#also people assuming I’m talking about THEM instead of the very prevalent lists that exist on the internet.

[museenkuss]

[I’m aware films are even worse when it comes to Americanisation, but this was still a bleak list to come across. Which is NOT the fault of the person making the poll!!!! I’m criticising the anglocentrism in the arts and especially films here.

Bonus: addition I made before adding the link:]

@ those “1000 classics you must read or you’re an uncultured unga bunga cretin clown” lists

Update: I collected a few “foreign books in translation” lists here, if you’re interested! :)

[maxwell-grant]

Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions once said :"If you can imagine your Batman comforting a shared child, then congratulations, you're righting Batman. If not, you're just writing the Punisher in a funny hat". This got me wondering: could the Shadow comfort a scared child?

Could he? You forget who was there to lift young Bruce to his feet at his first brush with death (sadly far from his last).

But it's an interesting question to pose still, because children were straight up not in the pulps, not in any I've read, and I can't recall any episodes of the radio show that feature them much (there's gotta be at least a few, because they had everything in that show). The most interaction I think The Shadow's ever had with children (from comics that I can discuss here, because Marshall Rogers' "Harold Goes to Washington" is way, way too much for me to go into right now, and the less I talk about some other DC comics, the better) is in the Street & Smith comics.

There's Jerry from the Devil Kyoti arc, a kid who was traumatized by an encounter with the villain who Sayre's looking after and who ends up having some kind of hidden power that allows him to see The Shadow and defeat the villain. There was a blonde Jerry who showed up later in the Monstradamus arc, but he isn't a kid so much as he's diet Jimmy Olsen or a replacement for Harry, but he had weird eyesight-based powers and a familiarity with The Shadow, so I assume it's the same character.

There was also Donald Jordan - Shadow Jr, and okay, I may have to talk more about this weird little failed experiment some other time, but the basic gist of it is that The Shadow had a friend in Tibet named Harry Jordan (and someday I'm also gonna write about the weird prevalence and significance of the name "Harry" in The Shadow's mythos in and out of universe) who was murdered, leaving his son orphaned and with nowhere to go. And, I'll admit that I have a real weakness for The Shadow calling people "son", which he does a lot in this story.

And as you can expect, it then turns out that the kid's also learned how to cloud minds and has basically the same powers The Shadow has in these comics, and they solve the mystery of his dad's murder together, and yeah, you can absolutely tell that they are setting up this kid to be The Shadow's Robin. Although, interestingly, they don't have The Shadow actually recruit the kid, instead it's Jordan who asks The Shadow if he can go with him and join his mission, and Cranston even states he's going to have to "earn" his way

"Must I stay here, sir? It will always remind me of dad - I'd like to devote my life to your fight against evil and evil doers!

Now, "Shadow Jr's" career was incredibly short-lived, it only lasted for about two other issues, and I have no idea what happened in his final appearence called "Snake Eyes" in Shadow Comics #77, I cannot find that issue anywhere and I really want to. But the one other solo story of his I've read was...well, I think it kinda illustrates why the idea of The Shadow having a Robin was doomed from the start.

...Yeah. Even The Shadow at his most sanitized and family friendly is still The Shadow, and there's no room for children in his network, obviously he shouldn't and wouldn't have children be in those positions or make decisions expected from grown-ups who have already had encounters with death and danger, why would anyone do that-

The only instance I can think of The Shadow interacting with a child in the pulps was during The Prince of Evil, when he has to rescue a young boy from Stark's thugs.

Cranston, dazed, tried to stagger to his feet. Before he could do so, the thug had picked up the limp figure of the boy and was darting out into the street. There was a scream of horror from pedestrians.

A heavy truck was racing at top speed along the avenue. Straight into the path of the truck, the thug threw the senseless boy!

The driver of the truck jammed on the brakes. But it was too late to halt the heavy vehicle. The broad-tired wheels rolled toward the limp head of the lad on the pavement.

An instant before it could crush out his life, Lamont Cranston dived headlong into the path of destruction. His shoulder struck the boy, rolling him toward the curb. A quick wriggle, and Cranston swerved aside from the grinding death that loomed over him.

He picked up the boy. One glance and he knew there was no time to lose. The attempted killer had leaped into a waiting sedan and had already made his escape.

The boy was all Cranston could see or think about. Brass knuckles had fractured his skull. He had suffered a concussion of the brain. A glance at his bluish lips and the fixed glaze of his staring eyes told Cranston that unless the boy was operated on immediately, he would die.

A leap, Cranston was in his car. He laid the boy gently on the seat beside him, then headed the car toward the nearest hospital. Traffic lights were ignored.

The boy was taken to an emergency operating room and a skilled surgeon went to work. When it was over, Cranston asked only one question: "Will the child live?"

"Hard to say. We'll do our best."

"Spare no expense. Put him in a private room. Engage day and night nurses."

Cranston's face was pale. He knew that he himself was indirectly responsible for the boy's attack. A supercriminal had made a prompt answer to Cranston's message over Jackson's telephone. That telephone must have been tapped. The attempt to kill the boy was a vicious warning for Lamont Cranston to mind his own business about the Harmon family. It was a follow-up of the attack on Jackson's dog.

Cranston felt a surge of hot anger. He kept it under control while he answered routine police questions. He told all he knew - which was nothing.

He had only one angry thought. He intended to drive straight to the office of David Chester. He'd get the truth out of the sleek Chester, if he had to batter him with vengeful fists!

Cranston was actually halfway to Chester's office before common sense returned to him. He realized he had lost his sense of balance. He was behaving exactly as the crooks wanted. He was playing their game, not his!

He parked, and the hot rage drained slowly from him. He stopped thinking about the limp figure of a young lad on a white operating table.

This is definitely because Tinsley writes the character differently than Gibson, but I actually cannot think of another occasion where we got to read about The Shadow actively wanting to hit someone with his fists. It's very, very rare to read about The Shadow actually getting mad in the first place in such an undignified way. And I think with this passage, you'll start to notice a pattern.

The problem isn't that The Shadow cannot interact with kids or that he can't comfort them, he does it to his agents and adults he wants to help just fine, he knows how to address people in their language, or any language. The problem is, The Shadow is constantly surrounded by danger everywhere he goes, because he is The Shadow. He can be any number of things at any number of occasions, but usually, when The Shadow shows up, it's usually because people are going to die, and people are going to kill, and it's his job to address that and work the scales.

Children should not be anywhere near this, and if The Shadow's interacting with a child, it usually means that some grave danger or tragedy fell upon them, and he's here to either prevent greater tragedy or address the fall-out, and he'd be the first to agree that neither of these options should be happening at all. It doesn't mean he's not gonna do what's right and give life and limb to protect them, but, it shouldn't be up to the Boogeyman to look after them in the first place. Maybe it shouldn't be up to the Boogeyman to protect us.

But then again, as I mentioned when I talked about my own reasons for liking The Shadow so much, there are many kids who would like nothing more than to have the Boogeyman by their side to protect them. There's comfort in knowing that the scariest man in the room is unconditionally there to protect you, and that is the comfort that The Shadow gives best. Not as Cranston, not under a friendly face, but as what he is.

Due to a lack of scenes from the pulps or satisfying scenes from elsewhere, I will instead be pulling one from a fan story written by Kimberly-Murphy Smith, editor and writer of The Hot Cornerm where The Shadow rescues a child who was kidnapped for blackmail. I couldn't care less that it's fanfic, and if you do, come back in 20 or so years after The Shadow's been made public domain and it's gonna be just as official as anything licensed (on my “to write about” list: how fickle the separation between “official” and “fanfic” is, and the many times it plainly didn’t exist). There’s aspects of her writing I don’t care for, but I really like this scene and I do think The Shadow’s more gentle interactions with people are necessary to getting the character.

Annabelle.

She stopped crying for a minute. "Who's there?" she said, her voice choked.

A friend. Your mommy and daddy sent me to pick you up.

"Mommy? Mommy's here?"

Sh-h-h. Annabelle felt a gloved hand gently stroking her hair. She's waiting for you at home. So, we need to hurry up and leave.

"'kay." She looked around. "Where are you?"

It's kind of hard to see me. It's dark in here, plus you've been crying so much your eyes probably hurt.

"Yeah."

Don't be afraid. I'm here to help.

"'kay."

The implicit trust of children was simply amazing at times. Adults trembled in fear of The Shadow's wrath, but children somehow seemed to understand that he was there to help them, even if they couldn't see him.

Sit up, Annabelle. I'm going to pick you up. Be very quiet.

One hand took each of her arms and guided them around a neck she could not see. "Why are you wearin' a blanket?" she asked as the fabric of his cloak brushed against her shoulders.

Sometimes I get cold at night.

"Even in the summer?"

Even in the summer. He gently stroked her cheek and wiped away her tears. Now, you need to be very quiet so those bad men in the next room don't hear us. I'll bet you're tired.

She nodded.

He rocked her on his arms, projecting a very gentle hypnotic relaxation into her with his powers as he did. You probably didn't get your nap, either. Poor thing. Lean on my shoulder and go to sleep. And when you wake up, you'll be back with Mommy and Daddy.

She yawned, then snuggled against his shoulder and went to sleep.

The Shadow sighed with relief. Now to get past the men out front. He gently pulled the pistol out of its holster under his left arm and slipped it into the belted waist of his overcoat within easy reach, then secured his grip on Annabelle and draped his cloak over her.

She clutched the edge of his cloak in her hand like a security blanket and snuggled against his shoulder again.

(Art by Jill Thompson)

[7-wonders]

The Trouble With Wanting

Summary: Though life has changed for you, for the rest of the world, everything remains the same.

Word Count: 1.3K

Author's Note: Hello yes it's the beginning of Act II of Mad Love. Buckle up. Special shoutout to @mrslangdonn for being so pumped for this and making an actual meme. Really hope I didn't let you down with this.

Mad Love Act I here!

In the grand scheme of things, life has been oddly normal lately. Since being kidnapped by witches, saved by your Antichrist husband, admitting that you actually do love said Antichrist husband, and realizing that you’re potentially the only thing that can stop the end of times, the world continued turning and the days marched on. Michael did what he normally did during the days (you don’t really know what it is he does, to be honest. Probably just talking to rich people all day), and you did too. Life continued as it had been, even though it felt like your world had been changed numerous times lately. Honestly, you had expected things to be a lot more dramatic.

But no, life was almost boring now. Mallory had gone back to New Orleans to handle being the Supreme and running her coven, so besides the texts and phone calls with her to try and figure out how to convince Michael that ending the world wasn’t the right course of action to take, the vigilante talk was almost non-existent in your day-to-day life. That was also because neither of you had any idea how to actually put this plan into action. There had been ideas, of course, but none that held any weight. That may be because the best idea either of you had had was a Powerpoint that showed all of the reasons why ending the world was a bad idea, but in your opinion that was still an idea that was on the table.

Also, you assumed that professors wouldn’t take “preoccupied by your husband’s plans for world domination” as a proper excuse for you not completing your work or showing up to class. At the very least, with how turbulent your life had been, you had expected far less homework than what you’re staring at right now.

You’re sitting in your room, doing some reading for class. Surprisingly, the reading isn’t that boring. It’s certainly not fun to do, which is probably why you hear the music right away; your attention absolutely is not all that focused tonight. It catches you entirely off-guard, considering that there’s no speakers in your room and you definitely did not have any music playing from your phone. You listen for a moment, trying to place the melody.

“Is this Frankie Valli?” you question, standing up from your bed and trying to find the source. Opening up your door to see if this is an isolated incident, you find that the music is drifting throughout the house. ‘Drifting’ is probably the wrong word, since it literally sounds like there’s speakers playing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” that are installed in every room and hallway.

“Hi,” you say, finally coming across Michael in the living room. He’s standing there nonchalantly, which you automatically know means that he’s involved in this.

“Hi,” Michael says right back.

“Uh, what’s with the music?”

“Well, I was on my phone earlier, and I came across an article.”

Smiling, you step towards him. “You did?”

He nods. “I did, and it was extremely informative. Did you know that married couples typically have a reception after they officially get married? Apparently, they share a first dance at the reception.”

“And you believe everything you read on the internet?”

“Sometimes, if there’s some truth to what I’m reading.” You stare at him, biting back a laugh. “We’re married.”

“We are married.”

“We didn’t have a first dance when we got married.”

“No, we did not.”

Finally, Michael sighs, tired of you playing dumb. “(Y/N), may I have this dance?”

You grab Michael’s outstretched hand, letting him pull you towards him. One hand goes onto your waist, the other intertwined with yours. He begins to lead you in a simple waltz, and you’re thankful that he knows how to dance because you sure don’t. “I didn’t know you knew this song,” you comment when you realize he’s humming.

“I enjoy the classics.”

“There’s this scene from a movie, where one of the main characters--”

“You’re talking about 10 Things I Hate About You, right?” You raise an eyebrow in questioning, and he chuckles. “Madelyn loved ‘90s rom coms, and sometimes I was bored enough that I would watch them with her.”

“I’m a little impressed.”

Michael spins you around. “You should be.”

The romanticism of the whole situation is almost overwhelming. It doesn’t matter that you’re in your living room instead of a reception hall, wearing sweatpants instead of a wedding dress. You’re here with Michael, and just that is romance enough for you. You could stand here like this, with him, forever if he asked you to do so.

“What if we had an actual wedding?” Michael asks.

“We did have an actual wedding.”

“I mean one where you actually have a say in it.”

“Well that’s sweet of you, Michael, but you still haven’t taken me on a proper date.”

“My apologies.” He dips you, kissing you before bringing you back up. “How’s Paris for a first date? Maybe Greece?”

You gasp. “Seriously?”

