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lobsters-on-their-heads · 6 years ago

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Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 2, Chapt. 10

Disclaimer reminder: I haven't been to the Middle East, so if I've gotten some details wrong, please let me know in a respectful manner. This chapter and the upcoming ones involved some interesting research, and I've tried talking to people who've been there, but of course things slip through sometimes. Let me know!

You can read the entire work from the very beginning here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12116799

The night after the party, after a small dinner at Sarah's house, Cosima and Delphine rode with Sarah to the airport as cold evening rain peppered the city. Most of the trip was silent, with Cosima in the front seat and Delphine in the back with their carry-on bags. Delphine had spent most of the day recovering and doing a great unintentional impression of a cartoon sloth, but the after-effects of last night's brownies had worn off by late afternoon, and she was more or less back to her usual self.

As the airport infrastructure came into view, Sarah sniffed loudly and rubbed her nose.

“You gonna be a'right, then?” she asked.

Cosima peeled her face from the passenger side window and blinked at her sister. “Yeah. Yeah, we're gonna be fine. Why?”

“No reason.”

Sarah steered the car towards International Departures and sucked on her teeth.

“We will have personal security from the moment we arrive in Baghdad,” Delphine assured her. “It's a highly reviewed company, personally recommended by our contacts both here and abroad.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sarah rubbed her nose some more and the airport itself came into view. “I would feel a bit better if Helena went along with you, though, to be honest.”

Cosima laughed and imagined Helena following them around the Middle East. Hell, just getting her through airport security would be a trick to write home about. Putting a hand on Sarah's shoulder, Cosima said, “Do not worry about us. We're okay with what we have, and Helena needs to stay here with her boys. And don't go reading too many news stories about the places we're going to, either.”

Sarah laughed. “Not often someone accuses me of reading too much. Anyway, it's not me. It's the kids, reading up on every place you two go off to. I've got Alison on my case, too, telling me every little horror story she sees online –”

“Yes, we've heard,” Delphine cut in. “She's been on our cases, too.”

“She's calmed down recently, though,” Cosima added.

“And Art,” Sarah went on, like the words were being pushed from her body against her will. “He's coming to me every week with some other story he heard from one of the translators about someone's brother getting his head cut off, or somebody's sister being sold off to IS for God knows what. It's not like I just can't listen, Cos.”

The car wound its way into the departures lane and down the alphabet of airlines as everyone thought about what Sarah had said. Aer Lingus, Air Canada, Air France...

“Well,” Cosima said, “just remember, and tell everybody else this, too, that the stuff that makes the news, and the stories people tell, are the exceptions. I mean, yeah, obviously it happens, but not every day. Aid workers go in and out of Iraq and Syria every day without getting any more than a paper cut or a couple of nasty pimples.”

“We're being careful,” Delphine added. “We're being very careful.”

Sarah made a face. “Right.”

Five minutes later, Sarah pulled up to the curb near the Turkish Airlines sign. There were hugs and promises to call once they'd arrived in Baghdad, and as Cosima and Delphine went inside with their suitcases and bags, Sarah leaned against her car and watched them go.

Inside, the check-in process was smooth and the security checks predictable, and when they settled into the airport-standard restaurant close to their terminal, they still had thirty minutes before boarding their plane. They sat sipping water and nibbling on what passed for a “harvest salad,” and Cosima watched the other late-night fliers going by while Delphine did her daily social media Leda check, twelve hours later than she usually did.

“You did yours, then?” she asked Cosima.

“Yeah, at lunch time. You were kinda busy trying to remember that pool noodles aren't sentient, though, so you get a pass.” Cosima kissed Delphine's cheek, then her lips. It would be weeks, or possibly months, before she could that in public again. “You were super cute the whole time, though, fyi.”

Delphine grunted and resumed flipping through status updates of new bikinis, inspirational quotes, and cute babies.

“By the way, didn't Gabriela call you last night?”

“You mean while you were baked out of your mind and climbing all over my sister?”

Delphine looked like she had a retort coming, but just rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

Cosima giggled and squeezed her fiancée's arm to show no ill will. “Yeah, apparently her husband's divorcing her. Guess he was only in it as a monitor, and he was kind of convinced they could have kids, but when that obviously didn't happen, he peaced out.”

“Hm.” If Delphine had any thoughts or comments about being a monitor herself, she kept them to herself. Her thumb hovered over her Facebook feed. “Look at this.”

“What's up?”

The post Delphine pointed to was in Hebrew, and the picture beneath it showed a hand with an IV going into it.

“Oh, shit,” Cosima whispered.

“It's Avigail Chernev,” Delphine said. “One of the Israelis. It's the first time she's posted anything in almost a year.”

Cosima scooted her chair over to get a better view. “Is that her hand? For sure?”

“I assume so. It looks like yours.”

Cosima held her own hand up next to the picture on the phone and squinted. “I'll take your word for that. You are, like, the Leda expert at this point.”

Delphine's eyebrows twitched. “Yes, I suppose I am. You're still my favorite, though.”

“Thank fuck for that.”

Delphine took a screenshot of the Facebook post and emailed it to David Margolis, their Hebrew translator and Israeli cultural guide based back in Toronto. They would translate it themselves, too, with Google, but David's translations were more accurate and nuanced, and he could more easily match up the texts with others he had on file for both Israeli Ledas.

“There's WiFi on the plane, at least,” Delphine went on, “we'll need to monitor this pretty closely.”

Despite the severity of the situation, Cosima smirked. “Did you seriously just say monitor? Even after what I said about Gabriela's husband?”

Delphine stuck her tongue out and copy/ pasted Avigail's status into Google translate. In a second, the English side read Third treatment of the week, here we hope we can cure it soon!

“Third of the week, shit,” Cosima murmured. She pulled up a map of the Middle East on her phone and measured the distance between Baghdad and Tel Aviv. It was a hell of a lot closer than Toronto, but they weren't exactly next door neighbors. And then there was the whole messy political situation.

Meanwhile, Delphine pulled the Europe and the Middle East notebook from her carry-on bag. She flipped through it and tapped her finger on the first Israeli entry.

Avigail Chernev, born 11 June, 1984, in Bet Shemesh, current residence Tel Aviv Monitor as of 2016 – Daniel Fridman Primary care physician as of 2016 – Dr. Joseph Blachar [two msg sent by D.Cormier via D.Margolis, no replies] Social media contacts attempted 21 July, 3 September, and 4 December – no response

Delphine added a line about today's Facebook post on the otherwise empty page that stood in sharp contrast to the information-crowded pages on either side. The page before detailed the medical history and social media habits of Lonah Gerbi, the clone in Haifa they had already made an appointment to treat. Delphine tapped Lonah's page.

“We're not scheduled to be in Israel until the end of May,” she said. “Eight weeks from now.”

“Right, and we scheduled Lonah's treatment after all these other countries for a reason.”

She checked the time. They had fifteen minutes until boarding their plane to Istanbul, where they had a five hour lay-over before flying on to Baghdad. Baghdad, of course, being in one of the many countries with restrictions on travelers who'd had their passports stamped in Israel. Then she looked at Avigail's hand again. Third treatment in one week. Failed treatments, almost certainly, probably radiation or some kind of chemotherapy. The side effects alone probably kept her from working or taking care of her family or whatever else she would have been doing otherwise, and it was quite likely that the treatments had actually hastened the disease's progression, as it had in Jennifer Fitzsimmons.

“She can't wait until May,” Cosima said. “None of the other clones in the Middle East have shown these kinds of symptoms.”

“That we know of.”

She nodded. “That we know of.” Of course. More than once before had a Leda stayed quiet and private right up until she was dying, and only then did Delphine and Cosima hear anything about it. Desperation brought people out of hiding. Or, in the case of Nooran in Djibouti, brought the attention of enough people to point Cosima and Delphine in the right direction.

Delphine was watching her with those big doe eyes, waiting for her to say something, but the decision was obvious.

“I'll email the airline from the plane,” Cosima said. “Change the flight from Istanbul to Tel Aviv instead of Baghdad.”

Delphine's face didn't change, though. She licked her lips. “We still have to cure the others, though. Even if they don't have symptoms, we still have to – ”

“Oh, for sure, we're curing them, too. But we have to get to Avigail first.”

“Yes, but – ”

The airport announcement gong sounded, announcing preboarding to Turkish Airlines Flight XXX bound for Istanbul. They packed up their things, threw away their trash, and went to loiter near the gate with everyone else. At this hour, the crowd of passengers was quiet, mostly businessmen buried in their phones or newspapers.

“What if,” Cosima offered, “we just ask them not to stamp our passports in Tel Aviv?”

Delphine snorted. “Yes, certainly. Have you ever tried telling a passport controller what to do?”

“Not yet, no.”

“Well, I don't think it's a very good idea.”

Some of the businessmen looked up from their devices to listen to the only conversation happening, but the announcer called for first class boarding, so Cosima and Delphine hoisted their bags back onto their shoulders and got on the plane.

Once they were in their seats, enjoying the perks of the frequent flyer program, Cosima said, “Maybe someone else can go to Israel. Cure the Israelis, and we finish up the rest of the Middle East.”

“It's an idea,” Delphine agreed.

Cosima pulled out her phone and texted Scott while the coach passengers filed past.

A minute later, though, that idea was shot. I'd love to, he replied, but I can't take that kind of time off work. We have a big project right now.

She swore under her breath but typed, Okay, thx anyway

The faces of Clone Club flashed before her eyes, and she imagined all of them in lab coats in an Israeli clinic, syringe in hand. Art, Sarah, Alison, Helena, ... None of them fit that image. None of them had experience putting needles in people. Well, Helena might, but she probably wasn't used to aiming the needles with the intention of helping, and she had none of the other necessary skills for this endeavor.

She tapped on her phone until the crew directed them to turn off their devices, and held Delphine's hand as Toronto faded away below them. When the city was entirely gone behind clouds, she turned to Delphine and said, “Rachel would do it. She gave me my treatment, and she knows clone stuff.”

“And she is completely inaccessible to anyone who wants to contact her.”

“And there's that. Fuck.”

Once the fasten seatbelt sign was off, they both had their laptops out, emailing everyone on the Clone Club listserv for ideas and support. David Margolis confirmed their translation of Avigail's status and offered to reach out to her in Hebrew for them, which Delphine replied would be very helpful. Delphine posted a notification on the Foundation's website, just in case Rachel happened to be checking in from wherever she was. Cosima's Google searches confirmed that, indeed, for most of the countries they would be traveling to in the next two months, entrance was denied to anyone who'd been to Israel.

After thirty minutes, though, Cosima found herself staring into space at the shadowy clouds moving below them, forgetting what the hell she'd been typing, or starting one sentence and finishing it with another thought entirely. Beside her, Delphine kept trying to hide her yawns.

“It's after midnight,” Cosima said, dropping her head on Delphine's shoulder. “Maybe one of us should get some rest.”

Delphine kissed her forehead. “You go ahead. I'm used to working late.”

“And I'm not, is that what you're saying?”

“Mmm, yes. You work late, of course, but not like this.”

“Not on an airplane.”

“Correct.”

Delphine was right. Something about traveling had this way of knocking Cosima right out. Maybe the sound of a motor, steady total-body vibration, and occasional rocking back and forth made her feel safe, like she was six years old again and her parents were taking care of everything.

When she woke up, the window shade was closed and Delphine's light travel blanket was tucked around her shoulders. To her right, Delphine dozed with her arms across her chest and her head tipped to one side, laptop still open on her tray. The rest of the cabin was bathed in daylight and a flight attendant went down the aisle announcing the last call for beverages or snacks. According to her phone, it was 7:20 in the morning, but when she raised the shade the sun was well above the horizon.

Right. If it was 7:20 am in Toronto, it was 2:20 pm in Istanbul, and they were scheduled to land at 3:15.

She opened her laptop, trying not to jostle Delphine as she checked the clone business email. Five new messages.

Art said he would look into it but made no promises, which could really apply to most of the emails they'd exchanged with him over the past year.

