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comicteaparty · 5 years ago

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March 16th-March 22nd, 2020 CTP Archive

The archive for the Comic Tea Party week long chat that occurred from March 16th, 2020 to March 22nd, 2020. The chat focused on The Phoenix by Bri de Danann.

Featured Comment:

Chat:

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB START!

Hello and welcome everyone to Comic Tea Party’s Book Club~! This week we’ll be focusing on The Phoenix by Bri de Danann~! (https://www.bridedanann.com/thephoenix)

You are free to read and comment about the comic all week at your own pace until March 22nd, so stop on by whenever it suits your schedule! Discussions are freeform, but we do offer discussion prompts in the pins for those who’d like to have them. Additionally, remember that while constructive criticism is allowed, our focus is to have fun and appreciate the comic!

Whether you finish the comic or can only read a few pages, everyone is welcome to join and chat with us!

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 1

1. What did you like about the beginning of the comic?

2. What has been your favorite moment in the comic (so far)?

3. Who is your favorite character?

4. Which characters do like seeing interact the most?

5. What is something you like about the art? If you have a favorite illustration, please share it!

6. What is a theme you like that the comic explores?

7. What do you like about the comic’s story or overall related content?

8. Overall, what do you think the comic’s strengths are?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I'm really loving Cassidy so far - her confidence is infectious! One thing I'm interested in learning more about - the worldbuilding exposition we're given during the intermission. Like, it paints the Alliance in a REALLY positive light... which makes sense, because contextually this is an Alliance-produced ad/propaganda piece. So, I'm curious to find out what the actual story of Marketplace is.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Just started reading from the beginning..."You need a blue cat in every scifi creation" is making me feel very called-out right now, heh.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Aaaand the cat-guy runs up stairs on all four feet, that's a good touch

I wish a lot of these pages were bigger, or at least had the action spread out a bit more! Like, on this page https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-13-chapter-1 the "And...associate" is a very funny beat, but there's not enough space to put the speech bubbles one-after-the-other, so they read out-of-order and you lose the rhythm of the joke

That overhead shot of the city streets, too -- it's great, cool evocative setting, neat glowy future architecture, solid anatomy and a good feeling of motion with the figure -- so I wish the whole thing had more room to breathe.

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

I will second that criticism about the bubble order

Also on the topic of criticism, I don't know if the author already knows this or not, but the formatting is a bit messed up on mobile and you have to scroll a lot to reach the page(edited)

BriDanann

Thanks for the layout critique! It's something I've noticed and have tried to fix in my writing and bubble placement in subsequent chapters! I am still learning but I'm glad you like the setting and action! Also, for the mobile viewing on the site I am aware that it is messed up. Squarespace is honestly trash at setting up for mobile viewing, I've tried to finagle it but it won't stack neatly... this is why I put it on tapas and Webtoon, they are set up for mobile and it makes it much easier. Sorry for that inconvenience! I am looking into getting a better site for the home of my comic

RebelVampire

Something I like about the beginning of the comic was it just kind of defied my expectations. Like from the cover I was expecting something a bit more light-hearted, maybe even philosophical. And then nope, it's a space adventure. Yet at the same time I still get some of those beautiful more whimsical shots in the art, and it's an interesting combination. As for favorite scene, definitely https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-15-chapter-1 A very light comedic moment that takes the normal graceful leap of faith and turns it into what it would actually be like in real life for most people. Gotta love that subversion. Favorite character right now is Arerio. As the newcomer to the crew, I just connect with Arerio the most right now, plus I'm invested in Arerio's sort of bodyguard defense roll for the crew. Means Arerio is gonna get them spicy action scenes. So far, I've enjoyed seeing Cassidy and Arerio interact the most. I like that Cassidy is both frank with Arerio while also pushing Arerio to do crazy things like jump off random buildings. I kind of feel too that, again, as the newcomer, their lack of established relationship makes what will develop for it have higher stakes, vs. the people Cassidy has clearly known for a long time.

What I liked about the art most is the spacescapes. Beautiful color choices and blending, such as https://www.bridedanann.com/pg-1-chp-2 And like, if you're gonna have a space adventure, having great spacescapes like this is fantastic! Insofar, I like that the comic seems to be exploring authority and trust and what people do when they no longer trust the people in charge. While I don't have a favorite moment yet, I do feel this is a very important topic these days to talk about, as more and more young people are growing up unsure if they can trust authority figures. As for the story content, I've really enjoyed the world-building. Like that Intermission part was really right up my alley, and I enjoyed how expansive the world is yet balanced to not bring up the world at every turn in the main story. It makes for a good setting for space adventures. For the comic's strengths, I'm gonna say a combo of the world-building, the creativity in the world-building, and the effort put into the spacescapes. All together, these just make the space part of the space adventures seem more interesting, which surprisingly not every story nails in that regard.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much control does Squarespace give you over your CSS? If you can edit that, it would be really easy to do things like make the little spaceship-graphics disappear completely in mobile view, so readers don't have to scroll past them. (A host with a Wordpress installation would give you total control over the CSS. Switching would take some effort, the benefits might or might not be worth it for you, but it's probably worth looking into it and seeing what you think.)

Back to the comic itself -- just got through chapter 1, and, aha, this is an Oppressing AIs Who Want To Be Free kind of Space Empire? Plus, this narration about a planet being "discovered" and happily "added" to the Alliance -- even though it already had native residents, and the Alliance apparently decided to rename it without their input -- is...chirpily ominous.

Chapter 2 cover: oooh, is that a plant-person I see?

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 2

9. Given the comic describes itself partially as a “found family” story, how do you think events in the comic will bond the characters into a family? What obstacles will the characters go through that challenges their relationships, and what is the overall message about family?

10. Why is The Phoenix’s AI being hunted by the Alliance? Further, why are Cassidy and crew seemingly risking themselves to protect the AI from the Alliance? Which side is right in this situation?

11. Why and/or how do you think Cassidy wound up on the Alliance’s bad side? What about Arerio – why doesn’t Arerio trust the Alliance either? Overall, do you think we as the audience should trust the Alliance?

12. What aspect of the world-building so far do you think will become relevant to the events of the story – especially in regards to Cassidy’s crew’s activities? How will the addition of Arerio change how the group operates from what has been revealed so far about their activities?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Well, the Alliance is definitely evil, and Cassidy said AI Rights. Remains to be seen whether it's a general "the AI wants to have free will and not be controlled by authoritarian programming" issue, or something specific like "the AI refused to carry out a specific mission." I thought it was the ship's AI, given that it's not described as an android/robot/etc -- but now we've seen it enter the scene in a humanoid body, so I wonder if the issue is "it experienced mechanical dysphoria while ship-shaped, and the oppressive space empire wouldn't allow it to switch to a new body."

RebelVampire

From initial impressions, I get the feeling all the main cast are outcasts in some ways, at least as far as the Alliance goes. And I think that along is will what bond the characters, since regardless of events, it can always come back to "at least were outcasts together." As for obstacles though, I kind of feel like there's bound to be personality conflicts and while they might all agree the Alliance sucks, at the end I feel each choice Cassidy makes is gonna divide the crew in some way. As for overall message, though, I think it's that family can be anyone and you're not just stuck with the family or even birthplace you were given. Go to where the people who care about you is. As for why the AI is being hunted, not entire sure, but I'm sure a lot of it is just its an AI. People tend to be extremely fearful of the idea of AI or AI that isn't under control. I mean, there's a reason this is a common theme in sci-fi. So for all intents and purposes, I think a large part is just AI = danger to the Alliance. As for why Cassidy and crew are risking their lives, it's probably just they see the AI as a person, not some hardened criminal threat. As for whose side is right, probably neither in my personal opinion. XD They're two extremes that fail to consider the other point of view.

I get the feeling that Cassidy was probably a bit too free-spirited and rebellious for the Alliance's liking, so they outcasted her and snowballed the whole thing. In regards to Arerio, I feel like he witnessed something horrible and just noped outta the situation. I don't think we should trust the Alliance as an organization. Maybe individual people in it, but the whole organization is surely corrupt. I've talked a bit about the world-building I think, but I want to mention again I actually enjoy the Intermission the most. Really gave some context to the story. I kind of feel Arerio is gonna cause Cassidy to take more risks. Cause there is less of a need to be careful if you've got muscle. And while this may increase good deeds, it will inevitably put them in more dangerous as they become more infamous.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

The Intermission was hosted by an AI with some kind of official role, so it's definitely specific to AI that don't "follow the rules" in some way. Details to be revealed, I'm sure. And if one extreme is "I am definitely a person" while the other extreme is "You are definitely not a person", that's not a situation where you should try to consider each other's views and find a truth somewhere in the middle! You gotta stand up for the person, insist that they deserve the same human rights (...sapient rights?) as everyone else.

RebelVampire

I don't really view this as an argument of definitely a person vs. not a person for this story personally. I mean I'm sure that's in there. But I think this is more about "AIs are safe" vs. "AIs are dangerous"

Calliope Ψ ^,^

AIs will absolutely be deserving of rights. Their danger notwithstanding, it would be unethical to withhold inalienable rights from a sentient being simply based on their being digital instead of electrochemical.

RebelVampire

Just in case anyone thinks otherwise, I 100% think AIs are deserving of the same rights as people. However, I do think talking about safety is still important and to blanket say AIs are auto safe or auto dangerous are two extremes, neither of which is entirely correct. But obviously I'm basing this off my interpretation of the comic. It could shift to the people vs. not people debate, which would be a different matter to me.

Calliope Ψ ^,^

Humans are just as dangerous as AIs, that much is true, especially given how much we appropriate low-level proto-AIs to do our bidding. Though, I definitely understand where you're coming from ^^

RebelVampire

Yeah. Like i mean humans are the exact same, which is why we take precautions and have laws and enforcement to stop dangerous people. AIs should be treated in a similar respected but cautionary fashion. Just enforcement for AIs will obviously have to be different cause you can't exactly throw an AI in jail and hope for the same results.

Comic Tea Party

DISCUSSION PROMPTS – PART 3

13. What are you most looking forward to seeing in regards to the comic?

14. Any final words of encouragement for the comic?

Don’t feel inspired by the prompts? Feel free to discuss anything else that interested you!

mathtans

Found a little time today. So quickly running through the prompts:

1. Liked the setup of meeting someone who doesn't know the plot to act as our window into things... with the twist that Cassidy and crew are actually known by reputation at least.

2. The cloaked ship angle was a good one, I didn't think of that (I was envisioning that moment in Back to the Future II when Marty steps off the roof) and wow leap of faith by Arerio.

I think that kinda shows how the Alliance is bad news. Arerio was practically willing to die instead of be captured (though presumably he figured there was an ace up a sleeve somewhere).

3. Honestly, I like Sequoia. Cassidy's a bit reckless for my tastes, Arerio didn't really ping for whatever reason, and the others we're still learning about... and here's a character who seemingly drinks water by holding hair in a cup. I gather s/he's a type of tree. Seems to hang back and observe. Liking that. Of course, I'm weird.

4. The Cassidy/Tiko felt a little annoying at first but the interaction on the bridge later helped me to realize this is just a thing they do, and I like that they can be so casual with each other. (When it's not some life and death thing!)

5. Each character's distinctly different, though maybe that's more about the background than the art. I also liked the trip up the stairs and the fall off the tower. The visuals conveyed the scale/scope to me.

6. I'm bad with themes. I suppose the idea of coming together (when faced with a problematic Alliance)?

7. The AI thing has set up a good mystery. And maybe I'm watching too much "Picard" lately, but there's different places they can go with that that others have pointed out too... seems to have been a bit of a topic so far.

(I'm fading, I'll hit a bit more tomorrow.)

(Oh, I like the little comments at the bottom of the panels. So maybe that's a strength too.)

RebelVampire

What I'm most looking forward to seeing in the comic right now is just this first mission so we can get a feel as to what the characters are involved in. That will really set a lot of the tone for the rest of the story, so it'll definitely be a positive step forward. Overall, though, I really enjoy the effort put into the comic so far, and it'll be nice to see where it is in a few months~!

mathtans

Just to hit the highlights of the last questions, continuing from last night... there's probably the idea that family is the people who stick by you more than the people you're related to. In fact it might be interesting to see who some of their parents are (assuming they're alive) and whether they approve versus got into similar trouble.

The AI is being hunted because it's mostly armless. Eh heh... I'm wondering if maybe it's obsolete and refused upgrades or something? But maybe Cassidy and team are able to prevent any viral takeovers, the Alliance simply isn't listening? (That got a bit random but I don't think it's been pitched already.) And "right" is probably somewhere in the middle.

Alliance, as others have said, is probably shady (not the least of which because of the art portrayal?). But I guess there's some reason they're still in charge. ("Firefly" comes to mind, not because I was ever one who watched it, but because I think they were in a similar situation? I could be way off base.)

I liked the thought (I think it was Rebel) of the crew getting riskier now that Arerio is there. Though they seem a bit free spirited anyway, so it might be more a case of not raising their guard as much as they have before.

Anyway, I'd be looking forward to a bit more of the secondary characters (like Sequoia) as the twist of their mission (isn't there always a twist?) becomes apparent. Best with it!

Comic Tea Party

BOOK CLUB END!

Thank you everyone so much for reading and chatting about The Phoenix this week! Please also give a special thank you to Bri de Danann for volunteering the comic and creating it! If you liked The Phoenix, make sure to continue to support it via some of the links below!

Read and Comment: https://www.bridedanann.com/thephoenix

Bri’s Redbubble Shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/bridanann/shop?asc=u

Bri’s Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/bridedanann

Bri’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/BriDanann

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #book club #bookclub #webcomic book club #webcomic bookclub #comic tea party #ctp #the phoenix #bri de danann

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finokoye · 5 years ago

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Mozfest 2019 writeup: Using IoT to Measure Outdoor Air Quality in Africa

As part of Mozfest 2019, I attended a session in the Openness space called ‘Using IoT to Measure Outdoor Air Quality in Africa’. The session was going to be led by Warukira Theuri who wasn’t able to make it* (for reasons I learned later which I’ll add a note about below).

There were about a dozen of us gathered so in the spirit of Mozfest... we kind of put our own session together on the topic.

This post is to document what was discussed. I take no credit for the topic, and advise anyone interested to follow/contact Warukira who is clearly an amazingly talented and smart young woman.

The session was facilitated using techniques I’ve picked up through my design jam facilitation days. The basic steps are:

Check in - a quick round of introductions for people to say their name, who they are and what they hope to get out of the session

Ideation - individually, everyone has 10 minutes to write down their thoughts on the topic. These could be challenges, questions or general comments

Clustering - what themes arise from people’s notes?

Discussion - normally in a design jam we would want to format the themes into ‘how might we?’ statements to help frame the future prototyping and research.

Discussion part 2 - taking the role of the critic, what are the questions, new provocations, criticisms we can think of?

Ideation - based on the themes that have been identified, what could help address these issues?

Check out - we swap contacts/social media handles and say ‘til next time!’

What themes came up?

As a group we noticed our thoughts and questions could be divided into a couple of core themes:

What standards do we build IoT products to?

Should we look to EU standards?

Questions were raised around ipv6 and general security of devices

Are there lessons from environmental tech for protecting and monitoring endangered wildlife for privacy paradigms? e.g. rhino tracking

How can we ensure quality of data created by IoT devices?

Does it match with quality of other public data assets?

What is the right hardware?

How do we learn to make the hardware?

Are there IoT devices that can boost wireless strength (to help deal with issue of lack of connectivity in rural areas)

Are there any accessible courses to learn how to program for IoT?

A diagram of our ideas mapping can be found here: https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1U_OVPPGElw0b3F4T0cLANYlDUDEyuFu68nQDxPtqrNA/edit?usp=sharing

Some provocations...

“OK, the air sucks - now what?”

This connected to question about how one turns data into action. Reporting that pollution levels have changed is one thing but is that enough to convince local councils? Is there a social/political organising aspect to support community tech?

Who else is doing this around the world - can we work in solidarity?

What are models of successful activism [informed by data obtained from open source IoT]

IoT will collect data for AI. Where does the responsibility lie?

Any good resources?

We ended the session by sharing potential resources that could help us all address these questions. The resources range from regulatory, to service design practice, to people working on similar projects facing similar obstacles (one thing that came up was that actually the dynamics of local politics and access are very similar whether in East Africa or Western Europe!).

