and of course we care about art and creativity but we also have a bottom line objective. Too many people push too far in one or the other direction. They create great art, but they don’t have a lot of respect for business or it’s only a right a hook and there’s no thought behind the creative or the brand value.

At the end of the day, it’s all trying to do the same thing, which is to make something happen. Whether to fall in love with a brand or sell a product,  service or feature, the creative has to have intent (which doesn’t have to be financial and can be as simple as to entertain, inform, surprise or delight)

Basically, concerning context,  it’s bigger bets, bigger wins, and bigger risks, bigger losses.

My personal strategy is predicated on practicality.

MIX PASSION WITH PRACTICALITY

I am always trying, testing making and doing… I put out enormous amounts of content at scale because I’m playing in a field where I actually can. It’s not any better or worse.. It’s different. With Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and Medium, it doesn’t cost me a lot to put out great content. Some things will work and others won’t. Not every piece of creative needs a business objective. Obviously, if you make “Where’s the Beef” or “Just Do It” or “MasterCard Priceless” It’s game-changing. The problem is, 99% don’t, and they waste real money on things that don’t convert and my big thing is about doing what you can to get to where you want to be.

10 years ago, it wasn’t even an option. Producing the amount of content I do, and distributing it at the same scale would have cost me tens of millions of dollars a year. Now it’s practically free. Of course, I have a team to help which involves salary, but the technology, tools, and platforms have democratized the access to create. The internet is the middleman and you now have more opportunity than ever to tell your story in a way that makes sense and can resonate with people around the world.

You have to remember… I started with zero followers too! But now I’m in a position to make bigger bets. Instead of DailyVee I can go out and plan and produce and edit a $200,000 documentary. I could do that now. But I couldn’t do it before. I’m actually telling the same story, but with different tools and evolving rooms. My advice is to build up, build up, build up.

It’s why I preach that you have to mix passion with practicality.

The biggest hack to my success around content is the idea of “Document. Don’t Create.” I obviously do both, but the only reason I’m able to “produce” so much content is because I’m documenting not creating. I’ve built an enormous infrastructure around me to record my life and chop it up into 41 pieces of content each day in order to help me tell more stories across the internet.

My latest project The Airplane Project, and one of my most powerful to date was recorded on my iPhone during a 9-hour flight with no WiFi where I literally documented myself working through my most important concepts in real time. I cut those videos into 12 rants and released it as my version of a mixtape. Even my team wanted to debate me about putting out a more polished product.

It’s definitely true that if you want to be seen or heard on social media, you have to put out valuable content on a regular basis. You should be posting Instagram stories, photos, Snaps, tweets, and statuses at least 6-7 times a day.

Now you’re probably thinking: “Whoa, that’s a lot. How do I create 6-7 meaningful things a day?”

And here’s the trick.

DOCUMENT. DON’T CREATE. 

If you adopt that philosophy, it will allow you to overcome your fears of putting yourself out there. Just tell the world what’s going on. Describe your journey, outline your vision, and describe your thoughts, ideas, actions, wins, losses, anxieties, and ambitions online.

Just start talking about the things that are most important to you. Because in the end, the creative (or how “beautiful” someone thinks your content is) is going to be largely subjective. What’s not subjective is the fact that you put out more content and have more chances to be heard.

Social networks and mobile devices have created a gateway drug to consumer awareness. They have commoditized communication and storytelling.

That’s really how I see it. You have to understand that Instagram and Snapchat, and Twitter and Facebook are the new CBS, NBC, and Showtime. Except now you can reach hundreds of millions or billions of people every day.

I look at Medium, and WordPress, and Podcasts and Twitter like I look at the books on your shelf. It’s the modern platform for telling a great story.

So stop being so romantic and figure out the way the world actually works.

When time is the asset, how do I story tell on social media and give you something that you can consume very easily and very quickly?

When I think about the creatives that I work with for the media agency I run, we’ve gone from 20 to 800+ people in the last 8 years. Obviously, we are doing something right.

I truly believe for the last 70 years we’ve lived through an era that can be best categorized as “movies and docs.” Heavy thinking, a lot of prep work and a lot of time spent planning the shot, the script, the lighting and everything else.