David Margolis forwarded both Cosima and Delphine the email chain with Avigail Chernev, her medical team, and himself. Avigail's primary doctor right now, it said, was a Dr. Ada Bronstein, and both she and Avigail were excited about the possibility of a new treatment option.

There was an email from her mother, linking to an article about a suicide bombing in Basra and begging Cosima to be careful while she was over there.

Her advisor at U Minn sent her a list of epigentics conferences that Cosima “really should consider presenting at.”

And to her surprise, Rebecca Twell replied to Cosima's mass email, saying she was so sorry to hear that another of their identicals was ill, but Rebecca could not take off that kind of time, either, and regardless she did not feel comfortable administering any kind of medical treatment to anyone. She ended her email with a reminder that if and when Cosima and Delphine made it to Scotland, they should absolutely drop by for a pint.

Cosima went back up to the email chain and tapped Dr. Bronstein's number into her phone. That five-hour lay-over coming up in Istanbul was starting to feel awfully short.

At Istanbul Atatürk Airport, they got microwaved sandwiches and juice from Starbucks and found a terminal waiting area with no one else sitting in it, so they could spread out over several seats and the floor, charging everything that needed electricity. Delphine exchanged more emails with David Margolis and Avigail's medical team, and compared her symptoms with notes in the MEDICAL notebook that listed all observed symptoms and treatments with side effects.

Cosima called everyone, starting with Adele. Alphabetical order seemed as good as any order right now.

Adele answered with a dynamic yawn. “Oh, hey, Puddin' Pie, how are you doin'? How's Delphine, more to the point? She back from her brownie trip yet?”

“Yeah, yeah, she's good,” Cosima said. “Did you get our email?”

“Huh? No, I haven't checked yet. Why, what's up?”

While Cosima explained the situation, Adele responded with various “uh huh,” “yeah,” or “well shit.” When Cosima finished, Adele laughed. “Oh, honey, I wish I could help you. I really do. But heroin is the one drug I will never, ever touch. Needles skeeve the hell outta me. I stick to drugs that go into holes my body already has.”

Cosima had not said anything about heroin, but she laughed for Adele's sake and said, “Okay, that's cool. That's, uh, probably for the best, actually.”

“Yeah. Hey, have you tried Colin, though? He's gotta have some skills there, right?”

“Uh, not yet. I don't have his contact info, actually. Do you?”

“No, but you know who does.”

Felix picked up on the third ring. “You want Colin's phone number? What for?”

“For the stuff I emailed you about. Did you get our email?”

“I mean, I skimmed it. I've only been up for about 30 minutes. Why? You still haven't found anybody?”

“No. Colin's, like, potentially our last hope.”

Felix muttered something unintelligible, but a moment later produced the number for her, and listened as she read it back to him. “He won't go, though,” Felix added. “I'm certain of that.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, first of all, he's hates flying. He's only flown once, and that was to Calgary ten years ago. He doesn't even have a passport.”

“He doesn't...?” She had forgotten that people could even exist in the world without a passport. “Wow.”

“So, feel free to call him. Tell him that I'm not pining away in his absence, and that he's much more attractive when his head's not shoved up his own arse.”

“You know, I think I'll let you tell him all of those things, and I'll just stick to clone business, okay?”

She called Colin and left a message, and checked the message that had dinged while she was talking to Felix. A picture greeted her at the tap of her thumb: the main room of Nooran's apartment in Djibouti, with the girls and Mohammed, the younger boy, sitting around a folding table that had not been there when Cosima last visited. On the table were the art supplies Cosima and Delphine had given them, and each of the younger children held up a piece of artwork to show off. Fatima sat the farthest from the camera, and she held a book close to her chest, a smile tugging at her lips. The table wasn't the only new item in the photo – a calendar and a flag decorated the wall, and a drying rack laden with laundry snuck into view in the lower right corner. The cell phone used to take the picture must have been new, too, since the family had not had one before.

While Cosima studied the picture, distracted for a moment from Avigail's troubles in Israel, another message popped up, this time showing Nabil taking a selfie with his siblings in the background. Tapping Delphine to get her attention, Cosima took a picture of them together, Delphine smiling and Cosima making a face, and sent it to the kids.

“They are such good kids,” Cosima remarked. “We gotta see if we can keep helping them out, somehow.”

“Mmhm.” Delphine's attention was already back on the task at hand. “Julian can't go. Neither can any of my other medical contacts, including the doctors we know are aware of the cloning situation. All of them are busy, uninterested, or no longer reachable at their former email addresses. I texted Ali, even, from Tripoli, but he's tied up for the rest of the month, apparently.”

“Why Ali? He doesn't have medical training.”

“No, but I thought maybe he could at least transport the cure to Avigail's doctors for us. They could administer it, I expect, on their own, although I haven't confirmed that with them.”

“Oh, yeah. That is a good idea.” She texted Clone Club back with that idea – not to treat, but to transport. Anyone could do that. Anyone that didn't need to go to any of the Muslim-majority Middle Eastern countries that Cosima and Delphine needed to go to, that is.

Colin called back at 4:23 pm Istanbul time. “I'm sorry, you want me to do what, now?” he asked.

She gave the spiel again. “And you're really our last hope.”

“Why can't you do it?”

“Because once we get an Israeli stamp, all these other countries won't let us in. It's geopolitical bullshit.”

Colin exhaled into the receiver. “I don't think you understood my question. Why can't just one of you go, and the other one go to all the other countries? I mean, there are two of you, right?”

Cosima bit her tongue and pushed her hand into the top of her head. “Well, for starters, all the people we're curing look exactly like me. Haven't you noticed? We're clones. It's gonna be pretty weird for me to look all of them in the eye before treating them.”

There was another heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “And you can't futz your way around that for one dying woman? Wear colored contacts or something? Seems like it'd be pretty easy. I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

Felix's last comment about the location of Colin's head came to mind, but Cosima said, “Just trust me. It's not the best idea.”

“Well, I haven't got any other ideas for you. I am not flying to Israel for you. I am not sticking a syringe into a woman I've never met for you. I am not going to deliver biological material that I have not personally inspected to a doctor I've never met for you. I don't even work with the living, remember? I sure as hell don't speak Hebrew.”

“That part really doesn't matter. Think about it, at least?”

“Yeah, maybe. But I'm not changing my mind.”

Just go yourself. She could change her appearance somehow and treat both Israeli Ledas while Delphine was in Iraq, but then Delphine would be in Iraq all by herself. And several weeks after that, Delphine would have to go to Syria all by herself, because Cosima would not be allowed in either of those countries.

Cosima made her way down her contacts lists and called everyone she hadn't already talked to, to see if they or anyone else they knew would be willing to pick up the job. Some people she called again, just in case.

“We'll sort something out,” Sarah assured her after coming up with no new ideas. “I already gave Art a call.”

Cosima even called her mother.

“Oh, Sweetie, I'd love to help,” her mother said, her voice heavy with sleep, “but I am completely unqualified for that kind of work. Even though you know your grandma's been trying to send me to Israel for decades, like with that Birthright program, you know, but for older adults instead of teenagers? Anyway, Israel would be great, but I really just can't go treating someone's illness. I'd probably do it wrong and make everything worse. I'd stick the needle in the wrong organ or something. I work with fish, not people.”

“Well, maybe you could just bring the cure into the country, then? Drop it off and take a week to see the sights.”

“Oh I can't. I'm having bunion surgery tomorrow. Did I tell you that?”

Bunyan surgery. Great. “Uh, no,” Cosima said. “You didn't. How 'bout you send me an email all about it, huh? I have to make some other calls. Unless you think your podiatrist might want to go to Israel for us?”

Sally laughed. “No, but she is Jewish, and I think she's been before. Hey, why don't you just mail it? The treatment, I mean? It's all sealed up, isn't it? You'd have to pay extra, but I don't think that's a big issue.”

Cosima could have kicked herself for not thinking of that earlier, but still, the idea didn't sit well with her. She and Delphine made a point to personally carry the treatment whenever they travelled specifically because they didn't trust anyone else with it. When she floated the idea to Delphine, Delphine's face mimicked her own.

“I mean, it's possible,” Delphine conceded. “But certainly not ideal.”

“I don't know how many other options we have, though.”

She shook her head. “Not very many. None that I like very much. We have a phone conference with Dr. Bronstein in about ten minutes, though, so we can always run it by her, see what she thinks.” Delphine checked her watch and muttered “putain” under her breath before winding the little knob to get in sync with local time. “It's very last minute, of course. I was afraid we might have to wait until tomorrow to talk to her, and, like we've been saying, Avigail doesn't have much time left. Dr. Bronstein seems willing to do whatever it takes, though.”

In the time before their phone conference, Alison called, and after a moment of checking in, repeated Colin's suggestion. “I don't know why you don't just go over there yourself, Cosima. You and Delphine are the only ones who have any experience with this. Put a surgical mask on and no one will notice you look the same.”

Cosima bit her tongue. “So you don't know anyone who could step in and help us out? No one at all?”

“No one who I'm willing to out myself to by sending them to Israel to treat one of my clones, no. Just go! You can rejoin Delphine when she's finished treating all our sisters in those... other countries. Or, you know, like I've been saying all along, you can just split the work and get it all done in half the time.”

“Alison,” Cosima began, “People recognize me. They recognize that I look like other people. Don't you remember how you felt way back when Beth first contacted you, first said you were a clone...”

Delphine nudged her before she could continue. “Dr. Bronstein's calling.”

“Gotta go, Alison. We'll talk soon, yeah?” She hung up before Alison could say anything else, and popped in Delphine's left earbud so she could participate in the conversation without annoying the few other passengers now camping out in the waiting area with them. Cosima took a deep breath to center herself and switch her brain from Sestra mode to professional mode as Delphine gave Dr. Bronstein a warm greeting.

“Yes, hello to both of you,” Dr. Bronstein said with a voice that reminded Cosima of character from Downton Abbey. “It's so felicitous that you've found us. I'm afraid Ms. Chernev's prognosis is quite poor at this point.”

“Yes, that's my understanding, as well,” Delphine said. “She knows that you're in contact with us, yes?”

“Oh yes, I've just spoken with her and her family, and Ms. Chernev has signed the agreement allowing me to discuss her condition with you and your translator, Mr. Margolis. I believe a PDF of the agreement has been emailed to you, as well.”

Cosima didn't see it right away, but considering everything else they were doing to save the Ledas, she wasn't too worried about a single release of information form.

“So, Dr. Bronstein, can you give us another quick run-down of Avigail's symptoms and prognosis so far?” she said.

“Well, she's been in my care for almost two years,” Dr. Bronstein told them, “starting with lung polyps that remain and have no clear cause.” She went on to give every symptom of the disease, and all the attempted treatments. Avigail had had numerous seizures that resisted the effects of anti-convulsant medications, and she'd been on oxygen full-time for the past year. Her doctors had tried every treatment that Cosima would expect them to and then some. Avigail had lost her hair and now weighed only forty-one kilograms. Her vision was spotty, She had difficulty swallowing. She was jaundiced. Her kidneys failed almost a year ago, and she was on dialysis, but the rest of her health conditions kept her off the kidney transplant list.

“Anyway,” Dr. Bronstein concluded, “I don't know exactly how you've found us, but any help you can offer is incredibly welcome. We don't know how much time she has left, since we've never seen something like this before, but, well, to be honest, it might not be very much time at all. Her family's been advised to help her get her things in order.”

Cosima hung on every word Dr. Bronstein said, picturing the cells and tissues and organs, and the woman lying on the hospital bed. “Third treatment this week,” she'd said, just that morning, on her Facebook page. The understatement of the century, it seemed. If nothing else, Avigail's attitude seemed positive.

“I'm glad she has her family with her,” Cosima said.

While Dr. Bronstein gave a standard sort of agreement, Delphine put her arm around Cosima's waist and held her tight, until an airport employee walked by and gave them a double take, and Cosima scooted away. On her own cell phone she typed We're in Turkey again, babe and showed it to Delphine. There could be no public displays of affection here.