Here is the list we put together:

Papers and research

Global information society watch 2018: Community networks

Community networks: the internet by the people, for the people

Designing Connected Products

Community centred tech

Luftdaten (Berlin)

Internet Society

Afrinic

Web Foundation

Women’s Rights online research

Design

This is Service Design Doing

Decolonising Design

Global Design Jam community

Campaigning

Friends of the Earth, Scotland - FYI, there are global networks so find your nearest one!

Regulatory

European Environmental Agency

Data

52 North wiki - specifically work on specific project called “sensor web”

SOME FURTHER COMMENTS

At a later conversation, I learned that the reason Warukira wasn’t able to make it was due to the “usual” UK government hostile environment idiocy which messed up her visa application.

I intend to write about this in a bit more depth but as someone who has attended Mozfest before and tends to hang out a lot with the folks attending from Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, this isn’t unusual. However, what struck me was the attitude of ‘us’, us in a collective sense meaning the hosts, the volunteers etc etc.

To me, the spirit of Mozfest should also be about solidarity as much as it is about people having fun, ‘just getting involved’ and having a can-do DIY attitude. Maybe it would have put the organisers into too much trouble with the authorities, but honestly, I wish more of us attendees and fellow facilitators could also have known about all the amazing people who weren’t able to make it because of the UK governments despicable policies, so that at least we - as the Mozilla family - can show our support and solidarity.

Now as I said, this happens every year and honestly at this rate will keep on happening - it will probably even get worse, so long as the conference remains in Europe, which it will. In the meantime, what those of us with relative privilege can do is to call it out, let our governments and local councillors know that we know what’s going on and that this is NOT OK. As a community, we should be explicitly talking about the fact that our fellow civic technologists are being unfairly treated due to neo-colonial nonsense. At the very least, this repeated issue with visa applications is an important lesson for the younger generation of technologists and academics in countries like the UK, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, the US, Canada; in countries that are only at the top of the pile because of centuries of colonialism and occupation, to demonstrate why we cannot imagine technology is somehow in an ivory tower that will never be affected by politics.

I’ll stop there because I’m working on a proper article about it, especially now my initial fury has eased so I can talk a bit more thoughtfully about this.

In short, it would have been amazing to meet Warukira in person but I want to say a huge thank you to her for putting in a kick-ass session which provided an opportunity for us to discuss some really fascinating ideas and to learn from each other.

#mozfest #mozfest19 #workshops #visa #hostile environment #civic tech #tech activism

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kindabraveandlittlestupid · 6 years ago

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This isn't a point of nostalgia, I am only 32 and have only paid attention to so many debates over the years. Mostly the last three Presidents, so basically from 2000 to 2018 which you think would be a long time but in truth that's basically only 5 Presidential Campaigns. I cannot fathom a moment in my life where I was proud of how we conduct American debates. This is not a Right or Left issue, this is not a Media or Politicians issue... this is a failure on all fronts including that of us Citizens.

News channels capitulating to the demands of candidates who wish to establish the rules of the debate they are participating in. American citizens wanting a good show on stage over measuring the content of these men and women's character. Politicians being asked a question, ignoring said question and talking about whatever the fuck they want and no one stepping up saying “Hey Fuck Wit. We asked about Medicare and you just wasted your time talking on The Border. AGAIN!”

I am quite honestly ashamed that we allowed this to happen. The contestants of a game show don’t get to put forward the questions they have have the answers too. They don’t get to have a ‘correct’ answer when answering a different question that was never asked. Softball questions like “Who is your favorite musician?” to make them more likable is a hell of a lot less important than how they plan to conduct themselves diplomatically. The host should not be kissing the ass of the man or woman on stage they are supposed to be grilling for the sake of establishing a better democracy by allowing the American people to see who doesn't have a clue what they are doing and who actually has a plan/vision for the country.

As I said this is a failure across the board and the people who benefit from News Channels kowtowing and Publics complacency are the Shittiest Politicians who can say taglines like “Make America Great Again” without ever explaining how he plans to pay for his wall, what sort of statesmen he plans to conduct himself as or even how they even plan to MAGA. Which is how we got ourselves into this mess of someone who has increased the deficit by a trillion and has systematically weakened our relationships across the world. Am I taking a shot at Trump again? Fuck yeah, I am because the debates didn't take him to task and that perhaps would have put someone more qualified in the White House (Democrat or Conservative) in his place. Let’s face it, he is a fuck wit.

So we are at this point now where Politicians pick their voters (gerrymandering and a topic for another time), they pick their debater, the debate questions, they pick the answers they want to give regardless of the questions asked, and they get to lie about their intentions and beliefs with no adults holding them accountable to what they said before. This is why I am writing this article and calling it a “The Crucible” not to tie a stone to their feet to see if they sink or float but rather to live up to the definition of the word.

A situation of severe trial, or in which different elements interact, leading to the creation of something new.

This should be the aim of American Politics to put the men and women in power in intense scrutiny be they liberal or conservative. I am not saying we do not conduct ourselves without empathy or forgiveness of the past mistakes that some men and women might have made in their early life but look at the values they hold as they step into Office. Values that define how they will vote and judge issues that come across their desk.

So here is a list of ideas that I think will improve debate in the US allowing us to separate the pretenders from the visionaries, the dunces from the intellectuals, the reality TV stars from the patriotic civil servants.

youtube

Cutting the Mic/Refocusing

On small thing we can add to debates is the ‘cut the mic’ option for the moderators. Far to often insults will be thrown between candidates, rants on none answers to an important question, and the domination of moderators is exploited on stage. If a candidate is asked about a subject he/she should answer said subject and if they try to switch topics the moderator should step in and cut their mic, repeat the question and reminding that individual to stay on topic. This might upset some individuals on stage but let's be honest they (the Politicians) serve the people and they don't get to change the narrative when we are asking them what their thoughts or beliefs are.

youtube

Equal Time for 3rd Parties/Alternative Candidates

I think we Americans are pigeon held by the two-party system. We forgo third parties because MOST Americans understand the Spoiler Effect and the consequences of splitting the vote between two like-minded candidates will ultimately elect the other party which is furthest from their values. Pretty much the reason while Republicans fall in line behind their nominee which sadly the Bernie fans didn't get the memo on.

Anyways the Equal Time for 3rd Parties/Alternative Candidates is essential for a healthy democracy and the exploration of ideas. In the 2016 election, there were 6 people running under the Democratic Primary. Can you name them? Do you know what they believed in? It’s not Jill Stein (Green Party) or Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party). Don’t feel bad I only remembered 1 of the other 4 candidates besides Bernie and Hillary. This is mostly because the media provided heavy coverage to Hillary and Bernie while ignoring other options. This was much the same for Stein and Johnson having no memorable debate moments.

When we conduct the debate we need to ensure that each candidate receives an equal amount of serious questions and time to answer them. If a candidate wants to use his/her whole five minutes to speak, great! If they decide to turn over their remaining time to another candidate or back to the moderator, that would also be acceptable.

Call Backs

Very often a politician will be asked to answer for something they said in the past and explain their intent/context of what they are saying. Some will say “I never said that. Go back and read what I said.” We all know who’s said that in the past but the beauty of modern technology is we can summon those video clips instantly on a computer and we can share it with an audience right then an there with very little effort. It’s a very simple idea of pulling up videos, images, and quotes behind the candidates but an effective one because it will either A) Make candidates honestly answer what their intent/position was on the past and encourage them to avoid the call back or B) Immediately turn off the valve when a Politician attempts to gaslight an audience. It’s instant karma for those who attempt to lie their way through the questioning.

No Fluff Questions

We all know what Fluff Questions are, little softballs placed on a T-Ball stand for Candidates to answer to make them more likable. What kind of soda do you drink, who is your favorite band, what's your favorite football team and so on. None of these fucking questions matter. I don't care about the music they like, I don't care about ketchup on steak, and I don't care about the fo faith that some politicians pretend they have said they regularly read the bible and blah blah blah.

If candidates want to share these falsehoods and image during the campaign trail, fine I am ok with that. Even better if they decide to post it on their website in a bio page so people can see what they are into. However, during a debate, these individuals should be answering hard questions on policy, their vision for the country, questioned about past votes and/or judicial decisions, and should be held accountable for the beliefs/views they bring with them.

In a debate like this, we need questions on policies, beliefs, values, vision, and a fucking plan if they have one. Fluff questions just make you feel closer to the individual making you think he is just like you before he or she cuts your healthcare and runs up the debt. We smarter then this and the moderators are just as much to blame for tossing these questions out instead of asking real questions to root out the shit candidates.

Questions By The People, For The People

On occasion, an individual might stand up and asked a very important question that puts a gravity to a topic that may have not had before. These questions are important but also very rare as most people might have trouble articulating the right question to ask. I admit I sometimes do when thinking of questions on the spot. I believe this is where the Media, Journalists, and the Citizens work together to share their concerns and questions with moderators who will be conducting the debate and let them sift through the questions and turn them razor sharp inquiries to ask the candidates. This isn't to say people can't/shouldn't ask their questions but the beauty of having the people share their questions with an experienced moderator is that follow questions can be crafted ahead of time by a news team that can dig further and deeper than the vast majority of citizens.

youtube

Conclusion

Debates, Interviews, Confirmation Hearings, and even Town Halls all suffer from these issues of Politicians deciding what they will and will not talk about. I would prefer to have a candidate say “I don’t know.” “I haven't thought about that.” ‘I will get back to you later on that” then go off on a rant to try and stir up the rest of the room with rhetoric. We collectively as citizens need to raise the bar for these men and women because if they had their way they would keep it as low as they possibly could to slither over it.

The Moderators IE the Media need to stop having this love affair with the RNC and DNC trying to charm them into letting them be the moderators. I know this is hard to do because they will take their candidates to another channel but the News Organizations are providing a civil service of keeping the public informed. If the organizations can come together and decide on a proper debate format/rules together and leave them (the candidates) no other options but to appear on one of their channels then it will no longer be the Politicians deciding the rules of debate but the moderators and the people. Thanks for reading.

Regards, Michael California

#Debate #Public Discourse #Debates #Politics #US Politics #Public Forum #Democracy

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readcommendations · 6 years ago

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Hi readers, bookworms, and robots!

This actually happened a few days back, but I’ve been so busy with space things I rudely forgot to update my page. Shame, shame, shame on me!

As you might recall, back in 2017 I was a part of the amazing PEW PEW anthology series. A set of amazing, hilarious space adventures that I couldn’t believe my little stories had the honor of being presented with. Out of the three novellas I submitted, two of them followed the adventures of Miss Planet Earth: awakened thousands of years in the future with her visa long since expired, our poor Katra has to find her way back to a home that no longer exists – with Space Pirates in tow.

When the rights reverted back to me this spring, I secretly started putting together pocket paperbacks of Katra’s adventures. And now, after weeks of waiting for the approval… they’re online! Well, Miss Planet Earth I is in paperback, Miss Planet Earth II (The Amulet of Beb-Sha-Na) is still just an ebook. But in any case, they’re now available for your viewing pleasure!

Miss Planet Earth is avilable here in ebook and pocket paperback, Miss Planet Earth and the Amulet of Beb-Sha-Na is available here in just ebook format (for now!)

Check out the very first chapter to see if it’s your cup of tea!

A pageant queen out of time. A secretive assassin in the wrong body. Space pirates and demented droids. It’s been a long day.

Katra Zorento won the title of Miss Universe only days before first contact was made. Armed with only her charm and her golden bikini, she was sent to compete on the real stage, against the rest of the Milky Way – only to overshoot the arrival by 13,000 years.

Now, with her visa expired and no one on her side, she must make the arduous trip back to the planet that once was Earth… That is, of course, if dashing space pirates don’t get in the way. And to make matters worse, her fiancé’s brain might be trapped inside her head. Katra’s only allies are a mysterious assassin trapped in a 9 year old’s body and a ‘service’ droid with memory issues. But if she survives this, she could win the most valuable crown in the universe…

Chapter 1: In which mistakes were made, and visas revoked

Katra Zorento woke up to find she had overslept the pageant by 13,000 years. Her fingers were still frosty as she sat at the desk, trying to warm them in the soft fabric of her leggings. To her left was the open casket she had been pried from: her cryogenic sleeping pod, packed with her makeup bag, her red ball gown and a bikini. There was also the large golden disk she had brought from Earth, a replica of the one from the Voyager probe, a gift for the Council of Twelve. Every member of which was now dead. The council itself abolished 4,812 years ago, after an incident with a gas cloud which proved once and for all that diplomatic missions and fire breathing dragons do not mix. At least not on a spaceship. All this Katra gleaned from the overstuffed office she found herself in. Posters covered the walls, telling the history of this weird planet through snippets of Public Service Announcements. The Council’s abolition was a stark reminder not to travel through nebulas in the first place. They tried the gas – and ended civilization. Don’t gas and drive. The entire floor space was taken up by her pod, two chairs, and a desk, so Katra had to tuck her legs under her seat since there was no room to put them down. Across from her sat what appeared to be a formless blob of gelatin, which wobbled back and forth on its hovering chair, as if waiting for her to speak. Every once and a while, a paper on its desk would ruffle, though how it was moving Katra had no idea. “You understand your visa has long since expired, yes?” the blob said. The voice was loud, and somehow directly in Katra’s mind, which made her spine tingle. She had never met a telepathic alien before, nor any kind of alien, so the entire experience was a little unnerving, to say the least. “Yes, but, what happened?” she asked, trying to keep her still thawing limbs from trembling. “I was supposed to meet Chancellor Forbin and…” “As I explained earlier,” said the blob’s voice, somehow conveying a sigh through its haughty mightier-than-thou airy voice. “Chancellor Forbin has been dead for over thirteen millennia.” “But the trip was only supposed to take fifty years,” Katra protested, “and where is Marcus?” “Marcus?” “Yes, my bodyguard, Marcus. We were put in cryo-sleep together.” “Ah, the male.” The blob mentally ruffled the pages on the desk. “I thought they explained after they woke you? And your visit to a dislocation officer didn’t make it clear to you?” “I’m not quite sure what a dislocation officer is, exactly.” Katra looked down at her lap and tried to avoid eye contact. Not that there were any eyes to latch onto, but gazing in the blob’s general direction made her mind swim uncomfortably. “You’ve been sent to see a dislocation officer – me – because your traveling companion’s mind was too damaged by the time spent in the cryo-sleep.” “Marcus is dead?” Katra couldn’t help but glare at the blob in complete shock. Marcus. Dead. He was – no, had been – more than just her bodyguard and constant companion. The two of them had been engaged to be married upon their triumphant return to Earth. And now he was dead. And was there even an Earth to return to? She wanted desperately to ask all those questions, and more. But she was face to face with a sentient slice of Jell-O and not quite sure how to proceed. Her heart shook with silent, terrified grief. “His body passed away not long after your departure from the planet formerly known as Earth,” said the blob, “though… how much do you know about dislocation?” “Absolutely nothing.” “Ah.” The blob seemed to hesitate. “Did the officer who put you in the chamber explain the process employed to preserve your body during the cryogenic session?” “Vaguely,” Katra replied. It might have been thousands of years ago in history, but for her it was less than an hour ago that the strange man with gray skin had hastily sputtered some space jargon before sealing her and Marcus into the pods. That in turn was only minutes before she woke up in a strange orange room, surrounded by giant lizard-men trying to spray her down with a hose. “So you know the consciousness is downloaded to a quantum cell, in case the physical mind is damaged in transit.” Katra’s heart leapt. “So Marcus’s mind is still alive?” “Yes, and no,” the blob almost seemed embarrassed at this. It was hard to tell, what with the lack of facial expressions. Or any face to speak of, for that matter. “Due to a malfunction that must have occurred during the incident that destroyed the male’s physical mind, his upload was compiled with yours. So when you awoke…” “Shut. Up!” Katra could almost shout with glee. “He’s alive? In my head?” “Yes,” the cloud said, perplexed, “you do not find this perturbing?” “We were to get married!” she sputtered, “this is even better! Two minds, one body. For as long as we both shall live, in sickness and in health. This is better than marriage!” The blob swiftly tossed a stack of papers into the trash. Katra’s excitement faded. She had probably just lost a massive bargaining chip with her outburst. Marcus? Are you in there? I need you. I’m making a mess. Nothing. “You sure he’s in here?” she asked. The news alone was enough to bring heat back to her chest, drawing out the ice forever. “Safe and sound?” “Yes, the download was definitely complete,” the blob said proudly, “your mate’s consciousness is safely in your head. But he may not present himself at first: he must carve a space in your gray matter. Humans have gray matter, correct?” Katra nodded, though not entirely sure. It was the future, after all; maybe modern humans had done away with the stuff entirely at this point. “Once the consciousness emerges, he may try to take control of his new host body. We apologize for any inconvenience this brings you.” “What is inconvenient is me being here in the first place,” said Katra, her spark finally returning. Maybe it was the news that Marcus was safe and hers alone; maybe it was the heat creeping back into her extremities. Either way, she was majorly pissed. She crossed her arms over her chest and propped her extremely long legs on the blob’s desk. The blob said nothing. Katra wondered how it even saw what she was doing. “How come I wasn’t woken up in time for the pageant?” she spat, “the engineers calculated everything perfectly. A fifty-year trip, not a minute longer. What happened?” “Well, this is closer to ancient history for us, now,” said the blob, “you understand, a year after your departure for Earth, faster than light travel was invented.” “So?” “The council decided they didn’t want to wait another forty-nine years for you to arrive at the pageant when they could have everyone show up the next day. So Earth sent someone else.” “Who?” Katra slammed her hands on the table, making the Jell-O wobble. Which was an odd sight to see. It wobbled to one side and then back, like someone had poked it with a stick. “Don’t tell me it was that bitch, Riley. Miss Australia? She had no place as my runner up.” “Then you’ll be happy to know that Miss Earth – formerly Miss Australia, according to my notes – was eaten and digested by Miss Ma’jarkeen. Which is why the pageant was canceled and hasn’t been held since.” “So our ship got there and you… what? Put us in a warehouse and forgot to revive us for thousands of years?” “I’m sorry, not my department,” said the mound of gelatin, “I’ve already outstepped by pulling up so much information from this case. To make things short: we’re sorry for the inconvenience, and we’re sending you home right away.” “To Earth?” “It used to be called Earth, yes.” “What is it now?” “Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM.” “You call that my home?” Katra sputtered. She would have stood up, indignant, but there was no space for her to do so in the tiny office. “What the fudge is super-strange dark world death thingy?” “Super-freaky funland dark-side death-zone powered by MnM.” “That can’t be Earth!” “Well, I’m sorry, but things change, child,” said the blob. “Your home planet had to make ends meet somehow. Becoming an escape room theme park was the logical choice.” “An escape room… theme park?” Katra felt as if the ice around her heart had gone right back to being frozen, as cold as the popsicle she had been inside the pod. She wished her eyes could shoot literal daggers across the room, but even if they did, she doubted they would hit the gelatin or harm it in any way. “Yes, and quite a nice one,” said the blob. “I brought my hovel-mates there a few cycles ago. Such fun! Much better now than it ever was before.” The pageant queen was fuming now, but she forced herself through the breathing techniques her coach had instilled in her and stayed focused. There was no point lingering on the fact that her home was gone, or the fact that everyone she ever knew or loved was now dead. Except maybe Marcus, her one love, her rock, who was living quite silently in her head. “I want to go home,” she murmured, under her breath. “Do not worry, we’re sending you back, all expenses paid.” “It’s not my home anymore.” “Well, I’m sorry, but according to your passport, it is.” The cloud made the little green booklet drift up before Katra’s eyes. “And your visa expired quite some time ago. So we have to send you back. You understand, of course.” “Of course,” said Katra, keeping that pageant calmness. “Do I get some kind of compensation, at least?”