And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with that, there is still a place for blockbuster content and I love a great movie. It’s just one way of telling a story and the only thing I’m preaching is that you just have to be aware of how consumption has changed. People watch movies every day on their phone. It’s called Instagram stories and YouTube!

I just don’t think movies are the only way now. Banner ads and billboards and 2 million dollar commercials aren’t the only things we can do now, and so we have this other avenue where we have to start respecting the nuances of the new platforms.

I have 800+ people who spend their entire days’ lives thinking about how to actually market and story tell, where our eyeballs and ears actually are because they’re not in the places where a lot of companies and entrepreneurs and businesses think.

And listen, I’m not here to pick on outdoor media, print, radio, or television because it’s just too easy. I can pick on digital too. Even the way digital works has completely changed.

Think about Google AdWords, starting to decline. Email Marketing. Down. Banner ads and Youtube Pre-rolls. Down.

I built my first business, my wine business on email marketing. How many people today would use email marketing as their #1 strategy? Things have changed! It’s impossible to repeat the 89% open rate I had in 1996 with a 400,000 person email list.

It’s because marketers ruin everything. As a proud marketer, it’s what we do. When something new comes out, we try to figure it out. Go look back at 1995 to 2000 clicks through on banner ads, 10%, 20%, 30%. Now, if you get point.01, you’re a hero.

Attention changes. Tools change. The mediums in which we storytell continue to change.

THE NUANCES OF EACH SOCIAL NETWORK

The reason why Facebook has won is because you never unsubscribed. You’re still following people on Facebook that dated your best friend four years ago, which is what we do, we don’t want to unsubscribe. It’s an important medium. It has a tremendous amount of attention.

Everybody looks at social networks as distribution. You’re doing something somewhere else and then you’re using the tweet to drive towards it.

You’re using the Facebook status update to drive towards it. We default into thinking that social networks are distribution because we treat it like email to really win in the world that we’re all about to embark into, we need to start respecting the nuances of these platforms.

And when I say “social networks” I’m just using that as a general term to describe any websites where people actually spend time and interact with each other’s content.

Social media is the layer on top of the internet. These are the new mediums and they are the portals for which you need to create.

When you start looking at the data, you realize that posting the same thing across every channel doesn’t work.

You post the same exact thing at the same exact time on two different networks that incentivize different behaviors and you will lose.

So when you think about Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter, understand that they are very, very different.

When you are on Facebook, that’s an all-encompassing awareness around your social graph. When you’re on Pinterest your psychology is intent to buy or aspiration to buy. You need to be storytelling differently on those platforms. You have to be giving them different visuals that are mapped to the psychology, not to the number of users that are there… But to reverse engineer why they are there!

If you don’t have a strong understanding of why a user is on Pinterest vs. Snapchat then you are going to lose.

You really have to start focusing on this because when you start looking at it, the one thing that is really deteriorating in our world is the amount of time we have. Everybody’s pounding at this one asset. It’s the one asset that none of us are going to get more of, and the battle of supply and demand for our attention is completely out of control.

I’ve stopped being excited about outdoor media because I was looking around and I saw everyone on their phones.

Yet my clients are spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to tell stories on billboards.

We’re living through a major culture shift and the only thing anybody reading this should care about is where the attention actually is.

We have to get out of this stupid thought of awareness and we have to start getting to emotional attention. Are we actually bringing them value? Do we actually talk to them about what they want in the spheres in which they actually are? It’s not about advertising, It’s about bringing value to the sphere.

You don’t need a business objective for every piece of creative, because we live in a world now where it’s not just about campaigns where you only have two or three minutes to spend all of your money. We live in a world where we’re doing it every day, all day, from every angle.

We have the creative freedom to actually act human and bring a little value, be funny, bring value, bring value, respond, engage, bring value, make it human and make it newsworthy 🙂

A funny thing happens when you give a truckload of value upfront, you guilt people into buying shit. You evoke a reaction and you develop a relationship.

The thing you have to remember is these are all social networks. Any content and story can work. It can be serious, sentimental, funny, sad, educational, nostalgic.. All of it works!

You don’t have to be funny or witty on Twitter, you can be whatever you want. It’s a human platform, and the problem is most people don’t want to be self-deprecating or have empathy or be kind and it’s a mistake when it comes to true storytelling.

If we do not figure out the art and the science of how to actually storytelling on these platforms then we will lose.