“So, Dr. Bronstein,” Cosima said, “we've actually seen this condition a few times before, and we're very interested in treating Avigail if she'll let us, but, um –”

“Yes, that's what your colleague said in her email. How soon can you get here?” She laughed, and Cosima had a mental image of large front teeth.

“Well, that's just the thing,” Cosima began. “We'd love to get there as soon as possible, but –”

“–but we're also going to a lot of other countries in the region,” Delphine finished when Cosima's hand flapping indicated she needed help.

“I see,” Dr. Bronstein said.

“For the same purpose,” Delphine went on, “and our understanding is that we're not allowed into those countries after we've been to Israel.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and Cosima and Delphine exchanged a long look. In her research, Cosima had run across another interesting fact – people who visited Palestine were occasionally not allowed to enter Israel, unless they were Israeli citizens. She'd made a mental note of that and moved on, since they didn't plan to visit Palestine, but now she dredged it back out.

“For what it's worth, Dr. Bronstein, we're traveling exclusively for medical purposes. We really have no interest in anyone's political positions. We just want to cure these women. And, again, for whatever it's worth, we are not planning to go to Palestine. We haven't heard of any patients there with this condition.”

“Oh! Hahaha...” Dr. Bronstein chuckled. “No, no, I was thinking more of our patient here. You see, I've reached out to other doctors, and no one has any idea, either, so I'm simply surprised, ehm, surprised that you've had so much experience. That's all. And, worried, quite frankly. I am quite worried about what will happen if she is not treated soon.”

“Well, we have the treatment with us,” Delphine said. “We could send it to you.”

“With you? As in...?”

“As in, we're sitting next to it right now,” Cosima said. “But we're worried that if we bring it over, we won't be allowed into some of the other countries that we really need to get into.”

“I see. Well, one of you could come and the other could go to the other countries. Or not?”

That idea again. The worst part was that it was right. It would be the easiest solution. It would also be the absolute worst one.

“Yes,” Delphine acknowledged, “that is one of our possibilities, but we'd prefer not to travel alone if at all possible. I'm sure you understand.”

“Well, where else are you going, exactly?”

Delphine pulled up the itinerary she had save on her laptop. “Iraq, later today. Iran, Kuwait, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria...” Below Syria on the list were Jordan and Israel, followed by the European countries, but the noises Dr. Bronstein was making on the other end of the phone interrupted that flow.

“You're going to Syria?” Dr. Bronstein exclaimed. “Have you really found a patient there in such dire straights that you must absolutely go into that blazing inferno to treat them?”

Dire straights was putting it rather dramatically for most of the Ledas at the moment, since less than twenty percent had developed visible symptoms, but that was beside the point. “Yes,” Delphine said. “We have. She may have more time than Avigail, but we don't know how much.”

“Well, you certainly are dedicated,” Dr. Bronstein said. “You're not going to Jordan, then? It's a bit more peaceful.

“We are,” Cosima said. “After Syria.”

“I see. I was going to tell you that entering Jordan and Egypt is often easier after a trip to Israel than some of the other countries are, so you may consider going there instead.”

Cosima leaned her head back against the wall. That was not the point. “We'll keep that in mind, thank you.”

“About our other suggestion, though,” Delphine said, “about us mailing you the treatments. There would be five vials, all properly secured, with extensive instructions --”

“Erm, I don't know about that. You've administered this treatment to other women, you say?”

“Yes, more than a hundred of them.”

“Oh! Well, I can't think of anyone better qualified, then, to administer than yourself. I wouldn't feel completely comfortable no matter how extensive your instructions are, if I knew that there was someone better qualified to do it. And I assure you, Tel Aviv is quite safe. You don't need to worry about traveling alone here.”

Dr. Bronstein probably had a reassuring smile on her face, but Cosima's stomach continued the drop it had started twelve hours earlier. If Avigail's main doctor did not want to give her the cure herself, there wasn't much chance anyone else over there would, either.

“And if you're worried about the stamp,” the doctor went on, “I'm told that many tourists don't get their passports stamped at all. They have this little piece of paper they stamp for you instead. You can throw that away once you've left the country, if you like.”

Cosima and Delphine looked at each other. That changed everything. “Really?” Cosima asked.

“That's what I've been told. I'm a citizen, myself, so of course I've never been in that position.”

“It's worth a try,” Delphine said.

“Can we expect a visit, then?” Dr. Bronstein asked.

“We, euh, we need a few minutes to discuss it, privately,” Delphine told her. “May we call you back?”

“Of course. This is my mobile, so it shouldn't be any trouble.”

They got off the phone, and Cosima started pacing around. “If they just don't stamp it for anyone, we've been pulling our hair out for nothing. Not that I'm complaining, but, it would be suspiciously convenient.”

Delphine tapped away at her keyboard, then her eyes darted back and forth. “Other travelers back it up, actually.”

“Shit, we should've just put that in our Google search first. Here I was trying to see if I could tear the page out of my passport without anyone getting suspicious.”

Delphine leaned back against the wall, fingers resting on her keyboard. “You want to be the one to go, then?”

“I think it makes the most sense.”

Delphine nodded. “I agree. Just in case, you know.”

“In case they don't let me in anywhere else, after all. Which is still a possibility, I think.”

“I think so, too, but I don't know how much of one.”

Cosima thought of everything Dr. Bronstein had said about Avigail, about how she seemed to be staying alive out of sheet pluck while her body fell apart all around her. In the end, there really had been only one solution – this one. “Go ahead and call her back,” she told Delphine. “I can be there by tomorrow morning.”

A few hours later, after a visit to the ticketing agent, a phone call with Alison, two more phone calls and an email with Dr. Bronstein, and repacking of their carry-on bags, they stood together just outside the terminal for Delphine's departing flight to Baghdad, which she would take alone. Cosima's flight to Tel Aviv left in two more hours. Outside the terminal windows, the sun had set almost an hour ago, and each of them had several more waking hours ahead of them.

“Try to get some rest where you can,” Delphine told her. “You won't do Avigail any good if you're exhausted.”

“Yeah, I could say the same for you.”

“I have a little more time. The appointment isn't for another twenty-five hours.”

“Yeah, but you have to get to it.”

Outside on the tarmac, Delphine's Turkish Airlines plane pulled up to the extendable passenger bridge. Before it began discharging passengers, Cosima nudged Delphine and gestured towards the women's bathroom.

“Come on. Last chance for a little while.”

Delphine followed her into the largest stall and giggled as Cosima locked the door behind them. “You want to have sex in the bathroom? In ten minutes?”

Cosima made a face. “Not sex, no. Not smelling like this. Just...” She draped her arms around Delphine's neck and pulled her down for a long kiss. They stood together holding each other and kissing until passengers flooded the bathroom with their chatter, their laughter, their complaints, and a couple instances of explosive releases.

“I just wanted to kiss you again,” Cosima said. “It's gonna be a couple days till I can do it again.”

Delphine cupped Cosima's face in her left hand, stroking her earlobe with her pinky finger. “It's just a couple of days. I'll text you when I land, yeah?”

“Yeah. Same. I'll... I'll keep you abreast of all affairs.” Her terrible attempt at imitating Dr. Bronstein's accent made Delphine break into giggles again, but their moment was cut short by knocks on the stall door.

“We have to go,” Delphine whispered. She peppered Cosima's face with kisses and told her how much she loved her.

“I love you, too,” Cosima said, just before the knocking resumed with a bit more force. “Be safe, okay?”

“I will, I promise. You, as well.”

When they opened the door, they were greeted by a stout cleaning lady and a couple of curious travelers, all of whom expressed some version of “oh!” Delphine gave them her best smile and a cheery “Bonsoir!” as she and Cosima maneuvered their way through the people and back out into the main terminal.

And like every other flight they'd taken in this part of the world, Cosima did not hold Delphine's hand in the boarding line, or rest her head on Delphine's shoulder. For those other flights, though, Cosima had still been beside her, and now she wasn't. She stood by the departures board and watched her fiancée move through the line of almost exclusively Middle Eastern travelers and get her ticket checked. Just before rounding the corner onto the passenger bridge, Delphine turned and paused. She smiled and gave Cosima a tiny air kiss, then made her way down the hall and out of sight.

* * *

Four hours later, standing in line at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Cosima flicked through her messages. Delphine had arrived safely in Baghdad an hour before and was suitably exhausted. She said the security escort was working out fine. Cosima texted her love and sent another message to Dr. Bronstein saying that she was waiting for passport control.

Wonderful! Dr. Bronstein replied. I will retrieve you personally and deliver you to our guest house. I am the tall thin woman in the burgundy jacket, but I also have your name on a sign, so we should have no trouble at all finding each other.

In the next message, Alison assured her that “the Jewish family who lives down the street” had been to Israel and never gotten their passports stamped in Tel Aviv, and they'd never had an issue visiting any other countries. She did not, however, specify which other countries they had tried to visit. See? Alison went on, I told you this would work out just fine.

Scott texted her that one of his Muslim coworkers had tried visiting Israel a few years ago, but got turned away at the border with Jordan. But that shouldn't be a problem for you, Scott said.

The line inched forward. A baby cried. A man bragged to a woman about the ultra marathon he'd run in Israel last year. A little boy whined about being hungry. And Cosima swayed on her feet with no one to lean against.

It was after one in the morning when Cosima finally reached the passport control window. She gave the uniformed man behind the glass her best smile and handed over her passport, open to the picture page.

“Miss Niehaus?” he clarified, winning top marks as one of very few people who got the pronunciation right on the first try. He spent longer than any other passport official ever had comparing her face to her picture, confirmed her date of birth and residence, and asked how long she planned to stay in Israel.

“Two weeks,” she said. They'd made the mistake way back in Ecuador of being vague but honest about how long they would stay, so now they gave a nice firm, if wrong, time frame right up front. He nodded and began flipping through the passport, slowing down after a few fully-stamped pages.

“Um, actually,” she said, “I was wondering if I could get one of those stamps pieces of paper instead?”

He glanced up at her and resumed his exploration of her travel history. “You go a lot of places, Miss Niehaus.”

“Yes. Yes I do.”

He clucked his tongue. “Very many places. Mexico. Argentina. Oman. Libya. Saudi Arabia.” He looked up at her with a frown. “And you have visas for Iran, Syria, and Iraq. You plan to visit them later?”

“Yes, well, you see, that's why I'm kind of hoping you might stamp a different paper instead, because they might not let me in if I have your stamp, and well, you know.” She smiled and held up her hands in a “what're you gonna do” gesture, to show that it wasn't his fault politics were all fucked up.

He did not smile. He leaned over, picked up the phone receiver, and mumbled into it. When he hung up, he gestured for Cosima to step to the left. “Stand aside, please, Miss Niehaus.”

“Oh. Okay, sure. Um, can I have my –”

The officer handed her passport to a tall man in a gray uniform who approached and looked her up and down, one hand on the strap of his rifle.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered.

The room they took her to was tiny, with a long table on one side and two metal chairs on the other. A uniformed woman directed her to remove her boots, jacket, belt, and all of her jewelry. She then gave Cosima the most thorough pat down Cosima had gotten from anyone other than Delphine. While that went on, an middle aged woman (Soldier? Guard? Border officer?) sat in one of the metal chairs. The man who'd taken Cosima's passport placed her bags on the long table, and he handed the passport to the second woman, who set a recorder with a blinking red light on the table.

“Sit,” the woman told Cosima. “Take your hair down.”

Cosima did so, and the younger woman worked her fingers down the length of every one of Cosima's dreadlocks.

“It's okay, I left the explosive hair pins at home,” Cosima snarked when the hair inspection was about halfway done.

The younger woman paused for a moment. “No jokes, please.”

So Cosima sat quietly while the man opened up her bags, setting the electronics to one side, and the older woman looked through her passport. Maybe it was her exhaustion seeping through, but the more she watched them working, the more they reminded her of General Leia Organa and Kylo Ren from the new Star Wars movies.

The officer Cosima now mentally called General Organa began the conversation. “So Miss Niehaus, what brings you to Israel?”

She had practiced professional answer for that. “It's a medical trip. There's a patient here who's arranged for us, I mean, for me to come and treat her.”