Miss Planet Earth hits Amazon shelves! Hi readers, bookworms, and robots! This actually happened a few days back, but I've been so busy with space things I rudely forgot to update my page.

#excerpt #miss planet earth #mpe #new release #novella #s.e. anderson

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siliconwebx · 6 years ago

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Matt Mullenweg Addresses Controversies Surrounding Gutenberg at WordCamp Portland Q&A

Matt Mullenweg joined attendees at WordCamp Portland, OR, for a Q&A session last weekend and the recording is now available on WordPress.tv.

The first question came from a user who tried Gutenberg and turned it off because of a plugin conflict. She asked if users will have to use Gutenberg when 5.0 is released. Mullenweg said one of the reasons Gutenberg has been tested so early is to give plugin developers time to get their products compatible. He also said that it has been the fastest growing plugin in WordPress’ history, with more than 600,000 installations since it was first made available.

In response to her question he said users will have the option to use the Classic Editor and that the team is considering updating it to include per-user controls and the possibility to turn it on/off for different post types.

Subsequent questions went deeper into recent controversies surrounding Gutenberg, which Mullenweg addressed more in depth.

“The tough part of any open source project – there’s kind of a crucible of open source development which can sometimes be more adversarial and sometimes even acrimonious,” he said. “Working within the same company, you can kind of assume everyone is rowing in the same direction. In a wide open source ecosystem, some people might actually want the opposite of what you’re doing, because it might be in their own economic self-interest, or for any number of reasons.

“I liken it much more to being a mayor of a city than being a CEO of a company. I’ve done WordPress now for 15 years so I’m pretty used to it. It might seem kind of controversial if you’re just coming in, but this is not the most controversial thing we have ever brought into WordPress. The last time we had a big fork of WordPress was actually when we brought in WYSIWYG the first time. Maybe there’s something about messing with the editor that sets people off.”

Mullenweg commented on how polarizing Twitter can be as a medium and how that can impact conversations in negatives ways. He said people tend to read the worst into things that have been said and that has been a new challenge during this particular time in WordPress’ history. WordPress tweets are sprinkled into timelines along with politics and current events in a way that can cause people to react differently than if the discussion was held in a trac ticket, for example.

One attendee asked, “With Gutenberg there’s a lot of uncertainty. Where do you see the tipping point where you see people become more favorable to Gutenberg than the Classic Editor?”

“Part of getting these two plugins, Gutenberg and Classic Editor, out early, was that it could remove uncertainty for people,” Mullenweg said. “Months before they were released you could kind of choose your path. The hope is that the 5.0 release day is the most anti-climactic thing ever. Because we have over a million sites that have either chosen to not use Gutenberg, which is totally ok, or have already opted in and have been getting these sometimes weekly updates. We have hosts that have been actually been pre-installing, pre-activating Gutenberg with all of their sites.”

Mullenweg said hosts that have pre-installed Gutenberg have not reported a higher than normal support load and that it has basically been “a non-event.” It’s the users who are updating to 5.0 after many years of using WordPress who will have the most to learn.

“Gutenberg does by some measures five or ten measures more than what you could really accomplish in the classic editor,” Mullenweg said. “That also means there’s more buttons, there’s more blocks. That is part of the idea – to open up people’s flexibility and creativity to do things they would either need code or a crazy theme to do in the past. And now we’re going to open that up to do WordPress’ mission, which is to democratize publishing and make it accessible to everyone.”

Gutenberg’s current state of accessibility has been a hot topic lately and one attendee asked for his thoughts about the recent discussions. Mullenweg said there is room for improvement in how this aspect of the project was handled and that WordPress can work better across teams in the future:

Accessibility has been core to WordPress from the very beginning. It’s part of why we started – adoption of web standards and accessibility things. We’ve been a member of the web standards project for many many years. We did kind of have some project management fails in this process where we had a team of volunteers that felt like they were disconnected from the rapid development that was happening with Gutenberg. Definitely there were some things we could do better there. In the future I think that we need – I don’t know if it makes sense to have separate accessibility as a separate kind of process from the core development. It really needs to be integrated at every single stage. We did do a lot, as Matias did a big long post on it. We’ve done a ton of keyboard accessibility stuff, there’s ARIA elements on everything. One of their feedbacks was that we did it wrong, but we did it the best that we knew how to and it’s been in there for awhile. There’s been over 200 closed issues from really the very beginning. We also took the opportunity to fix some things that had been poorly accessible in WordPress from the beginning. It’s not that WordPress is perfectly accessible and all WCAG AA and it’s reverting. It’s actually that huge swaths of WP are inaccessible – they just might not be considered core paths from the current accessibility team but I consider them core.

In response to a question about the future of React in WordPress, Mullenweg went more in depth on the vision he had when he urged the WordPress community to learn JavaScript deeply in 2015. At that time he said “it is the future of the web.” He described how each block can be a launching point for something else – via a modal, such as updating settings, doing advanced things with an e-commerce store, zooming in and out of those screens from the editor. This was perhaps the most inspirational part of the Q&A where the potential of Gutenberg shines as bright as it did in the early demos.

“The other beautiful thing is that because Gutenberg essentially allows for translation into many different formats,” Mullenweg said. “It can publish to your web page, your RSS feed, AMP, blocks can be translated into email for newsletters, there’s so much that the structured nature of Gutenberg and the semantic HTML it creates and the grammar that’s used to parse it, can enable for other applications. It becomes a little bit like a lingua franca that perhaps even crosses CMS’s. There’s now these new cross-CMS Gutenberg blocks will be possible. It’s not just WordPress anymore. It may be a JavaScript block that was written for Drupal that you install on your WordPress site. I mean, hot diggity! How would that have ever happened before? That’s why we took two years off; it’s why we’ve had everyone in the world working on this thing.”

JavaScript is what makes this cross-platform collaboration possible and it’s already evident in the work the Drupal Gutenberg contributors are doing, as well as the platform-agnostic Gutenberg Cloud project. When Gutenberg is released in 5.0, it will enable more for WordPress and the web than we can predict right now.

“This is not the finish line,” Mullenweg said. “5.0 is almost like the starting point. Expect just as much time invested into Gutenberg after the 5.0 release as before – to get it to that place where we don’t think it’s just better than what we have today but it’s actually like a world-class web-defining experience, which is what we want to create and what you all deserve.”

😉SiliconWebX | 🌐WPTavern

#Silicon Web Design #Ahmedabad #India #Web Development #WPBeginner #Silicon URL #Web Site #Cloud Host

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galaxa-13 · 7 years ago

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Person here who's barely been on tumblr for a year, asking what the fuck home stuck is and what it did and why it invokes a strange alien fear in me even though I don't know what it is

‘Hoooooooo boy am I glad you asked me. Not because I think I’ll give the best answer, but because I just love talking about Homestuck and how it applies to the internet (and fandom) at large.

O.K., so, first off the simplest explanation of Homestuck is:Homestuck is a webcomic found at mspainadventures.com made by one Andrew Hussie.

Simplest explanation of what it did:Garner a huge fanbase and changed how a lot of people viewed/interacted with fandom.

Simplest explanation of why you’re filled with fear:The fandom has been asleep for a long while, you may have heard whispers of the infamous “homestucks”, suddenly they are everywhere again and those who were around during it’s heyday are worried of things to come (including those that were a part of it).

Now I’m just going to ramble at length. First I’m going to go on about the fandom and then I’ll move on to describing the comic itself. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESTUCK.

So as I mentioned earlier the fandom, known as homestucks, is quite infamous. Due to it’s sheer size there were a lot of issues. Some of it being that since there were just so many of us it was hard to go anywhere without running into one. This wasn’t just on the internet either, conventions became so packed with Homestuck cosplayers that convention rules literally changed because of them. Some convention locations no longer allow body paint because too many Homestuck cosplayers didn’t properly (or straight out didn’t) seal their paint and left smudges all over the venue (and people). Photo shoots also became more structured. Before conventions didn’t really get involved with them, people attending set them up and ran them themselves, but there were just too many people dressed as Homestuck characters. They blocked pathways, crowded areas, convention staff needed to start regulating photo shoots even if they were still ran by attendees themselves.

With the size there was also the problem of negative behavior being in more abundance. It’s not that people who like Homestuck are more likely to make bad decisions or be nasty people, there were just more people in general so more of a sample size of events to take note of. Like the afore mentioned body paint. There was also buckets and bike horns. The buckets were a problem because some thought it would be funny to just yell the word or repeat it over and over, which was quite annoying. There was also an incident of people spitting into a bucket and then giving said bucket to Hussie. The horns were noisy, as you can imagine.

There was a lot of porn drawn of Homestuck characters (often known as “homesmut”). Some people are turned off by this since most of the characters in the comic are underage. The argument about porn being drawn of these character is a discussion I’d rather not be having since it is something argued about at quite a length and has often led to really nasty things like doxxing and smear campaigns. The age of the characters wasn’t the only thing people were weirded out by. Tentacles also became a very popular thing within the homesmut community. Gore porn was also pretty common (compared to other fandoms, in my experience), though it wasn’t nearly as big as the “tentabulge”.

Homestucks were ravenously creating fandom content back at its peak. AUs of all kinds were created, just think of a word and add “stuck” on the end and there’s probably a fic for that. Petstuck, Regancystuck, Humanstuck (lots of characters in the comic aren’t human), Zeldastuck, StarTrekStuck, you name it. Homestuck was the AU community. Then there was the cosplay. First, many of the characters had simple designs so it was ridiculously easy to cosplay them, then there was the hoards of characters from which to choose, then there were all the AU variants, and then there were the upd8 cosplays.

Whenever a new page or set of pages was added to the site it was known as an upd8 (or for a really injoke, a papaya) and if a new character or outfit was revealed in such an update then it was a mad race to see who could be the one to cosplay it first. Sometimes you’d find pictures of people in completed cosplays (including styled wigs) within the hour. This even happened at conventions.

Homestucks were everywhere, and they were loud. Many people began to resent them simply for being a thing. Even people who liked the webcomic itself could be cited as fearing/hating the Homestuck fanbase. It became accepted that no one likes homestucks. Then something happened. Homestuck embraced how they were hated. Now I’m not saying they were trying to stick it to the man or anything, homestucks were able to look at all the things they were hated for and go, “yeah, that’s all pretty trash, but I’m still having fun”. It became a thing where you’d see a post bashing Homestuck or the community and you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was a homestuck who wrote it themself or not. “Homestuck trash” is a popular phrase. We’re trash and we’re proud of it. No one hates Homestuck more than homestucks. No one hates homestucks more than homestucks. Yet we’re still one big family.

A couple of years ago 4chan ran a campaign. They were going to inavde tumblr and make all the tumblrites cry and run to their SJW princess mommies. They flooded tags of popular fandoms with horrific images and bashing of their fandoms. People were scared to leave their dashes. Then, 4chan tried to go after the homestucks.

They bashed the comic. They found the most disgusting porn and death art of the characters. Homestucks took one look at that and shrugged. “Yeah, seems about right.” 4chan lost its mind. Why couldn’t they bother this fandom? Nothing they did seemed to work. Other fandoms began to rally behind Homestuck. Maybe they had bashed it themselves before, or they had simply stayed away from it, but now homestucks were the heroes, the wall against this cruelty. Homestucks laughed at 4chan’s pitiful attempts. Eventually 4chan had to throw in the towel, their troll campaign had failed, they just couldn’t outmatch the homestucks.

Along with the horror stories about the fandom in general there was now this. Homestuck couldn’t be taken down by 4chan. The most vile trolls on the internet had no power over them. That in itself was a terrifying thing.

Yet homestucks began to be regarded highly. Partly it was from this event where they were able to stand up to the bullies, partly because the fandom had matured over the years. Many people had grown up. They weren’t the immature children they once were. They set up charity funds, such as the Can Town Project, an organization that donates canned foods to the hungry.

Of course we can’t talk about Homestuck without talking about its creator, Andrew Hussie. Hussie is a strange man, to say the least. He’s been doing webcomics and other online endeavors for years before even starting Homestuck. Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff (SBAHJ), a comic written and drawn to be as terrible as possible while making fun of the “two guys on a couch play video games” style of comic; Problem Sleuth, a noir detective comic full of whacky shenanigans and done like text-based adventure games of old; Whistles: The Starlight Calliope, an unfinished comic about a clown in a dark circus (I really couldn’t begin to properly describe this story without talking about it by itself, but this is about Homestuck and already will be way too long); fancy Santa reviews, sadly I have been unable to find a copy of such reviews; Wizardology graffiti, he simply defaced a copy of a Wizardology book to hilarious effect as a gift to his friend; Olive Garden money, humorous blog posts about how he set out to spend $150 at Olive Garden; I could go on with his zany creations and adventures, but I won’t.

Hussie is a troll. He does things just to mess with people. He has a dark sense of humor and he isn’t above crass humor either. All that and he can weave fantastic tales you could never dream of. He is fairly private and is known to do odd things, which has led the fandom to calling him a real life cryptid. The Hussie experience isn’t really something that can be properly explained, so I’ll just leave you with this gif of the man himself.