“Absolutely. Wherever you want, whenever you want, however you want.” He punctuates each scenario with a kiss, making your body melt into him. The song ends, the house falling into silence before the music begins to repeat. But neither of you are paying attention to that any more, not when he’s staring at you in a way that makes heat pool in the bottom of your stomach.

“Michael,” you whisper, tilting your head up to kiss him again.

He reciprocates, trailing kisses down your jaw and onto your throat as his hands move up and down your sides. All too soon, he pulls away, making you groan in disappointment. “We shouldn’t, you know…”

“I know,” you lean your head against his chest with a sigh.

Of course. The main issue that’s been prevalent on both yours and Michael’s minds for weeks now: you’re married and you love each other, but sex is...not going to happen for the time being. You both absolutely, 100% want to, but, as with most things in your life, Satan seems to be the major roadblock. You just never thought that your father-in-law (who you’ve still never met) would end up cockblocking you.

Just because Michael made sure that you wouldn’t be under Satan’s influence, that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t stop trying. If anything, he’s going to try even more now that both of you had openly defied his will. And what was the one thing that Satan wanted besides the end of the world? For Michael to have an heir. And you didn’t trust any sort of contraception when it came to the supernatural powers that you had been married into. Michael completely agreed with that, especially since he knew first-hand just how easily material things (like condoms and all of the various forms of birth control) could be manipulated. So for now, until you could figure out a way to safely get it on, sex was off the table. Unfortunately.

“I’m going to go finish my reading, then.” Slowly, because neither of you particularly want to, you disentangle yourself from him.

“And I’m going to...take a shower. A cold shower.” You laugh at him, but you’re really in the same position that he is.

“Have a good night,” you say, bounding up the stairs before you can stop yourself.

“You too.” Michael also goes up the stairs, and you shut your door before you have to say something to him again. You still keep separate bedrooms, partly because you really enjoy your space and partly because you know that, given the opportunity to be laying in a bed with Michael when you’re both horny, you would totally let him fuck you.

Sliding your back down the door, you groan as you hold your head in your hands. Saving the world from the apocalypse is definitely difficult. Having to stop yourself from having sex with your incredibly hot husband? Well, that feels impossible.

//

Tag List (starting from scratch because I need a new tag list so message me if you want to be tagged!): @michaellangdon @trelaney @xavierplympton @hecohansen31 @blakescoven @we-did-it-joe @thatonehumanbeing05 @michaellangdonstanaccount

[dreamwithoutreason]

Really need people to understand that there is a difference between your diagnosis being stigmatized (what usually happens with mental illness) and your diagnosis resulting in you being subjected to ableism (disability) because those two things are a bit different and the distinction is important.

I want to start by saying that I am in no way attempting to minimize the struggles that mentally ill people face. I am mentally ill and have depression, anxiety, and ADHD as well as a physical disability, Cerebral Palsy. The line between the struggles of people with mental illnesses and the struggles of disabled people is thin but there is still a line. I just want to highlight some of the ways that disabled people are especially discriminated against in a world built and run by abled people and how that can be different from how mental ill people experience alienation or stigmatization. These differences are also why I think that comparing a mental illness to a disability can be problematic. I am, however, also aware that there is overlap and that some diagnoses can be considered to have a foot in both arenas, this is in no way meant to be a hard and fast rule. I also don't claim to speak for the entire disabled community but a lot of the things under the ableism list are things that I've experienced myself which is the place that this post is coming from. I want people to realize that ableism is more than stigmatization and that it is engrained in the world that we live in.

Stigmatization comes from people misunderstanding your illness and how seriously it can impact you and your life. I would consider stigmatization to be things like:

People using your diagnosis as an insult or joke, further stigmatizing it. Ex: When ppl say things like "I'm so ocd" or "I'm so bipolar"

People ignoring your symptoms or attributing your symptoms to your character. For example, instead of recognizing the symptoms of your illness like executive dysfunction, someone might just call you lazy.

General lack of understanding or sympathy towards mentally ill people

Lack of accurate representations of mental illnesses in media. Most of the time the character with the mental illness is made to be the villain or antagonist. Once again, very stigmatizing and gross.

Also, for both mentally ill and disabled people it can sometimes be difficult or expensive to get the right medications you need.

Examples of everyday ableism and systematic ableism that's ingrained in our society which particularly affects disabled people include:

Someone using derogatory language to belittle and degrade your existence as a person. It positions you as less than. Can often be a targetted, direct attack at a disabled person. Ex: the r slur, words like "cripple", and using "deaf", "blind", or "disabled" as insults.

Mocking the way someone walks, moves, speaks, or exists as a disabled person.

No one taking you seriously because you are disabled/being subjected to infantilization. People assuming that you can't do anything for yourself.

Able-bodied people assuming the needs of a disabled person without asking them. Often this comes from a place of trying to be helpful but make sure you always ask what you can do to accommodate someone before assuming what they might need help with because it can be infantilizing

Example: I've had a lot of people assume that I need help putting on a jacket or getting my shoes on so they automatically start helping me with it and they basically end up treating me like a child because they assume that I can't do something.

People touching you or your equipment or mobility aids without your consent. Mobility aids can be like extensions of our body so do not touch them without our permission. This urge to violate a disabled person's space comes from the subconscious assumption that disabled people don't have their own autonomy.

Example: many times when I was a full-time wheelchair user people would come up behind me and just start pushing my wheelchair without asking or saying anything. Their intention was to help me get where I was going but it was very jarring to suddenly start being pushed without asking.

Being denied a job because you are disabled.

Job applications including physical ability requirements for non-physical or desk jobs to discourage disabled people from applying. Ex: "must be able to lift [x amount] of pounds"

Being denied the accommodations you need to be able to function in a school/work/home/other environment.

Lack of captions or audio descriptions

Being expected to work and move at the same pace as your peers all of the time.

Constantly feeling the need to "prove" yourself to the abled majority.

The idea that being abled is the ideal and that you need to do everything in your power to try to be as close to abled as possible. The idea that you shouldn't be comfortable with your disability. The notion that being disabled cannot be a whole or fulfilling identity.

A good example of this that people don't often think about are the viral videos that are like "Sally worked for months so that she could [struggle] to walk down the aisle at her wedding! Isn't that sweet?" Or the videos of kids feeling pressured to walk across the stage at graduation. These videos imply that struggling to perform ability is somehow better than being comfortably disabled.

The idea that disabled people can't be desirable, attractive, or sexy. The idea that they don't make good romantic partners.

Using disabled people as inspiration porn. This happens a lot with viral videos of disabled people where the comments amount to "if they can live with a disability, then you have no reason to complain about your life!" Disabled people do not exist to inspire you.

Also another personal example but one time in gym class I did more push ups than a girl who was able-bodied so she got all defensive and said "well if she can do that many then I'm gonna do more!" Like girl.... anyways...

Having to jump through a million hoops to get disability benefits. Or being denied disability benefits for arbitrary reasons.

Also once you get disability benefits it's barely anything. Also when you're on benefits you're not allowed to save up money and if you get married you lose benefits. I could make a whole other post about how disabled people are expected to live off of nothing but...

MOBILITY AIDS ARE SO EXPENSIVE HOLY SHIT

The world was built by and for able-bodied people. Architectural/environmental ableism occurs when there are no ramps, no accessible bathroom stalls, no elevators, no disability parking spaces, and/or no space for wheelchairs/mobility aids in public places.

This also happens a lot with public transportation. When I tried using the metro with my friends in DC, I had to have a security guard help me get down the escalator because there wasn't an elevator nearby. Right before I got on it, I saw a man force his wheelchair onto the escalator.

A smaller example but it can be as small as there not being a sidewalk ramp. One time I couldn't even cross the street because there was no sidewalk ramp and I was in a wheelchair. Once again, the world was built by able-bodied people.

Eco-ableism. It's when disabled people aren't considered when it comes to environmental activism. The best example of this is the straw debacle that happened last year. Every abled person and their mama wanted to complete ban plastic straws without acknowledging that a lot of disabled people need to use blendable, flexible plastic straws.

Another example that I've witnessed myself has been with automatic doors. I've had to tear down signs at my university that were put on automatic doors that said "save a polar bear, use the other door". Stop blaming disabled people's survival for environmental issues and blame big corporations.

Almost a complete lack of disability representation in media. Disabled kids don't have many people who they can look up to. I know I didn't have any.

The ableism that comes from abled parents of a disabled child.

For years I was told inaccurate information about my disability by able-bodied people, including my mother. It was only when I started researching my disability myself that I actually began to understand it.

Related to the previous point, lack of information or knowledge about certain disabilities

People assuming that just because someone is in a wheelchair that they can't move their legs or walk. This feeds into the idea that disabled people are "faking" their disability. The idea that someone is "faking" can lead people to be attacked or have people tell them that they don't "deserve" things like benefits or parking spaces.

People who straight up pretend they don't see us. I've had so many people try to cut me in line over the years just because they didn't think I would say anything or wanted to pretend they didn't see me.

I have friends who have delayed speech as part of their disability. If you know someone who has delayed speech or a stutter, don't fucking cut them off or try to finish their sentences for them. It's super rude and disrespectful.

DON'T FUCKING SAY THE R WORD. DON'T SAY IT! DON'T SAY IT EVEN IF YOU ARE DISABLED! THE R WORD IS SO ABLEIST AND STIGMATIZING STOP SAYING IT! DON'T PUT IT IN YOUR WRITING EITHER!

Lastly, about half of people killed by police have some sort of disability or mental illness. Disability is intersectional and it's important when talking about things like the BLM movement, women's rights, lgbtq+ rights, etc.

Hope this helped you learn something about ableism and how prevalent it is!

[soveryanon]

Reviewing time for MAG122 /o/ (Rambling, pondering, wild mass guessing and probably many stabs in The Dark, as per usual.)

- … actually, relistening and realizing that Georgie and Basira never told Jon that by “a coma” they meant that neither his heart nor his lungs were functioning while his brain was still active for the past six months does… shed another light on their interactions, and on the fact that Jon is probably not as weirded out as he ought to be by the whole thing (or, at least, that he didn’t feel as “not fine” as Georgie would have wanted). Unless he’s been absolutely lying to them throughout the exchange, he… doesn’t really have a clear grasp on the amount of time that passed either:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: I’m okay– GEORGIE: Jon, you are not okay! You have been in coma. ARCHIVIST: Wait– wait. H–how long? BASIRA: Six months. Give or take. ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six…

I initially freaked out over the whole episode, feeling that Jon was utterly off, and while there are some bits that are clearly worrisome (the apparently missing memories; the feeling “more real” thing; that ~the Archivist~; the mere concept of Jon saying that he feels all right??? his last explicit good night's sleep was around Halloween 2016!), and the whole basis/state of Jon waking up Means A Few Very Unfortunate Things… at the same time, how would have usual!Jon reacted, if he was waking up after apparently having survived the Unknowing, and suddenly being told that he’s been in a coma for half a year, while he himself didn’t feel like he had been unresponsive for this long (and quite the contrary: feeling like he’s just… waking up after only a night of sleep)? And when all these pieces of information are dropped on him, one after another, from Basira who had all those months to cope with them and to learn to not (totally) drown herself in this new life? The whole premise is wrong but, actually, Jon’s reactions didn’t seem… that much out-of-character, on their own?

- In the list of Jon-related things to get worried over, though, I am *squints squints squints* about the bits that he seems to have forgotten:

(MAG122) BASIRA: How much do you remember? ARCHIVIST: I don’t… Music. Everything was wrong. Gertrude was there, and then… dancing. I think? Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming.

The Unknowing was chaos, it messed with their minds, they had been warned about it and we got to hear first-hand how it went. But I find it curious that Jon… didn’t mention Jurgen Leitner, who arrived right after Gertrude, and with a special purpose when Nikola was puppeteering them:

(MAG119) ARCHIVIST: I, I tried, I tried, I almost… GERTRUDE: You almost what? […] You know, it’s probably for the best I’m dead. Can you imagine how much I hate having to watch you fumble around as my replacement? I really cannot express how much of a disappointment you are. ARCHIVIST: I, I’m sorry, I didn’t even– GERTRUDE: […] This is your fault. ARCHIVIST: It is not! It’s not, I didn’t know, it’s not my fault you died! LEITNER: No, I suppose not. Me, on the other hand… […] you left me to get my head bashed in. I understand, of course. You needed a cigarette! I suppose you should have remembered that smoking kills! [LAUGHS]

“Leitner” was specifically brought up to shatter Jon’s defence that he has had no responsibility whatsoever in Gertrude’s death – while his actions had direct consequences in the case of Leitner’s. Jon makes no mention of Tim’s last moments in his summary, either, and those also contained something specific: his assertion that he was not forgiving Jon.

(MAG119) TIM: […] Jon, I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can… ARCHIVIST: Tim…? TIM: I don’t forgive you. But thank you for this.

I wonder if perhaps, there wasn’t some messing around to keep Jon away from the guilt he had felt over some of his actions? (The feeling getting cauterized, or sealed, or the memories getting purposely buried to make him forget about it?) Especially since… it had been very prevalent in him towards the end of season 3.

(MAG098) MARTIN: […] Y’know, I think he thinks that the distance keeps us safe, you know? Like, like, if he just makes sure that we’re not involved, we’re somehow fine. […] He was… Y’know, we know about Sasha now, and… he said he doesn’t want to lose anyone else. Like, y’know, it’s his fault. TIM: Isn’t it? MARTIN: No! No, it isn’t! I mean, you heard Elias… We never really stood a chance. TIM: Yeah. Maybe. But Elias wasn’t actually the one who offered me the job down here.