“What's the patient's name?”

“Uh, that's confidential. Patient confidentially's very important to us.”

“Who's us?”

“The Sadler and Daughter's Foundation. Their information is on a card in my purse.”

The Kylo Ren guard emptied her purse onto the table and fished around in her things until he got the little stack of business cards, which he handed to the General.

General Organa arched an eyebrow. “So you're based in Toronto, but hold a US passport. Where will you be treating this patient?”

“At the Tel Aviv Medical Center.” When the General put the cards back on the table, Cosima added, “I have an appointment there first thing in the morning, and our patient's life really depends on me being there.”

As if on cue, Cosima's phone rang, vibrating its way in a little circle on the metal table next to her laptop.

“That's probably my contact at the hospital,” Cosima said. “She was supposed to pick me up here.”

No one moved to hand her the phone, but they waited until it stopped ringing to speak again. “And who is this contact?” the General asked.

That part was not exactly confidential. “Dr. Ada Bronstein. I can give you her contact information.”

“Please do. We also need to search your email addresses and your mobile phone.”

“Excuse me?”

“Failure to comply will jeopardize your chances of entering the country.” The General gestured to the male guard, who handed the laptop and the cell phone over to Cosima.

“Unlock these,” he said.

Unlocking her phone, she saw that, indeed, Dr. Bronstein had called her, and sent a text message inquiring about her whereabouts. “Can I just respond to these real quick?” Cosima asked.

General Organa frowned up at her, but did not say no, so Cosima sent a quick text. They're asking me a lot of questions. Then the young female guard took her cell phone and the General took her laptop. While they poked and prodded, Kylo Ren continued his search of Cosima's carry-on bag.

“I hope you like all the pictures of my fiancée,” Cosima muttered to the guard scrolling through her cell phone.

There was no reaction from the guards to her statement. Kylo Ren, though, held up the case containing the Avigail's cure, and Cosima sat bolt upright.

“What's this?” he asked.

“That's the medicine we use to treat people.”

“What is the chemical composition?”

At this point, it must have been close to two o'clock in the morning local time. Cosima's hands and legs were trembling, and biting her tongue got harder with every question they asked. Still, miraculously, she did not give the chemical composition as “the cum I scraped off your mom's face last night, bitch” but rather gave the actual breakdown of materials in each vial. The guard's face glazed over after five words or so, but the little recorder on the desk blinked away, and someone listening certainly knew what she was talking about.

“Where was it manufactured?” Kylo Ren asked.

“Toronto, Canada.”

“Where exactly?”

“The basement of a comic book shop. The Rabbit Hole.” She waved at her laptop. “Look it up. There's a picture of it on our Foundation's website.”

General Organa leaned forward on her chair. “You have been asked a serious question, Ms. Niehaus. If you wish to enter the country, I strongly suggest that you take this process seriously.”

Cosima's voice trembled and she dug her fingers into her palms. “Dude, I am as a serious as a fucking heart attack. There is a woman here in Tel Aviv who needs that medicine to survive. You can call her doctor if you don't believe me. Her number is in my phone.”

“That won't be necessary.”

Cosima bit her lip and struggled not to cry. She was in the habit of not drinking much in the last hour of any plane ride, in case she couldn't use a bathroom anytime soon after landing. The habit came in handy now, but her throat was dry and the blood vessels in her head throbbed, and crying wouldn't make any of that better. She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Can I at least know why you're holding me? Or, like, your names or anything? Badge numbers?”

In college, when she participated in far more political protests, she'd had the whole spiel of what to say to cops memorized. But that was years ago, and she hadn't been exhausted or desperate to save someone else's life.

The young female guard came around in front of her and held Cosima's phone up so the screen was a foot away from Cosima's nose. “Who are they?” she demanded.

Cosima put her glasses back on to see the picture of Nabil and his siblings around their new kitchen table. “Friends. Their aunt is a friend of mine.”

The guard handed the phone to her superior and looked down at Cosima with a face that had switched from professional indifference to outright contempt. “Where are they?”

“Djibouti. Why, you wanna call them, too? Wake them up in the middle of the night?”

The General's body language also changed when she saw the picture. “How do you know these children?”

“I just told you, they're my friend's nieces and nephews.”

“What friend?”

“A friend in Djibouti. She was also a patient of mine, and the kids are in her custody.”

The General shoved the image closer to Cosima's face. “Those children are not Djiboutian. They are Arab.”

If she had been less tired, Cosima would have rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you got me, they're from Yemen. They're refugees. You might be aware that there's a bit of a refugee situation, like, fucking, globally right now, right?”

“Well, that's a bit closer to the truth, finally.” The General pointed to Nabil's selfie, not to his smiling face but to the wall of their apartment, where a green flag with white swords decorated the drab brown and gray. “What symbol is that, Ms. Niehaus?”

“I...” She looked again, with the feeling of being dropped into the most important geography pop quiz of her life. The flag looked Saudi Arabian, but the swords pointed up more, and there was a book between the sword tips that wasn't present on the Saudi flag. The flag wasn't Djiboutian, Egyptian, Algerian, or any other country she recognized, either. “I have no fucking clue. I'm sure you have a specialist somewhere in Tel Aviv who can answer that question for you, though.”

“Smart ass,” Kylo Ren muttered, shaking out her underwear once piece at a time.

“Ms. Niehaus,” the General said, “I suggest you give us a very good explanation for this photo, right away, or I shall have to deny your entry into our country, not only for today, but for the next ten years at the very least.”

Tears fell from Cosima's eyes before she could speak. So much for not crying. “What the fucking hell,” she whispered into her hands. “Please,” she said, looking at the General and opening crying now, “they're just kids. They're good kids. Their parents are dead. I don't know what the flag means. They probably don't know, either. For fuck's sake half of them can barely read! This has nothing to do with Israel, or, or with anything else! Just let me cure my patient and leave! Then I swear to God I'll stay away for the next ten years or forever if you want me to!”

General Organa might have said more, but the door opened and a trim young officer stepped in and addressed her in Hebrew.

They stepped out together, leaving Cosima with her guards, staring at her belongings scattered across the table and quietly sobbing. Delphine would have been out of here by now. She would have said just the right things, had just the right whatever-the-fuck, and they would have let her in the country with no problems. But now, hopefully, Delphine was sleeping peacefully in a hotel bed, in a country that everyone had told them not to go into, and Cosima was this close to being denied entry into what Alison called “the only civilized country in the Middle East.”

Cosima had almost dozed off on the little metal chair when the door opened again and the General came in with Cosima's passport in her hand and a scowl on her face. “You're very lucky, Ms. Niehaus. We've been instructed to let you into the country without further delay. Get your things together, please.”

Keenly aware of the guns still pointed not exactly at her but certainly not away from her, Cosima stuffed everything back into her bags, only taking any care with her cell phone, her laptop, and the cure. She asked no questions and made no comments. Once she was finished, she turned and held out her hand for her passport, but instead, the guards led her back around to the passport control desk.

“Dr. Bronstein will meet you through those doors,” the General said, her voice dripping with disdain. Then she cut in front of the other people waiting to get into the country, went into the passport control booth, and stamped Cosima's passport with the Israeli travel visa.

#continuing travels of cophine #cophine fanfiction #cophine fanfic #orphan black fanfiction #fictional depiction of israel

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journey-to-be-wealthy · 5 years ago

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The Wealthy Affiliate Review For 2020 - Update

Today, I will be updating the Wealthy Affiliate review for 2020. There have been so many updates in WA. Too many for me to talk about but I will be touching on the key updates that you need to know. Right now it's 102° F. outside and I am sitting in my A/Ced office chair updating you about the updates that have happened or coming in the near future. Because of COVID-19 that most companies are closing and they might not be open for a long time. They will be laying off hundreds if not thousands of good workers. Already there are more than a million people applying for unemployment benefits. We are always hiring and helping you build your online business from scratch. You manage it. Hiring a company to manage for you will cost you up to $1000+ a month. With WA it's only $49 a month. The Old Program In the previous update. We were informed that we will no longer give two free websites for our starter members. Starter members are members that sign up for a trial run for a week, 7 days. You know, those that are afraid to purchase a service thinking it's a scam. I was one. However, I did my own research after research and after taking the free courses just to get a taste of what WA was all about. Long story short I was hooked. 2.5 years later I'm still here. Back to the update. As you will see below are the new program that we will have for now on. As you can see there are no more two free websites. Only one. Uno. Ib. (That's one in Hmong.) Instead of 25 free websites and 25 own ones, you'll be, getting 10 total. You'll still have your free lessons and chat rooms for the first week you joined. That's would be $359 annually. I have an older version if you want more details here. The old version of WA prices. More like an older review for your convenience. ===> Get the Black Friday Pricing, Only $299 For a Year of Premium Until May 11th! Why The Changes W.A has been in business since 2005. There are more than 1.5 million members and counting, needed more staff, overhead cost, payroll to do, and economic changes along with the cost of living. Not to mention technology changes, it's expensive. So, yeah there have to be some changes but incentives for everyone. It's not easy keeping everyone happy. As a business owner, sometimes, we have to put our foot down and keep our business alive. It comes down to compromise between owners and customers. "We change this but we'll add this." No one actually needs 50 websites. Most of us have 3 and that's because the ones that have more than one website are advanced and ones that do have more than one website are already making some kind of passive income. What's The New Membership Program

After May 11th, the new pricing at Wealthy Affiliate will look like this: Premium Yearly = $495 per year (NEW PRICE) Premium Bi- Yearly = $234 per 6 months (REMOVED) Premium Monthly = $49 per month (UNCHANGED) First Month Premium Monthly Offer = $19 First Month (UNCHANGED) As you can see, the monthly pricing and first-month bonuses are not impacted by this. The bi-yearly pricing is no longer available, and the yearly price has a new price structure. The new Premium Yearly is going to be $495 as indicated, but we are going to be introducing some new perks associated with going yearly. The Premium Yearly is going to include: Only if you act now! ===> Get the Black Friday Pricing, Only $299 For a Year of Premium Until May 11th! (1) Free .com Domain (2) 100 Community Credits to use towards SiteComments/SiteFeedback (3) Video Bonus (4) A 2-Month Off Discount ($93 off) As you can see we added a few incentives to the mix to make everyone happy, hopefully. Final Thoughts or Conclusion Now is the time to start looking for a new skill. Technology is in high demand right now. When you have downtime because of the stay at home order or need to find ways to make extra income to supplement what you have right now is the best time to start. We care for you and we are in business to help if you want us to. We are a service to help you create your own online business you manage. If you want it managed by someone other than yourself you can but it will cost you double. So it up to you, what do you want? It's been 15 years, we haven't increased our prices, however, before May 11, 2020, you can still get our lowest prices going premium at $299. Remember after the 11th of May the price will be increased so hurry before it's too late. Get grandfather today. Don't wait. Once you become premium you are safe from price increase from future updates. Not only do we train you to manage your own website we also host it right in WA. For the same price. It's included. Even if you have your website hosted elsewhere we make it simple to move from and to. ===> Get the Black Friday Pricing, Only $299 For a Year of Premium Until May 11th!

Thank you for stopping by and helping me out. I really appreciate you and I know your time is as valuable as mine. If I haven't answered any of your burning questions. Or wrote a satisfying post please don't be shy. Please leave me a comment or have a question I will get to you ASAP!

Disclaimer: Results may vary. This is an attempt to change your mind that you are worth it and that I believe you can do this even if your family is opposed to your choices. This is not a quick-rich scheme. It takes hard work, determination, imagination, a lot of writing, effort, and a go-getter attitude. Meaning never gives up on a few failures. You'll never learn if you don't fail. Challenge the unknown, do it with TAMC. I have affiliate links. Please click here for the full disclosure. I make a little profit to keep my website up for all readers as you thank you for stopping by.