Hiveswap is to be a video game tie-in to Homestuck. It was put up on Kickstarter known only as the Homestuck Adventure Game. 700k was asked for. It raised nearly 2.5 million. Hiveswap is currently why the fandom’s seen a resurgence. It’s being released episodically and the first episode was released September 14, 2017 and the second episode is to release Spring, 2018. In the meantime the studio has been releasing previews and extra bits of lore, which has been making the fandom go wild.

*DEEP BREATH*

Homestuck, at its simplest, is about a group of teens playing a video game. It follows the format of the other previous webcomics hosted on mspaintadventures (all written and drawn by Hussie, of course) of looking like it was drawn on MS Paint and acting like a text-based adventure game. Readers would submit actions and Hussie would draw the results, continuing the story. Over time this method proved unwieldy and Hussie did away with the command box, but the comic still acted like it was in such a format. Even without direct reader input Hussie still managed to incorporate a lot of input from the fans. Injokes mostly, but sometimes things fans had done would come back as major plot points.

In the beginning the art style was simple, using sprites and limited colors. One of the more well known things about Homestuck is its characters’ lack of arms in this style. As the comic progresses different art styles are used as well as different artists. Many people have bashed the comic for its simple visuals, but even aside from some of the more complicated visuals used later even the “simple” ones can be breath taking. Here’s some examples of the art.

Yes, these are all images from the same comic. As you can see gifs are used quite a lot in this comic. There are also sound pages, animations, and interactive games. Homestuck uses the fact that it’s on the internet to the fullest degree. It has inspired many other webcomics to experiment in similar manners.

Homestuck goes beyond that, however. Homestuck would not exist without the internet. In a way, Homestuck is about the internet. All the characters communicate over the internet to each other for a majority of the story. Internet subgroups and cultures are referenced, satirized, and incorporated. Real life websites are used and you can find characters’ personal accounts yourself in the real world such a one character’s DeviantArt account.

O.K., back to the story itself. I said it was about some teens playing a game, but obviously it’s more complicated than that. First off the game destroys Earth and sends our first four protagonists (yes, you heard that right, the first four, Homestuck has a lot of characters and a lot of them are protagonists) into a realm known as The Medium which is where the game itself (known as SBURB) will be played.

Part of the draw of Homestuck is SBURB itself. We know a lot of the mechanics involved in the game and if it weren’t for the destruction of our planet loads of people would pay good money to be able to play it. Unfortunately, for some, the story doesn’t really focus on the game, despite spending quite a lot of time in the confines of it. If you’ve ever heard of god tiers, classpects (Class and Aspects), Propsit, or Derse these are all SBURB things that the fandom loves to pour over. This stuff is like Hogwarts houses, you get sorted into them.

Throughout the story you get introduced to a new band of characters that troll our original four. Turns out these guys are all aliens who had previously played the game (their version known as SGRUB). Their race are literally called Trolls and they are another commonly known thing about Homestuck. These are the grey-skinned, black-haired, horned people. Their race has a rainbow of different blood colors they can be born with, which is another thing for readers to sort themselves into (are you a greenblood or an orangeblood?). They also have quite a fascinating romance system known as the quadrants (guess how many different types of love they have) and a society based on violence and no adults on homeworld. If SBURB doesn’t scratch your lore itch then Alternia and the trolls will probably do it for you.

The comic also has time travel and alternate universes. No, not AUs like what fandoms make, actual alternate universes where there are multiples of a single character that led different lives. Homestuck coined the phrase “double mobious reach around” to explain some of its convoluted nature. There are literal graphs and spreadsheets people have made to help keep themselves on track with what is going on in the story.

I could go on to explain the actual plot of Homestuck in more detail buuuuut this is already a grotesquely long answer to your message aaaand I don’t really want to spoil it too much if there’s even a chance you feel like giving it a read for yourself (other than what I’ve already told you and what you will see on the internet in general). Instead I’ll mention one event that happened in comic that affected the real life internet.

There is one flash animation in the comic known as Cascade. The comic had been building up to it for a while and I would say it’s one of the first climaxes of the story (yes, there’s more than one in my opinion). Hussie took a break to work on creating it. I forgot to mention earlier that Hussie updated the comic on a daily basis for years, often multiple times in a day. The insane update schedule was part of the reason the fanbase grew so immense. With this break the fanbase became tense and ravenous.

Cascade dropped and people flooded the site. The flash refused to load because so many people were trying to access it at once. Hussie put the flash on Newgrounds as well, because he knew his website wouldn’t be able to handle the traffic. We crashed Newgrounds. Homestucks. Crashed. Newgrounds. The website designed to host flashes and had loads of people on it daily was crashed by one fandom just to see one flash. It didn’t stop there, though. Livestream crashed as people who were able to get access to the flash streamed it so others who couldn’t get mspa or newgrounds to load could watch it. Megaupload crashed as people ripped the file and tried to share it so others could watch it on their computers without a website. It’s known as the day Homestuck broke the internet. It was absolute chaos. There’s a great image that summarizes this chaos with a collage of #notes that were used at the time and ending with a tweet that Hussie had issued at the time which was “well that didn’t work”. I would link it, but I can’t for the life of me find it right now.

There’s so much more I could talk about, all the different characters, the various hiatuses, shipping, all the wonderful people I’ve been able to meet thanks to Homestuck, my love for this comic and the community surrounding it. If you’ve actually made it all the way through my word vomit then I commend you. Feel free to ask me about anything Homestuck related. As you can see, I do so love to talk about it. Thank you sincerely for asking me about it and giving me a chance to write this huge wall of text.

OH GOD I DIDN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT LYRICSTUCKS AND FANDOMSTUCK.

I’M POSTING THIS NOW BEFORE I THINK OF ANY OTHER THINGS I DIDN’T MENTION BECAUSE BY GOD I’M SURE THERE’S LOADS.

#homestuck #let me tell you about homestuck

40 notes · View notes

daynamartinez22 · 4 years ago

Text

Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 310

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 310 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

There’s a search console because that’s my go to I don’t care what anything else says. And right when I’m looking at everything, I had a form submission come in. So I got it, I got it, I got the screen capture because I had to blur out some stuff. So I’m going to be sharing that as soon as we’re ready to go.

And we are live Welcome everybody to Hump Day Hangouts, Episode 310. While Bradley’s doing some stuff in the background here, we’re gonna get going. I’m gonna say hi to the guys real quick. We got some quick announcements. And then I’m just scrolling through here. It looks like we’ve got a good number of questions. So with that said, Marco, I’m going to loop back to you, man, how you doing today? Like, by the way, like your shirt, you’re looking good.

I’m good, man. I’m sorry. I took it away from from my window. Should I have done that? I got I got I got a mess in the office right now. But you guys, you see? Nothing but like, Man, this is how I do to do I do. I can’t help it again. Come get some come get some guys. Just Just a quick word, stop relying on on third party vanity metrics for what’s going on on your website, according to Google. So you go to somebody else to see what’s going on in Google. I it for the life of me, I can’t figure that out. So in a minute, when we get to that question or five, whenever we get to it, I’m going to be sharing something on screen, just so you guys can see why you can’t go with third party vanity and domain authority then, whatever the hell it is you’re relying on. you’re relying on the wrong thing. And I’ll show you some and let’s see, I’ll get I thought it was muted. Sorry, Chris. How’s it going?

Doing good here? Good. They can complain and yeah, I think we got something pretty sweet coming. Oh, really? I made a video about something today, so, huh?

All right. Well, now I’m curious. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Well check Facebook.

Ah, all right. I will check it out. Bradley, you got the tech stuff done. Are you available?

Well, it’s the fucking video still not on know that on the page. Click Funnels bullshit. I’m tired of it. And I really am.

It’s still not even there we go. Yeah, it’s updated now.

Well, it’s not for me.

Gotcha. Well, we’ll circle back around. I’m going to type something in while I ask her not How you doing today, man?

Great, man. I’m in Miami. Having fun. Everything’s good.

Well, you got to talk for a little bit longer. I gotta, I gotta touch.

Okay. I’m in Miami. It’s raining. I’m having a lot of fun. This is awesome. And I’m waiting for Adam to stop typing so that he can keep on doing the intro. But did I mention that I mean, Miami? And

I’ve heard that you’re in Miami. Is that true?

No, I don’t know what you got that from? Yeah, man. How? how weak Are you really in the gym right now after all these months of no workouts? I’m a pussy. I’m doing like a D load quote-unquote, D load week right now. And I’m like, so sore. And I did like, two squats on Monday.

Those are right now, but we still had it. So.

Gotcha. All right. Well, I got a little note there. So if you’re watching us on YouTube, let us know. Also, if you’re somehow seeing this on the page, just shoot us a message let us know you can see it. But in the meantime, we’re gonna keep rolling and maybe figure something else out. But Bradley, how are you doing man? Besides page refreshes and caches?

Yeah, I’m just I’m tired of Click Funnels in their stupid fucking. There are always issues with Click Funnels, it seems to be getting worse. So anyway, maybe we can move the webinar on to a page on our site instead. I think we should probably do that. Because we won’t have to deal with this every week. It seems to be getting worse. So anyway, that said I, everybody.

Everything is fine. Yeah, that’s cool. Um, I’ve actually been testing out group funnels, maybe that’ll grab the lifetime account. And that came out, maybe we can just toss it on there and see if that works. Or just put it on the website, like you said, or do like a direct YouTube type of thing. love to see. But anyway, with that said, we have a couple of announcements. First of all, if you’re on the email list, that’s great. You’ve gotten the announcements about the POFU Live recordings, you got access to the little special offer we had to go in there. But if you’ve missed out on that, first of all, go to semantic mastery or go to Hump Day Hangouts. Just Google that and go to our page, enter your email address, so you can get notified about stuff like this. We do give special deals, special offers, and some bonuses to subscribers, but I’m also going to put it on the page here today. The recordings are available. Along with the recordings, you have the option to get executive summaries we’ve gone through and we’ve taken and distilled every single talk that we had into a quick basically reference guides. So you’ve got links, you’ve got the main points, so you can go back or have that open as you’re watching the talk. Super, super handy. So that will be on the page in just a minute. Oh, man, I am just losing my place like crazy today. I’ve got a couple more announcements. And while I hunt these down, did you guys have anything we need to also cover? Before we dive into things?

What about POFU?

About It was a great event.

Oh my god, what about it?

The live of the recordings are available, right?

Should be right.

Yes, that what I was just talking about or not my losing my mind about POFU.

I don’t know, but well I’m gonna keep running on because I don’t know where we’re going and this is gonna get pretty weird for people watching. So anyway, I do want to talk about one other thing, if you go to the SEOshield.com, the SEOshield.com that’s a great place. If you’re new to Semantic Mastery and MGYB You can find out how to shield your site and never worry about algorithm updates. Again, it’s a free training, just head over to the SEOshield.com and grab that if you’re more on the agency owner kind of consultant side and you want to get more clients to grow your revenue scale your team, head over to 2xyouragency.com. And last but not least, if you’re ready to grow your digital marketing business, your agency then you can join our experienced community. With the mastermind You can find out more about that at mastermind dot semantic mastery.com I like to go through these every time because we don’t know you know, we have new people watching every week. And those are some pretty typical questions we get from people, you know, hey, I’m just starting to watch you guys where the hell do I start? Right? Good question. So finding out about the SEO shield is great. Then we got people are saying hey, I either want to start or kind of grow my agency, I’m not sure what to do that’s to x your agency COMM And then we’ve got people, of course, are like, Hey, I’m in it, I want to grow, I want to be around other people like me who have got their agencies going who’ve got their businesses going. And that’s where the mastermind comes in. So those are the big ones. Of course, we mentioned MGYB, if you’re not familiar with that it’s mgyb.co, save time and money with done for you services. This is all stuff that we’ve used, and either converted into a done for you process or stuff that we had done for us. And now we’re offering it as well. So you can get it done for you and save time. So this is a great place to be like white labeling, things like press releases link building the SEO shield, for example. Lots more over there, too, and lots more coming. So with that said, guys, that’s it for the quick announcement. Anything else we want to cover before we dive into questions? I’m waiting around to say something No, just kidding. Wait, good. All right, let’s do it is that we got a bunch of questions already. So let me get the page pulled up here. And I’ll grab the screen.

This has got me all screwed up. Because the format has changed in the last couple of weeks. And after years of having one particular startup format. It’s hard to hard to transition.

All right,

you guys are seeing my screen now. Correct. Good to go. Yes.

Yep. All right.

What Is The Name Of The Upcoming Buffer Site S3 Creator?

Let me expand this a little bit. There we go. So the first question up says, Hi, you mentioned something about an upcoming buffer site s3 creator from ABS right? Yeah. Abbess. Rathje. As I think I’m saying his name correctly, I always feel like I’m mispronouncing that. Or he says, Can you please give us some URL or spell the product or the name as I can’t find anything? Yes, buffersites.com. It’s not available yet. But I believe it says coming soon. And I think he’s working on something because I recently got an email from him about kind of a technology that he created for that works with Amazon s3, hosted web pages, as well as some other type of web 2.0 sites and things like that. So I think buffersites.com is in the pipeline, but it’s not available yet. So that’s what it is buffersites.com and the developer’s name is Abbess Abbess. ABB BB as Rathje. And I think I always butcher his name when I try to say it. But he’s, he’s got many different types of software products out there that are fairly good. Some of them are but got a little bit of a learning curve, but he’s got like video marketing Blitz was one of them, it was a good product that we use for quite some time. So he’s got several different kinds of products out that you know, software programs that do things so that’s the one I was talking about.

Should You Make A Separate Page For Each Location When Siloing A Local Service Business Site?

Next question is Tommy says when creating location pages for a local service business, would you make a location page for the location the business is located in the business already has the primary location in the footer about, etc, and ranks on page two for keywords in the primary location on a general service page? Would it be overkill to create a location for it to and be duplicate content would appreciate your advice? Thanks. Now, if it’s a single location site, you don’t need to you don’t need a location page for it. The only time that I would recommend having location pages is if you have if it’s a multi-location business right? Because then you can, you’d have one location is typically going to be like a headquarters, right? Like the main location or, you know, the primary location, the first location, whatever you want to call it. And so that would be like what I would, you know, a lot of So for example, if I were to build a lead gen site that was optimized for one location, but then I decided, because let’s say it was really successful, and I decided to start expanding locations for that brand, then what I would do is I would make that, you know, the primary location would be the first location, and I would take that as kind of like the name, address and phone number for the primary location would be like the organization, you know, essentially, the main location for that multi-location business, and then I would create separate location pages for each individual, or additional location, I should say, that’s how I would do it. But yeah, I wouldn’t recommend creating a location page on a site that is optimized for one location. Because you’re it that that’s kind of, you know, Department of redundancy department, you know what I mean? So I would recommend that you don’t do that, you don’t need to do that. But what you can do is you can split out like suburbs, or, you know, I’m not, I’m not sure what how you’ve got your site structured, but you can create geo posts, that’s what I call it, but they’re locally optimized posts for localities within your service area, if it’s a service area business, I’m just assuming that it is. But it could be a storefront business, in which case, you wouldn’t even really need to do that either. But for service area businesses, like contractors, which is what I do, then what I would do is have the one location, you know, is probably the only location but then I would start optimizing content in what’s called geo posts, or what I call geo posts, which would be optimizing content for like the suburbs, the adjacent areas, that and then I would, you know, kind of optimize cut, my blogger does all this, but she’ll go out and pull in like points of interest, historical, you know, references, things like that, that are relevant to each individual, you know, suburb or municipality or whatever that I’m trying to expand into, and then show, you know, produce some content, you know, included about whatever products or services the company offers. And you can start to blog that way, so that you can start really kind of expanding your service area footprint, so to speak. But you don’t need to have a separate location page for the location. If it’s a one-location business, it just doesn’t make sense to do that, in my opinion. Any other input on that guy just said, there’s no such thing as a duplicate content.

And we see this all the time, no such thing as that happening. Now, as far as would it be overkill? to us that perfectly? The advice is that when looking at content is whether you’ve given the content, proper attribution. That’s all that matters. Because if you haven’t, then let’s say if your G site is really strong, it might outrank your money site. That’s the only problem you’re going to run into. But if you have proper attribution, if if Google understands where the master copy of the content resides, and there is no problem, there are only problems if you’re running like duplicate titles, duplicate descriptions, and things like that. But we’ve literally only changed location on content and run the same, like 15,000. More than that pages have the same content except for the location and it works. It’s working. Right now. I’m about to show you how it’s working right now. And when we get to that question, there is no such thing as duplicate content, you got the master copy. And then you have copies of that content. proper attribution takes care of any duplicate content issues, and so does canonical. If you canonicalize. correctly, you’re fine. You’re good to go.