No company has had an eternal monopoly on attention and I promise you things will change. You just have to accept that change and be open to storytelling on the mediums of the moment.

When you are telling your story, realize how stupid it is to use the same picture on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Understand there’s a real science in this, a real storytelling battle going on right now in these platforms and understanding that you as an individual act differently when you go into a boardroom and to a business meeting than you would when you go out with your girls to Las Vegas for the weekend than when you would when you go out with your boyfriend.

It’s the context that’s key. You’re still the same person but the room changes the way you story tell.

Never forget that truth.

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

  HOW TO TELL A STORY ON SOCIAL MEDIA by GARY VAYNERCHUK For me, I’m only interested in one thing. The thing that binds us all together.

[cryptocurrencyguide]

Building A Good Cryptocurrency Model Is Harder Than You Think

As cryptocurrencies have exploded in value, so too have the attempts tounderstand them. Even more exciting is a recent uptick in quantitative analysis. Spreadsheet models have risen in popularity as a tool for evaluating and predicting trends.

The effort and analytic rigor behind these models is phenomenal. However, there are strong reasons why most top funds do not use this as part of their evaluation methodology. Often, there is no objective measure — what am I trying to predict, price in 1 week? 1 year? 10 years? And the feature set is often not very predictive (are we really so sure that the number of Telegram users is a strong indicator of future price?). In this space, it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of cargo cult analysis: building complex models that are not all that predictive once the assumptions and objectives are stated and the model is tested.

To illustrate my point, I’ll walk through an example on an existing dataset and finish with my own take on token sale evaluation. All that’s required to follow along is a bit of basic statistics. I’ll post the code at the end of the article.

Crunching the numbers

For the sake of example, let’s use the following spreadsheet which has the benefit of being very detailed and complete (a godsend for anyone playing around with data). It tracks quite a few interesting metrics that intuitively seem very predictive: codebase activity (Github contributors/commits), community activity (Reddit/Telegram members), exchange listings, and public presence (tweets, news mentions). Most people I talk to use some combination of these as a major part of their decision process.

We can write some quick code to read the CSV and dump it into a useful format: a grid of numbers across the feature space (our input matrix) and a list of numbers that we want to “predict” (more specifically, check for correlations). Before we do any number-crunching, there’s an important observation to make. There are 51 rows and 21 columns: a ton of data for a lowly human to process. But, to draw useful conclusions, you typically need much more data than this. Models that I’ve run in the past have been trained on at least tens of thousands of samples. ImageNet, the go-to database for training computer vision algorithms, has over 14 million images!

The main issue with our dataset is something known as dimensionality. In a spreadsheet, this can be be seen as the number of rows in the spreadsheet versus the number of columns. What we’re looking for is something that looks long and thin — a ton of rows but just a few columns. The Netflix Challenge dataset famously has over 1.4 million rows but only three columns (user, movie, and rating).

The more complex the model (the more columns we have), the more samples we need for the data to generalize (the more rows we need to add so we can still trust our results). Without going into more detail, the rule of thumb I’ve internalized is that you need at least ten times the rows as you have columns. So, the next time you see someone making a model out of a square spreadsheet (dimensionality about the same as the sample size), you can be a bit more skeptical of the conclusions they draw.

Back to our example. 51 rows of data is fine, but to keep things simple (and statistically significant), let’s start with checking correlations between pairs of data (a bivariate regression).

Looking at the data

The following section has some numbers and graphs. If that’s not really your thing, feel free to skip to the next section, “Ok, so what model should I use?”

So we run the regression and it looks something like this:

Total # Commits vs Market Cap R^2: 0.138249 Total # Contributors vs Market Cap R^2: 0.130249 One Month # Commits vs Market Cap R^2: 0.002144 One Month # Contributors vs Market Cap R^2: 0.091301 Telegram Members in Top Group vs Market Cap R^2: 0.159053 Reddit Members vs Market Cap R^2: 0.806415 Exchanges Listed vs Market Cap R^2: 0.298320 # of Top 5 Exchanges vs Market Cap R^2: 0.150254 # of Hashtag Tweets (30 days) vs Market Cap R^2: 0.368655 # of News Mentions (30 days) vs Market Cap R^2: 0.771270 Twitter Followers vs Market Cap R^2: 0.443522

For those of you unsure how to interpret this, the numbers to the right are the coefficients of determination of the best fit line. As long as our data satisfy certain properties, we can be sure that the line is our best possible guess of a correlation.