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spacephant0m · 7 years ago

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Animal Crossing Pocket Camp Tips: In-Game Currency

I really love animal crossing, it’s easily one of my favorite games. I had been waiting FOR SO LONG for Pocket Camp to come out, and honestly the day it was released, I cried tears of joy. I love my little animal friends. SO I decided since I’ve never had the chance to do this before (or the willpower), I decided to make my own little game guide for all of you lovely camp-goers~

First of all I’d like to say that a lot of these tips are obviously OPTIONAL. Don’t feel pressured into doing these things if you don’t want to. This is just here to help you make the most out of your gameplay!

DISCLAIMER: this is not a full-fledged guide as an absolutely amazing one has already been written here: https://sirtaptap.com/2017/10/animal-crossing-pocket-camp-guide/ . However, I feel that some quick and easy tip-sharing to make things a bit more ~personal~ is always great to have because, everyone plays games differently. There’s no one way to play a game, especially one like animal crossing. Please keep in mind that not everything in the guide is set in stone as mistakes can be made. As time goes on we’ll have more details about how everything works~

App version: 1.0.0 Date: November 24th, 2017

Making Money

Okay so there are tons of ways to make those sweet sweet bells. Obviously just talking to animal campers is a great way. But there are tons of other things you can do!

1. Tap on campers at your campsite to see if they are available to talk. It won’t tell you above their heads in the map screen if their conversation option has refreshed yet, so you just have to look. This refreshes about every hour. Doing this will help them level up, and sometimes they will give you bells or an item! If their level is maxed out, talk to them anyways just in case they wanna give you something. Approximately every hour, 3 random campers at your site will have new requests, so fulfill those as well just in case they give you some bells/items for it.

2. Catch ALL BUGS AND FISH YOU SEE. PICK UP ALL FRUIT AND SEASHELLS. You can sell them in the market, but if you wanna “grind for bells” quickly, you can easily just choose “sell” instead of “list for sale.” Regular items go for 10 bells a piece, rare items for 100, and then VERY rare go for 1500, (such as the rainbow trout), ULTRA rare go for 5000, (such as the tuna). I WOULD NOT recommend selling these very rare ones unless you just got lucky and somehow have like 5 tuna fish. Save them for later because with further game patches and updates, they’re likely to be useful. And Idk about you but I feel that putting it in your market box for 30k wont do any good considering -most people- do not have that many bells right now and it will be stuck in your market box for a very long time. I’ve seen way too many people doing this and it’s insane.

3. The spawning in this game seems to work a bit like acnl, except that they don’t always randomly spawn. Sometimes you have to leave the area and then come back for new fish and bugs to spawn. Seashells take longer to respawn, though I’m not entirely sure how long it takes. But by leaving the area and coming back, you can easily catch lots of bugs and fish to sell if you’re REALLY short on bells (I’m trying so hard to get enough to buy this 5000 bell acid-washed jacket as I’m typing this).

4. You get 100-200 bells for talking to/assisting campers, and 1000 bells each time you level up.

5. You can shake trees in ACNL, and you can shake trees in ACPC as well! ALL OF THE TREES. EVEN THE PALM TREES. SHAKE EVERY SINGLE ONE. You can get up to 1000 bells this way. That’s like the equivalent of talking to 10 campers. It’s so easy. Shake the trees. I beg of you.

6. You can enter shovelstrike quarry once per day, and you have a good chance and making some moolah here, so, make sure you ask those pals of yours to help ya out. You only need 5 so it shouldn’t be too difficult.

BELL SAVING

1. Some people will say “just build everything.” But that is a no-no if you want to save time and money (and resources o lord). Personally, my main focus is campers. I want certain campers in my campsite, so I prioritized building the furniture that their heart so desires. If your focus is decorating and you don’t care for any of the campers that are available, then knock yourself out crafting those couches. But for me, once I get all of the campers I want, then I will make the furniture I want.

2. Your items aren’t cataloged like they are in ACNL. So there is really no reason to buy every single thing at the little nookling’s shop. Buy what you WANT, but do your best not to make impulse purchases. I know it’s tempting but once the shop rotates and that rare item comes into view, you’ll be heartbroken at how poor you are and that you can’t afford that fancy jacket you wanted. Of course, if you are one of those upperclass folks who can throw dollar dollar bills at this game, then this certainly does not apply to you. Go nuts.

3. Try to pay attention to market box prices. You can easily make 100 bells back by talking to a camper, but paying an excessive amount for a few beetles is no good. I tend to buy stuff from market boxes because I’m lazy and I don’t mind helping out my friends. However, you just have to be smart about it because you can easily spend all of your money this way.

CAMPER CUSTOMIZATION

1. There are currently 2 models of the camper. Vintage and modern. So you don’t HAVE to change your camper model if you don’t want to. Just pick the one you want. The models are 5000 bells and you get a free paint job if you switch models. Fancy patterns cost leaf tickets so make sure you save those up if you want one. Also, you can switch back to patterns you paid for with leaf tickets, as they are always available for free once you buy them.

2. Loans: expanding the interior is something that you can pay off in a loan in this game, just like your house in ACNL.

1st expansion: more space in the main floor, 10,000 bells

2nd expansion: second floor, 30,000 bells

3rd expansion: more space in the second floor, 50,000 bells

4th expansion: more space in the main floor, 100,000 bells

5th expansion: more first floor space (maximum? Not sure yet), 150,000 bells

6th expansion: more second floor space (max?), 200,000 bells

NOTE: currently there is a bug with paying off a loan, where it will take out your money you put in and then later say you didn’t actually pay anything, but you will have less bells. It’s best to pay it all off at once and then immediately go to OK MOTORS and upgrade again! I’m sure they will fix this since this is only version 1.0.0.

LEAF TICKETS

Last but not least, the dreaded in-game currency. First of all I’d like to say that you should not complain about this because this is how game devs make money. I believe that all artists deserve payment for their work and, asking that they do this for free is just a no-no, even if it is a “big company.” These people have to pay their bills, man. Besides, a game like this isn’t the same as an actual fully featured video game. It’s great that people have the option to pay for something IF THEY WANT TO. And let me tell you, a copy of animal crossing new leaf is currently 20 USD, and most hardcore animal crossing fans actually purchase multiple copies of the game just so that they can have another custom town and more of the villagers that they want, since you are limited to 10 in that game.

OKAY ENOUGH BABBLING ON, time for the tips

1. Save your leaf tickets. What should you spend them on? 3 things:

Limited special items. I bought Tom Nook and K.K. even tho only one of them will be out at a time, because I love them both so much.

Expanding your crafting capacity. This is so super helpful and actually useful to you, as most things in the game you can pay for with leaf tickets are actually easily attainable. The ONLY way to expand crafting capacity is with leaf tickets, so spend them on this.

Camper paint customization. Make sure you only do this if you really truly want that fancy camper paintjob.

2. If you have a dollar to spare I’d recommend spending it on the 72 hour special offer because you can get double the amount of leaf tickets (40) for the price of 20. Offers like this in mobile games tend to only come around rarely, such as for specific holidays, game anniversaries, etc. And, personally, I like to support things that I love, which brings me to my next point.

3. This may not be a decision that you can make so early in the game’s release, however, if you like this game and you want to see it improve, SUPPORT IT. Buy yourself some leaf tickets. It is sooo important to support games that you love, as that is how they can afford to spend time making new updates and adding new content. A lot of people absolutely DESPISE this sort of thing but, good games come with paying for em. People were totally outraged that you have to pay to play Mario on mobile devices. They are giving us this game for FREE with lots of great content. It’s certainly not a pay-to-play game, which I am so thankful for. And if all else fails and you’d rather not spend money on Pocket Camp, go out and buy yourself a different animal crossing game to show your support for it. And I don’t want to see anyone whining that game devs have to make a living with their work. Creative careers are so incredibly under-appreciated because people think they should have access to LEISURE for free. HEALTH CARE should be free, not leisurely activities that are OPTIONAL. This backwards thinking is incredibly toxic behavior.

If you’re like me, a poor millennial child just trying to get through college, then you shouldn’t mindlessly throw your money away buying fishing nets and honey pots. I’d recommend you save your leaf tickets for more special items that ACPC will have in the future.

Thanks for reading and I hope you found this helpful. This is just something I whipped up to avoid writing my research paper. Please leave more tips and any corrections if you have any!

#dandan speaks #acpc #animal crossing pocket camp guide #acpc guide #game guide #animal crossing guide #animal crossing pocket camp #idk what else to tag this with #respect game devs #lol #RESPECT CREATIVE CAREERS

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viralnewstime · 6 years ago

Link

This week, Facebook invited a small group of journalists — which didn’t include TechCrunch — to look at the “war room” it has set up in Dublin, Ireland, to help monitor its products for election-related content that violates its policies. (“Time and space constraints” limited the numbers, a spokesperson told us when he asked why we weren’t invited.)

Facebook announced it would be setting up this Dublin hub — which will bring together data scientists, researchers, legal and community team members, and others in the organization to tackle issues like fake news, hate speech and voter suppression — back in January. The company has said it has nearly 40 teams working on elections across its family of apps, without breaking out the number of staff it has dedicated to countering political disinformation.

We have been told that there would be “no news items” during the closed tour — which, despite that, is “under embargo” until Sunday — beyond what Facebook and its executives discussed last Friday in a press conference about its European election preparations.

The tour looks to be a direct copy-paste of the one Facebook held to show off its US election “war room” last year, which it did invite us on. (In that case it was forced to claim it had not disbanded the room soon after heavily PR’ing its existence — saying the monitoring hub would be used again for future elections.)

We understand — via a non-Facebook source — that several broadcast journalists were among the invites to its Dublin “war room”. So expect to see a few gauzy inside views at the end of the weekend, as Facebook’s PR machine spins up a gear ahead of the vote to elect the next European Parliament later this month.

It’s clearly hoping shots of serious-looking Facebook employees crowded around banks of monitors will play well on camera and help influence public opinion that it’s delivering an even social media playing field for the EU parliament election. The European Commission is also keeping a close watch on how platforms handle political disinformation before a key vote.

But with the pan-EU elections set to start May 23, and a general election already held in Spain last month, we believe the lack of new developments to secure EU elections is very much to the company’s discredit.

The EU parliament elections are now a mere three weeks away, and there are a lot of unresolved questions and issues Facebook has yet to address. Yet we’re told the attending journalists were once again not allowed to put any questions to the fresh-faced Facebook employees staffing the “war room”.

Ahead of the looming batch of Sunday evening ‘war room tour’ news reports, which Facebook will be hoping contain its “five pillars of countering disinformation” talking points, we’ve compiled a run down of some key concerns and complications flowing from the company’s still highly centralized oversight of political campaigning on its platform — even as it seeks to gloss over how much dubious stuff keeps falling through the cracks.

Worthwhile counterpoints to another highly managed Facebook “election security” PR tour.

No overview of political ads in most EU markets

Since political disinformation created an existential nightmare for Facebook’s ad business with the revelations of Kremlin-backed propaganda targeting the 2016 US presidential election, the company has vowed to deliver transparency — via the launch of a searchable political ad archive for ads running across its products.

The Facebook Ad Library now shines a narrow beam of light into the murky world of political advertising. Before this, each Facebook user could only see the propaganda targeted specifically at them. Now, such ads stick around in its searchable repository for seven years. This is a major step up on total obscurity. (Obscurity that Facebook isn’t wholly keen to lift the lid on, we should add; Its political data releases to researchers so far haven’t gone back before 2017.)

However, in its current form, in the vast majority of markets, the Ad Library makes the user do all the leg work — running searches manually to try to understand and quantify how Facebook’s platform is being used to spread political messages intended to influence voters.

Facebook does also offer an Ad Library Report — a downloadable weekly summary of ads viewed and highest spending advertisers. But it only offers this in four countries globally right now: the US, India, Israel and the UK.

It has said it intends to ship an update to the reports in mid-May. But it’s not clear whether that will make them available in every EU country. (Mid-May would also be pretty late for elections that start May 23.)

So while the UK report makes clear that the new ‘Brexit Party’ is now a leading spender ahead of the EU election, what about the other 27 members of the bloc? Don’t they deserve an overview too?

A spokesperson we talked to about this week’s closed briefing said Facebook had no updates on expanding Ad Library Reports to more countries, in Europe or otherwise.