There you go. Let me unpause the screen for a minute if I can find it. Okay.

What Do You Recommend For A Self-Hosted URL Shortener?

So the next question is from Jr. My guess, says, Hey, guys, do you have any well-recommended URL shortener? Excuse me? Do you have any good recommendations for a self-hosted URL shortener looking to set up one for a client to be public-facing so users can create short links easily from their website? Open to using a hosted solution if it exists? Thanks. Also, is there any SEO value for the target site if users create short links? So, Marco, you would be the one to answer that because we set that up for MGYB.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, there eventually will be SEO value once you power it up. However, how long is it going to take you to power up that URL shortener on that website that has no power to start with? Which is what you need, which is the reason why Well, the reason why just say use a shortener To make the URL easier to handle, right, when you’re sharing it, you don’t want this long 50 character URL, you want something short and memorable. That’s why Bitly for a while was so good. And then we started realizing the SEO value in Bitly, until they decided that they were going to 302. At well, then we went to the Google goog l URL shortener until they took it away. So we decided rather than rely on others, why not create our own power that up, give everybody the SEO value and the added benefit that you could go in, and I think it’s only for like five or six, I don’t know, seven bucks a month, I don’t even know. Use your own use of our shortener which is powered up. And then you could have your own URLs, right, you can have your own URL extensions, you could have your own. If you want to call them vanity, whatever you want to call them. They’re yours, but they reside in MGYB. And they continue to get powered up by dedhia. So I will be there’s the SEO benefit, the SEO benefit that you get is the power that’s behind that. But right from the start when you go and install that whether you do it on a subdomain on your client site, whether you use pretty links, whatever it is that you’re going to use is not going to have any SEO value until you power it up.

All right, there we go on the resume share again.

Because doing some background stuff. Alright.

Can You Make Multiple GStacks On One Google Account That Are Interconnected?

So the next question would be Hey, guys, the question on G stacks. Can I make multiple G stacks on one g account that are not interconnected? Uh, yeah, I suppose you could. Now I’m not sure why you would want to we separate them. But you know, Marco, now that we’re not using the script. There’s not a limitation on that, though. Is there?

Let me see, of course, there is.

Why would you want to go and break up the well, not a limitation? But why would you want to put two things that are unrelated in the same dry stack?

We go for G stacks under one account. So different g stacks, but yes,

no? No. Okay.

Oh, unless they’re totally relevant if I mean, if you can, if all right, same niche, yes, it makes sense. If you’re going to break up the niche, if it’s going to be totally unrelated, then No, they’re not because now you’re putting all your eggs. First of all, you’re putting all your eggs in one basket, right? Everything is in a Google takes that away, you’re gonna lose everything that’s in there. That’s why we turn over we create our own Gmail accounts. And we turn them over to you so that you can use it. And if you order 1000 from it, you’re gonna have 1000 Gmail accounts, but you can manage a whole lot of them from one account, which is what we recommend, you can are we send a letter, we send an email when we deliver the drive stack, and we tell you what to do with it, make your main account the manager of that account, so you never again have to go back into that account. But this way, you won’t take any chances in eliminating the public-facing dry stack and decide you’re not going to run any into any problems or getting locked up or anything like that. Right. And then we tell you to change the phone number, change the recovery, make sure that you can get in there eventually. But only if you have to only have you must, once we turn it over, there is absolutely no reason for you to go back in there. Unless you want to go in there and Tinker and then you’re on your own. So please understand what it is that we’re doing. And what it is that we recommend for you putting like 50 I don’t know you could you get 15 What is it 15 gigabytes in that drive stack, excuse me in Google Drive to play with. So there’s plenty of space in there for you to get multiples in. But you’re putting everything in one basket you’d be put you putting all your eggs in there, and you drop that fucking basket and all your eggs break, you better know how to make scrambled eggs.

Yeah, I agree with that limit, you know, mitigate your risk that way. And so you know, as Marco said, we deliver it with its own Gmail account. And that’s you know, the primary owner of the drive stack which you can always add you know, your main Gmail account or G Suite account, whatever as a manager or share it with that so you can still manage the stack from within your own account, but it’s owned by the other account that way you’re limiting your risk like Marco said, if that you had one account that had all of your G stacks in it and then something happened in it got suspended or terminated, then you’d be screwed. So I totally agree with what he says there.

Is It Better To Have An Old Google Account Better Than A Gsuite Account When Creating Drive Stacks?

Okay, the next question was which is better and old g account or a new G Suite account? Well, I’m always gonna say G Suite account because you’re paying Google that way and I use G Suite for freaking everything now. So if it’s a brand or a project that I know I’m going to be working on for any amount of time Other than just for testing purposes, I always set up G Suite accounts for everything. Now, that’s just my own personal preference. One thing you can do is if you have old Gmail accounts, you can set up a G Suite account through the old Gmail account. And that, I don’t know if that actually adds any additional benefit or not. But I can’t imagine it wouldn’t. You know, I can’t imagine that hurts anything. And so like, if you’ve got some old Jeep, like, for example, I have a Gmail account that I’d set up for Tree Service stuff way back in, I think, 2012, that I just recently decided to turn that into a brand and I created a G Suite account with that. Email is like the, you know, the, when you set up a G Suite account, you need to have an email account anyways, and all that, you know, to add to the system, so I use that one. And I think and again, I don’t know this without testing, but it makes sense that it would have some inherent authority built-in because it was an age, an old account, something that I had set up in 2012, that I just now turned into a G Suite account. Now again, I don’t know that that’s true. But it makes sense to do. So do you have any input on that as part of the entity validation, isn’t it? I wrote that when I wrote the black book, I mean, we’ve been recommending go G Suite, go pay Google, or pay Google for extra drive space, get that credit card, on file, get your stuff in the database. So now you’re a real thing on the web. Rather than someone trying to gain Google, you’re still trying to gain Google, but you’re going the extra step, which most people won’t do. And you go pay for ads, ads for branding, Brandy put out a great course, ads, I run ads, for branding purposes. So again, you’re going a step further validating your entity. This is all talked about how old is the black book about four years old? It’s all in there. I don’t know, you guys, it’s all available to you. I think we also send it with that email with that recommendation email. For us, excuse me, the user’s guide, done for your users’ guide is what we send out. And it’s all in there how to add validation to your entity pay Google, get your credit card, and Google, they’ll tell you that it doesn’t have any effect in rankings. And they the way that they’re saying it is right, I would say okay, that in and of itself doesn’t. But when you’re validating the entity, that part of it has a big, big play in what the end results are going to be.

Unknown Speaker 22:33 Absolutely. All right. So next is Oh, by the way, a couple of things I wanted to briefly mention I was distracted from the start-up for the webinar being rough again. But a couple of things. One, I want to talk about this, this great post in our free group Facebook group from Max Lucey fam bam, we had we did a webinar on Monday with Mike Martin for Lead Simplify if you guys haven’t seen it yet, I would highly recommend that you check it out. I know most of our audiences into local SEO, local client work or lead generation. And it’s a fantastic application. It’s very inexpensive, and it works really, really well. The lead simplifies the app, I use it in my own business. In fact, I started using it eight or 10 weeks ago, probably closer to 10 weeks ago now. And I reached out to the developer Mike Martin, specifically after I had set the app up and integrated it into my own lead gen business. Because I saw the value of it, I decided to reach out to Mike and the developer and asked him if we could promote it to our audience specifically, because, guys, you know, we don’t promote other people’s stuff ever. Unless we, ourselves, you know, or somebody in our, my partners or one of us in my company use something and can vouch for it. And so we rarely promote other people’s stuff. And in this case, I reached out specifically to try to ask if we could promote it because I think it is such a valuable app. And so the webinar was great. We had some technical difficulties at the beginning of that part of the reason why I was frustrated this today for Hump Day Hangouts, but I got that cleaned up. So now the replay is just the content. And it’s really good content about what he calls the hybrid lead generation model. It’s fantastic content, as well as the app itself, is very inexpensive and very useful. And I use it in my business now. So we also throw in a couple of bonuses that I use specifically for generating lead buyers. So basically prospecting for lead buyers. And it works really, really well. I’ve been bringing multiple new lead buyers into my business over the last several weeks because of this app, as well as the prospecting systems that I have built, which I share all of that in our bonuses, so I would highly recommend that you guys go check out the lead simplify webinar that we did with Mike on Monday, and check it out.

Also, I just wanted to give a shout out to max Lu See fam bam, for this great post that they posted about watching that webinar and becoming inspired, because of some, you know, basically having some issues with clients, client work can be very frustrating guys in I’ve said that over the years, there’s certainly ups and downs with client work. But I really have decided that you know, I don’t want to work with any more take on any new clients, I just want to work on building my lead gen business and for several of the reasons that were mentioned in this post here, as well. So just wanted to kind of point that out, give a shout out to Max, Max Luci for posting such a thoughtful and thorough posting here. And, you know, we’re excited to see you, we’re excited to see you excited, and I think you’re on the right track, build your own assets instead of others. Now don’t get me wrong, guys, if you got to do client work, to make money do it, you know, but at the same time, instead of always building other people’s businesses budget some time and some money to start building your own assets to so that you can be gain more control over your revenue, right and your future. Clients can fire you at any moment, right? They can stop paying you to go find the bargain basement $99 a month SEO from you know, India or wherever and fire you in a heartbeat. And what are you going to do? You know, one of the things in our mastermind is we’ve had people that have come in that have had, you know, perhaps one or two clients that provide 90% of their income. Like for example, like a 4000 or $5,000 a month retainer client, what happens if that client drops you and your, your, your 90% of your revenue is based upon that one client, does that make sense or just a couple of clients and then you lose one of them. And now you’ve cut your revenue in half or a third or whatever my point is, you know, start thinking of ways to generate your own assets so that you have more control over your, your revenue and your future. And, and so again, I’ve got clients now, and I’ve still got a handful, I just took a client on about seven, six or seven weeks ago now a new client, but I don’t think I want to take on any more clients unless they’re going to give me you know, a much higher retainer value than what I typically asked for, because I really just want to focus on building my own business. So I thought this was a really thoughtful post and I just wanted to give a shout out to there and also encourage you guys to go check out the replay.

How Do We Use of Text Transcripts From Videos For Traffic And Link Building Purposes?

Alright, any comments on that before I move on guys? Nah, perfect. Okay, Franklin says, Hey, guys, given the rise of video integration in SERPs, and Google taking snippets of sentences, and focusing more on YouTube and looking to get a syndication ring and look into backlinking for videos, is there anything we can do with text transcripts from our videos for traffic, and link building purposes. Um, you know, the only thing that I, I don’t, what I’ve done in the past that works fairly well, like with client work, especially is I’ve had, I’ve trained some of them. Like, for example, I’ve got an outdoor pest control company that does like mosquito control, take control, that kind of stuff. It’s a very seasonal business. But I trained their technicians to, like I told the company owners to tell their technicians to just when they go out on job sites, which are just people’s yards, essentially, to just take their phone out and grab, record a short video, like literally like, Hey, this is John, for a company name, I’m out in, you know, Fairfax, Virginia, providing mosquito control services. And, you know, if you want your yard to be tick free ticket, mosquito, free, contact us, and then drop a phone number, whatever. So very, very short little video clips that then they send to me, I upload them to YouTube, optimize them, and then have that transcribed, which is, you know, literally, it’s usually about a minute long the video or less, so cost a buck or a buck 50 to have it transcribed, and then embed that into a blog post with the transcription underneath. And that syndicates out to the branded network that’s attached to the, to the website, as well as the YouTube channel can be attached to that too. So both can be syndicated to it, that’s what I’ve done. And it just it that tends to work because it adds some text without having to have you know, it’s, it’s all done with just a video, right? a short video can be turned into a video plus a blog post with the text with the transcription, the call to action, everything that you need for additional content, you know, to multi-purpose the content. So that’s what I’ve done. Maybe somebody else here has some other suggestions for how to use text. But that’s pretty much the extent of what I’ve done. And that works quite well actually.

Anybody else? Yeah, I mean, what you could do lots with the transcript, right? You can add it to your page and it becomes part of the blog post when you embed the video on your website. The transcript can actually become the content on your pay. I mean, we recommend that this time and again right then you syndicate it, then when you do your embed, right With the video, you could do the page I mean, not just the video, you can do an embed run of that page. Right? Because then that it’s an iframe, and that’s perfectly fine. You want you’re not going to run into any duplicate content issues. But people are still going to say, Okay, yeah, there are problems there are. So that’s another thing that you could take the audio from that video and start going to the audio distribution, I’d SoundCloud would be one podcast, and then you can create a syndication network for that. And there are so many different things that you could do with that, to get tons of value, rather than just think, Okay, what I do with this transcript, you could also convert it into a PDF, a downloadable PDF on your website. Right? That content, so I framed the video. And rather than just put the text on there as content, you could put additional content on it, then a link to a PDF that people can download, then you go and submit that to all these PDF directories that you have all over the web. And, I mean, that’s, that’s another thing that you can do, really, you’re only limited by, by, you know, your imagination. And what you can come up with the limit is the things that you can think of to do with this content. Not that you have multiples, but you have video, you have audio, and you have text, and then that text can become a PDF, it can become any other kind of download, it can become an image, the text itself can become an image, you can do the question and answer images of each. I mean, it becomes what you could do becomes ridiculous. The thing is, is it necessary? And why are you needing to do all of this a lot of times, all of that just simply isn’t necessary because the process that we use, requires you to do as little work as you can for as much benefit as you can saving the bullets. In case you need more.

There you go. Always keep some, some in reserve, right.

How Do You Properly Optimize The GMB And Website Of An Old Business?

Okay. The next question is a basic GMB question. I have a client who bought his dental practice from another dentist. The old dentist GMB is ranking Okay, three in some map packs around the office. And second, organically what is the best approach try to merge in the GMB market is closed and rank the new one with the new business name for the web for a website, the old one as a pop up directing to the new site, should I take that site down or leave it up just worried about the possum, but I think I could rank them both, I would be fine with that both businesses have exact same address. Okay, I’m going to give you what I would do in that situation. And then I’d love to hear Marco’s opinion on this as well. But what I would do is I would merge those two GM B’s the one that was shut down, I would contact Google My Business support and explain exactly what you just did to us without the SEO terminology, because you want to act dumb, or even, you know, you can act on behalf of the business owner. But I’ve done that in the past something similar where you know, there’s two GM B’s because of a tree service company bought another tree service company, for example. And so since they ended up sharing the same address, but it was different names and everything else, I don’t want to cause any PII issues, right where you can ambiguous ate the data for a particular business. So what I do is I contact Google My Business support and tell them, hey, this company bought this company there now. And you know, it’s now this name, but it’s in the same location, I want to merge the two and Google support Google, my business support will help you with that. I’ve had I’ve done that on multiple occasions. So that’s personally what I would do as far as the website. What I would do with the website is do a redirect. Right? If it’s ranking second, organically, I think you said yeah, second, organically, the website is got some authority, obviously. So if you’ve got the new website for the new brand, what I would do is do a redirect, I wouldn’t leave both of them up because it could cause some excuse me some NAEP issues and possibly some entity ambiguation. So I would like I said I would merge the two GM B’s you might have to contact you will likely have to contact GMB support to do that so that it can be done properly. For example, you know if you have I had another client that had a GMB where they had to they moved all they did was move locations so when they moved locations, they set up a new GMB instead of changing the original, like the information in the original GMB, they just set up a new one. And so when they came to me as when I, you know, brought them on as a client, they had a bunch of reviews for their old location, but they had their new location that had you know, just a hand a couple of reviews but they wanted to merge the two and so once again, I contacted GMB support and I had them merge the two. So they basically called and removed the old GMB from the old location, but merged all of the reviews into the new one under the new location. And so you can do those kinds of things as long as it’s 100%. legit, if it’s spam stuff, don’t even attempt it. But if it’s 100%, legit, then I would absolutely contact GMB support have the two merged. And then again, for the organic site, I would have that redirected to the new site so that you can push that authority over to the new site. Now that’s my method. Would anybody have a different opinion? merge and properly three? Oh, and I totally agree, is a having tool and maybe creating. Now, this is where duplicate matters, right? And, and the entity comes into play, and you create ambiguity, and then Google doesn’t Okay, so which dentist is which? And how does this all work? Because it’s a bot and it’s stupid. And if you don’t give it the information is not going to know. And you want to try to relate them to one to the other, and why what’s changed and all that you’re going to get into a whole lot of issues that you don’t want. Bradley told you exactly how to solve it, merge the GMB’s call and act really stupid with the owner as a matter lead to let the dentist’s quiet Look, I bought those dentists out and now he’s got a GMB and I got I let them work it out. And then you could properly 301 the old site to the new and gain from all that power that the old one has. And as a matter of fact, if you properly three or one, you could hammer the old website for a while and get the benefit into the new website.