Let’s take some examples. “Total # Commits” and “Market Cap” have an R² of 0.138249. That ends up looking something like this:

Probably not too useful. We’re looking for something that looks a little more like this: The closer R² is to 1, the stronger the correlation. Fortunately, our results have some strong contenders: “Reddit Members vs Market Cap” at 0.81 and “# of News Mentions (30 days) vs Market Cap” at 0.77. Let’s take a look at one of those graphs, “Reddit Members vs Market Cap”: Oh no — even though the R² is pretty high, the graph doesn’t look like the one we’re expecting. That’s because the data suffer from something known as heteroskedasticity — where the points kind of fan out as the numbers get larger. This is something we see often in venture capital data because the sizes of companies grow by orders of magnitude, and with larger companies come larger variances. Fortunately, there’s a very easy fix: normalize the data on a logarithmic scale. Now, the plot looks much more correlative:

Total # Commits vs Market Cap R^2: 0.083247 Total # Contributors vs Market Cap R^2: 0.094291 One Month # Commits vs Market Cap R^2: 0.091181 One Month # Contributors vs Market Cap R^2: 0.151921 Telegram Members in Top Group vs Market Cap R^2: 0.130186 Reddit Members vs Market Cap R^2: 0.357688 Exchanges Listed vs Market Cap R^2: 0.303370 # of Top 5 Exchanges vs Market Cap R^2: 0.395840 # of Hashtag Tweets (30 days) vs Market Cap R^2: 0.426500 # of News Mentions (30 days) vs Market Cap R^2: 0.484609 Twitter Followers vs Market Cap R^2: 0.353295

The correlations took a hit: the R² of “Reddit Members vs Market Cap” is down from 0.81 to 0.36. But these values aren’t bad. At the risk of offending the Bayesian readers, a more precise evaluation of how “not bad” these values are is to perform a hypothesis test on the coefficients of the regressors. Without going into too much detail, the idea is to compare your model against a model that assumes no relationship (just a horizontal line). If there is enough evidence to show that adding “Reddit Members” significantly improves the model, we can, with confidence, say there is some relationship.

The formal measure of this is the p-value derived from the F-statistic, which represents the likelihood our data would’ve been generated purely by random chance — that is, if there were no actual relationship between “Reddit Members” and “Market Cap”. Put another way, if the p-value is very small, there’s almost no chance that the data we’re looking at could’ve been randomly generated. There must be some relationship.

Most academic studies look for p-values less than either 0.05 or 0.01. In fact, the p-values we get hover around numbers very close to zero. It seems that the popularity of a cryptocurrency might be nontrivially related to its market cap after all (imagine that)! Though it seems that developer activity is a bit less useful.

Total # Commits vs Market Cap p-value: 0.074861 Total # Contributors vs Market Cap p-value: 0.057240 One Month # Commits vs Market Cap p-value: 0.061724 One Month # Contributors vs Market Cap p-value: 0.014175 Telegram Members in Top Group vs Market Cap p-value: 0.009292 Reddit Members vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000004 Exchanges Listed vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000028 # of Top 5 Exchanges vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000001 # of Hashtag Tweets (30 days) vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000000 # of News Mentions (30 days) vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000000 Twitter Followers vs Market Cap p-value: 0.000007

But think about this for a second. All these p-values mean is that you can perhaps eyeball a general trend of dots moving up and to the right in the plots. How does this inform which cryptocurrencies you should buy? Do you buy the currencies at the top right — the ones with the most Reddit members and highest market caps? Do you buy all currencies above the trend line because their market caps are proportionally higher per additional Reddit member?

We’ve talked ad nauseam about correlations — the relationships between variables. But, it turns out that prediction is an entirely different problem. This is where the question of correlation vs. causation comes in: does being in the news lead to a higher market cap, or does a higher market cap lead to more news coverage (or both)?

We can do a pretty quick sanity check. Instead of comparing these factors to market cap, we can instead compare them to the change in market cap since the spreadsheet was made. When running the code over the new data (current as of 2/13/2018), the plots no longer look so meaningful.

Removing the outliers makes the randomness even more apparent.