So, as it stands, the vast majority of EU citizens are missing out on meaningful reports that could help them understand which political advertisers are trying to reach them and how much they’re spending.

Which brings us to…

Facebook’s Ad Archive API is far too limited

In another positive step Facebook has launched an API for the ad archive that developers and researchers can use to query the data. However, as we reported earlier this week, many respected researchers have voiced disappointed with what it’s offering so far — saying the rate-limited API is not nearly open or accessible enough to get a complete picture of all ads running on its platform.

Following this criticism, Facebook’s director of product, Rob Leathern, tweeted a response, saying the API would improve. “With a new undertaking, we’re committed to feedback & want to improve in a privacy-safe way,” he wrote.

The question is when will researchers have a fit-for-purpose tool to understand how political propaganda is flowing over Facebook’s platform? Apparently not in time for the EU elections, either: We asked about this on Thursday and were pointed to Leathern’s tweets as the only update.

This issue is compounded by Facebook also restricting the ability of political transparency campaigners — such as the UK group WhoTargetsMe and US investigative journalism site ProPublica — to monitor ads via browser plug-ins, as the Guardian reported in January.

The net effect is that Facebook is making life hard for civil society groups and public interest researchers to study the flow of political messaging on its platform to try to quantify democratic impacts, and offering only a highly managed level of access to ad data that falls far short of the “political ads transparency” Facebook’s PR has been loudly trumpeting since 2017.

Ad loopholes remain ripe for exploiting

Facebook’s Ad Library includes data on political ads that were active on its platform but subsequently got pulled (made “inactive” in its parlance) because they broke its disclosure rules.

There are multiple examples of inactive ads for the Spanish far right party Vox visible in Facebook’s Ad Library that were pulled for running without the required disclaimer label, for example.

“After the ad started running, we determined that the ad was related to politics and issues of national importance and required the label. The ad was taken down,” runs the standard explainer Facebook offers if you click on the little ‘i’ next to an observation that “this ad ran without a disclaimer”.

What is not at all clear is how quickly Facebook acted to removed rule-breaking political ads.

It is possible to click on each individual ad to get some additional details. Here Facebook provides a per ad breakdown of impressions; genders, ages, and regional locations of the people who saw the ad; and how much was spent on it.

But all those clicks don’t scale. So it’s not possible to get an overview of how effectively Facebook is handling political ad rule breakers. Unless, well, you literally go in clicking and counting on each and every ad…

There is then also the wider question of whether a political advertiser that is found to be systematically breaking Facebook rules should be allowed to keep running ads on its platform.

Because if Facebook does allow that to happen there’s a pretty obvious (and massive) workaround for its disclosure rules: Bad faith political advertisers could simply keep submitting fresh ads after the last batch got taken down.

We were, for instance, able to find inactive Vox ads taken down for lacking a disclaimer that had still been able to rack up thousands — and even tens of thousands — of impressions in the time they were still active.

Facebook needs to be much clearer about how it handles systematic rule breakers.

Definition of political issue ads is still opaque

Facebook currently requires that all political advertisers in the EU go through its authorization process in the country where ads are being delivered if they relate to the European Parliamentary elections, as a step to try and prevent foreign interference.

This means it asks political advertisers to submit documents and runs technical checks to confirm their identity and location. Though it noted, on last week’s call, that it cannot guarantee this ID system cannot be circumvented. (As it was last year when UK journalists were able to successfully place ads paid for by ‘Cambridge Analytica’.)

One other big potential workaround is the question of what is a political ad? And what is an issue ad?

Facebook says these types of ads on Facebook and Instagram in the EU “must now be clearly labeled, including a paid-for-by disclosure from the advertiser at the top of the ad” — so users can see who is paying for the ads and, if there’s a business or organization behind it, their contact details, plus some disclosure about who, if anyone, saw the ads.

But the big question is how is Facebook defining political and issue ads across Europe?

While political ads might seem fairly easy to categorize — assuming they’re attached to registered political parties and candidates, issues are a whole lot more subjective.

Currently Facebook defines issue ads as those relating to “any national legislative issue of public importance in any place where the ad is being run.” It says it worked with EU barometer, YouGov and other third parties to develop an initial list of key issues — examples for Europe include immigration, civil and social rights, political values, security and foreign policy, the economy and environmental politics — that it will “refine… over time.”

Again specifics on when and how that will be refined are not clear. Yet ads that Facebook does not deem political/issue ads will slip right under its radar. They won’t be included in the Ad Library; they won’t be searchable; but they will be able to influence Facebook users under the perfect cover of its commercial ad platform — as before.

So if any maliciously minded propaganda slips through Facebook’s net, because the company decides it’s a non-political issue, it will once again leave no auditable trace.

In recent years the company has also had a habit of announcing major takedowns of what it badges “fake accounts” ahead of major votes. But again voters have to take it on trust that Facebook is getting those judgement calls right.

Facebook continues to bar pan-EU campaigns

On the flip side of weeding out non-transparent political propaganda and/or political disinformation, Facebook is currently blocking the free flow of legal pan-EU political campaigning on its platform.

This issue first came to light several weeks ago, when it emerged that European officials had written to Nick Clegg (Facebook’s vice president of global affairs) to point out that its current rules — i.e. that require those campaigning via Facebook ads to have a registered office in the country where the ad is running — run counter to the pan-European nature of this particular election.

It means EU institutions are in the strange position of not being able to run Facebook ads for their own pan-EU election everywhere across the region. “This runs counter to the nature of EU institutions. By definition, our constituency is multinational and our target audience are in all EU countries and beyond,” the EU’s most senior civil servants pointed out in a letter to the company last month.

This issue impacts not just EU institutions and organizations advocating for particular policies and candidates across EU borders, but even NGOs wanting to run vanilla “get out the vote” campaigns Europe-wide — leading to a number to accuse Facebook of breaching their electoral rights and freedoms.

Facebook claimed last week that the ball is effectively in the regulators’ court on this issue — saying it’s open to making the changes but has to get their agreement to do so. A spokesperson confirmed to us that there is no update to that situation, either.

Of course the company may be trying to err on the side of caution, to prevent bad actors being able to interfere with the vote across Europe. But at what cost to democratic freedoms?

What about fake news spreading on WhatsApp?

Facebook’s ‘election security’ initiatives have focused on political and/or politically charged ads running across its products. But there’s no shortage of political disinformation flowing unchecked across its platforms as user uploaded ‘content’.

On the Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp, which is hugely popular in some European markets, the presence of end-to-end encryption further complicates this issue by providing a cloak for the spread of political propaganda that’s not being regulated by Facebook.

In a recent study of political messages spread via WhatsApp ahead of last month’s general election in Spain, the campaign group Avaaz dubbed it “social media’s dark web” — claiming the app had been “flooded with lies and hate”.

“Posts range from fake news about Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signing a secret deal for Catalan independence to conspiracy theories about migrants receiving big cash payouts, propaganda against gay people and an endless flood of hateful, sexist, racist memes and outright lies,” it wrote.

Avaaz compiled this snapshot of politically charged messages and memes being shared on Spanish WhatsApp by co-opting 5,833 local members to forward election-related content that they deemed false, misleading or hateful.

It says it received a total of 2,461 submissions — which is of course just a tiny, tiny fraction of the stuff being shared in WhatsApp groups and chats. Which makes this app the elephant in Facebook’s election ‘war room’.

What exactly is a war room anyway?

Facebook has said its Dublin Elections Operation Center — to give it its official title — is “focused on the EU elections”, while also suggesting it will plug into a network of global teams “to better coordinate in real time across regions and with our headquarters in California [and] accelerate our rapid response times to fight bad actors and bad content”.

But we’re concerned Facebook is sending out mixed — and potentially misleading — messages about how its election-focused resources are being allocated.

Our (non-Facebook) source told us the 40-odd staffers in the Dublin hub during the press tour were simultaneously looking at the Indian elections. If that’s the case, it does not sound entirely “focused” on either the EU or India’s elections.

Facebook’s eponymous platform has 2.375 billion monthly active users globally, with some 384 million MAUs in Europe. That’s more users than in the US (243M MAUs). Though Europe is Facebook’s second-biggest market in terms of revenues after the US. Last quarter, it pulled in $3.65BN in sales for Facebook (versus $7.3BN for the US) out of $15BN overall.

Apart from any kind of moral or legal pressure that Facebook might have for running a more responsible platform when it comes to supporting democratic processes, these numbers underscore the business imperative that it has to get this sorted out in Europe in a better way.

Having a “war room” may sound like a start, but unfortunately Facebook is presenting it as an end in itself. And its foot-dragging on all of the bigger issues that need tackling, in effect, means the war will continue to drag on.

from Social – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DNPAOH

#Blogger

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sheminecrafts · 6 years ago

Text

When it comes to elections, Facebook moves slow, may still break things

Worthwhile counterpoints to another highly managed Facebook “election security” PR tour.

No overview of political ads in most EU markets

A spokesperson we talked to about this week’s closed briefing said Facebook had no updates on expanding Ad Library Reports to more countries, in Europe or otherwise.

Which brings us to…

Facebook’s Ad Archive API is far too limited

Ad loopholes remain ripe for exploiting

Facebook’s Ad Library includes data on political ads that were active on its platform but subsequently got pulled (made “inactive” in its parlance) because they broke its disclosure rules.

There are multiple examples of inactive ads for the Spanish far right party Vox visible in Facebook’s Ad Library that were pulled for running without the required disclaimer label, for example.

What is not at all clear is how quickly Facebook acted to removed rule-breaking political ads.

There is then also the wider question of whether a political advertiser that is found to be systematically breaking Facebook rules should be allowed to keep running ads on its platform.

Facebook needs to be much clearer about how it handles systematic rule breakers.

Definition of political issue ads is still opaque

One other big potential workaround is the question of what is a political ad? And what is an issue ad?

But the big question is how is Facebook defining political and issue ads across Europe?

While political ads might seem fairly easy to categorize — assuming they’re attached to registered political parties and candidates, issues are a whole lot more subjective.

So if any maliciously minded propaganda slips through Facebook’s net, because the company decides it’s a non-political issue, it will once again leave no auditable trace.

Facebook continues to bar pan-EU campaigns

Of course the company may be trying to err on the side of caution, to prevent bad actors being able to interfere with the vote across Europe. But at what cost to democratic freedoms?

What about fake news spreading on WhatsApp?

What exactly is a war room anyway?

But we’re concerned Facebook is sending out mixed — and potentially misleading — messages about how its election-focused resources are being allocated.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://tcrn.ch/2DNPAOH via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes

endenogatai · 6 years ago

Text

When it comes to elections, Facebook moves slow, may still break things

Worthwhile counterpoints to another highly managed Facebook “election security” PR tour.

No overview of political ads in most EU markets

A spokesperson we talked to about this week’s closed briefing said Facebook had no updates on expanding Ad Library Reports to more countries, in Europe or otherwise.

Which brings us to…

Facebook’s Ad Archive API is far too limited

Ad loopholes remain ripe for exploiting

Facebook’s Ad Library includes data on political ads that were active on its platform but subsequently got pulled (made “inactive” in its parlance) because they broke its disclosure rules.

There are multiple examples of inactive ads for the Spanish far right party Vox visible in Facebook’s Ad Library that were pulled for running without the required disclaimer label, for example.

What is not at all clear is how quickly Facebook acted to removed rule-breaking political ads.

There is then also the wider question of whether a political advertiser that is found to be systematically breaking Facebook rules should be allowed to keep running ads on its platform.

Facebook needs to be much clearer about how it handles systematic rule breakers.

Definition of political issue ads is still opaque

One other big potential workaround is the question of what is a political ad? And what is an issue ad?

But the big question is how is Facebook defining political and issue ads across Europe?

While political ads might seem fairly easy to categorize — assuming they’re attached to registered political parties and candidates, issues are a whole lot more subjective.

So if any maliciously minded propaganda slips through Facebook’s net, because the company decides it’s a non-political issue, it will once again leave no auditable trace.