(MAG113) MELANIE: Wasn’t a great time back here, either. ARCHIVIST: Oh, god, Melanie, of course. I’m… I’m sorry. If I’d known that Ivy Meadows was– MELANIE: What?! You’d have told me? Let me learn from one of your statements instead of from Elias? I don’t see that changing anything. ARCHIVIST: Even so, I… am… I’m sorry. MELANIE: I don’t need your apology. Or your pity. ARCHIVIST: Of course. [QUIETER] Of course.

(MAG114) TIM: … You listened to it, then? My statement. ARCHIVIST: I listened to all the tapes. I, I had no idea how much of a… a mess I left this place in, I–I–I’m sorry. […] [SOFTLY] Tim, I… I didn’t realise. I–I didn’t think. I’m sorry.

(MAG117) ARCHIVIST: I’ve listened to the tape, I– I know what they talk about behind my back, how much they’ve… suffered, because of… this place… because of me. God. Poor Melanie.

Jude Perry had highlighted that her choices had made her cast away at least some bits of empathy (MAG089: “Any feelings of pity or mercy I might have had for the poor woman I fed from were cauterised.”), so, I find it suspicious that Jon would forget about “Leitner” and Tim during the Unknowing, when both of them specifically had words that had probably elicited the feeling at the time…? Jon still sounded concerned about the remaining assistants (and he hadn’t forgotten about Tim’s whole existence), so that’s reassuring! But I do wonder whether he will still be able to feel bad/guilty about his own actions, past worrying over future consequences? As usual: wait and ~see~.

- He sounded less anxious than usual!Jon, more philosophical/detached than truly shaking over the idea of being inhuman, but that… could plainly be due to the avalanche of bad news and Jon having trouble processing and readjusting. Technically, there was a lot to assimilate, on all accounts and everywhere. (We can only assume that The Admiral is safe, and that’s it?!)

(MAG122) BASIRA: Jon, is it still… you? ARCHIVIST: Er… Y… yes. Y–yes, I–I think so? I, I don’t know how you’d… prove it, though.

ARCHIVIST: […] They can be hard, though, sometimes, oth–other people… feelings. I’m… I’m… I’m trying to focus. Trying to make sure I’m the same me as before, but… how can anyone really remember that? How do you know… you’re the same person that went to sleep…?

BASIRA: Me first. What are you? ARCHIVIST: … Honestly… I don’t know. I don’t feel… inhuman, or… … I want to say I’m the same. But I don’t… really know if that’s true. I know I’m different. I feel… more real, somehow. BASIRA: So what does that actually mean? ARCHIVIST: Probably nothing good.

^the reassuring thing is that 1°) Jon expressed doubts over the fact he could still be himself, while not being able to pinpoint differences (he’s not taking for granted that he could still be the same/The True Jon Who Was There All Along), 2°) HE EXPRESSED THESE DOUBTS ALONE, TOO!! So he’s not lying to Basira about it. He could be dissimulating some information again, but he’s genuine about these doubts – and doubts are a good thing! … though the word “monster” was quite curiously totally absent from the conversation, and it had been the one Jon had been using to refer to the Avatars before. Also, Jon quite obviously tried to get some Alone Me-Time at the end, when telling Basira that they should get the nurses; on the one hand, Jonathan “don’t tell me what to do” Sims could have tried to just… leave like this, on the other hand, it really sounded like he needed to blank out for a bit before facing all there is to face? (Sob, regarding Jon waiting for that medical check: the last big one had been… with Prentiss? There were apparently a few medical things after his first encounter with Michael, since he got five stitches, but Elias had told him to not “worry about the doctor’s note” back in MAG092, and we don’t even know if he tried to get his arm treated post-handshake with Jude… so yeah, it’s been a while since he got a complete check, probably. ;; I wonder if they’ll find something wrong about him (… O-negative blood…? There had been two statements in which spooks had that one), or if he will be… uncannily normal, still. Neither option would be reassuring given the context.)

- Noticeably: there was no static when he asked Basira questions. There had been no static either back in season 2 even in cases for which we retrospectively learned that he had actually been non/dubconning answers out of an unwilling person (Daisy), but punctual compulsion has steadily made the tape recorders react more reliably. So, unless twist (tape recorder not reacting anymore / Jon has lost that power / etc.): it means that Jon is still able to not compulse someone, and that he… didn’t do it on Basira, when he could have for various reasons (not caring, being too anxious to keep it in check, being unsure whether she would hide things from him, etc.) Which… is kind of good, actually??? (How long will it last.)

-Re: Jon’s memories and the “dreams”… In fact, I’m not sure that he’s currently able to remember their content? Or at least not in details?

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six… Er, the others. T–Tim? Is he… [SILENCE] Oh… [SILENCE] BASIRA: … Daisy, too. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. BASIRA: Yeah. […] ARCHIVIST: Then… pain. And I was somewhere else. Dreaming. BASIRA: Dreaming. ARCHIVIST: Yes. … You’re… sure a–about Tim? BASIRA: Yeah, they, er… They found his remains a few days later. ARCHIVIST: And… Daisy? BASIRA: They still haven’t found her body.

… it sounds like Jon discovered Daisy’s Official Status As Dead at the same level as he did with Tim; but Elias had previously narrated that Jon was searching for Daisy in his dreams (MAG120: “He looks around, his eyes scanning this forever road and the clouds of iron grey, looking for her – but she is not there. The Archivist expects, he hopes, to find the violence in her looking back at him, hungry for pursuit and murder. But the emptiness of the place is complete […]”), while the assistants are apparently excluded from his dreams (so even counting the post-Prentiss statement from MAG040, he’d probably never seen Tim in there). Jon would have pieced the things together, I think, if he remembered his dream about Daisy? Or was the memory of this one in particular robbed from him?

There is also the fact that he almost immediately began to ask about Tim and wasn’t aware that he had been out for six months… as if nothing had really happened between the Unknowing and the moment he woke up. I’m definitely fearing some memory tampering, since we already had Mike mention having no recollection of his own transformation (MAG091: “I don’t remember that night in detail. […] There are echoes of resignation, I think, almost desperation. That can’t be right, though. What reason would I have had not to jump? Not to become as I am now. Perhaps I just didn’t know the true joy of vertigo. It doesn’t matter.”) – memories getting twisted a bit when they don’t fit the ~narrative~ of Avatars willingly deciding to give themselves in wholly, without any hesitation? Or will that come… later. So, really: does Jon even currently know that he ~made a choice~ and apparently became an avatar/a monster/got an upgrade on the spooky-scale? Or was he… made to forget about it? Not banking on it but I can’t help but think that there is a possibility he might not know, given how… the tape recorder with Oliver’s statement on it apparently disappeared between MAG121 and MAG122:

(MAG122) GEORGIE: It was just there! BASIRA: Could he have come back? Moved it? GEORGIE: I guess. BASIRA: […] And you don’t know why this guy would have left a tape recorder? GEORGIE: You’re the detective. BASIRA: And you’re sure it was him who left it? GEORGIE: I mean, the nurses said there were no other visitors so, unless it appeared by magic… … What, seriously? BASIRA: I don’t know. The whole tape thing is… I don’t know. […] Shh. [SHUFFLING] Down here. GEORGIE: I told you. BASIRA: This is the one? GEORGIE: Sure. BASIRA: You don’t sound very sure. GEORGIE: I mean, I don’t know. It might be a different model, maybe? I thought it was plastic. But… yeah.

Tape recorders are still spooky, but in this special instance, it seems like the previous one vanished and that a new one popped up elsewhere. Which might mean that the tape inside is probably not the same. Which would mean… that Jon probably won't be able to listen again to Oliver’s statement? Why did it disappear? (And “how?”, but that’s the tape recorders for you.) Assuming that Jon wouldn’t even remember that he made a choice following Oliver’s statement… he would still be unable to rediscover what happened, so long as he can’t access the tape?

But at the same time, he threw us that (AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH) “Jonathan Sims, the Archivist” with a small hesitation (though there were hesitations everywhere in his introduction, he apparently had trouble reading/sorting the words out), so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As usual: Jon, what the fuck do you know about things around you/yourself, what are you planning, and could you share it with us instead of letting us wonder about it for the next 10 or 20 episodes. If he knows, he didn’t tell Basira, and that part is concerning because uh, Jon, really, if ~you are(/were) still you~, you should give people plenty of warnings about agreeing-to-turn-into-a-monster-for-real in order to allow them to keep you in check. (… but that would also be Typical Jon Behaviour to know that he can be a danger and to assume that he can keep himself in check anyway. If he’s even caring about it.)

(Please, relisten to your old tapes, if you want to make sure that you’re still you ;__; At the same time, I’m fearing that he would also not really recognize or understand that “past Jon”, his worries and his concerns… ;; … and that’s assuming that the old tapes are still in the Archives, since they can now apparently… disappear. And assuming that whatever happened in the Archives didn’t damage some of them.)

- A few things had previously been established already regarding Jon’s powers: that Jon has grown to be dependent on statements (MAG107: “It looks like the recording of statements has now passed over from psychological compulsion into… a more physical dependence. I don’t know whether this is… some sort of classical addiction or something a bit deeper. […] What irritates me most is that Elias was clearly aware of this, hence his sending me this. Which seems to serve no other purpose but as a restorative. [BREATHES] But as usual, he chose to keep this very useful information to himself.”), complete with his voice getting sturdier as he’s reading after a withdrawal (though the process took much longer here compared to MAG107!), and the static happening when Jon quoted the words from spooky creatures (which… is something the tape recorder catches independently from Jon: it did the same things when the assistants were reading statements, and does it too during live-statements when people remember a Spook’s words, cf Georgie’s “The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one.” in MAG094, or Elias describing the “DIG” add in MAG120).

The only new things, as far as I can tell, are that Jon could feel (or see?) the statement in Basira’s bag, complete with static effect, and that he spontaneously changed his introduction to… that (“Recording by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.”)… without questioning it… (Did he not realize? Or, as usual: does Jon know way more than what he’s deigning to tell right now, and it is one of the things he has embraced?) It’s quite funny how that new introduction sounded so off-balance to me, compared to the usual one which had its own rhythm and harmony (“Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.”). Comparatively: he’s keeping his name, switching to the spooky title, and not tying himself to a place anymore. Jon, what do you knooooow…

- As usual with the series, characters… clash in bittersweet ways, but leaving you enough clues to feel why they behaved in the way they did – they don’t act as you would want them to, they tend to hurt each other very spontaneously, refuse to open up to others when it could maybe help, but all these reactions also feel like they make sense for who they are and what they've experienced. Martin had already mentioned that Basira was keeping things together, in the trailer, and her presence confirmed that she has been the one in charge for some time: Martin is out of their reach (Basira isn’t even sure that he’s working with Peter!), and Melanie is apparently too worrisome to be allowed to see Georgie-or-Jon at the hospital? And Basira has had her own worrying and grieving over Daisy in the meantime; Daisy who… had been her own anchor until now. She was very dry and steel-like towards Jon, making it obvious that she had to check if Jon waking up wasn’t… something that was making the already bad situation worse: she did not take the concept of “Jon” as an ally for granted, it hurts, but the situation sounds very bad overall so that’s… absolutely understandable.

As for Georgie… ;; I’m heartbroken that she apparently still hoped that Jon could still (want to) (try to) put everything behind him… while it hadn’t been an option for him for a long while. And that’s understandable for Georgie! Her own experience messed her up, took from her, made her lose a precious friend, and she knows it, and she felt it; and she also spent time rebuilding herself and trying to hide it (Jon had never realized that she was literally fearless when he had dated her afterwards!). Comparatively, Jon’s situation was different from the start since he had doomed more people in this mess (he had “trapped” at least Tim in the Archives by choosing him), but as Elias put it in MAG092, he also decided to press on and to seek knowledge (without understanding the repercussions) instead of letting things go. The circumstances preceding Jon’s awakening already had enough elements to give Georgie the impression of being in a hostile and alien territory (someone feeling like death being there; a wild tape recorder in the room, and Georgie was already wary of them before the coma; Basira answered her call instead of Melanie); and then, Jon just woke up after getting a visit from an Avatar of The End, in a medical room, and Jon insisted that he was feeling fine… There was enough to get triggered for multiple reasons, and to project and to get hurt by the differences in the way Jon reacted – I felt that Georgie wanted some normalcy, needed Jon to say that he wasn’t fine and needed time to readjust, just like she had? And indeed, what to think, when Jon presents his whole situation as “normal” while nothing had been normal for the past six months? When Georgie knew first-hand that you don’t (shouln’t) come out of this unscarred?

It’s so sad to think that Jon was easier to handle when he was… unconscious, and that Georgie did more than her share during all these months but that she ultimately reached her breaking point as soon as he woke up – pushing people away from her private life (“Honestly Basira, it’s not your business. … Sorry.”) and being excluded in return (“Georgie, could you give us a minute? There’re some things we should probably discuss.”) – and that she has decided to get out now. It’s good for her, but also so sad because her advice had been the bestest before, and Jon might have attenuated the damages a bit towards the end of season 3 thanks to what she had told him:

(MAG099) GEORGIE: I said I’m fine with it. At least until you’re properly back on your feet. You’re not doing well. You keep apologising and saying you’re changing, but it’s all just the same. If you leave, I think it’s just going to get worse, and I don’t want that. […] ARCHIVIST: Is it… Why are you so insistent on keeping me around? GEORGIE: Because you’re trying to cut yourself off, and that’s… that’s really bad. Look, when’s the last time you spoke to someone who wasn’t me? ARCHIVIST: That’s… I… I–I– talked to Martin a… a, a few weeks ago… GEORGIE: Did you talk to him? Or did he talk to you, while you tried to find a way to escape? Look, you’re worried. I get it. But if you really think you’re turning into something… inhuman, you need people around you. You need anchors. ARCHIVIST: All my “anchors” are just as deep in this as me. GEORGIE: Well, you still need them. ARCHIVIST: [SIGHS] Maybe you’re right. I’ll talk to the others. […]

(MAG0117) ARCHIVIST: […] Georgie was right. If I am… slipping, then I need people I can trust. And I… I don’t think that can happen naturally for me an–anymore, so… I’m making a decision. I trust them. All of them.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I– GEORGIE: Jon. If this really is a second chance… please, try to take it. But I don’t think that it is. ARCHIVIST: Georgie, I don’t und– GEORGIE: Take care of yourself.