Or you go so the next question. I’m not sure if well, I guess there is a question in there. It says guys, I’m looking both at land solutions and alpha land realty not typing these names for a reason. I don’t care. I know. I honestly don’t care that I’ve never tried to hide my homeland realty business. They’re public. Yeah, they’re public. I’ve always mentioned that and he said, anyway, I’ll finish the question then I’m going to comment and I’m sure Marco has some comments as well says I don’t see any good rankings there. In fact, I see a huge decline. I see a huge decline in something that was not very impressive anyway. Well, that’s okay. Because that not very impressive, impressive Alfa land realty site makes me between three and $15,000 a month and fucking month and has for a year and a half. So that’s not very impressive. They’re not you know, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to impress you. It works just fine for me. He says I know you do local use GM B’s ads, etc. You said, you said and you said it many times. It’s about calls and leads I get it but it looks more narrowed towards local map listing rather than a national campaign or global campaign. Mine is not a national or global campaign Alfa land realty is a Virginia based real estate acquisition company. All I target is Virginia. That’s all I’ve ever targeted since I set it up. And I use Google ads, direct mail and SEO, and I get all the damn leads that I want or can handle from those three methods. So and most of my traffic comes from direct mail I’m not gonna lie I do get leads from Google ads and from organic SEO, but those leads aren’t really the leads that I want. Those are typically not as good leads because I like to target specific land types in certain areas. And so with direct mail, I can do that. And so again, I’ve always I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I’ve not done a whole ton of SEO for Alfa land realty because I haven’t needed to most of the traffic that I generate is through direct mail. However, I do get probably eight to 12 leads per month from Google ads and or organic SEO but those they tend I bought several properties from you know, leads that have come in from either Google ads or from organic SEO, but most of them that come through aren’t those good they’re not that good leads because they’re not as targeted as I want them to be like I can do with direct mail. So again, I’ve never tried to hide that guys there’s no reason for me to I’m always honest with what’s going on in my business and it’s all been about Virginia land by land acquisitions in Virginia so I’ve been able to accomplish my goals with the methods that I’m using that solutions go ahead.

On the other hand is national and as a matter of fact we got we had a lead once from Bali so it’s it’s global. We did lead from somebody was selling land in Bali wanted us to do one to see if we would buy it I and I’ve prepared some some stuff that I that I want to share my skis Mind if I grabbed the screen shirt. Let me go here. And I can’t you got to give me permission or stop sharing your stop sharing mine. How about that? And I was Okay, here we go. Let me make sure I share the right one. Get rid of the porn. All right. So I saw this question and I came a look. Because I love the use of the turn of the phrase, I see a huge decline of something that was not very impressive anyway, wasn’t meant to be impressive was meant to get results. I’m not to impress anyone. I’ve never, I’ve never been it, I don’t want to impress you. All I want is the person here. If you can see my screen, when they come on here to fill out the fucking form. That’s all I want. Not to impress. So here we go. Are we seeing that position? I took a look. I don’t know how many top 10s I have. I but if I can scroll down? I don’t know. I can keep scrolling. Scrolling. Scrolling. Right. So you can see yes, it’s very local. It’s heavily local. How else would you target local real estate? Please, what are we talking about? Can we please define what we’re talking about first, because yes, even though this is National in nature, I have to target it locally. Or else, the person that’s looking to sell their land, in bumfuck, whatever, would never find me to sell me the land. So of course, I don’t know what it is you’re using you said hrs, I don’t use hrs. I don’t use sem rush, I don’t use any action. I use go, this is what I use. This is what tells me what it is that I’m doing. And whether what I’m doing works. Not only this, but while I was doing this, what’s so funny is let me pull this up in my G but look at the time 1:37pm I haven’t even opened because I was going through this, to show this during have to have a web web form fill came through. This is what I’m after man. Now, not you, you why user specific or targeted or whatever. But this is what I’m after I’m not after you. And I’m not after a dress to impress a dress and whatever the fuck it is they decide to give because I could give a shit about a trust and majestic. And and whoever else, you name it, I don’t care. I get my information from analytics, I get my information from the Search Console. That’s what tells me what to target. So I can get this because as Bradley said, Now these, what I do is I’ve been turning them over to the alpha land Realty, that you created Bradley. Yeah, the group, I’m sure you see me posting in there. And this is what I’ll do with this form. Because I have enough with what I’m doing with what I’m targeting in the states that I’m targeting. Or I’m good where I don’t know, four or five sales.

I wouldn’t say that much, let’s say three to four sales per month, three to four k average, well, that’s an extra 10 k in my pocket that I’m not expecting to see. I mean, and this is after expensives after expenses, after cost lawyers and everything else, it’s in my pocket is what I put in my pocket. That feels really nice. I don’t know about you, it may not be impressive to you. And I understand that. Okay, you may you probably make way more than I do, from something that just a side hustle, and a website that we haven’t done really anything to other than you know, we set up the SEO shield, some schema, some q&a, but not really giving it the love that it should not giving it all of the attention that we need to. Because since this is my main source of income, since this is just a playground, whatever I get here is perfect. I mean, this is fine for me, if I get I don’t know, 10 of these is what we’re getting per month, and I turn them over to the guys and and they can close a few. And they give me the commission. I mean that that’s an extra source of income in my pocket. So in addition to whatever it is that I’m closing and that I’m making every month, now this, this last solution network will also produce webform fills, where the guys who took Bradley’s training can go and they can get after these people make the offer and try to make that close and sell and put a couple of grand in their pocket. And they really didn’t have to do the effort other than to contact and try to close it. Because this person is hot. This person is hot to sell. They don’t go and find you organically unless they’re hard to sell this we know. So I’m sorry that you’re not impressed. But yeah, I mean, the other part of this what you said is so like calls and leads, because that’s the only way that you gonna make money. And I could be number one in everything and not making a penny and I could be selling it hot. Look, look, I’m number one. Number one. Number one, I’m not making a penny. And yet you’re going to fall for it. Because you see number one everywhere and is not really doing anything. So I mean, hopefully, this is the example you should be focusing on. We put everything through Google through analytics, and through search console. That’s what that personally, this is what I focus on. I don’t care about anything else. And I don’t care what anybody says about analytics and search console, because they’re generally wrong and they don’t know how to use it. And so they can’t see how it works. that’s their problem, not mine. All right, my hand a second, let me just finish my mastermind, people, my heavy hitter club and my mini mastermind. They know how to use this shit, because I’ve shown them how to use it. And how it is that you’re supposed to take a look at analytics and search console so that you can get the most benefit from it. And I’m done. Go ahead, man.

Yeah, no, I was just mentioning that, again. You know, I, I spent last year I’ve been running my alpha land realty business for about a year and a half now. And it’s, it only requires about eight to 10 hours a week now, because I’ve got personnel in place, and automations and systems and everything that I built took me months to build all of it. But now it just requires very little of my attention. Like I said, between eight to 10 hours a week on average. And for a period of time, I did spend more time on SEO and a lot of time in Google ads. But I’ve refined the Google Ads campaigns. And I realized, after starting to receive leads from just SEO and from Google ads, that those aren’t the best quality leads, because they’re often in random areas of the state that I’m not interested in, which ends up taking more time to research those markets to get to know those markets. I know which markets, I can flip properties in very quickly. And so those are the markets that I target and I target them more specifically with direct mail, because it’s a higher quality lead, and it works better for my business model. So again, it’s not I’ve never tried to, you know, sell people on the fact that my alpha land realty site was super optimized and all that shit. And everyone, it’s a single page landing page on Click Funnels, but still ranks. So what difference does it make, it generates me a very nice income with very little effort now, because I’ve built the systems and everything else. So anyways, if anybody’s interested in learning more about that specifically, reach out to support at Semantic Mastery, we’ve had a couple of people reach out in the last month or so and say that they’re interested in possibly joining a paid training group where you where I’ll teach how to flip land, it’s a great business guys, you can do it virtually from a computer at home, like out of I think I flipped. I don’t know, 28, maybe between 20 and 32 properties in the last year and a half. And I’ve only been to three of them. And it was only for very specific reasons that I went to three of them, I’ve been able to buy and sell land and make, like I said, on average, on my low end, in fact, this month, I only make 2300. But on my on my low months, it’s still a four figure profit. And on my good months, I’ve made five never made more than 16,000 in a month. But you know, that’s a really good income now for three to or excuse me for eight to 10 hours a week of effort. And so again, if anybody’s interested in that business, just reach out and say you’re interested in land flipping business. And once we get enough interest, I’ll put together another group and do some training on that it will be a paid training though, guys, so just keep that in mind. All right, we’ve got about 12 more minutes. I’m gonna grab the question. Question, though.

It was a good question. And we’re weren’t attacking you for your vote on another way. No, no. And and it’s good. I love this when people call you out. And it’s okay, so well, because the proof of a profit is and whether the prophecy comes true. If it doesn’t, then the profit is useless, right? So what we say is the results are what matter we need to be able to show results so that people who are in a dress and doubting I understand the doubt man, I understand the doubt. What I’m saying is your focus is wrong. I’m not saying you’re wrong, I’m saying the focus that you’re giving it is wrong, because we’re not interested in HS. And they can show whatever they want. And you could go ahead and share. It’s the land some land solutions network, you can share it, you can go look at it, reverse engineer it, because we did a lot of nasty stuff in there a lot of testing, and it’s still it’s ongoing. We’ll get back to it and give it some love man, because we can take over a lot of stuff with the way that it’s ranking right now. At any rate, yeah, it’s not anything done to you or set to you specifically. It’s just that when you when you focus on Ah, they’re going to show you what they want majestic what they want SEMrush what they want. I only care about Google. That’s all I care about.

Yeah, and just one other thing about that is what’s interesting is if you take a look at my site, somebody’s got positions here. Oh, look at that son of a bitch anyways. But you can see like sell land fast, Virginia. We buy land Virginia, there’s a few other keywords that work really well for ranking. But if you take a look at my site, guys, it’s a single page landing page on clickfunnels, which clickfunnels doesn’t even give you the ability to optimize the page much there. You can’t really optimize the elements and Click Funnels. It’s very difficult. But that’s it. I mean, it’s a very simple site on a wide Firefox has been so slow, but that’s it. It’s that I mean, there’s no content marketing going on there. I’ve had a syndication network built but I never I don’t I don’t blog. I don’t publish posts. I don’t have I’m not doing GMB posts or anything like that. I do a few a handful of press releases per year. And that’s it. And that’s all I’ve had to do because look, I’m ranking number one in Virginia for my primary keywords the keywords from because I’ve run Google ads for this for a year and a half, I know which keywords produce conversions generate leads, those are the only keywords I give a shit about all the other ones I could care less about. It’s not a it’s not a it’s not a you know, a test to see how how many rankings I can get. In this case, it’s producing like I said, on the low end, four figures and on the high end five figures per month consistently month in and month out. And it has been for a year and a half. So I’d say it’s a success. And I don’t spend a lot of time on it anymore. I did four months but it’s it’s where it is now to where it’s on. It’s almost on autopilot requires very little my attention. So

I’m not sure what why am why Oh, niches What does that mean? Do you know what y m y l means?

Marco? You’re You’re muted

by the way.

What is okay?

Nevermind.

I’m sorry. Somebody want to answer that?

Now? I thought I thought it was something else. MF

Global campaign for y m y l niches? I’m not sure what that means. Okay. Um, are these methods suitable for current moments for something outside at the current moment? Excuse me for something outside local marketing? Yeah, of course. I mean, again, like if you I mean, Mark always talks about local is relative, right? Your local can be a neighborhood, a city, a county, a state, a country, or global, it really just depends you local is relative, you know, there, I’m just targeting on a statewide basis, because I found that it doesn’t make sense to target like, we buy land Culpepper, Virginia, we buy land, it doesn’t make sense to go through all of that additional effort for that particular project. Because again, like and here’s the other thing about that project. And tree services, people will go to Google because they got a tree that is overgrown or a dead tree that’s in danger of falling on their house or their car or something. So they need that service. So they go to Google, and they search tree service or tree removal, Tree Removal near me or tree removal and whatever their city is, right. But with the landowners and for again, for that business, it’s a lot of times these are people that own land that really doesn’t haven’t even considered selling it, they just pay taxes on it, you know, year in and year out. And so I all of a sudden send them a letter that says, hey, I’m interested in purchasing your vacant land parcel located at whatever, whatever. If you’re interested in receiving an all-cash offer, fill out this form at this website, or call this number, which goes to my call center. That’s it. And so again, you know, a lot of the times I’m targeting people that have land that doesn’t even know that they want to sell it, the ones that do think, well, I’ve got a piece of land I need to generate some money from there are the ones that go to Google and search for it. But I found again because those are in random areas throughout the state that I’m not specifically targeting and ends up requiring more research on my part. And then it’s a market that I’m unsure about whether I can flip it quickly and all that other kind of stuff. So it’s that uncertainty is the reason why I don’t like those leads as much Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still make offers on them. But I like the areas that I’m specifically targeting through direct mail those areas better So again, just to kind of explain.

it’s just a different model period. So why am while your money or your life. Okay? What is it your money or your life niche? Not sure what that means?

Is It Okay To Optimize Two YouTube Channels For One Money Site

Anyway, so we’re gonna move on fit says good agents, I have a client posting on two different YouTube channels, only one optimized, should they optimize both? And add the money to site to both thanks for all you do. Yeah, I guess you could, uh, I don’t see how that could hurt anything. As long as it’s the same brand. I mean, I guess it depends on what it is that you’re doing. What it is that they’re doing? If it’s the same brand, but like, perhaps two different topics, or for whatever reason, then then yeah, I don’t see why that would hurt anything. Um, that’s what I would do. I mean, obviously, I need some more details, Fitz, to be able to give you a better answer, then that but I mean, if it’s the same brand, I don’t see why you couldn’t, it wouldn’t cause any ambiguity as long as you’re not, you know, trying to create two different types of brands for the same company if that makes sense.

What’s The Drawback If A Google Drive Folder Is Shared To Anyone With The Link Vs Sharing It Publicly?

So Okay, the next question is a G Drive folder is shared to anyone with the link versus public on the web. What’s the drawback? Or is it completely useless to do it that way? Is it thoroughly tested? I’ve heard it’s still good for buffering if you share with anyone with the link, but don’t know about entity validation. What’s your take? Marco? That’s a question for you.

The link shared folder has no fucking use that has to be public on the web. Really? It has to be it won’t pass if you Uh, no. It has to be public on the web man. Hmm. Now, even if you try the iframe that anyone with the link, it has it if you don’t do it right, it has a frame breaker. So once you if it has a frame breaker then we were losing all the benefits from what we now know, as our ys Academy reloaded, right? Because that’s built upon the power of the iframes and how they work. Okay,

so you’re saying his shit has to be public on the web to provide the benefits public and if you can’t do it, don’t worry. Go to MGYB to order drive second t site from us because we can make it public.

What’s The Drawback If A Google Drive Folder Is Shared To Anyone With The Link?

There you go. Rob says thanks, guys. Baby’s up. What’s up, baby? I was wondering where the hell you are today. He says, Hey, guys, after I asked all the External links variations now it’s time for a new wave. So so we’re gonna go through several weeks Marco has some other topic but one topic.