Now, the implied correlation is negative! More Reddit users apparently leads to decreases in market cap. We can blame this more on fitting noisy data rather than any negative relationship, as evidenced by the final set of p-values.

Total # Commits vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.839070 Total # Contributors vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.709478 One Month # Commits vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.227949 One Month # Contributors vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.615143 Telegram Members in Top Group vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.019781 Reddit Members vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.810512 Exchanges Listed vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.311267 # of Top 5 Exchanges vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.512172 # of Hashtag Tweets (30 days) vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.930046 # of News Mentions (30 days) vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.698512 Twitter Followers vs Market Cap Change p-value: 0.821432

Most of these values are well outside our tolerance of statistical significance and are more or less entirely random. Interestingly enough, for the one feature that might be related, “Telegram Members”, the correlation is negative, which implies more Telegram members relates to a decrease in price. But, I wouldn’t read so much into that. The only conclusion I’d draw is that the data we have do not predict what we expect.

Ok, so what model should I use?

So what does this mean? Can we definitively say the number of Reddit or Telegram members has no predictive power? Unfortunately not. There’s nothing ruling out better models or correlations that come out of larger and more comprehensive datasets. For example, try using “change in Telegram members” as a regressor, using a more expressive model, or framing the problem as a classification problem. The point I’m making is that, with the current dataset, it’s hard to imagine a truly predictive model without some change.

The larger point is this: if you construct a model, start with a formalization of your objective and assumptions. Make sure it’s testable and, more importantly, verifiable/falsifiable. If it works — fantastic, you now have an edge! If not, back to the drawing board.

Often, when predicting future prices of an asset, you’re probably looking forautocorrelations. There is an entire body of economic work devoted to proving that these might exist as well as another body of work devoted to disproving it. In public equities markets, it’s commonly believed that prices follow a random walk or, more specifically, a martingale (or not?). That is, the expected change in stock price is not influenced by the previous prices. This is the source of the commonly held belief that the stock market is impossible to predict. According to some of my quant fund friends, there is reason to believe that this might not hold true just yet in cryptocurrency markets. Perhaps there are predictive signals of future price movements (past price, social media activity, etc.), but the results are yet unpublished. At best, this requires more analysis.

So what did we learn? A few things:

The data that we might believe are meaningful are probably less than we think.

It’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking we have a good strategy or model. Often times, we look for patterns that aren’t really there. This can be avoided with good ol’ data analysis.

Quantitative analysis is hard to get right. Correlations are an important first step. But there is a much larger body of work around what we’re really trying to do: predict future price.

As promised, here’s a link to the code. Feel free to play around with it on your own, and let me know if you find any bugs: https://github.com/opentoken-inc/crypto-dd

Thanks to Haseeb Qureshi, Michael Graczyk, and David Smooke.

[the-other-vince]

On Friendship and Expectation

I'd say that I've probably been battling depression on and off for several years without me knowing it. Or rather I think I didn't really want to acknowledge that there was really anything wrong with me and that I'd just "get over it" soon. Recently I had an extra severe bout of depression that lasted probably over a month. During that time, I didn't want to talk to anyone, I didn't want to see anyone, I didn't want to leave my room, I didn't want to do anything. I had no energy (even less than usual), I didn't want to even get out of bed, I just wanted to do nothing, say nothing, eat nothing, and just let time pass by. During that time I really started to reflect and try to think about what it actually is that makes me so depressed. I guess this is an attempt at explicating some of those thoughts and reflections. A side note, the reason why I haven't updated this blog in over a year is because I've recently taken quite a liking to Twitter and would've probably posted these thoughts on there too but even with the recent increase to 280 characters per tweet I would probably need like 100 tweets before I could convey everything that I want to say.

Let's talk about expectations. There was a post I saw somewhere once and probably reblogged which basically said that "Happiness equals Reality minus Expectations". That is to basically say that if you keep your expectations low, you will never be disappointed. I have a history of getting really mad at my friends. Well not mad. I think just disappointed. I generally don't explode at them though that can happen if enough incidents occur. It has caused friendship terminations. Anyways, what I have come to the conclusion of recently is that I think I have too high expectations of my friends. And when friends fail to reach that expectation I become disappointed. Not necessarily disappointed at them, but I think just disappointed in general. What do you mean expectations? Good question. I'm going to lay down what I'm calling ground truths which will help set the foundation for the rest of this piece.