But now, Georgie is quitting, and she has every right to do so ;; Not even… abandoning Jon at his lowest, since Basira is there (Jon might have other anchors, or more or less?), and not even wishing him the worse, but also deciding that she has had enough with all of this. … It’s also the worst of Jon’s dreams (MAG120, Elias: “She simply looks at him sadly, a pity in her face that burns him worse than any flame. More than anything, the Archivist wants to looks away, to turn his Eye from her gentle sadness, from the disappointment for what she sees in him; but he cannot. So he watches her, until she simply fades away.”) happening to him in real life, and AOUCH. I wonder if Georgie remembers her own dreams of him…? I still hope that they might be able to more or less patch things up at some point, their friendship was great, okay TT____TT (AND SO WAS THE ADMIRAL.) … I’m also a bit worried for her, since she met Oliver, and since… she seems to think that she managed to leave behind what happened to her all these years ago, but given that she still lives with the consequences (she’s unable to feel fear), I’m not sure that it won’t catch up with her at some point.

Aaaand in return, Jon had apparently not quite understood what he was coming back from (six months coma with no lungs nor heart working), and is just being told that Tim and Daisy died; that Martin’s plan worked and that Elias is in prison, but that it solved nothing! that Elias had been able to choose his successor beforehand! and that it’s Peter Lukas; that Martin might be collaborating with him; that Melanie is not doing great; that “a lot has happened” while he was out; and Basira is wary towards him; and nobody looks relieved to see him alive… It had every reason to be disorientating for him, too.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Honestly, I… I, I think I’m alright? I mean, that’s… good, right? I… GEORGIE: After a six months coma? No. It’s not. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go, Jon. ARCHIVIST: I… What? Y–you, you’d prefer I was… brain-damaged? Dead? Or– […] ARCHIVIST: … What about you? Disappointed to see me alive? … Basira? BASIRA: We can deal with that later.

gODS, the misdirected bitterness towards Basira ;__; (His tone was so insidiously cruel and twisting the knife?! Gods, Jon D: Not out of character, since he tends to snarl/bite when cornered, but still, that one gave me chills.) In the same vein, it was… heartbreaking to see Jon trying to ground himself with familiar elements, and them being perpetually denied. Basira has always been quite direct and often savage, but she was stern and steely here (cautious about what “Jon” was); Georgie has always called out Jon on his bullshit, but got enough and quit. Tim is dead and confirmed dead, Daisy is “officially” dead. Martin isn’t there to fuss over Jon, and might be working for another party than the Institute. Melanie’s overall situation sounds bad. Elias is in prison but chose a replacement who sounds worse in his own way; there is not even that relief. Even materially: Jon’s old clothes from the Archives have been discarded, and Jon asking for a cup of tea (something familiar, associated to comfort: Martin and Georgie had usually been the ones to offer it to him) was cut off and denied. Aouch?!

- I stupidly freaked out at this part:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: Georgie, is she, er… BASIRA: She’s gone. Didn’t see where. ARCHIVIST: [MUTTERING] (No, I, I wouldn’t have… (?)) [LOUDER] Probably for the best.

Because my brain was flaring “NOP NOP NOP NOP” at this “Probably for the best”, not for itself, but for the wording, and I couldn’t figure out why…? And, right. That’s because I was remembering this one:

(MAG108) PETER: Do I scare you Martin? MARTIN:  Yes…! PETER: Hm. Probably for the best.

Probably absolutely and utterly unrelated, it’s just that the “same phrasing” echo made me flip out. (Still.)

- BASIRA!!! ;___;

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: [WHISPERS] Six… Er, the others. T–Tim? Is he… [SILENCE] Oh… [SILENCE] BASIRA: … Daisy, too. [SILENCE] ARCHIVIST: … I’m sorry. BASIRA: Yeah. […] ARCHIVIST: And… Daisy? BASIRA: They still haven’t found her body. Probably never will. I thought for a while she might’ve… but. It’s been months. She’s gone.

So yeah, we’ll… see Daisy again at some point, in some form, and we’ll probably regret that she didn’t die orz I’m not sure that Basira finally managed to convince herself that ~Daisy is dead~, it sounds like she’s trying (and failing) to be rational about it. Gdi!! The fact that Jon immediately asked about Tim, got stunned, that Basira had to add about Daisy’s fate (Jon would have probably asked after a while, he kinda liked Daisy, they had that weird friendship/partnership going on?), and that Jon didn’t forget to ask about her the second time ;_; The weird pauses, because obviously, Jon was more concerned/curious about Tim (MAG118: “Tim, contrary to what you think, I did not bring you here to indulge your death wish! […] I am not losing you as well!!”) while Basira… lost her own anchor… (MAG117: “But at least Daisy's coming along. I mean… I know she’s… difficult. Everything they say about her, it’s true, it’s fair. But… she’s solid. She’s a fixed point. And if she’s there, I know exactly where I stand, exactly what I’m doing relative to her. She has no doubts. […] Despite everything she’s done, she’s… she’s still the best partner I ever had.”). She’s had months to try to rationalize that not finding Daisy’s body doesn’t mean that Daisy managed to escape; that Daisy is probably dead and not coming back… And yet, Basira has apparently been the one in charge since then… Due to their respective losses, Jon and Basira interacting was kind of the worst configuration, but at the same time, it was… for the best that Basira was the one to go. I am so impressed by her! She went straight to the point, asked the right questions to assess the current situation, kept in mind that the “Jon” in front of her might very well not be who Jon used to be (Martin would have probably been relieved first, denial&interrogations maybe a bit later). Obviously, there are still valuable questions that should get asked about the past/future (Why is Jon only waking up now and what did he give up to be able to come back? What is he planning, what does he want?), but Basira was focusing about the now and here and said herself that “We can deal with that later”. Though these bits will… have to factor, probably.

- By the way, some potential canon credentials to the fantheory that Basira is religious /o/

(MAG122) BASIRA: … What, capital D “Death”? GEORGIE: Yeah. Y’know, one of your dark gods… BASIRA: They’re not– Look. I’m trying to help.

It proves nothing (they’re not technically gods, though Christopher Meyer had called them “outer cults” in MAG060) but it’s still something I’ll Take And Run With! /o/

- YEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPP things are not great regarding Melanie:

(MAG122) BASIRA: […] Look. I’m trying to help. You came to me. GEORGIE: I came to Melanie. BASIRA: Well, sorry. Right now, I’m it. […] ARCHIVIST: And Melanie? BASIRA: A lot’s happened, while you’ve been gone.

Sounds like Basira didn’t want Melanie to go near Jon orrrr to leave the Archives? It seems that she’s still there, though, since Basira used a plural form (“We don’t see [Martin] around the Archives much these days”). The question is: in which state. It sounds bad anyway.

- Is Melanie related to whatever happened to Jon’s clothes.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: […] I don’t suppose you brought in any… clothes? […] Right, well, er… I kept some in the Archives, er, in my office. BASIRA: Yes, those got, hum… We had to throw those out. ARCHIVIST: What? BASIRA: Like I said, a lot’s happened. ARCHIVIST: S–since I’ve been… … Fine. BASIRA: I’ll get you some new ones. Better ones.

Fire? Flooding/rusting effects from the Lonely? Spiders infestation? Melanie permanently staying in the Archives? Peter forcing sailors uniforms on the staff? I really hope that this “Better ones.” is once again Basira’s own sense of humour (casually throwing shade at Jon for his style), because it… sounds… so weird… too…

- Did Jon share Gerry’s tape with the assistants, or did he give them a lecture about the entities between MAG111 and MAG117? I had already wondered about it due to Martin’s comment in MAG117 (“I mean, if you’re right, if these things out there are eating our fears […]”), and Basira confirmed that they’re now a bit more informed:

(MAG122) GEORGIE: He, er… He felt like Death. BASIRA: … What, capital D “Death”? […] So Jon told you, then. GEORGIE: Some of it. Not… everything. BASIRA: Right. So how exactly is it that you’re able to identify an Avatar of The End on sight? GEORGIE: Honestly Basira, it’s not your business. … Sorry.

-> Jon didn’t share Georgie’s statement with the others (or maybe even specifically hid it?), since Basira didn’t know about it. That’s… surprisingly thoughtful of him. (He respected her privacy!! Didn’t want to get her involved!! ;;) -> Basira was able to translate Georgie’s description to label it under “The End”, which is a veeeerrrry specific way to allude to it (one would more spontaneously stick to “death”, yes?). Not surprising that she, amongst all the others, did her research (she had some on Peter Lukas even before he began to be relevant, back in MAG108, and had tracked down the things around Maxwell Rayner as well), but I don’t think that she could have understood that its official name was “The End” if it hadn’t come from Gerry’s statement, be it directly or indirectly. So yeah, either Jon made them listen to that specific tape (or bits of it), either Basira found it herself, either Jon gave them all an Official Lecture before The Unknowing.

- The fact that Jon has been out for six months might complicate things a bit as to who-knows-what and who had access to the tapes during this time… Elias’s from MAG120 was directly addressed to Jon towards the end, but was probably kept by Peter Lukas since then? Or did it disappear (like the one from MAG121 apparently did) and will reappear only for Jon? It sounded like Elias intended for Jon to listen to it – it was a verrrry Beholding-like move from him indeed (the fear of ~having your deepest secrets exposed~, the ~feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer just so it can watch~), but did it have another purpose? As mentioned above: what about the tape(s) from The Unknowing (MAG118+MAG119): have they been destroyed, will they resurface? What happened to Oliver’s from MAG121? Has Martin hidden his tape from MAG118 (T____T), or will Jon be able to access it? He ~listens to all the tapes~, but that would require getting his hands on this one… though they might get into his hands whether someone wants it to or not.

- I wonder if the assistants have still been recording things while Jon was out, and if he will catch up with that? Or if they… totally stopped in the meantime? Maybe they read statements to comatose!Jon but without the tape recorders on, since Georgie was so offended to find one there? Georgie had called for Melanie, and Basira came instead, but it doesn’t seem like… she had spotted that Jon was breathing, since Basira&Georgie were more concerned about the tape recorder that Georgie had seen before trying to chase Oliver, at the beginning of the episode, and there was no nurse attending to Jon. So apparently they hadn’t noticed that Jon’s body was functional again, and yet, Basira still came with a statement:

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: No, er, the, er, the, the statement. [STATIC] In, in your bag. BASIRA: Oh. Yeah, I, er… [ZIP SOUND] I just grabbed one on the way out. I thought maybe you’d need it. ARCHIVIST: You, you were right. I, I think that’d do me some good. Do you have a tape rec– oh. BASIRA: How did you know I’d brought one? [SILENCE] Right. ARCHIVIST: Thank you, Basira. […] ARCHIVIST: […] … I don’t suppose you brought in any… clothes? BASIRA: No, I just, y’know. Grabbed you a statement on my way out.

Basira didn’t question what she did, so it sounded like a regular thing? OR IS THAT A FUCKING SPIDER THING AGAIN…………… TELLING HER TO TAKE A STATEMENT THAT DAY BECAUSE OF COURSE, IT WAS THE LOGICAL THING TO DO, SHE HAD CLEARLY ALWAYS PLANNED TO TAKE ONE ON HER OWN. Orrr the Archives “gave” her this one? It sounded very fitting for Jon. Not reassuring at all (the world becoming alien and the statement-giver getting convinced that the problem was with everyone else), very disturbing, and also very fitting.

- (I barely mentioned anything about the statement itself, given how so many things happened around it… But yeah, wooowww was this one unsettling. No idea who did it, though? The eerie repeated words made me think of the Anglerfish, and there was something Stranger-like in your whole world turning into something you didn’t recognize; I thought of the Lonely because of the loss of contact and ensuing isolation; and I thought of the Spiral because of the idea of something twisting your mind and making you lose your bearings.)

- Some silly hopeful part of me hopes that there will still be… a way… to remember Tim’s last words… because it would be too sad, gdi!! That Tim died, and that his last moments are also forgotten!! (THAT HIS LAST UNFUNNY JOKE WAS FORGOTTEN…) We already got that with Sasha, not again!! ;_; Not when Tim had been the one to regard what the Institute was doing so gloomily, with his overall defiance and fuck-everything attitude… Maybe they wouldn’t have been caught in the mess if he hadn’t snapped, but he was also the one to ultimately pull the trigger and blow up the ceremony (and partially axing Nikola I think?!), I want them to know that the Unknowing was stopped thanks to him!!! ;_;

I have no idea if the tape from MAG119 survived the explosion (they’re spooky, this one could have just… managed), or if Jon will be able to get some of these memories back somehow through a live-statement, or through other spooks – I… don’t see Elias agreeing to do it with his Carving Truth Into Your Mind, though it could probably fall whithin his theoretical competences (MAG106: “I can see almost anything I care to, weave knowledge from someone’s mind, or place it there, but I just cannot change the nature of a person.”). But it occurs to me that the survivors should absolutely give their own statements about the Unknowing, and to carve it in stone rather than frail perishable tapes, for the next generation who will have to neutralize it in 200-300 years, since they had themselves been helped by a witness account of the previous one? … but at the same time, ~what’s the point, if The Watcher’s Crown is supposed to happen (and succeed!) before that~, right.