Yeah. 1000 ways. Maybe I’m giving you shit, man, we appreciate you, man. There’s no there’s no question. He says, Does the organization schema have to be on each page or just the home page? What page or post should the organization schema on which should be an article scheme? Okay, that’s a great question. And I’ve recently because of POFU Live and some of the training I’ve received from there, I started digging into schema more and I only put organization schema as the only schema on the homepage now. But if you understand the connected schema, then you can, you’ll still can work organizations schema into like local business schema or into article schema because the organization can be the publisher, there’s it’s connected schema is like combining schema types, but it has to be done correctly, or else it will ambiguity of the page that multiple schemas are on. So in other words, you have to understand how to connect schema properly, it’s not something we’re going to cover here, you’d have to go to heavy hitter club, that’s you that’s the place to be if you want to learn how to do that stuff. I’ve been learning from Marco and Rob and also doing some research on my own. And I’ve just recently begun to understand the idea of the concept of connected schema. And so I was actually doing it wrong for a lot of my own local business sites for the last couple of years because I would put organization schema sitewide. And then on location pages, I would have local business schema also. But that actually ambiguous. It’s the main entity of that particular page unless you combine them into a connected schema. And then you designate the main entity of the page or you can ref local like for example, local business schema can be the primary schema for a location page, but it can reference the overall parent organization. The same thing for articles schema, Article schema is going the primary entity of the pages the article itself, right. But then you can reference the publisher as an organization, for example, or even the author could be an organization. And that can pull in all of your organization schema with your same as attributes and everything else. You have to learn how to put that together properly. And I didn’t know how to do that until after I went through POFU Live. And I got to watch some of our speakers, which by the way, you can buy POFU Live recordings right now. So if you want to get a really good bass training for what connected schema is, and how you can develop this kind of stuff out, go get the POFU Live recordings. And I just want to mention, as I said, I realized after the POFU Live event and hearing some of our guest speakers, that I really needed to step my schema game up. And so I’ve spent the last several weeks now actually really tightening up my schema on a lot of my lead gen properties. And I’m starting to see some significant results from that already. But as so organization schema can go on all the pages if it’s nested within the other schema properly. Otherwise, just put it on your homepage or your about page or both. It can be on both of those even. But for everything else that would have the main entity of the page have that only schema on that particular page only unless you’re using connected schemas. So essentially nested schema where it would reference organization schema, hopefully, that didn’t confuse a lot of people. Mark, do you want to comment on it before I move on?

parent, child-parent, you can have organization either on the homepage or on the about page don’t make both if you’re going to do that I prefer it on the own baby to that’s where the bot will generally come in and go through the rescue website. So that’s what I like. As far as everything else. I mean, no, yeah. Don’t ambiguity. You’re in big trouble, man. Yeah.

Yeah. And that’s the thing. Like if you have multiple schemas on a page, and they’re not, you can actually main entity of page that’s it. That’s an attribute that’s a type that you can designate so that you can specify which one it is but if you’re using connected schema, or like you said Parent-Child, nested schema is another term for it, then it should validate correctly. Anyway. But yeah, it’s an interesting man, I didn’t realize how much I was missing drugs and data world until we had the poker live event. Now, that was my main takeaway. And I’ve told that to everybody. I was like, my main takeaway was I need to step my schema game up. And so I spent and I’m still just scratching the surface, Robin, and Marco, and heavy hitter clubs where you want to go for all of that stuff. Guys, there’s no question. It’s what we’re teaching a heavy hitter, man.

Yep. All right.

Last thing, I’m just gonna answer the part two real quick. And then we’ve got to wrap it up. He says, What if the homepage is general info, the representation of the brand, sort of, and then there is long-form post, which is targeted for the main service, keyword example tree removal, how to place schemas there. Yeah. So again, that would be I would consider that article schema. And you can also nest within article schema services, right? You can mention service. You can even have like offer catalogs, all that kind of stuff. Again, it’s a, it can get very, very complex. So you have to understand what it is that you’re doing. But I would say like a main like service page where with an article that talks about services, you could create a service schema type, but I don’t think that’s as valuable. And I don’t know, maybe Marco can answer that. Or maybe this isn’t the proper place to answer that. But I’m testing right now with some of my Tree Service sites having the like Tree Removal page, for example, marked up as a service page. And then I’ve got others that are article pages with nested services in it. I think the article page with a nested service is the proper way to go but I don’t know and that’s why I’m kind of testing and comparing right now. Mark Oh, am I am I revealing too much or what?

Yeah. Because that’s stuff I mean, how we, how we create the relationships and and how we stack the schemas. What it’s what’s dealt with in the heavy hitter club.

There you go. So that was a tease, go go join heavy hitter club guys. It’s inexpensive, and it’s totally worth it if you want that kind of technical knowledge. So all right. Thanks, everybody for being here. We got to wrap it up. Everyone knows next week. Thanks, guys.

Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 310 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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localwebmgmt · 4 years ago

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Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 310

youtube

Click on the video above to watch Episode 310 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

Announcement

Doing good here? Good. They can complain and yeah, I think we got something pretty sweet coming. Oh, really? I made a video about something today, so, huh?

All right. Well, now I’m curious. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.

Well check Facebook.

Ah, all right. I will check it out. Bradley, you got the tech stuff done. Are you available?

Well, it’s the fucking video still not on know that on the page. Click Funnels bullshit. I’m tired of it. And I really am.

It’s still not even there we go. Yeah, it’s updated now.

Well, it’s not for me.

Gotcha. Well, we’ll circle back around. I’m going to type something in while I ask her not How you doing today, man?

Great, man. I’m in Miami. Having fun. Everything’s good.

Well, you got to talk for a little bit longer. I gotta, I gotta touch.

I’ve heard that you’re in Miami. Is that true?

Those are right now, but we still had it. So.

What about POFU?

About It was a great event.

Oh my god, what about it?

The live of the recordings are available, right?

Should be right.

Yes, that what I was just talking about or not my losing my mind about POFU.

This has got me all screwed up. Because the format has changed in the last couple of weeks. And after years of having one particular startup format. It’s hard to hard to transition.

All right,

you guys are seeing my screen now. Correct. Good to go. Yes.

Yep. All right.

What Is The Name Of The Upcoming Buffer Site S3 Creator?

Should You Make A Separate Page For Each Location When Siloing A Local Service Business Site?

There you go. Let me unpause the screen for a minute if I can find it. Okay.

What Do You Recommend For A Self-Hosted URL Shortener?

All right, there we go on the resume share again.

Because doing some background stuff. Alright.

Can You Make Multiple GStacks On One Google Account That Are Interconnected?

Let me see, of course, there is.

Why would you want to go and break up the well, not a limitation? But why would you want to put two things that are unrelated in the same dry stack?

We go for G stacks under one account. So different g stacks, but yes,

no? No. Okay.

Is It Better To Have An Old Google Account Better Than A Gsuite Account When Creating Drive Stacks?

How Do We Use of Text Transcripts From Videos For Traffic And Link Building Purposes?

There you go. Always keep some, some in reserve, right.

How Do You Properly Optimize The GMB And Website Of An Old Business?

I’m not sure what why am why Oh, niches What does that mean? Do you know what y m y l means?

Marco? You’re You’re muted

by the way.

What is okay?

Nevermind.

I’m sorry. Somebody want to answer that?

Now? I thought I thought it was something else. MF

it’s just a different model period. So why am while your money or your life. Okay? What is it your money or your life niche? Not sure what that means?

Is It Okay To Optimize Two YouTube Channels For One Money Site

What’s The Drawback If A Google Drive Folder Is Shared To Anyone With The Link Vs Sharing It Publicly?

What’s The Drawback If A Google Drive Folder Is Shared To Anyone With The Link?

Yep. All right.

Yeah. Because that’s stuff I mean, how we, how we create the relationships and and how we stack the schemas. What it’s what’s dealt with in the heavy hitter club.

Source: Semantic Mastery Weekly SEO Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 310 published first on your-t1-blog-url

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backstorywithdanalewis · 4 years ago

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Presidential Debates Back Story with Dana Lewis podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/5803924 @johndonvan #backstorywithdanalewis #debates2020