Ground Truth #1: If I say something to my friend, I would want my friend to say something back.

After having lost friends in the past and not wanting to lose friends in the future, I had this naiive thought that if I keep giving my all, putting 120% into every friendship I will never lose friends again. That is humanly impossible. I am human. I have tried. I have failed. Therefore, it is impossible for all humans. (That's how logic works right?) At the end of the day, we only have a limited amount time. We can't possibly talk and maintain relationships with every single person we meet ever. And hypothetically even if we did have infinite time in the day, we only have limited amounts of energy. I don't know if you've ever tried really hard to be friends with someone but you just know that they don't really want to be friends with you so talking with them is basically just super draining. If you're the only one putting in effort in maintain a relationship it's completely unsustainable and you just end up burning out.

So with the limited time in a day, limited energy that I have, if I decide to talk to you, send you a message, a funny video, ask about how you are, I expect a somewhat genuine response. My thought process is basically, since you are my friend I want to talk you, and if I am your friend I assume you would want to talk to me too. There have been several occasions where I am genuinely interested in someone's day and how they have been so I start a conversation with them, but then they reply with the things like "Yeah good" with pretty much no attempt at follow up conversation. Yeah I understand, everyone can be busy with life and what not but even if you don't reply within a day, a week, or a month, when you do decide to reply I would appreciate a bit more of a genuine response.

Another incident occurred when my friend told me that if I ever needed to get something off my chest or if I ever needed someone to just rant to, she would be there to listen. She told me to use this voice-messaging app called Voxer which basically let you leave messages and kind of talk to each other like a walkie-talkie. I downloaded it used it exclusively for that friend. I decided to take her word for it, and basically had a massive rant to her about something and told her all these things. She never replied. You know seen-zoning? Well she basically heard-zoned me. Like mate, if I didn't want a response I would've ranted to the wall or something. At least walls don't get your hopes up or make false promises. This basically leads me to my second ground truth.

Ground Truth #2: If my friend says something to me, I would want my friend to mean what they say and tell the truth.

I don't know if I am abnormal for doing this but when someone says something (especially if they are my friend) I expect that they actually mean what they say. I would rather you say nothing than say something you don't mean. Like honestly! Let's say I sent you a YouTube video which I wanted you to watch cuz I thought it was awesome. And you say something like "I'll check it out later." but you actually don't have any intention to check it out because you're not interested in it or it's just not that appealing or whatever. I would rather you not say anything than say "I'll check it out later" because after you say that I have an expectation that you will live up to your word and actually do what you say.

But what about Ground Truth #1? You said you expect your friends to respond, right? Yep. So what you could do if you didn't just want to leave me hanging, is to make things ambiguous or add a bit of uncertainty. Like "I'll see if I have time to check it out later" or "I might watch it later" cuz at least that way it's nothing actually certain. Obviously if I never hear from you again about that video then it means you didn't watch it (because I still would have expected a response to that video) but in that case I will just remember that those kind of videos are not appealing to you and I won't ever ask you to watch them again. Kind of like how YouTube learns about what videos to recommend to viewers, I will learn that you don't particularly care about what I sent you and I will refrain from sending such things to you in the future.

Another incident occurred where someone said the words "Wish you were here". Holy crap, Vince. That's actually a nice message! How can you get mad at someone for saying that? Yes, it was a very nice thing to say and I did actually appreciate the message. But put it another way. Person A mentioned in passing to Person B about potentially travelling to Location X in the future, but says nothing more about it to Person B. A short while later Person B finds out through someone else that Person A is in Location X and also received a message from Person A saying "Wish you were here". Is it wrong for Person B to feel a bit upset that they weren't at all communicated the details or intentions of Person A? Would the words "Wish you were here" not seem more genuine if Person A had attempted to communicate their travel plans to Person B?

One word comes to mind whenever I think about my thoughts towards friendships and expectations. Petty. It all just seems super petty. It's like Wow. I can't believe you are so salty just because your friends didn't watch the video you sent them or they didn't invite you to go travelling with them. And in one sense, it's true. It is all just super duper petty. But at least for me personally, it doesn't matter if you're a friend I've known for one month or friend I've known for ten years, if you are my friend, I would expect you to mean the words that you say to me. If that expectation isn't met, I get upset.