- Tim didn’t believe that avatars/monsters could fight against their own urges:

(MAG114) TIM: So, why don’t you ‘Archivist’ me, then? Just pull it straight out. ARCHIVIST: Because I don’t want to! I am not your enemy, Tim. TIM: [DISMISSIVELY] Like that matters! These things aren’t human. It’s… instinct. You can’t not. ARCHIVIST: [SOFTLY] I’m still me, Tim. [TIM HUFFS] I’m still… me.

And we’ll see if that’s the case with Jon, too, but gdi!! I don’t want Tim to have been right on that / to have been right to think that Jon was becoming this ;; There is the weird Agnes case (what was she?), she seemed quite reluctant to get into Business in MAG067 but she wasn’t benevolent either (she… was the one to recruit Jude Perry?); we had the case of “Helen” whose transformation, unless lie, went wrong (MAG115: “I took a man, wandering the halls of an old tenement. He’s dead now, he never even came close to finding me. It was nourishing, but… […] I didn’t like it. […] I feel… wrong. I feel this—”), so I have no idea how Jon will manage/navigate through his new state, since he apparently turned-avatar-for-real, but I have a mix of dread (and eagerness.) thinking about how his next interaction with Elias will go. It will be Terrible but in which ways? (Will Elias switch to calling him “Archivist” all the time, or will he stick to “Jon”? At least there is one (1) person that might be ~happy that Jon chose to not die uwu~ (since Martin is not there), but I don’t want Elias to congratulate him about thiiiiiiiis *cries*) I AM VERY AFRAID that in the end, after the “throw Elias in jail” plan, Jon will have to crawl back to him for help re:Martin and the Peter management ORZ Though I guess the alternative would be “getting Elias out of jail because he’s needed for The Watcher’s Crown and Jon now finds it logical that they would head towards it yeah?” but, at least right now, he’s still seeing Elias as a source of trouble and malevolence; WHICH IS GOOD.

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: What? Oh god, the, their plan, it’s, Martin is– Is he okay, or– … What did Elias do? BASIRA: No, nothing. Elias isn’t the problem. ARCHIVIST: Sor– what? BASIRA: Elias is locked up. ARCHIVIST: … Wait, Martin’s plan worked? BASIRA: Yeah. A bunch of Section’d officers took him in. He made some sort of deal, I think. But… he’s not getting out anytime soon. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. Wow. O… kay, er… Great, s–so… what’s the problem?

That surprise when being told that “Elias isn’t the problem.” dhrfcjn. YEAH, for fucking once, Elias is not The Problem. (Also immediately assuming that Elias would have done something terrible to Martin. Yes, Jon is still aware that they’re not on the greatest of terms.)

- Will Peter Lukas introduce himself to Jon right away (Elias… might have left… instructions… for when archivist!Jon would wake up…), or will he keep avoiding him entirely? So far, he had only appeared when Jon was kidnapped, when Jon was in America, and when Jon was in a coma, so. (Get Martin back!! ;;)

- *WHIMPERS LOUDLY* at Jon!!! Surprised that Martin wasn’t there!! Noticing Martin through his absence!! And also protective/possessive!Jon when it comes to him…

(MAG122) ARCHIVIST: What? Oh god, the, their plan, it’s, Martin is– Is he okay, or– … What did Elias do? […] BASIRA: He appointed an “interim” director. Guy named Peter Lukas. ARCHIVIST: … Oh. BASIRA: Yeah. ARCHIVIST: Read about him. BASIRA: Yeah, I’ve… hunted down some of his old statements and… yeah. ARCHIVIST: … What did he do to Martin? BASIRA: Er, I… don’t know. We don’t see him around the Archives much these days. Best I can figure, he’s working on something with Lukas. ARCHIVIST: No, that– No, that, that… that must be something else.

… Jon sounded like he was out for blood, it’s gonna be great/terrible (last one of the original assistants alive! For now). That last line, though: is Jon not believing that Martin could collaborate with someone who is this much Very Bad News, or is something in Jon seeing the whole situation as Martin betraying the Institute/Beholding by working for another cluster…? I kinda hope that we’ll focus on Melanie first, though, since 1°) she’s accessible, 2°) she had blamed her entrapment on Jon (MAG102), 3°) she already had it bad before The Unknowing and the last time we heard her was when she relented after spitting that they should still kill Elias. She only shared her India war ghosts story riiight before Jon left for The Unknowing, they’ll have to… deal with that bullet.

- … I do wonder if Martin is actually leaving the Archives for random missions/working on that thing, or if he’s actually there, in the Archives… but in the Lonely dimension from MAG092’s statement, inaccessible to the others. If Martin sometimes passes by, it could be for recharging, to not end up like Tim? ;; (Though I always wondered if Tim had been a special case, and Elias basically dragged him back to the Institute because he wanted all the assistants to be there when Jon would come back?)

- Cheers, Jon has been in a coma for six months! Which means that his last birthday either happened during the coma, either while he was on the run from the police / kidnapped by Nikola / being sent here and there by Elias to get information to stop the Unknowing (cross out the wrong options). Jon, what’s your life. HE WOKE UP FOR THE INSTITUTE’S BIRTHDAY!! The Magnus Institute is now 200 years old!!! I wonder if they’ll throw a party.

[tlbodine]

Verb Tenses and You

In reading a lot of amateur writing, I somewhat frequently see stories slipping tenses. Part of this, I imagine, is sheer forgetfulness or editing incongruities that, but some of it I think probably stems from a bit of confusion about how tenses work. 

Allow me to illustrate with an example that I just made up: 

Lizzy was a beautiful maiden with long blonde hair and a wonderful sense of irony about her role in this fairytale example. She knows that “Lizzy” is an anachronistic name, but she wouldn’t care about things like that. On the day of her birthday, she’s sitting in her similarly ironic ivory tower, imagining what might happen later today, when a giant bird swooped through the open window quite unexpectedly. 

Do you see the problem? 

The verb tense changes from one sentence to the next -- sometimes even within the same sentence -- making it unclear what’s actually happening and when. It’s quite jarring. 

Fortunately, it can be easily fixed. And by the end of this post, not only will you know how to fix it, you’ll also know why this happens and how to choose the right verb tense for your story. 

What is a Verb? 

A verb is an action word. It designates that something is happening, that someone is doing something, even if the “something” is simply existing (”to be”). 

This is important because in English at least, verbs don’t just tell you what happened -- they also tell you when something happened. They’re the only words that do this. Nouns, adjectives, articles, adverbs -- none of those words change when talking about something that happens last week vs something that’s happening right now vs something that will happen in the future. 

But verbs do. 

And when a verb changes to designate when an activity happened, that’s called a verb tense. 

How Many Tenses Are There? 

As it turns out, there are a whole lot of tenses in the English language - about 19 of them. And to make matters worse, the rules for how to conjugate verbs (that is, how to change verbs depending on their tense) aren’t consistent. There are a lot of irregular verbs in English for a variety of reasons. Consider: 

I blamed him. I blame him. I am blaming him. I will blame him. (regular verb)

She blamed him. She blames him. She is blaming him. She will blame him. 

I ran. I run. I am running. I will run. (irregular verb) 

I brought. I bring. I am bringing. I will bring. (irregular verb) 

I know. I’m sorry. English is a ridiculous language. 

The good news is, if you already speak English, you probably already know most of these words and how to conjugate them, even if you don’t realize that you know them. (Although even native speakers sometimes struggle with the irregular verbs -- I had a friend who would say “brang” instead of “brought,” which you’d think would be right since the past tense of “ring” is “rang,” but sadly no.) 

Also, even though there are a bunch of different tenses, most of them are really just sub-types of the three major tenses: past, present, and future (which, unsurprisingly, describe when something is happening). 

Referencing a handy verb conjugation list can help: https://www.ef.edu/english-resources/english-grammar/verbs/

So What Tense Should I Write My Story In? 

The vast, overwhelming majority of literature written in English is written in past tense. It is the default for storytelling. Why? Probably because literature’s roots are in historical tradition, mythology, journalism, etc. - in other words, chronicling events that have already happened. Even if your story is fictional, ie, talking about things that did not actually happen, telling it in past tense lends an air of authenticity. 

Stories written in past tense: 

Feel more traditional 

Create narrative distance between the narrator and the events of the story

Invite editorializing (the narrator may feel differently now than he did at the time of the events, and be able to explain that) 

Lend an air of authenticity or historic-ness to a narrative 

Present tense feels much more modern. It predates the internet -- Bleak House by Charles Dickens is written in present tense! -- but I feel like it’s become more prevalent in a post-internet, post-cellphone world where we are accustomed to communicating with people while they are doing other things rather than waiting for them to tell us about what they’ve been up to the next time we see them. The fact that a lot of the books written in present tense are YA novels I think speaks to this as well. 

Tend to feel more fast-paced and immediate 

Feel more modern 

Have less narrative distance - the narrator hasn’t had time to process the emotions of the story before telling it to you 

You can tell a story in past or present tense from any POV, but the majority of present-tense narratives are told in first person as opposed to third, probably to bank on the immediacy. 

Because present-tense narratives leave very little room for introspection or editorializing, they’re best for stories that are more action-oriented and “raw,” where experiencing the story as it unfolds is a primary goal for your reader experience. 

I personally have found that every story just works better in one tense or another, and I might experiment with both before I settle into one. 

But whatever tense you’re writing in, the most important thing is to stick with it. 

If you start off writing in the present tense, and then write in the past tense, it had better be because you’re talking about something that happened before the current events of the story: 

Lizzy sits in her ivory tower, brushing her long hair. It wasn’t always this long. She’d kept a very fashionable fauxhawk for many years, carefully shaving the underside, until growing bored with it. She longed to find new ways to style it. Her hair became a distraction from the long hours of solitude. Now, she can barely remember ever having the free time to tend to anything else. 

This slips tenses from present, to past, then back to present, but it’s not confusing because there’s some indications that the past-tense stuff is like a miniature flashback. There are transitions on either side of it that orient the reader in time and space. 

Similarly, if you’re writing in past tense but suddenly start writing in present tense, it had better be because your narrator is breaking the fourth wall and providing commentary: 

Visitors often assumed that Lizzy was a princess. After all, it’s not common to find just any young woman locked up in an ivory tower. But the truth was less romantic than that: She simply lived in a tower because it was where she was born, like her mother and her mother’s mother. She came from a long lineage of tower-dwelling women, and if they had ever been royal in the past, they certainly weren’t anymore. 

That second sentence is in present tense (”it’s” is a contraction of “it is,” and “is” is a present tense of “to be”). But it’s editorializing on behalf of the narrator, who’s popping in to provide a bit of commentary rather than just reporting on what’s happening. 

Make sense? 

[greengargouille]

I felt the dire need to talk about Korosensei and Aguri, and more precisely why I don’t see their relationship as romantic. Somehow, this ended up pretty long.

(Note : for convenience’s sake, I will use ‘Korosensei’ even to talk about his past human form)

It’s not a matter of “Korosensei is to blame for Aguri’s death”. It wasn’t intentional on his part, and even if he had taken time to think about it, would he really have imagined Aguri doing such a reckless thing as she did ? (doesn’t mean he is to blame any less, tho). Heck, stories where a person kills their love interest for a good reason could be really interesting, like some kind of twisted Trolley problem, but that’s not what happened so let’s leave it at that.

If I were to convey my feelings into words, I think there would be three main points that makes me unable to appreciate this relationship:

1)We don’t actually see much of Aguri in her other relationships. Before Kayano’s arc, we have two mentions of Aguri ; one in chapter 1, a brief flashback from Korosensei ; and in chapter 76, between some students, which can basically be summed up as one page of ‘we had a former teacher that disappeared’, one panel of ‘I liked them, they were nice’ (keep in mind that the sentences were gender neutral), and then one panel to reveal said teacher was called ‘Yukimura’.

Then come Kayano’s reveal. When the story stop to explain us how and why she got tentacles, we don’t really focus on why is Akari so attached to her sister. Chapter 131 had one and an half pages to explain Aguri liked her teacher job, and she was nice and passionated.

Since the past time arc is mostly from Korosensei’s point of view it’s even a bit weird that it’s not solely his, given he’s supposed to be telling the story to his students, most of what we see of Aguri is with her developing relationship with him. We see her interacting with the former class E for two pages, sure. We see her interacting with Yanagisawa. But, the moment with our class E or the phone call to Akari ? It’s mostly to tease Aguri that ‘she found a man’ (we will come back to that later) ; it does imply some friendliness between them, else they wouldn’t say such things, but not much else.

The story post-tentacled!Kayano isn’t that much better. A brief half-page mention during Volume 17 saying Aguri wanted Korosensei to live, one case in chapter 153 on how she put her life on the line to save Korosensei, a photo of her on a chocolate on Korosensei... You can start to see a pattern here. The moments on the top of my head who break this are Yanagisawa’s flashback in chapter 157 and a mention from the Chairman in chapter 160.

A lot of those relationships are really... informed. We hear people say she was this or that, but we don’t actually see a lot of those interactions. For all the ill I could say about the second live action movie, at least they have a small scene of a young Akari baking with her big sis ; those are those kind of little moments that would make us understand why is this relationship valuable. This contrast a lot with Aguri’s relationship with Korosensei, that start from ‘this person could be useful to me’/”Eeeh you looks nice but if I release you you will kill me” to the tentacle hand scene (each wanting to express their thanks to each other and wanting to touch the other).

And then Aguri dies, the sacrifice saving Korosensei from becoming a bloodlust-fueled beast and motivating him to become a better person (and to teach class E).

So... a character that exists mostly for Korosensei’s development and motivations (yes, even more than for her own sister), that is then disposed and appear really occasionally for a one-panel flashback. Matsui, may I direct you to Tv Tropes ? I think you will find the example list on Disposable Woman and Stuffed Into the Fridge are long enough as it is.