Facebook continues to bar pan-EU campaigns

Of course the company may be trying to err on the side of caution, to prevent bad actors being able to interfere with the vote across Europe. But at what cost to democratic freedoms?

What about fake news spreading on WhatsApp?

What exactly is a war room anyway?

But we’re concerned Facebook is sending out mixed — and potentially misleading — messages about how its election-focused resources are being allocated.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://tcrn.ch/2DNPAOH via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

0 notes

technicalsolutions88 · 6 years ago

Link

Worthwhile counterpoints to another highly managed Facebook “election security” PR tour.

No overview of political ads in most EU markets

A spokesperson we talked to about this week’s closed briefing said Facebook had no updates on expanding Ad Library Reports to more countries, in Europe or otherwise.

Which brings us to…

Facebook’s Ad Archive API is far too limited

Ad loopholes remain ripe for exploiting

Facebook’s Ad Library includes data on political ads that were active on its platform but subsequently got pulled (made “inactive” in its parlance) because they broke its disclosure rules.

There are multiple examples of inactive ads for the Spanish far right party Vox visible in Facebook’s Ad Library that were pulled for running without the required disclaimer label, for example.

What is not at all clear is how quickly Facebook acted to removed rule-breaking political ads.

There is then also the wider question of whether a political advertiser that is found to be systematically breaking Facebook rules should be allowed to keep running ads on its platform.

Facebook needs to be much clearer about how it handles systematic rule breakers.

Definition of political issue ads is still opaque

One other big potential workaround is the question of what is a political ad? And what is an issue ad?

But the big question is how is Facebook defining political and issue ads across Europe?

While political ads might seem fairly easy to categorize — assuming they’re attached to registered political parties and candidates, issues are a whole lot more subjective.

So if any maliciously minded propaganda slips through Facebook’s net, because the company decides it’s a non-political issue, it will once again leave no auditable trace.

Facebook continues to bar pan-EU campaigns

Of course the company may be trying to err on the side of caution, to prevent bad actors being able to interfere with the vote across Europe. But at what cost to democratic freedoms?

What about fake news spreading on WhatsApp?

What exactly is a war room anyway?

But we’re concerned Facebook is sending out mixed — and potentially misleading — messages about how its election-focused resources are being allocated.

from Social – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2DNPAOH Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

#Technical Solutions #SEO #Online Earning #Youtube Marketing #Android Developer

0 notes

aracecvliwest · 6 years ago

Text

Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

A few years ago, a former boss of mine emailed me out of the blue and asked for a resource that would help him and his colleagues organize information more effectively. Like a dutiful friend, I sent him links to a few articles and the names of some professional writing books. And I qualified my answer with that dreaded disclaimer: “Advice varies widely depending on the situation.” Implication: “You’ll just have to figure out what works best for you. So, good luck!”

In retrospect, I could have given him a better answer. Much like the gestalt principles of design that underpin so much of what designers do, there are foundational principles and patterns of organization that are relevant to any professional who must convey technical information in writing, and you can adapt these concepts to bring order out of chaos whether or not you’re a full-time writer.

Recognize the primary goals: comprehension and performance

Not long after I wrote my response, I revisited a book I’d read in college: Technical Editing, by Carolyn D. Rude. In my role as a technical writer, I reference the book every now and then for practical advice on revising software documentation. This time, as I reviewed the chapter on organization, I realized that Rude explained the high-level goals and principles better than any other author I’d read up to that point.

In short, she says that whether you are outlining a procedure, describing a product, or announcing a cool new feature, a huge amount of writing in the workplace is aimed at comprehension (here’s what X is and why you should care) and performance (here’s how to do X). She then suggests that editors choose from two broad kinds of order to support these goals: content-based order and task-based order. The first refers to structures that guide readers from major sections to more detailed sections to facilitate top-down learning; the second refers to structures of actions that readers need to carry out. Content-based orders typically start with nouns, whereas task-based orders typically begin with verbs.

Content-Based Order Example

Product Overview

Introduction

Features

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature n

Contact

Support

Task-Based Order Example

User Guide (WordPress)

Update your title and tagline

Pick a theme you love

Add a header or background

Add a site icon

Add a widget

Of course, not all writing situations fall neatly into these buckets. If you were to visit Atlassian’s online help content, you would see a hybrid of content-based topics at the first level and task-based topics within them. The point is that as you begin to think about your organization, you should ask yourself:

Which of the major goals of organization (comprehension or performance) am I trying to achieve?

And which broad kind of order will help me best achieve those goals?

This is still pretty abstract, so let’s consider the other principles from Carolyn Rude, but with a focus on how a writer rather than an editor should approach the task of organization.1

Steal like an organizer: follow pre-established document structures

In his book Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon argues that smart artists don’t actually create anything new but rather collect inspiring ideas from specific role models, and produce work that is profoundly shaped by them.

“If we’re free from the burden of trying to be completely original,” he writes, “we can stop trying to make something out of nothing, and we can embrace influence instead of running away from it.”

The same principle applies to the art of organization. To “steal like an organizer” means to look at what other people have written and to identify and follow pre-established structures that may apply to your situation. Doing so not only saves time and effort but also forces you to remember that your audience may already expect a particular pattern—and experience cognitive dissonance if they don’t get it.

You are probably familiar with more pre-established structures than you think. News reports follow the inverted pyramid. Research reports often adhere to some form of the IMRAD structure (Introduction, Methodology, Results, and Discussion). Instruction manuals typically have an introductory section followed by tasks grouped according to the typical sequence a user would need to follow. Even troubleshooting articles tend to have a standard structure of Problem, Cause, and Solution.

All this may sound like common sense, and yet many writers entirely skip this process of adapting pre-made structures. I can understand the impulse. When you face a blank screen, it feels simpler to capture the raw notes and organize it all later. That approach can certainly help you get into the flow, but it may also result in an ad hoc structure that fails to serve readers who are less familiar with your material.

Instead, when you begin the writing process, start by researching available templates or pre-made structures that could support your situation. Standard word processors and content management systems already contain some good templates, and it’s easy to search for others online. Your fellow writers and designers are also good resources. If you’re contributing to a series of documents at your organization, you should get familiar with the structure of that series and learn how to work within it. Or you can do some benchmarking and steal some ideas from how other companies structure similar content.

My team once had to do our own stealing for a major project that affected about half our company. We needed to come up with a repeatable structure for standard operating procedures (SOPs) that any employee could use to document a set of tasks. Knowing SOPs to be a well-established genre, we found several recommended structures online and in books, and came up with a list of common elements. We then decided which ones to steal and arranged them into a sequence that best suited our audience. We made out like bandits.

Structural SOP Elements We Found Our Assessment Overview Steal Roles Involved Steal Dependencies Steal Estimated Level of Effort Nah, too hard to calculate and maintain. Process Diagram Meh, kind of redundant, not to mention a lot of work. No thanks. Tasks Steal Task n Steal Task n Introduction Steal Task n Responsibility Steal Task n Steps Steal See Also Steal

But what if there is no pre-established pattern? Or what if a pattern exists, but it’s either too simple or too complex for what you’re trying to accomplish? Or what if it’s not as user-friendly as you would like?

There may indeed be cases where you need to develop a mostly customized structure, which can be daunting. But fear not! That’s where the other principles of organization come in.

Anticipate your readers’ questions (and maybe even talk to them)

Recently I had an extremely frustrating user experience. While consulting some documentation to learn about a new process, I encountered a series of web pages that gave no introduction and dove straight into undefined jargon and acronyms that I had never heard of. When I visited related pages to get more context, I found the same problem. There was no background information for a newbie like me. The writers failed in this case to anticipate my questions and instead assumed a great deal of prior knowledge.

Don’t make this mistake when you design your structure. Like a journalist, you need to answer the who, what, where, when, how, and why of your content, and then incorporate the answers in your structure. Anticipate common questions, such as “What is this? Where do I start? What must I know? What must I do?” This sort of critical reflection is all the more important when organizing web content, because users will almost certainly enter and exit your pages in nonlinear, unpredictable ways.

If possible, you should also meet with your readers, and gather information about what would best serve them. One simple technique you could try is to create a knowledge map, an annotated matrix of sorts that my team once built after asking various teams about their information priorities. On the left axis, we listed categories of information that we thought each team needed. Along the top axis, we listed a column for each team. We then gave team representatives a chance to rank each category and add custom categories we hadn’t included. (You can learn more about the process we followed in this video presentation.)

A knowledge map my team created after asking other teams which categories of information were most important to them.

The weakness of this approach is that it doesn’t reveal information that your audience doesn’t know how to articulate. To fill in this gap, I recommend running a few informal usability tests. But if you don’t have the time for that, building a knowledge map is better than not meeting with your readers at all, because it will help you discover structural ideas you hadn’t considered. Our knowledge map revealed multiple categories that were required across almost all teams—which, in turn, suggested a particular hierarchy and sequence to weave into our design.

Go from general to specific, familiar to new

People tend to learn and digest information best by going from general to specific, and familiar to new. By remembering this principle, which is articulated in the schema theory of learning, you can better conceptualize the structure you’re building. What are the foundational concepts of your content? They should appear in your introductory sections. What are the umbrella categories under which more detailed categories fall? The answer should determine which headings belong at the top and subordinate levels of your hierarchy. What you want to avoid is presenting new ideas that don’t flow logically from the foundational concepts and expectations that your readers bring to the table.

Consider the wikiHow article “How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character.” It begins by defining what Dungeons and Dragons is and explaining why you need to create a character before you can start playing the game.

Writers at wikiHow help readers learn by starting with general concepts before moving on to specifics.

The next section, “Part 1: Establishing the Basics,” guides the reader into subsequent foundational steps, such as deciding which version of the game to follow and printing out a character sheet. Later sections (“Selecting a gender and race,” “Choosing a class,” and “Calculating ability scores”) expand on these concepts to introduce more specific, unfamiliar ideas in an incremental fashion, leading readers up a gentle ramp into new territory.

Use conventional patterns to match structure to meaning

Within the general-to-specific/familiar-to-new framework, you can apply additional patterns of organization that virtually all humans understand. Whereas the pre-established document structures above are usually constructed for particular use cases or genres, other conventional patterns match more general mental models (or “schemas,” as the schema theory so elegantly puts it) that we use to make sense of the world. These patterns include chronological, spatial, comparison-contrast, cause-effect, and order of importance.

Chronological

The chronological pattern reveals time or sequence. It’s appropriate for things like instructions, process flows, progress reports, and checklists. In the case of instructions, the order of tasks on a page often implies (or explicitly states) the “proper” or most common sequence for a user to follow. The wikiHow article above, for example, offers a recommended sequence of tasks for beginner players. In the case of progress reports, the sections may be ordered according to the periods of time in which work was done, as in this sample outline from the book Reporting Technical Information, by Kenneth W. Houp et al.:

Beginning

Introduction

Summary of work completed

Middle

Work completed

Period 1 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Period 2 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Work remaining

Period 3 (or remaining periods)

Description of work to be done

Expected cost

End

Evaluation of work in this period

Conclusions and recommendations

The principles of organization listed in this article are in fact another example of the chronological pattern. As Carolyn Rude points out in her book, the principles are arranged as a sort of methodology to follow. Try starting at the top of the list and work your way down. You may find it to be a useful way to produce order out of the chaos before you.

Spatial

The spatial pattern refers to top-to-bottom, left-to-right structures of organization. This is a good pattern if you need to describe the components of an interface or a physical object.

Take a look at the neighbor comparison graph below, which is derived from a sample energy efficiency solution offered by Oracle Utilities. Customers who see this graph would most likely view it from top to bottom and left to right.

A neighbor comparison graph that shows a customer how they compare with their neighbors in terms of energy efficiency.

A detailed description of this feature would then describe each component in that same order. Here’s a sample outline:

Feature name

Title

Bar chart

Efficient neighbors

You

Average neighbors

Date range

Performance insight

Great

Good

Using more than average

Energy use insight

Comparison details (“You’re compared with 10 homes within 6 miles …”)

Comparison-contrast

The comparison-contrast pattern helps users weigh options. It’s useful when reporting the pros and cons of different decisions or comparing the attributes of two or more products or features. You see it often when you shop online and need to compare features and prices. It’s also a common pattern for feasibility studies or investigations that list options along with upsides and downsides.