And so what I tried doing was to lower my expectations. There are some people that you have zero expectations of. Strangers for instance. If I gave a rant about my life to a complete stranger, I would not expect that they would care or listen or reply even. Like if I was to post a sob story on the internet, I wouldn't expect the randomos on Twitter to care but my friends on Facebook maybe a little. I tried to expect less from my friends. Expect that they might not always mean what they say. Expect that they might not always care to talk or make conversation with me. I thought that maybe if failed expectations is what's making me sad, then lowering/removing expectations should solve that problem. What I have noticed is that it doesn't really. Rather what I have noticed is that expectations and friendships come almost hand in hand and can pretty much not be separated.

Are expectations not what separates friends from strangers? I would expect my friends to care for me. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to be there for me when I need someone to talk to. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to check up on me once in a while. I wouldn't expect that from strangers. I would expect my friends to mean the words that they say. I would not necessarily expect that from strangers. When you remove the expectations you might have of your friends what differentiates them from random strangers?

If there was a contest for over-thinking things I would win, hands-down, no questions asked. Something as stupid as someone not giving me a heart-felt response over instant messaging can lead me to think "This person does not consider me a good enough friend to give me genuine response". Something as simple as not watching a short YouTube video that I sent them can make me think "I am not a good enough friend for this person to actually care about my messages". I mean if they couldn't spare 2 minutes of their life to watch a video, how on earth could I request ten or twenty minutes of their time just for me to talk about my feelings and life problems? I began to feel lonely and helpless, hoping that someone will randomly reach out and be interested in me and my life problems but when no-one does, I feel more and more alone, like no-one could care less about whether I'm alive or dead. I was basically caught in an endless cycle of negative thought and emotion. In the past, I liked to believe that I didn't actually expect too much from my friends -- since all I really want from my friends is that they speak truthfully, check up on me once in a blue moon, and maybe also watch the videos that I send them. But as it seems, that might be asking too much.

[boldadulting]

Guest Post: Science artist Dr. Thomai Dion on confidence in science, motherhood, and entrepreneurship

Masha: Today's post is brought to you by Dr. Thomai Dion, a scientist and artist who has an amazing series of science books called Think-A-Lot Tots and a science technology engineering mathematics (STEM) coloring and activity book. Thomai and I originally connected online over our shared interests in both science and sharing openly about our experiences; now I'm lucky enough to include her science art as both an activity and prizes in my confidence-building workshops. If you'd like to see my guest post on her blog, please visit and comment! Now, here's T

In my field of work I tend to have a lot of titles. In no particular order: I’m a(n):

pharmacist,

entrepreneur,

author,

writer,

illustrator,

editor,

seamstress,

innovator,

etc. 

I’m also human. I have feelings. I worry. I daydream. I’m a mother too, so you can add an extra dose of worry to that mix. (Pharmacy humor. See what I did there?). What I’m getting at is that saying I’m “insert-solitary-title-here” cannot possibly cover the gamut of emotions that are all actually associated with what I do. I wouldn’t have things any other way of course, but I think broadly stating that there’s a natural air of confidence associated with embarking on an entrepreneurship originally inspired by one’s own entrance into motherhood would be… not entirely true.

I’m a pharmacist by trade and had previously held an amazing role innovating within a large Fortune 500 healthcare company. Once my husband and I decided we wanted to start a family, we began thinking hard about our current career paths and how we wanted to raise our future little ones. We ultimately came to the conclusion that I would become a stay-at-home-mom; for all the passion and drive I had for my career, the excitement in knowing I would be home with my family quickly overwhelmed previous feelings. (That is not to say it completely extinguished things though!).

Going from jet-setting corporate business strategist to stay-at-home-mom with a baby was not without its adjustments. Life became much slower, the days longer, and compared to the busy schedule I had before, this was so wonderfully welcomed. Over time my stress levels admittedly dropped to zero, and with a baby-soon-to-be-toddler on the move constantly, my days were not without activity. I found myself in better shape, healthier and happier.