Not that tropes are necessarily bad, but when it becomes recurrent that a female character exist solely to be killed so the main male character get development, it’s really tiring. And so, Korosensei and Aguri’s bond feel in retrospect less like a genuine relationship and more like a plot device. And by relationship, I do include the possibility of it being platonic, even if the manga would rather us see it the other way. Speaking of that, next point...

2)The story forces us to see it as a romance. I said we would come back to Aguri’s interaction with class E, so here we go. The students see their teacher is particularly happy, and are quick to jump on the conclusion that she must be meeting with a man she loves after school. Silly middle schoolers, no wonder they jumped on Irina’s signs of a crush as soon as they heard about it.

Next chapter starts with Akari asking her sis if she’s in love, since she sounds more cheerful, and despite her sister’s protests she says she wants to her about ‘that guy’ on her mind later.

Did you see the parallel? Wait, let me rephrase it.

Aguri seems happy, so others assume she’s in love. With a man, obviously ; same-gender romance can’t exist in the main story if it’s not a joke on Kataoka, else it’s best left as a mention on extra-material (right, Yada ?).

But... why? Why couldn’t she be happy because, say, she would met a friend or a family member after classes and just packed a gift she know would make them happy? Well, Akari know about their family’s situation but it’s unlikely Aguri told her about the gift, so for all the knew her sister could just be happy because she had time off-work or got rid of a very stressful thing, no need to see a relationship in this.

It’s tied to the idea, even more prevalent in Japan, that all women seeks romance and need an happy love life to feel fulfilled. And, just like a game telling me not to push that big pretty red button only makes me want to push it even more, when a story insist that, of course a female character is/needs to be in love, I will sit here hoping my judgmental glaze travel across time and space to hit the author on the head.

I like relationships that could work either way. If Matsui had kept this ambiguous, I would be way more appreciative of it ; instead of what he’s pretty much saying “Yes, of course they’re in a relationship” while winking unsubtly and nudging me with his elbow enough to make me fall from my chair.

If you think I’m taking my analogies too far, I can’t exactly say you’re wrong since the appreciation of this is subjective. But think of Kayano post-tentacles. When choosing whether to kill or save Korosensei, she does think ‘I wonder if it’s because we’re sisters that we both fell for assassins’. Karma wants to give poisoned chocolates to Korosensei for Valentine’s day? She bring him a photo of Yukimura in a more-or-less sexy swimsuit. Seriously Akari, that’s your dead sister we’re talking about. 

Sure, we could say she’s coping with her sister’s death by trying to think at least she got to be in love with a man that isn’t Yanagisawa (in case you hadn’t noticed, Kayano... don’t really like him *Understatement of the week here I go*), because if Aguri wasn’t in love with Korosensei that meant she never found happiness before dying. But we never had signs that this was what Matsui was trying to do.

Why Aguri couldn’t be happy with Korosensei as a close friend? Wouldn’t her death have influenced him as strongly if he saw her as a found family? Heck, this one might as well be better, given the close relationship Korosensei have with class E. 

Now, those two problems are shared by lot of stories, be they manga or novels, destined to teens or pre-teens just as for adults. The third one is a specific story point, precisely in chapter 138. It might be more subject to interpretation (to translation, too), and as such personal tastes might play more of a role in it.

3) How Korosensei treated Aguri after learning he would die. The moon just exploded, Aguri had barely learned that the lab would dispose of the God of Death that she was already running to him to inform him of the truth. Of course, he is crushed by th- nevermind, the narration talks about ‘embracing a cursed death’. That sure was quick. So, Korosensei’s first reaction is to want to try his new powers. When Aguri wants to stop him, does he listen to her, even knowing full well she won’t make him change opinions ? Nah, better to point out she have less talent than him, and even add how little value she have. Uncalled insults are sure to make her feel better after all. (One might see these as a way to make sure she would leave and not get caught up in the events, because Aguri is Aguri and any less rude way to persuade her to do so wouldn’t work. I do not share this vision of things). 

Even the ‘it will be better if you leave before you die in vain’ is dismissive. Sure, he warns her and waits for her to leave the room before acting, showing a tiny amount of care left he wouldn’t have for probably anyone else in this building. But there also the underlying meaning that he won’t restrain himself in his destruction solely because she’s here. 

As soon as Korosensei was reminded of his values on death, he pretty much threw this relationship away. relationship for which Aguri put a lot on stakes by telling him about his imminent death. This upsets me for a personal reason, but even without that, this does throws a wrench in the whole relationship. 

Sure, when Aguri died next to him, Korosensei ended up regretting the whole thing and had a change of heart. But a ‘Ooops, turns out I do care after all’ doesn’t erase all the damage he did by his preceding action (or the damage he could have done, rather, because Aguri is too good and still tried to save him).

So, what am I telling with this post ? In the end, very little. I wanted to present my opinion on the subject ; if you do ship Korosensei and Aguri and it brings you happiness, feel free to continue. Those are points that I feel one should be conscious of (though I feel the last one is hard to ignore), but liking this pair despite this does not makes one a bad person. However, as one must do anyways, please tag your content accurately so people like me can blacklist it.

[rolypolywl]

Hello, and welcome to Roly-Poly weight loss. I’m your host, Roly-Poly.

Welcome to day 33!

Today we are continuing our assessment of factors that you need to consider for your lowercase-d diet. And today’s factor is number 2 - your environment!

Now, this, in combining the lists, I have broken down into three subfactors. The first is an abundance of food. The second is sedentary snacking, and the third is aggressive marketing. So we’ll go through those in order.

Now, environment tends to tie in with genetics, as you saw last time. It is hard to talk about the one without the other. This is something that comes up in the WebMD article, as Dr Li says so pithily: “Genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger.”

Last time I touched on how, while you get your genetics from your parents, you also get a portion of your environment from your parents. Harvard Health elaborates. “Childhood habits often stick with people for the rest of their lives. Kids who drink sugary sodas and eat high-calorie, processed foods develop a taste for these products and continue eating them as adults, which tends to promote weight gain. Likewise, kids who watch television and play video games instead of being active may be programming themselves for a sedentary future.”

The Explained docuseries’s Dr. Christopher Gardner agrees that genetics and environment are linked: ““One of the things we also know is that genetics haven’t changed appreciably over the last 30 years that have corresponded with the rise of the obesity epidemic.” Our genes may not have changed much, but our food environment has.”

This is something that we touched on last time, from “Why are We Getting So Fat?” Dr. Giles Yeo said, “In the developed world, we’ve never had so much available to eat, and so little to do. In the last 20 years, the number of Take-Aways has soared. And research has shown that living and working near a high density of Take-Away outlets doubles your liklihood of being obese.”

So we talked about how this relates to your genetic inclination for obesity, but on its own, purely as an environmental factor, that is a huge statistic. You are basically twice as likely to be obese if you live in a fast-food saturated environment!

But this statistic isn’t as straightforward as it seems. The prevalence of fast food ties in to food availability. As Healthline notes, “Food, especially junk food, is everywhere now. Shops display tempting foods where they are most likely to gain your attention. Another problem is that junk food is often cheaper than healthy, whole foods, especially in America.”

Junky fast food is usually cheaper than a more healthy alternative. For example, a place like Souplantation, where you can have a large salad and other healthier choices, costs $10 for lunch, not counting a drink. And more than that for dinner.

On the other hand, I can get a 5-dollar-fill-up at KFC, or a combo at Taco Bell for 5-6 dollars, and those include drinks! So I can feed two people fast food for the same price as one person at a Souplantation.

Sure, the fast food is less healthy, but sometimes cost is the more crucial factor.

Of course, it also bears asking if your local environment even has a place like a Souplantation. There are only about 100 Souplantations across the country - though I’m sure there are similar types of restaurants. Even if we take Southern California, where Souplantation originated, as the most prevalent location, there are just a dozen in the San Diego area and one in LA. In contrast, there are over 5,000 Taco Bells in the country, with almost 1,000 of those in California. Over 50 are in San Diego and LA alone. And that’s nothing on McDonald’s, which has almost 14,000 locations in the US!

So what is more likely to be close to you? The cheap, ubiquitous, unhealthy option, or the  expensive, rare, healthy option?

Now, tied in to this is food deserts, which is probably a term you’ve heard of. And also a term you probably haven’t heard of, which is food swamps.

So a food desert is a location where people don’t have ready access to supermarkets or other sources of fresh, healthy food. The general notion is that these people only have access to fast food or convenience store-type food, and that getting to a supermarket to get fresh food, either because of distance or because of lack of transportation, is unreasonable.

Now, the Washington Post has a very intriguing article on this. “The idea that areas that lack of access to a full-service supermarket — a.k.a. food deserts — promoted obesity “made theoretical sense,” Dubowitz says. And it was a testable thesis. So, it got tested! Scientists looked closely at the relationship grocery access has to obesity, and tracked changes to obesity and other health outcomes in low-access neighborhoods that got a new supermarket. It turns out that grocery access doesn’t correlate cleanly with obesity, and a new grocery store is unlikely to make a dent in obesity rates. And those results came up in study after study after study.”

This is where we try to fight against misinformation. Now, this research does not suggest that food deserts are unimportant, by any means. Access to healthy food would certainly have an impact on anyone’s lowercase-d diet. But science has shown no direct correlation to obesity.

For example, the Washington Post author notes, “The obesity needle might not move, but Dubowitz found that the new supermarket she studied, in Pittsburgh, was associated with several smaller changes. Study participants reported eating a little better — less sugar, fewer calories. People felt better about living in the neighborhood. None of this was specifically attributable to the supermarket, as people who didn’t shop at it reported the same changes as those who did, but it raises the possibility that a supermarket can help improve a neighborhood in ways that go beyond food access. It brings jobs, and could pave the way for more investment. It can make the area feel safer.”

Solving the food desert problem can certainly help people, but it won’t automatically cure obesity.

And when you think about that a little further, that makes sense. If your habit is to go to the convenience store to get your ramen and soda or whatever, and your taste buds are attuned to that kind of food, and maybe you have a double FTO risk variant that makes you crave those foods, and the existence of the supermarket in your food environment isn’t going to instantly change all of your other factors.

Which the article agrees with. “Step back, and look at how much has changed in our food environment over the past several decades. We’re navigating a landscape of diabolically irresistible food specifically designed to swamp our willpower, both by being engineered for deliciousness and by being available everywhere we turn. In that context, it makes sense that simply moving a produce section into the neighborhood won’t change much.”

This said, there is a journal article archived in the National Library of Medicine that poses an interesting distinction. They introduce - at least to me - the term “Food swamp.” As they explain, “Food swamps have been described as areas with a high-density of establishments selling high-calorie fast food and junk food, relative to healthier food options.”

Now this, you can see, is subtly different from a food desert, which deals specifically with a lack of good options. A swamp might have good food options, but they are overwhelmed by junk options. And this is just like what Dr. Yeo was talking about before, with people who live in a place with a high density of fast food outlets, or Take Aways.

And the journal’s authors agree! “Our results suggest that the presence of a food swamp is a stronger predictor of obesity rates than the absence of full-service grocery stores. We found, even after controlling for food desert effects, food swamps have a positive, statistically significant effect on adult obesity rates.”

They do offer one caveat, though, in that future studies should find a way “to adjust for the possibility that obese adults choose to live in neighborhoods that are food swamps.” So it might be an issue of which came first: the chicken or the egg kind of thing here.

But, cause and effect aside, if you live in a food swamp, you should consider that when forming your food plan. Likewise, if you live in a food desert that will also be a consideration, but in subtly different ways.

Okay, so the next sub-factor is sedentary snacking. This I touched on earlier, when talking about how we can even get fast food delivered now, for the absolute minimum amount of effort!

So far we’ve largely been talking about environment as something outside of the house, but Harvard Health makes a point that your inside environment and habits are also important. They note, “The average American watches about four hours of television per day, a habit that's been linked to overweight or obesity in a number of studies. [...] People with overweight and obesity spend more time watching television and playing video games than people of normal weight. Watching television more than two hours a day also raises the risk of overweight in children, even in those as young as three years old.”

Now, you might assume that this ties in to exercise. If you’re watching TV, you’re not being active. Or, conversely, if you’re not watching TV, you might do something active instead.

But the study referenced by Harvard Health points to a different reasoning. “Studies show that eating food in front of the TV stimulates people to eat more calories, and particularly more calories from fat. In fact, a study that limited the amount of TV kids watched demonstrated that this practice helped them lose weight — but not because they became more active when they weren't watching TV. The difference was that the children ate more snacks when they were watching television than when doing other activities, even sedentary ones.”

So something about the environment of watching TV, even compared to other sedentary activities like reading or sewing, leads to snacking, and potentially becoming overweight.

Another thing that might influence TV-related snacking is advertising. Though many people stream their TV now, and avoid advertisements, so it can’t be wholly responsible. But just watching a few minutes of commercials on TV will give you an abundance of food ads.

Harvard Health concurs, and expands on this. “Food advertisements also may play a significant role. The average hour-long TV show features about 11 food and beverage commercials, which encourage people to eat.”

Healthline points out that these ads are not exactly innocuous. “Junk food producers are very aggressive marketers. Their tactics can get unethical at times and they sometimes try to market very unhealthy products as healthy foods. These companies also make misleading claims. What’s worse, they target their marketing specifically towards children.”

Science Daily has a fascinating article about this. “Health-related buzzwords, such as "antioxidant," "gluten-free" and "whole grain," lull consumers into thinking packaged food products labeled with those words are healthier than they actually are, according to a new research study conducted by scholars at the University of Houston (UH).”