Cause-effect

The cause-effect pattern shows relationships between actions and reactions. Writers often use it for things like troubleshooting articles, medical diagnoses, retrospectives, and root cause analyses. You can move from effect to cause, or cause to effect, but you should stick to one direction and use it consistently. For example, the cold and flu pages at Drugs.com follow a standard cause-effect pattern that incorporates logical follow-up sections such as “Prevention” and “Treatment”:

What Is It? (This section defines the illness and describes possible “causes.”)

Symptoms (This section goes into the “effects” of the illness.)

Diagnosis

Expected Duration

Prevention

Treatment

When to Call a Professional

Prognosis

For another example, see the “Use parallel structure for parallel sections” section below, which shows what a software troubleshooting article might look like.

Order of importance

The order of importance pattern organizes sections and subsections of content according to priority or significance. It is common in announcements, marketing brochures, release notes, advice articles, and FAQs.

The order of importance pattern is perhaps the trickiest one to get right. As Carolyn Rude says, it’s not always clear what the most important information is. What should come in the beginning, middle, and end? Who decides? The answers will vary according to the author, audience, and purpose.

When writing release notes, for example, my team often debates which software update should come first, because we know that the decision will underscore the significance of that update relative to the others. FAQs by definition are focused on which questions are most common and thus most important, but the exact order will depend on what you perceive as being the most frequent or the most important for readers to know. (If you are considering writing FAQs, I recommend this great advice from technical writer Lisa Wright.)

Other common patterns

Alphabetical order is a common pattern that Rude doesn’t mention in detail but that you may find helpful for your situation. To use this pattern, you would simply list sections or headings based on the first letter of the first word of the heading. For example, alphabetical order is used frequently to list API methods in API documentation sites such as those for Flickr, Twitter, and Java. It is also common in glossaries, indexes, and encyclopedic reference materials where each entry is more or less given equal footing. The downside of this pattern is that the most important information for your audience may not appear in a prominent, findable location. Still, it is useful if you have a large and diverse set of content that defies simple hierarchies and is referenced in a non-linear, piecemeal fashion.

Group related material

Take a look at the lists below. Which do you find easier to scan and digest?

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

Part 1: Establishing the Basics

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Part 2: Calculating Ability Scores

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Part 3: Equipping Skills, Feats, Weapons, and Armor

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Part 4: Finishing Your Character

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

(Source: wikiHow: How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character.)

If you chose the second list, that is probably because the writers relied on a widely used organizational technique: grouping.

Grouping is the process of identifying meaningful categories of information and putting information within those categories to aid reader comprehension. Grouping is especially helpful when you have a long, seemingly random list of information that could benefit from an extra layer of logical order. An added benefit of grouping is that it may reveal where you have gaps in your content or where you have mingled types of content that don’t really belong together.

To group information effectively, first analyze your content and identify the discrete chunks of information you need to convey. Then tease out which chunks fall within similar conceptual buckets, and determine what intuitive headings or labels you can assign to those buckets. Writers do this when creating major and minor sections within a book or printed document. For online content, grouping is typically done at the level of articles or topics within a web-based system, such as a wiki or knowledge base. The Gmail Help Center, for example, groups topics within categories like..

https://ift.tt/2KygsrA

#Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

0 notes

jeanshesallenberger · 6 years ago

Text

Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

Recognize the primary goals: comprehension and performance

Content-Based Order Example

Product Overview

Introduction

Features

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature n

Contact

Support

Task-Based Order Example

User Guide (WordPress)

Update your title and tagline

Pick a theme you love

Add a header or background

Add a site icon

Add a widget

Which of the major goals of organization (comprehension or performance) am I trying to achieve?

And which broad kind of order will help me best achieve those goals?

This is still pretty abstract, so let’s consider the other principles from Carolyn Rude, but with a focus on how a writer rather than an editor should approach the task of organization.1

Steal like an organizer: follow pre-established document structures

There may indeed be cases where you need to develop a mostly customized structure, which can be daunting. But fear not! That’s where the other principles of organization come in.

Anticipate your readers’ questions (and maybe even talk to them)

A knowledge map my team created after asking other teams which categories of information were most important to them.

Go from general to specific, familiar to new

Writers at wikiHow help readers learn by starting with general concepts before moving on to specifics.

Use conventional patterns to match structure to meaning

Chronological

Beginning

Introduction

Summary of work completed

Middle

Work completed

Period 1 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Period 2 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Work remaining

Period 3 (or remaining periods)

Description of work to be done

Expected cost

End

Evaluation of work in this period

Conclusions and recommendations

Spatial

The spatial pattern refers to top-to-bottom, left-to-right structures of organization. This is a good pattern if you need to describe the components of an interface or a physical object.

A neighbor comparison graph that shows a customer how they compare with their neighbors in terms of energy efficiency.

A detailed description of this feature would then describe each component in that same order. Here’s a sample outline:

Feature name

Title

Bar chart

Efficient neighbors

You

Average neighbors

Date range

Performance insight

Great

Good

Using more than average

Energy use insight

Comparison details (“You’re compared with 10 homes within 6 miles …”)

Comparison-contrast

Cause-effect

What Is It? (This section defines the illness and describes possible “causes.”)

Symptoms (This section goes into the “effects” of the illness.)

Diagnosis

Expected Duration

Prevention

Treatment

When to Call a Professional

Prognosis

For another example, see the “Use parallel structure for parallel sections” section below, which shows what a software troubleshooting article might look like.

Order of importance

Other common patterns

Group related material

Take a look at the lists below. Which do you find easier to scan and digest?

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

Part 1: Establishing the Basics

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Part 2: Calculating Ability Scores

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Part 3: Equipping Skills, Feats, Weapons, and Armor

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Part 4: Finishing Your Character

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

(Source: wikiHow: How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character.)

If you chose the second list, that is probably because the writers relied on a widely used organizational technique: grouping.

https://ift.tt/2KygsrA

#Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

0 notes

pattersondonaldblk5 · 6 years ago

Text

Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

Recognize the primary goals: comprehension and performance

Content-Based Order Example

Product Overview

Introduction

Features

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature n

Contact

Support

Task-Based Order Example

User Guide (WordPress)

Update your title and tagline

Pick a theme you love

Add a header or background

Add a site icon

Add a widget

Which of the major goals of organization (comprehension or performance) am I trying to achieve?

And which broad kind of order will help me best achieve those goals?

This is still pretty abstract, so let’s consider the other principles from Carolyn Rude, but with a focus on how a writer rather than an editor should approach the task of organization.1

Steal like an organizer: follow pre-established document structures

There may indeed be cases where you need to develop a mostly customized structure, which can be daunting. But fear not! That’s where the other principles of organization come in.

Anticipate your readers’ questions (and maybe even talk to them)

A knowledge map my team created after asking other teams which categories of information were most important to them.

Go from general to specific, familiar to new

Writers at wikiHow help readers learn by starting with general concepts before moving on to specifics.

Use conventional patterns to match structure to meaning

Chronological

Beginning

Introduction

Summary of work completed

Middle

Work completed

Period 1 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Period 2 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Work remaining

Period 3 (or remaining periods)

Description of work to be done

Expected cost

End

Evaluation of work in this period

Conclusions and recommendations

Spatial

The spatial pattern refers to top-to-bottom, left-to-right structures of organization. This is a good pattern if you need to describe the components of an interface or a physical object.

A neighbor comparison graph that shows a customer how they compare with their neighbors in terms of energy efficiency.

A detailed description of this feature would then describe each component in that same order. Here’s a sample outline:

Feature name

Title

Bar chart

Efficient neighbors

You

Average neighbors

Date range

Performance insight

Great

Good

Using more than average

Energy use insight

Comparison details (“You’re compared with 10 homes within 6 miles …”)

Comparison-contrast

Cause-effect

What Is It? (This section defines the illness and describes possible “causes.”)

Symptoms (This section goes into the “effects” of the illness.)

Diagnosis

Expected Duration

Prevention

Treatment

When to Call a Professional

Prognosis

For another example, see the “Use parallel structure for parallel sections” section below, which shows what a software troubleshooting article might look like.

Order of importance

Other common patterns

Group related material

Take a look at the lists below. Which do you find easier to scan and digest?

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

Part 1: Establishing the Basics

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Part 2: Calculating Ability Scores

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Part 3: Equipping Skills, Feats, Weapons, and Armor

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Part 4: Finishing Your Character

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

(Source: wikiHow: How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character.)

If you chose the second list, that is probably because the writers relied on a widely used organizational technique: grouping.

https://ift.tt/2KygsrA

#Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

0 notes

joannlyfgnch · 6 years ago

Text

Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

Recognize the primary goals: comprehension and performance

Content-Based Order Example

Product Overview

Introduction

Features

Feature 1

Feature 2

Feature n

Contact

Support

Task-Based Order Example

User Guide (WordPress)

Update your title and tagline

Pick a theme you love

Add a header or background

Add a site icon

Add a widget

Which of the major goals of organization (comprehension or performance) am I trying to achieve?

And which broad kind of order will help me best achieve those goals?

This is still pretty abstract, so let’s consider the other principles from Carolyn Rude, but with a focus on how a writer rather than an editor should approach the task of organization.1

Steal like an organizer: follow pre-established document structures

There may indeed be cases where you need to develop a mostly customized structure, which can be daunting. But fear not! That’s where the other principles of organization come in.

Anticipate your readers’ questions (and maybe even talk to them)

A knowledge map my team created after asking other teams which categories of information were most important to them.

Go from general to specific, familiar to new

Writers at wikiHow help readers learn by starting with general concepts before moving on to specifics.

Use conventional patterns to match structure to meaning

Chronological

Beginning

Introduction

Summary of work completed

Middle

Work completed

Period 1 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Period 2 (beginning and end dates)

Description

Cost

Work remaining

Period 3 (or remaining periods)

Description of work to be done

Expected cost

End

Evaluation of work in this period

Conclusions and recommendations

Spatial

The spatial pattern refers to top-to-bottom, left-to-right structures of organization. This is a good pattern if you need to describe the components of an interface or a physical object.

A neighbor comparison graph that shows a customer how they compare with their neighbors in terms of energy efficiency.

A detailed description of this feature would then describe each component in that same order. Here’s a sample outline:

Feature name

Title

Bar chart

Efficient neighbors

You

Average neighbors

Date range

Performance insight

Great

Good

Using more than average

Energy use insight

Comparison details (“You’re compared with 10 homes within 6 miles …”)

Comparison-contrast

Cause-effect

What Is It? (This section defines the illness and describes possible “causes.”)

Symptoms (This section goes into the “effects” of the illness.)

Diagnosis

Expected Duration

Prevention

Treatment

When to Call a Professional

Prognosis

For another example, see the “Use parallel structure for parallel sections” section below, which shows what a software troubleshooting article might look like.

Order of importance

Other common patterns

Group related material

Take a look at the lists below. Which do you find easier to scan and digest?

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

Part 1: Establishing the Basics

Settle on a version of D&D.

Print a character sheet, if desired.

Select a gender and race.

Choose a class.

Name your character.

Part 2: Calculating Ability Scores

Identify the main attributes of your character.

Roll for ability scores.

Assign the six recorded numbers to the six main attributes.

Use the “Point Buy” system, alternatively.

Generate random ability scores online.

Record the modifier for each ability.

Part 3: Equipping Skills, Feats, Weapons, and Armor

Select skills for your character.

List your character’s feats.

Roll for your starting gold.

Equip your character with items.

Fill in armor class and combat bonuses.

Part 4: Finishing Your Character

Paint a picture of your character.

Determine the alignment of your character.

Play your character in a campaign.

(Source: wikiHow: How to Create a Dungeons and Dragons Character.)

If you chose the second list, that is probably because the writers relied on a widely used organizational technique: grouping.

https://ift.tt/2KygsrA

#Order Out of Chaos: Patterns of Organization for Writing on the Job

0 notes