As my son grew he began to talk more and more, and with that soon followed his questions. It was amazing to witness him experiencing life events for the first time, inquiring about any and everything around him. And by “life events” I don’t mean only what we would consider big events like birthday parties, etc. To him, everything was a big event; the grass, the wind, even rainy days. This realization combined with his natural inclination to ask “why” sparked the idea to write my children’s science book series called “Think-A-Lot-Tots”, create my kids’ science clothing collection, and begin my own business “td the science mom” to encompass all of this work (td being me!). This is also where that important phrase I mentioned before about career-related feelings not being entirely extinguished comes into play. When I think back on all of my experiences and the different professional roles that I’ve held, it’s really no wonder that I’ve found myself pursuing entrepreneurship. It was perhaps only a matter of time, but like any transition it is again not without its adjustments.

I think the biggest initial hurdle for me with regards to starting Think-A-Lot-Tots, my Etsy store and “td the science mom” was simply just talking about it. Were these ideas actually good ideas? I of course thought they were, but was I subject to my own bias? Could this actually have traction within the marketplace? Would it inspire others as much as I hoped it would? Is it really that far-fetched? Am I really ready for this?

There were so many internal questions and self-inflicted worries with regards to simply talking about what I wanted to do that when I finally did discuss my ideas with my husband and family, their positive reaction was astounding to me.  I had gone from seemingly endless rumination to having a team cheering me on and encouraging me to “go for it.” I still can’t express how appreciative I am to have had this, especially while I was just starting out.

The next big task for me was actually putting myself out there as I am by nature a relatively quiet individual. With the continued encouragement from others and my own conscious effort to push myself out of my comfort zone (inch by inch), I slowly began to share my work. And wouldn’t you know – people were actually interested in what I was doing! It all felt a bit unbelievable as I started gathering a following on social media. After many months of work, articles and podcasts, tweets and posts, I found myself exceeding any book sale goals I had previously set for myself. I have also taken a leap and broadened my work to include my kids’ science clothes within my Etsy shop, and I am proud to say I’ve very recently reached the highly anticipated milestone of making my first sale!

Thinking back on when I began all of this (which is really only almost a year ago) compared to how I feel now, my confidence in both myself and my work is by far what has allowed me to start and continue doing what I’m doing. During this journey, I’ve noted some of the major takeaways that I’ve learned in hopes of helping others who are thinking about pursuing a potential dream of theirs:

Make a tangible plan.

Put your idea to paper and map it out. This will help you create your major goals, define the “why” in what you’re doing, and identify what you could tackle now versus the many other to-do’s and larger picture down the road.

Talk to people.

Specifically – Identify a group of individuals whom you trust and value their feedback. If you’re uncertain about your abilities, open up about it and let them know. Those same foundational human elements of entrepreneurship like worrying, confidence issues, and even fear are common throughout all life experiences. Even if they don’t share the same entrepreneurial venture, they'll be sure to share relatable emotions with starting something new.

Give yourself credit.

You’re likely due for much more than what you’ve already allotted to yourself. Once you have your ideas mapped out, create a plan that can be executed, managed and measurable. The day-to-day progress can at times feel lacking and you again may experience moments where you are not confident in your work. Reflecting back on your achievements month-over-month can really put into perspective just how far you’ve come and help you stay motivated to continue pursuing your passion.

Don’t compare yourself to others.

Yes, there are many folks out there that are already very successful. For the glaring majority though, that success didn’t just appear one solitary morning in a glamorous “poof” of shimmering adoration. It came after many, many days of hard work, consistently quality results and an admirable persistency. Your end-goal is likely going to take a while to achieve, but it’s during the journey where you learn and grow, not at your destination. Enjoy the ride.

Share your work.

Let’s face it. No one is going to know about the amazing things you are doing if you don’t tell anyone about it! Take that step and put yourself out there. It may be scary. Probably very scary at first. But again – Give yourself credit. Don’t compare yourself to others. And talk to people! As basic as these principles may sound, they are foundational to your success.

Thomai Dion is a pharmacist and mom promoting children’s S.T.E.M. education through books and apparel. Inspired by her own child’s natural curiosity to learn, she has created the science book collection “Think-A-Lot-Tots” available on Amazon. Her children’s clothing on her Etsy store empowers girls to pursue their interests, stating that “brilliant is beautiful.” All of her work and more can be found on her tdthesciencemom website. You can also follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest for updates and to join the conversation on encouraging all of our children to achieve and succeed. To reach out, you can contact Thomai at tdthesciencemom[at]gmail[dot]com.