Speaker 1: (00:00) Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the fats. Just go to her website. She tells you how to fight ISIS on a website. You are telling the enemy everything you want to do. No wonder you've been fighting. No wonder you've been fighting ISIS, your entire adult life. By the end of this evening, I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened. Why not just join? Join the debate by saying more crazy things. Hi everyone. And welcome to another edition of backstory. I'm Dana Lewis. There have been some informative us presidential debates, some of them one on a good one, liner others on a relaxed look in 1960, Richard Nixon lost his first debate with John F. Kennedy because Nixon started sweating and look pale freedom, be maintained. Speaker 2: (00:53) I'm going to, to the attack, attack you to Devin own. I think it can be. And I think in the final analysis, it depends upon what we do here. I think it's time America started moving again. The things that Senator Kennedy has said, many of us can agree with. There is no question, but that we cannot discuss our internal affairs in the United States without recognizing that they have a tremendous bearing on our international position. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (01:21) The defining moment from 1976, Jimmy Carter versus Gerald Ford occurred when then president Gerald Ford insisted there was no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, Speaker 2: (01:33) No Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And there never will be under a port administration. I'm sorry. Could I just pause? Did I understand you to say sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries there and, and making sure with their troops that it's a, that it's a communist zone, whereas on our side of the line, the Italians and the French are still flirting with, I don't believe, uh, mr. Franco that, uh, the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet union. I don't believe that the poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet union. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (02:22) Polls showed president Jimmy Carter lost a Ronald Reagan in 1980. Regan's calm, relaxed, demeanor during the debate was seen as key to his victory. Speaker 2: (02:32) What kind of elements of a national health insurance important to the American people? Governor Reagan, again, typically is against such a proposal. You have enough, you go again. When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before the Congress. You already are the oldest president in history and some of your staff. So you were tired after your most recent encounter with mr. Speaker 3: (03:00) Mr. Mondale. Um, I recall yet that president Kennedy had to go for days on end with very little sleep during the Cuban missile crisis. Is there any doubt in your mind that you would be able to function in such circumstances? Not at all mr. Troy and I, and I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience. And then there was this mess between president Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Speaker 4: (03:36) Oh, sure. You, in fact, let people know. He doesn't want to Senator, I'm not going to answer the question because the question, the question is justice rational left. Will you shut up missing? Who is on your list, Joe, this is on your gentleman's. I think this is so with you that, wait a minute, Speaker 3: (03:56) We got the final word in it. It's hard to get any word in with this clown. I sorry, Speaker 4: (04:00) With a billion dollars, if you, that, you know, when you're not doing it, Speaker 3: (04:06) True, gentlemen is on this backstory. Do we make these debates meaningful, controlled, dignified? Because that wasn't. So we introduce you to somebody who has studied and moderated debates and is an expert on how we should remake and remodel the format. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (04:31) All right. I want to introduce you to John Donovan, a debate moderator in America, and that would be vastly understating, who John is because he's a former network news correspondent, a terrific correspondent. When he was with ABC news, he worked at the white house in John. First of all, welcome how many debates have you hosted now? John Donvan - Debate Host: (04:50) wUh, I think we're at about 180, 185, something like that since I started doing this in 2006 only. That's why you're terrific on this topic. First of all, could you have imagined an America like today, a few yesterdays ago when you covered the, uh, I could see the seeds of it. Um, I covered the white house during the Clinton administration, and I think that was the beginning of a turning point of a, of a kind of, um, a poisonous relationship between the parties, where things, um, after, you know, 40 years of some, some, some manner of civility and mutual respect, um, things began to get kind of ugly between the sides, you know, between, you know, going back now to, you know, 25 years, the, the, the sort of personal, uh, pettiness between bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich was already, um, also the, the media was beginning to get more into a more adversarial kind of personal relationship with presidents who were seen to be, which people might, people who are think fondly of bill Clinton might forget that bill Clinton lied, um, very, very, very publicly. John Donvan - Debate Host: (06:07) And, um, that there was the beginning of a, um, of an acceleration of, you know, Richard Nixon. Didn't like the press, of course at all, but there was the beginning of an acceleration of, um, uh, sort of a standoff between the press and the white house. So yeah, I guess I could have kind of imagined it. I don't think it started in 2016 or 2015. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (06:28) All right. We've gone from, to use your words kind of ugly the turbo ugly now, I think. And, uh, you know, do you take Trump seriously when you hear things like, he's not gonna respect the peaceful transition of power and he should get another two terms, not the constitutional one term after the next election? John Donvan - Debate Host: (06:48) Uh, yeah, I take, I, I think we've learned to take everything he says seriously. Um, he, uh, his, his, his followers have always appreciated the fact that he says what he means and he means what he says, even though what he says may shift around a lot. Um, um, there's, there's kind of a grain of truth into, I think he wants to leave himself, uh, ultimate maneuvering room. I remember in the very first debate, um, back in 2015, when there were something like 11 candidates on the stage and the moderator, I don't know if it was the first question. Maybe it was the last question, but, but asked a sort of obvious question, if you are not the nominee, um, will you support the person who is the nominee, raise your hand if you will. And 10 hands went up and all by himself back in 2015, Donald Trump didn't raise his hand. Speaker 3: (07:42) Um, and it was kind of a kind of moment. And, um, and he, he just said, we'll see what happens. And we know when he says, we'll see what happens. It means he's keeping his positions open and his options open, and that he's really, really willing to considering and willing to, um, break the usual convention. So, you know, peaceful transition of power so far has been the conventional practice. Um, and it's clear that he has been laying the groundwork for a potential refusal of the vote by casting down on, on the integrity of the process. So, uh, yeah, I take him seriously that he would certainly consider it. Yeah. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (08:28) First debate. How would you have changed it if you were hosting it? Could you have controlled it any better than Chris Wallace? John Donvan - Debate Host: (08:34) No, I couldn't. Um, Chris Wallace has got a lot of, a lot of, uh, um, uh, criticism for, for what happened in that debate. And the problem with that debate, uh, was primarily the president's, um, insistence on, on breaking in and interrupting, even though I know the interruptions went in both directions. And even though I know, um, um, I read, I didn't go back and check this, but I read that the first person to interrupt was actually Joe Biden. I'm not sure whether that's the case or not. I just know that the dynamic and the flow of the thing was that, uh, when Chris Wallace, who is a, certainly not an anti Trump guy called out the president for being the, you know, he basically said most of the problem is you mr. President, that was just absolutely true. And if you have a, somebody who's not gonna abide by the rules, there's not much you can do unless you have some sort of enforcement power I would have, I would have, I would going forward insist on having some enforcement power. I think of the, of a debate moderator, uh, as, uh, you know, some people think of it as being a timekeeper. I think of it as being much more of a referee where your job is to have some power to enforce the rules, to keep, to make sure, you know, uh, as an example, not only keeping on time, but keeping on point, uh, avoiding personal attacks, if that's the rules. So the debates that I moderate, can I talk a bit, a little bit about what those are so I can, Speaker 1: (10:07) You've given us some insight into the debates you do and how you do them, because I think you've told me a long time ago that you did them alone, Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (10:14) Oxford style, uh, you know, debating framework, which you, you know, I'm happy to hear about that. John Donvan - Debate Host: (10:21) Yeah. The Oxford style comes out of the Oxford union at Oxford university for is time honored tradition in which, um, a statement is, is a sate asserted. And, you know, I'll just make it extreme. Um, hamburgers are good, you know, that would be the statement and, and one, one debater or team of debaters. And it's usually a team, usually a team of two would argue would, would be arguing for the resolution. They would be there to prove that you can't, you have to agree with them after you hear all the arguments that hamburgers are good and against them as a side, arguing against what the statement says, arguments, hamburgers are not good. They don't have to say anything else. That's better. They just have to say that they're not good. And usually, uh, there's, there's a time timed rules and there's time for rebuttal and there's a structure to it. So the structure is number one, it's about this thing. Number two, you have to prove it's true, or you have to prove it's false. And number three, you take terms and Speaker 1: (11:19) Your act with the does one Bay debating team interact with the other, can they, John Donvan - Debate Host: (11:23) Yeah. There's time for that. Stop that. So I'm okay with interruption. If I think that's a sort of robust thing, but the, normally what happens is, is that there's an opening statement, which is not interrupted by all four debaters. They take turns making the case. Um, we do that for about six minutes per person. So that takes about, uh, with the introductions. Our first half hour are these formal opening statements where each side makes their case. And then for 45 minutes, we interact and I ask questions, uh, of the debaters based on their opening statements. You know, I'll say, you know, Ms. Jones, you said, um, you know, uh, hamburgers are unhealthy. And your evidence that you cited was from, uh, from the federal government. Let me ask your opponent, do you trust that evidence? Should we be questioning it or not? You know, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll bring them together. But once that process is flowing, we do like to have to encourage a sort of robust back and forth, back and forth, uh, where, you know, there is such a thing as a, as a, as a justifiably motivated interruption by one person to have another it's. Uh, and so we're good with that. As long as it doesn't get out of hand by out of hand, I mean, you, you don't, you're not, you're interrupting just to stop the person from talking. You're not letting them have their say, Speaker 1: (12:35) Well, what if it's just outright name calling? Like it wasn't the presidential debate. I mean, Speaker 3: (12:41) I stopped, but we've had it happen. Um, Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (12:43) Stop that. Sorry. Now I'm interrupting. So you could turn my microphone off, except I have the control today. Speaker 3: (12:48) Yeah, you stop. But the way in which you're interrupting me is I think of you're you're not challenging. You're not trying to stop me from talking. It's not your goal. You're, you're motivated by a question came to your mind based on what I was saying. You were seeking clarification. I think that's perfectly good kind of interruption. So I just want to say that, um, and, uh, the way I stop it is I, um, I can tell you generally what I say is, uh, I did what I saw Susan Page do last night. I say, thank you the first time I say, I say, thank you, your time is up. If the person is running over time and the opening segments. And, um, if they keep going, I start to talk over them so that it becomes pointless for them to continue. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Um, mr. John Donvan - Debate Host: (13:33) Smith, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Your time is up. I'm sorry. Your time is up. That's it? I'm sorry. I don't sit. I don't say thank you. And then say nothing. Um, and, um, we had one debate though, where we really, really had intelligence squared. That's the name of the organization? Intelligence squared us, uh, try to, one of our goals is to, is to, is to demonstrate civility in argument and then the discourse. And so, uh, we're good with argument, but we're not good with incivility and incivility includes name-calling personal attacks, ad hominem arguments, and, and that comes up a fair amount. A lot of people are trained to prime to do that as an it's a cheap and easy, uh, way to, uh, to try to debate is to, uh, make fun of your opponent or criticize their character, which just drives me crazy because it's not an argument about the idea. It's, it's a, it's a cheap shot it's and so, so we rule them out when they happen. Um, I stopped the debate. Um, I did it, uh, last week at a debate. I stopped the debate and I, I say, um, um, w you know, that what you just made was a personal attack. And, uh, do you care to withdraw that? And we would appreciate it if you would almost always think every time the person has says, yes, I'm sorry, blah, blah, blah. And one reason I do that. Yeah, Speaker 1: (14:55) No, John, no way in a presidential setting, Speaker 3: (14:59) Do these w would be, you know, Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (15:02) Second term president and would be first term president. They're not going to allow you to interrupt very well. They're not going to withdraw. Trump is certainly not that kind of character, and he's not going to allow you to control. Speaker 3: (15:13) I would do it. The referee at that debate needs to be given power. Should you have electronic power to turn them off? You have the power to turn them off. Absolutely. And you shouldn't have the power to dismiss them from the stage. You should have the power to dock them time. So, uh, you know, Speaker 1: (15:30) It's going to be hard, sorry, jumping in again, because you know, it would be hard to Speaker 3: (15:36) Dismiss president Trump Speaker 1: (15:38) The stage, but I get docking time, I suppose this is very fast. Speaker 3: (15:43) Well, if you, if you, yeah, if you cut off the mic, I mean, it would be a very, very delicate thing. It would be very, very difficult to execute in a way that would not, uh, raise questions about whether the moderator is being fair or unfair, but I think it's doable. I do think it's doable. Um, and I do think that there are times when, you know, if, if Joe Biden were to, to make some claim about the president, that the president truly thinks is untrue. It's just bizarre. And, you know, I know that his, his instinct would be, I don't want to let that continue to be set. I want to stop that thing being said about me right now. I don't want it to get another 40 seconds. I understand that, but that's not what was happening with the president. The president was just trying to shut him down at every stage. John Donvan - Debate Host: (16:29) But what, what I would do with that as a referee with those powers is I would, I would shut off, especially if we gave a two minute timing, I would shut off the other candidates. Mike, during the primary, the speakers two minutes, the other guys, Mike would be cut off. There would be a visible clock, visible to them and visible to the audience showing how much time they had left. It was just tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And when the time came, there would be a buzzer or a tone. So maybe not something not so obnoxious, but that would be it. And that thing would persist. And then I would say, you've had your two minutes, it's now mr. Bun, mr. Trump, it's now your time. And he would get the same thing. Sure, sure. Speaker 1: (17:13) And he wouldn't be heard on a, he wouldn't be heard on TV because as Mike would be, we'd be, we'd be turned off. So they've just announced, John, you know, and this is changing by the minute. So it may change again that the next, the presidential commission announced the next debate will be virtual. Speaker 3: (17:28) Um, so you can show it off. Biden has said yes. Yeah. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (17:33) And Trump has said, no, that that's not the way you hold a debate over a computer. Andy said, interestingly enough, when he phoned into Fox, he said, um, th they can cut you off whenever they want. So he has real trouble with it. Speaker 3: (17:47) Yeah. Well, I think it would help. I mean, the bottom line is I think it would help. I don't think the parties would ever agree to it. Um, but, um, you know, I had a debate where I had two debaters. The way we're set up on stage is there there's two tables where the debaters sit and spend most of their time arguing. They stand for certain parts of it for, for the most part, they sit and I'm at a lectern in between them a little bit higher than them, which by the way, is another adjustment I would make. I would not make the moderator, this little tiny figure sitting down in the debaters or standing up. I would put everybody on the same level. It can not be because it's about the moderator. It's not about the moderator, but the moderator needs the ability to moderate. Speaker 3: (18:27) And so these, uh, I was between these two tables and the two guys on opposite sides, both at the inner seats, the right one on my right. And one of my left started arguing with each other and they got very angry at each other. And then they began doing kind of thing back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I said, gentlemen, gentlemen, gentlemen, and they kept going, they kept going. They couldn't hear me. I don't even think they were ignoring the presidential debate. Yeah. So, and so I left my lectern and I went around to the front of the stage and I turned and faced them and I raised my arms and I said, just stop, just stop. And that stopped them. And then I, and then I returned to my lectern and I said, you know, that's just not the way we're going to do this. Speaker 3: (19:14) It's just not how it's going to be. And, you know, with the, and the audience applauded for the, for the gesture I make, which I think is where ultimately the, you know, the, the, the that's where my authority came from was the audience's support of what I was doing. You know, Chris Wallace doesn't have that, or these debaters don't have that. They, so, so you need to have some kind of moral suasion if you're not going to have actual power, but it stopped that moment. And, um, you know, I do know that there are some people who think that it's great to see people doing that. There are people who watched the Biden, Trump debate and found it very entertaining and, and, and sort of visceral dopamine level kind of exciting. And it was, it is, it is that it's, it's, it's like watching a wrestling match. And to be honest, I don't want to quash all of that too. There's something there's information in that and there's energy and it's it's appealing, but it just wasn't Speaker 1: (20:11) When it gets to the point that there's absolutely no policy being discussed. And it's it's name calling. And, uh, you know, and, and, and in fairness to Biden, I think that he had been criticized by a lot of people before the debate is as you know, sleepy Joe Biden, according to Donald Trump. And he felt he had to stand his ground no matter what, in that debate that he, he couldn't stand back and let Trump embarrass himself, but that he had to go toe to toe on every single exchange. So it, you know, they were kind of set up, uh, for that, uh, you know, brutal kind of machine gunning and forth, Speaker 3: (20:48) Uh, by, you know, a lot of the pre press on the debate and whether Biden could hold his ground. And, uh, you know, I mean, interestingly enough, you know, Trump has turned around and, and again said that Chris Wallace defended Joe Biden, which I don't, I don't think he did. I think Chris Wallace tried to just control it as best he could, but, and he felt a sense of failure at the end of it. Yeah. You mean a, that Chris Wallace felt a sense, Chris, I think Chris Wallace felt this debate and it wasn't, you know, I would too I've um, I, one time earlier in my career, I had that kind of a debate where I felt there was a sense of failure because one person came to, uh, to argue very substantively and had prepared that way. And the other person came with a series of one liners and zingers. Speaker 3: (21:34) And, um, and, and it, it kind of turned into a circle, you know, it was just cheap. It was cheesy. And, uh, and I, at that point was not experienced enough to, uh, to know how to try to a certain myself. I mean, every time I, I have to do this and I, I have to do it a lot, a fair amount. I never know if I'm ultimately gonna, you know, have a Chris Wallace experience, if the person just going to ignore me. But I think at a certain point I'm prepared to, uh, I'm prepared to dismiss a debater from the stage. I've never done it. I've never had to do it. It's never been discussed that I would do it, but, um, ultimately, um, it's, it's, we, we would need to make the point that the civil discourse has a place and needs to be defended and is useful without it being all, you know, policy is just such a policy is an important thing and a really boring sounding word. Speaker 3: (22:32) And, um, um, to me, the ideal debate is one in which the, the personalities of the debaters, their ideas for what is policy, it's what we would do, what we should do. I would want, I would want to express it in terms of the debaters, through their personalities and their convictions and their commitments share with us what they think we should do and what they would do. And that's how I would put it. I would, I would always want to walk around the word policy because it sounds like you have to do your homework. I, uh, interviewed somebody on the Eve of the 2016 Clinton Trump debate, and they said, cool, we'll get to see them under pressure. We'll get to see some flashes of personality, learning, how they would govern, um, in depth, probably not what their ideas are. What they're thinking really is. I think we probably won't learn much at all. And that guy was named John Donvan. And I think you were spot on, on that debate and even this one. Oh, wow. I had no idea, but, uh, you were going to argue with that guy, right? No, I was going to say, Hmm, I should debate that guy. What did you think of the Kamala Harris and Mike debate, different personalities, but, you know, clearly it was a lot more civilized. And I think people got a lot more, Speaker 5: (23:53) The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country. And here are the facts 210,000 dead people in our country. And just the last several months, over 7 million people who have contracted this disease. But I want the American people to know Speaker 3: (24:15) Very first day, president Donald Trump has put the health of America first, Speaker 5: (24:21) Whatever the vice president is claiming the administration has done. Clearly it hasn't worked. And you know, the vice president is the head of the task force. So I have no, but Susan, this is important. And I want to ask mr. Vice president, I'm speaking, I'm speaking. So I want to ask the American people, how come were you when you were panicked about where are you going to get your next roll of toilet paper? How calm were you when your kids were sent home from school and you didn't know when they could go back? How confident are you when your children couldn't see your parents because you were afraid they could kill them. Speaker 3: (24:54) There's not a day gone by that. I haven't thought of every American family that's lost a loved one. You just nailed it. It was more civil. Was it as entertaining? Should it be entertaining? Um, uh, I think we got a very good dose of the difference of their personalities. The question is, does that matter? I suppose it matters if one of them becomes president someday, which is, there's a fair chance of, um, given, uh, given the ages of the tune of the incumbent and the challenger. So I think we got, uh, I got a stronger sense of Mike Pence, his personality than I'd had before. And I would say the same thing with Kamala Harris, a stronger sense of, of her personality. Um, uh, I was very frustrated by, uh, by the, by the, um, Mike Pence is again, not keeping time. Uh, you know, she would give him 15 seconds and he would take 45 seconds and I'm okay with, you know, take 15 seconds, by the way, it is hard to make a, to do a comeback in 15 seconds more realistically should, she'd probably say I can give you 30 seconds to respond on that. Speaker 3: (26:02) And I would understand because the debate did get personal, they did begin to challenge, uh, aspects of each other's past. And the problem with doing that is it's usually the accusation is usually way more complicated than the, than it sounds. And that means that the person who's attacked feels this compulsion to want to correct the record. And they ask for that opportunity. I, you know, you know, Susan Page, I'm sorry, I was just attacked and I need to respond to that. The problem with those attacks is then they go down a rabbit hole for the next two and a half minutes about, did this happen to that happened at some incident in the past. And that's why I would discourage, uh, personal attacks and, and why in our debates when it happens. Um, actually when it happens in our debates and somebody, we did a debate the other day in which, uh, one of the debaters, it was about economics and one of their debaters accused another debater of being stolen. Speaker 3: (26:58) Like, and it was, it was totally out of line. It was meant to be kind of cute and kind of edgy, but the person who was accused of being stolen, like took issue and said, excuse me, I need to go back. And, you know, and, and at that point I stepped in because they were going to go back and forth. And then for the few minutes about whether this one debate or at some point in his life had said something that was stolen, like, and, um, and would use valuable time doing that. So what I said is I said to the person who said it, I would appreciate it. If you would withdraw that remark, would you do that? And the person said, I wouldn't to the person who was attacked. I said, I would appreciate it if you will accept that and let's not talk about it anymore. Speaker 3: (27:40) So it took 30 seconds to resolve something that would have taken two, two and a half minutes. So I've done that before. I've the person who's offended, needs to be also needs to move on and, and to accept that there was a withdrawal. So, um, in the, in the Harrison and pants debate, that happened a fair amount. And, um, and so I found that annoying and, uh, what, what was interesting to me as I had a sense that Pence had more time talking because he ran over the, a lot of time limits many, many, many times, but, uh, according to a CNN, um, analysis, they had equal time within three seconds of each other. I think Penn said more, three seconds more than Kamala Harris. So that was, you know, I got to pay attention to that. That appearances can be deceptive. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (28:26) It's going to be revealing too, because he talked over her a lot. And a lot of people think that that reveals his attitude towards women and whether that's true or not true, you know, by interrupting and talking over people in the end, you also create an impression that you leave with the audience, right? So Speaker 3: (28:42) Maybe, but I have a feeling he would have talked over an opponent who was a man and Tim, Tim Cain talked over him four years ago, incessantly talked over Pence. And, um, so I, I just think it was more of a, a personal style. And I, uh, I don't think he was trying to rattle her by doing that. I think he was trying, I think, you know, I think it's this thing that they're saying something that's really not true. I need to stop this from continuing to go on. And then, and then Harris, you know, towards the end began to, um, also run over time. She did so extensively on one question, I think about her prosecutorial record. I think that was the one where, where she said, I, you know, Susan, I was attacked Susan, the moderator, I was attacked. I want this time. And she went over probably by at least a minute, which is a chunk of time in a 90 minute debate trying to cover 10 topics. So it wasn't just Pence, but I felt that Pence is interruptions and frequent. Run-over sort of set the tone, something that was a little less sloppy than it should have been. And also frustrating there is that they were just in both of them are just ignoring the questions. All right. Dana Lewis - HOST BACKSTORY: (29:49) Just to wrap this up. I mean, we talked about a lot of stuff that we kind of without getting specific about it, we covered it because we, you talked about time penalties, you talked about the ability to cut Mike's off. Um, do you think that, does America need another two debates? Um, is America gonna survive another two debates with these presidents? And what do you do when one is, will not agree Speaker 3: (30:12) To a format change, which Speaker 1: (30:14) Obviously a lot of people think is critical to making these debates Speaker 3: (30:17) Formative? Um, I don't have much, I hate to say it cause I really believe in any kind of public forum possible. And I, I know people on the presidential debate commission and, uh, or people who have served on it. And, um, you know, that's a whole another story that commission is controlled by the two parties, essentially it's nominally independent. But when I say it's controlled, it's it's members are nominated by the two parties and then Speaker 1: (30:48) It's a bridge for negotiation between the two. John Donvan - Debate Host: (30:51) Okay. That's great. That's a really good way to put it. Um, but the members of the commission, I think take the role very, very seriously and do, try to act independently. They do assert their independence, they claim independence and assert it. So I believe in their efforts to try to make it work. Uh, that said, um, I don't see any need to have a second version, a secondary or a rerun of the Trump Biden debate if it's going to be like that. Um, I'm, I don't think we're going to learn anything and it felt, uh, I don't know, to me it kind of left a, a blemish it's one more blemish on the political process in a, in a season of many blemishes on the political process. No argument, no Speaker 1: (31:32) Argument, John, thank you so much for all your time and perspective. If, and I think a lot of people would now, after hearing you talk about all of the debates, you've moderated, they'd like to go and watch some of them. Where do they see Speaker 3: (31:44) John intelligence squared us has a URL and an app. Um, but if you Google IQ to U s.org, that's IQ, the number two U s.org, um, all of our, so that would be through a web browser. All of our near 180, 185 debates are online. Interestingly, almost all of them. Uh, we've been doing them for a now 14 years, hold up still. And, um, and some, some of them are interesting for having happened 10 years ago. How forward-looking they turned out to be? And we also have an app, uh, IQ T U S debates on the app store and Google play store and the Apple store. So, um, join us. We're on YouTube also. That's great, John Donvan thank you so much. Pleasure. Speaker 1: (32:30) And that's our backstory on presidential and not so presidential debates, please subscribe to backstory. And if you don't mind share our link, your network, Speaker 6: (32:40) We're on every major podcasting platform we are growing and appreciate your support. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Lewis and I'll talk to you again.

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