The study looked at the degree to which we consumers can be fooled by these kinds of buzzwords by showing them actual marketing images that included them, and then photoshopped versions that removed the “healthy” words. “It found that consumers tend to view food products labeled with health-related euphemisms as healthier than those without them. The research also showed that the nutrition facts panels printed on food packaging as required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration do little to counteract that buzzword marketing.”

So that last part, about the nutrition facts panels, is, I think, more telling than the buzzwords on the fronts. They showed two labels at a time and had the study participants pick the one they perceived as “healthier.” “"Food marketers say there are nutritional labels, so people can find out what's healthy and what's not," he said. "Findings from this research study indicate people aren't very good at reading nutritional labels even in situations where they are choosing between salmon and Spam. Approximately 20 percent picked Spam as the healthier option over salmon," said Northup.”

So 20% of the people who looked at these labels were confused or mislead about the actual health benefits of the contents. That’s kind of scary!

Why is it so scary to me? Because those labels aren’t as good as we think they are, even if we are reading them correctly! US News and World Report explains this in their article.

“Unfortunately, Nutrition Facts labels are not always factual. For starters, the law allows a pretty lax margin of error—up to 20 percent—for the stated value versus actual value of nutrients. In reality, that means a 100-calorie pack could, theoretically, contain up to 120 calories and still not be violating the law. The same margin of error goes for other nutrients as well.”

As they point out, for diabetics who are counting carbs, or people with high blood pressure who are counting their sodium, or anyone else counting a specific aspect from the labels, this “margin of error” can be a huge problem.

They go into specific detail about Vitamin A and iron content - two nutrients that are often outside of the 20% margin of error - pointing out several problematic labels. My favorite is the one for a cereal that supposedly gains 5% the daily amount of iron when you add milk, which doesn’t have iron in it. That’s a neat magic trick!

They offer “a rule of thumb: unless a packaged, non-meat food is iron-fortified—in which case, the word "iron" would appear in the ingredient list—any label's claim to have more than 10 percent of the daily value for iron per serving should be viewed with great suspicion.”

The problem with these labels is that, as US News explains, “The FDA has never established a systematic, random label-auditing process, and compliance with the law is expected to be self-enforced by food manufacturers.”

And, of course, why would they want to tell us anything bad? Or anything less than ideal? It’s almost enough to make you not trust the labels or food manufacturers at all!

And if they aren’t truthful on their labels, why would their commercials be any different? We’ve all heard the “part of a balanced breakfast” lie, or seen the teeny tiny fine print on the bottom of a commercial and not bothered to pause and get a magnifying glass and read it. This all ties in, again, to that “misinformation” factor that we’ve touched on throughout.

And this is all a part of the environment of food around us that can contribute to obesity.

So it is important to keep all of these things in mind when you’re considering your lowercase-d diet plan and just what is around you.

This has been Roly Poly Weight loss. As always, I am your host, Roly Poly. Use the hashtag #Food Advertising to share any crazy commercials or labels you’ve seen!

And please join me next time!

[creativityworks-s5]

Being Black and Hating Black History Month

Martin Luther King.  Carter G. Woodson  . Lewis Howard Latimer.  Maya Angelou.  Ralph Bunche. Out of the 5 names listed above, my bet is you recognise two of the names listed.

Truth is, I already know which ones they are.

The other three, well, ones known as the father of black history and the reason we celebrate black history month, the other is widely regarded as one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century, and the last is the very first black person to win a Nobel Prize for his peacekeeping efforts in the Arab-Israeli conflict in Palestine.

You see, I’m not shocked that the two names you likely register, are the two names commonly associated with slavery, apartheid, segregation and civil rights movement.

It’s what you were taught right?! I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you were made to believe black History was created and given to African descendants as a part of the peace treaty after the civil rights movement. p>

For the record, I’m a proud black young African woman but even the thought of Black History Month makes my skin crawl. Though at risk of my “black card” being revoked, I’ll discuss my views on why I feel black history is essentially nowadays a token tribute, and now severely aids in undermining the purpose it was once originally designed for.

Every October, we briefly honour the achievements of black people throughout history.                                                                                                                       A well-meaning concept once designed to teach about our history and achievement’s as black people, now happens to be the hall pass where everyone pretends to briefly care about the racial inequality afflicted upon black people.

When we marched and screamed “black lives matter” across the world in the other eleven months as a result of the daily racial injustice and police brutality against black lives in America, our white privileged counterparts declared “all lives matter”.

When Dylan Roof, a 21 year old white supremacists terrorists shot and killed 9 people in a church, the media quickly identified him as young man “suffering with mental disorders”. He was even treated him to a Burger King after he complained he was hungry, minutes after being arrested.

When Munroe Bergdorf recently aired her views that “all white people are racist” and  “that western society as a whole, is a system rooted in white supremacy – designed to benefit, prioritize and protect white people before anyone of any other race”, she was dropped as part of L’Oréal social justice campaign for being too honest about her personal experiences of being black.

When the Charlottesville attack happened in America, where white supremacist went about “yelling “white lives matter”, terrorizing and causing the death of an anti- racist protester, Trump failed to condemn the action of white supremacists instead stating “both sides were to be blamed”.

Week by week, another black live is gunned down.

Killed as a result of police brutality which lately seems to be encouraged by the legal system , we turn yet another blind eye.

But when Black history month rears its head, we pretend to care about the same injustice we’ve ignored the other 48 weeks of the year. Everyone’s quick to show their allegiance to the non-racist committee, the spokesperson for all the black people they know, and more than happy to sit round a fire singing Kumbaya.

You see my problem?

We relegate black history and existence to originating from slavery; we then regurgitate that same narrative told to us within the curriculum, so much so that when young black people are asked of the meaning of black history month to them, the common theme is slavery and civil rights movement.

What they don’t know is “slavery is not African history, slavery interrupted African history”, Mutabaruka.

The curriculum fails to continuously mention how the wealth of the west nowadays is built on Africa’s exploitations. Textbooks erase the existence of Africa’s great empires and civilisations, such as the Oyo Empire. Scientific knowledge that were widely known in Africa were long in existence before being taught to Europeans. The removal of economic wealth and trade with other countries such as Arabia are erased from the books we teach our children with.  We forget to mention how white men came to Ghana in search for gold, but greed overtook them and the people that they came to as partners, became commodities also.

The educational system now uses black history month as a token tribute where the truth is modified, where anything is possible because victory is won and slavery is gone, but more importantly we don’t have to pay for reparations for slavery since we’ve been allocated a whole month to talk about our ordeal.

I fail to yet understand why out of all the atrocities inflicted upon a race, why black history month is the only one that exists. I mean the Jewish suffered just as much as African descendants, but in a shorter space of time. They were uprooted from their homes, yet the 1952 reparations agreement ensured that every Jewish individual was compensated for losses in livelihood and property.

Is the west afraid of losing its first world status should it have to pay its debts of exploiting a race for over 300 years?

Whilst interviewing Morgan Freeman in 2005 in 60 seconds, Mike Wallace is then put in the awkward position of whether he would like a Jewish month, to which he responds immediately no.

The problem with his answer is clear; when you create a month to discuss “their history” you segregate black people from “the history”. Black history is British history. Black history is American History. By having this month dedicated to a narrative of slavery, you create an internalized otherness which is still prevalent today.

A common example is in the media and the language we use, if a person of color  commits the same crime as a white person, 9 out of 10 times, the media will label the colored individual as a “thug” “criminal” or similar connotations, whilst labeling the white man as a “loner, mental health suffer” and etc.

We teach young black children to survive and achieve in today’s society, we must behave and conform to our leaders examples, whom are overwhelmingly white men.

We teach young black children to shrink themselves, so that we may break the glass ceiling that enslaves social mobility.

We teach young black women to behave, dress and think a certain way, don’t say this you don’t want to be labelled as the “angry black girl”. Our natural afro hair has been condemned in the media numerous times as unprofessional, to the point where wearing weave and relaxers appears to be the norm.  

Our young men are constantly reminded that the world is against them, constantly vilified in the media as “violent, aggressive or uncivilised”.

We’re taught we must work twice as hard, and always have our best foot forward to avoid becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of societal stereotypical expectation, to achieve societal acceptance we must disregard and distance ourselves from the black discussions which puts our white counterparts at unease.

And when we do conform and play to our given guidelines, were responded with comments like “you act/talk like a white person”.  What may seem like a compliment is casually implying racist ideologies.  Are white people the only ones that are able to be articulate themselves, or is it so ingrained within our society that a non-white person is only able to conversate as an ignorant hoodrat.

I’m not in agreement of scrapping black history month; it’s the only time young black children learn a small but detrimental and hindering part of their history.  And as Maya Angelou once eloquently described “if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going”.

I’m however definitely not subscribing to this white washed tale of events that we constantly feed everyone, and expect the black community to be grateful for what seems as progressive, when in actual reality, has effectively changed from a physical abuse to a mental warfare.

Sincerely,

An opinotated angry black girl.

By Zainab Alejo

[philipfloyd]

8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts

There are many attributes that an SEO must have in order to be successful, but one of the most important ones is being willing to improve all the time. Improvement doesn’t always come from making things right. In fact, the only way you’ll really improve is by failing, over and over again.

  However, when it comes to SEO, a mistake might pass by unnoticed. You might not have any idea that you’re doing something wrong. Now, there are thousands of horrible mistakes that you could be making, like not adding keywords in titles or engaging in low quality link building.

  But here are some more subtle, modern mistakes that SEO might make these days.

  In order to find out people’s most common modern SEO mistakes, I decided to ask a number of renowned SEO experts the following question:

  Can you think of one major SEO mistake that is holding people’s websites back today?

  Some of them were kind enough to take some of their time and share the wisdom with us, so keep reading because there’s top quality information lying ahead in this list of 8 SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and later on!

  You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

You Have Duplicate Content Issues

You Target out of Reach Keywords

You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

You Over-Complicate Things

You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  1. You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

  Broken pages are really one major issue for websites, especially if they have backlinks pointing to them through those web pages. Ignoring broken pages can be a big mistake.

  John Doherty, Founder & CEO at Credo, a portal for connecting digital marketing experts with businesses, knows this and marks it as one of the biggest mistakes people make, as well as one of his team’s top priorities when optimizing websites:

  One major SEO mistake that I see holding back websites these days is not fixing their site’s broken pages that have backlinks pointing to them. I work with a lot of very large (100,000+ page) websites, and the first thing I do when we begin our engagement is look at their 404s/410s and which ones of those have inbound external links. We then map out the 1:1 redirects and redirect those. This always shows a good gain in organic search traffic, and then we build on that momentum from there. John Doherty CEO at Credo / @dohertyjf

  In the answer, John mentions a few things:

  Broken pages: First, we have the broken pages. Broken web pages are bad for the internet and, thus, bad for your website.

  Why you ask?

  Well, to understand why we first have to understand what a broken page actually is. A broken page is simply a page that doesn’t exist. You see, it’s not actually the broken page that matters, but the link that’s pointing to it.

  A page doesn’t really exist until another page links to it.

  When Google crawls a website, it always starts from the root domain. It crawls https://www.yoursite.com and then looks for links.

    Let’s assume that the first link the crawler finds is under the About Us anchor text and it links to https://www.yoursite.com/about-us/ but the page returns a 404 response code, because there’s no resource on the server at that address.

  When Google’s crawler finds 404 pages, it wastes time and resources and it doesn’t like it.

  In theory, there is an infinity of 404 pages, as you could type anything after the root domain, but a 404 page doesn’t really take form until some other page that exists links to it.

  Now broken pages can occur due to two factors:

  You delete a page that has been linked to (broken link due to broken page)

Someone misspells a URL (broken page due to broken link)

  Both the linking website as well as the linked website containing the 404 have to suffer. If you have too many broken links on your site, Google will be upset because you’re constantly wasting its resources.

  Backlinks: The second point John makes is regarding the backlinks pointing to the broken pages. As previously mentioned, some may occur due to people misspelling a URL, which isn’t your fault.

  However, if you have 10 websites that link to one of your pages and you delete that page because you think it’s no longer relevant, then you’re losing the equity that those 10 backlinks were providing. Bad for SEO!

  The cognitiveSEO Site Explorer is great for finding out backlinks that point to broken pages on your website:

    You can also have internal broken links, as well as external broken links pointing from your website to 404 pages on other sites and you should also fix those! Soon, on the 12 of December 2018, cognitiveSEO will launch its OnPage module which you’ll be able to use to determine if you have any broken internal links so make sure you check it out!. Here’s for the first time a quick preview to it. 

    Big websites: After that, we see that John mentions something about big websites. Why? Pretty simple. It’s easier to mess things up on a big website. On a small website, you might have one or two 404s but they will be easy to spot and very easy to fix.

  They might have some backlinks each, but not much is lost. However, when you have hundreds of thousands of pages, that link equity scales up pretty quickly.

  Redirects: Lastly, there are the redirects. John tells us that to fix the issue, he always does the proper redirects. By using a 301 redirect from the broken link/page to another page that is relevant, we can pass the link equity from the wasted backlinks.

  For maximum effect, don’t just redirect to the homepage or some page you want to rank if it’s not relevant. Instead, link to the most relevant page and then use internal links on relevant anchor texts surrounded by relevant content sections to pass the equity to more important pages.

  This is the type of SEO fix that might bring invisible results ‘overnight’. Thanks, John, for this wonderful input!

  2. You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

  Another issue that is generally related to bigger websites is the ‘thin content’ issue.

  One very common mistake sites make is that they publish way too many poor quality pages on their site. As a result, Google sees the site has a lot of “thin content” and lowers the site’s rankings across the board. ERIC ENGE CEO at Stone Temple / @stonetemple

  Although not always the case, when you have a small website, it’s pretty easy to come up with some decent pages. However, when you have a site with thousands of pages, the effort required to have qualitative content on all of them is a lot bigger.

  Thin content pages are pages that have no added value to what’s already on the web. Google doesn’t really have a reason to index the site so you’ll either end up in the omitted results or get this message in your Search Console:

    The message above is a manual action, which means that you’ll have to submit a review request and someone hired by Google will actually take a look at your website to determine if you’ve fixed the issue. This might take a long time, so be careful! However, it’s possible that the algorithm ‘penalizes’ your website without any warnings, by simply not ranking it. 

  Matt Cutts, the former Head of Spam at Google puts it like this:

    The thing is, thin content doesn’t always mean the site requires text. Why am I saying this? Well, Matt Cutts mentions doorway pages as an example but doesn’t really give an alternative to them. What if you do have a website that offers the same service in 1,000 cities? Should you write ‘unique’ content for each page?

  The truth is there’s no alternative to doorway pages. They’re either thin content or they have unique qualitative content. However, there’s much more than content when it comes to ranking. So if you have a car rental service, it’s not necessary to add filler content to every page, but you have to do other things well. Structure it very well, make sure your design is user-oriented and maybe consider having a blog to add relevant content to your website.

  I talk more about this in this article about doorway pages alternatives.

  However, although it does take a lot of time to add original content to every page, it might be worth the shot if you really want to stand out. Google has absolutely no reason to include you in the search results if the info you’re providing is already there, exactly in the same manner.

  Again, the CognitiveSEO OnPage Tool which will be launched on December 12, 2018 can help you identify pages with thin content.

  Thin content is a very big issue these days, especially for bigger eCommerce websites and should be treated as such. Thanks, Eric for this great addition to our list of mistakes!

  3. You Have Duplicate Content Issues

  Very closely related to thin content pages are duplicate pages, which are even worse. Andy Drinkwater (I know, that’s his real name! Pretty cool, right?) from iQ SEO knows this very well:

  Probably the one that is the most prevalent through the audits that I conduct, is the duplication of pages. This tends to often be done because site owners might have read (or believe) that multiple pages targeting the same or similar phrases, is a good thing. Page duplication/keyword cannibalisation leads to Google seeing a site that is trying too hard with its SEO and is often heavily over-optimized (not something that they want site owners doing). ANDY DRINKWATER Founder at iQ SEO / @iqseo

  Duplicate pages can occur due to many factors. For example, one client of mine had a badly implemented translation plugin, which created duplicates of the main language for the pages that did not have any translations. Bad for SEO.

  I have to admit, however, that I’m kind of surprised that any said people would do this voluntarily to themselves. Although… I did have one client that asked me why his competitors ranks with two pages for the same keyword. On his own, he might just have duplicated his pages, who knows?

  Either way, duplicate content is bad. Not only that you’re not providing anything of value and you’ll get into Google’s omitted results, but you’re wasting Google’s resources and that might eventually affect your entire website.

  I swear I did not cherry-pick these answers, but again, Andy’s input fits perfectly with our soon to release OnPage module. You’ll be able to use the tool to easily identify which pages are 100% exact copies of others and even which pages only have similar content.

  Duplicate content is definitely an issue affecting many websites. Thanks, Andy, for sharing this with us!

  4. You Target out of Reach Keywords

  It’s good to have big dreams, but sometimes, too big dreams can overwhelm and demoralize you. If you want to be able to lift those 250 pounds, you first have to be able to lift 50.

  Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media tells us that people should set realistic keywords:

  By far, the most common SEO mistake is to target phrases that are beyond reach. Even now, in 2019, a lot of marketers don’t understand competition. They target key phrases even when they have no chance of ranking. There are a lot of mistakes you can make in SEO and a million reason why a page doesn’t rank. But this is the big one. Andy Crestodina Co-Founder at Orbit Media / @crestodina

  Often times, competition is hard to explain to clients because authority and page rank are often times misunderstood or far too complex subjects. Thus, Andy has come up with a little system to better and more easily explain how people should target their keywords.

  Because it’s difficult to explain links and authority, I’ve started using a short-hand way to validate possible target phrases:

If you have a newer, smaller or non-famous website, target five-word phrases.

If you’re relevant in your niche, but not a well-known brand, target four-word phrases.

If you’re a serious player with a popular site, go ahead and target those three-word phrases.

Here’s a chart that helps make that recommendation…

  Source: Orbit Media

  I feel the need to point out that although there’s always been a correlation between lower search volume and higher word count, that’s not always the case. Many of you probably consider long tail keywords to be keywords with more words in the phrase but the term ‘long tail’ actually comes from the search graph:

    So, theoretically, you can find high search volume, high word count keywords and also low search volume, low word count keywords. Some of these two or three keyword phrases might even have very low competition.

  More on the true meaning of long tail keywords can be read here.

  However, as Andy stated above, it’s pretty difficult to understand what ‘low competition’ really is in terms of SEO so, since there’s a correlation between low search volume and high word count, there’s a big chance you won’t go wrong with it.

  When you’re first starting out, it’s always better to start targeting lower competition keywords and build your way up. Thanks, Andy, for the input and also for the very useful chart!

  5. You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

  Since we’ve just talked about what keywords you want to rank for, why not talk a little about keywords you’re already ranking for? Cyrus Shepard, ex Mozzer and current founder of Zyppy knows the value of ranking keywords data very well:

  I regularly see websites make the mistake of only optimizing for the traffic they want, and ignoring the traffic they have. Lots of sites perform an “SEO optimization” when they create content: choosing keywords, writing titles, structuring headlines, etc. Sadly, a lot of folks stop there. After you publish and receive a few months of traffic, Google freely gives you a ton of data on how your content fits into the larger search ecosystem. This includes the exact queries people use to find you, which is also an indication of what Google thinks you deserve to rank for. By performing a “secondary optimization” around this real-world data, you take guessing out of the equation and take advantage of more targeted opportunities, hopefully leading to more traffic. Cyrus Shepard Founder at Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  You know… you probably have no idea what keywords you’re actually ranking for. You’re probably thinking “I already rank for them, why should I care?”

  Well… the truth is that you might get some traffic from keywords you already rank for, but not all of it. If you’re getting 5 searches from a keyword that has 100 monthly searches, you’re probably not on 1st position because the average CTR for 1st position is around 30%.

  It’s either you’re number 5 or below or you have really bad CTR and won’t last long in the top spots. If you’re on position 5+, then there’s still room for improvement.

  You can monitor the keywords you’re already ranking for in your website analytics or by using Google Tag Manager on your website and adding Google Analytics to it. There’s a good amount of info in the Search Console as well.

  You can also use the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool to easily identify terms which you should add to your content to make it more relevant for specific keywords:

    Cyrus talks more about this here. Make sure you give it a good read! Cyrus, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us!

  6. You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

  If your SEO moves rely on unconfirmed theories, then it’s pretty much likely that you won’t be ranking high very quickly. 

  Josh Bachynski, science freak and renowned Google stalker, is very fond of this. He recommends that people should take a more scientific approach when it comes to search engine ranking factors because, in the end, it’s an algorithm:

  The biggest mistake people are making in SEO these days is in not using scientific methods to determine their theories about ranking factors and instead just wild guesses which of course are not as good and eventually will be completely off and they won’t be able to rank and have no idea why. Josh Bachynski Vlogger on YouTube / @joshbachynski

  The point Josh is trying to make is that you should always test your SEO methods before you actually implement them and you should test them the right way.

  One good example here we can give is the content pruning technique. We tried it and it apparently worked. Our organic search rankings started to rise. However, the test was not isolated, so therefore it wasn’t really scientific. We don’t really know if the organic search traffic increase was due to the content pruning or other factors because this happened over a longer period of time.

  This can be said about other tests, as well. Most of the time people approach search engine optimization from multiple angles at the same time and it really is difficult to attribute growth to only one factor. You can read more about the content pruning technique here.

  He also tells you not to trust Google a lot. I tend to agree. Here’s one example: “social media isn’t a ranking factor”. Take it as is and you will completely ignore building a social media marketing strategy. However, if you also take into account that social media can bring your website some backlinks, then you might reconsider things. Sure, blindly posting on Facebook daily while getting 0 likes is a waste of time, but get some engagement going and you’ll definitely see how it can boost you up.

  You can check Josh’s YouTube for more on his scientific approach on things and how he determines his ranking factors. It’s also kind of funny to watch how he keeps poking Google officials with a stick.

  7. You Over-Complicate Things

  On a completely different note, many people over-complicate things when it comes to search engine optimization. This is mostly true, especially for beginners or startups that want high organic search rankings in a record amount of time.

  Although what Josh says is true, that you should test your theories and choose your techniques wisely, most of the times it’s just better to stick to the basics.

  Kevin Gibbons, CEO at Re:Signal knows this very well and points it out in his answer:

  The biggest mistake I find people making in SEO is that they over-complicate things. SEO can be very simple. Start with what’s the goal and find the easiest way to hit your target. If you start with identifying the real opportunity, you won’t go far wrong – but quite often people are doing what they think is best, without understanding what question they are answering. e.g. we just need more links… that might be correct, but first identify why – as it might not be the real problem to solve. Kevin Gibbons Founder & CEO at Re:Signal / @kevgibbo

  Kevin makes a really good point. I’ve recently had a client that told me about her previous local SEO expert and his work. I was shocked! Over 100 backlinks built in the past 6 months (that’s a lot for the Romanian market), while the title of the homepage was still only the brand name, written in capital letters. Literally, no page on the website was targeting any keywords with the title! Unforgivable!

  Thanks, Kevin for the answer and the awesome presentation you gave at the 2018 WeContent Content Marketers’ Conference in Bucharest, Romania.

  On the same note we have Aleyda Solis, international SEO speaker and consultant with astonishing results:

  From SEOs: Overlooking the SEO pillars while trying to chase specific algorithm updates. I see many putting so much effort trying to identify the factors behind some of the latest updates that might have affected them while overlooking that at the end is about addressing the principles and fundamentals that will help them grow in the long-run: From relevance, organization and format of information to better addressing the targeted queries to user satisfaction, … It’s normal to have the need to keep updated and trying to identify potential causes that could potentially affect our SEO processes, but at the same time we should avoid getting obsessed with them and falling into the “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO is an ever-changing domain and you have to constantly keep an eye for major updates such as the mobile-first index update. However, these updates follow a real issue, which is that most websites aren’t mobile friendly and most users now use mobile devices to perform their searches.

  But constantly running after the next update, shifting your strategy 180 degrees or abandoning the essentials to pursue some rather unsure things won’t do any good.

  Although it’s good to stay up to date with things (and you should), it would be a better idea if the foundation of your strategy were based on the basics of SEO, the long-lasting ones.

  Aleyda was kind enough to give us two answers so keep reading:

  8. You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  Big words of wisdom here from Aleyda. I kept this one for the end because it’s so true and many SEO specialists will resonate with it. Most of the time, it’s not even the SEOs that make the biggest SEO mistakes, but the clients themselves:

  From other specialists (developers, designers, copywriters) as well as business owners: Implementing certain actions thinking that SEO “can wait” to be included later on in the process, without taking into consideration than doing it so might mean to having to “re-do” the whole project sometimes just because there wasn’t a timely validation in the first place, that can help to save so much in the long-run. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO can often be postponed because it seems like other things are more important. Many people build their website with “I’ll start SEO later” in mind, just to wake up to the reality that their website is built completely wrong and major changes are required in order to make it SEO friendly.

  Business owners would rather hire PPC experts than content marketers. They only ask an SEO consultant on their opinion after most of the development for the website has been done.

  For example, this study found out that ‘load more’ buttons convert better than pagination when it comes to eCommerce. Read it and you might immediately want to switch to ‘load more’ buttons or build your website that way from the beginning. However, you might completely ignore the fact that you’ll basically remove hundreds of pages from your site and hide their content under some JS that there’s no guarantee Google will ever see. Good for conversion, but bad for SEO.

  If you want to see good results with SEO and also minimize costs, you should start with SEO as soon as you start developing your website. Otherwise, things will only be harder and they will take more time.

  Thanks, Aleyda, for sharing your experience with us!

  Conclusion

  If you’re an SEO or a digital marketing professional and you’re making any of these mistakes, take action immediately to fix them, as they affect your websites dramatically! Hopefully, this list of common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and onward will be useful to you and your team.

  What SEO mistakes have you done so far? Share it with us in the comments section so that we may all learn from it!

The post 8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/20859/major-seo-mistakes/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[krisggordon]

8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts

There are many attributes that an SEO must have in order to be successful, but one of the most important ones is being willing to improve all the time. Improvement doesn’t always come from making things right. In fact, the only way you’ll really improve is by failing, over and over again.

  However, when it comes to SEO, a mistake might pass by unnoticed. You might not have any idea that you’re doing something wrong. Now, there are thousands of horrible mistakes that you could be making, like not adding keywords in titles or engaging in low quality link building.

  But here are some more subtle, modern mistakes that SEO might make these days.

  In order to find out people’s most common modern SEO mistakes, I decided to ask a number of renowned SEO experts the following question:

  Can you think of one major SEO mistake that is holding people’s websites back today?

  Some of them were kind enough to take some of their time and share the wisdom with us, so keep reading because there’s top quality information lying ahead in this list of 8 SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and later on!

  You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

You Have Duplicate Content Issues

You Target out of Reach Keywords

You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

You Over-Complicate Things

You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  1. You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

  Broken pages are really one major issue for websites, especially if they have backlinks pointing to them through those web pages. Ignoring broken pages can be a big mistake.

  John Doherty, Founder & CEO at Credo, a portal for connecting digital marketing experts with businesses, knows this and marks it as one of the biggest mistakes people make, as well as one of his team’s top priorities when optimizing websites:

  One major SEO mistake that I see holding back websites these days is not fixing their site’s broken pages that have backlinks pointing to them. I work with a lot of very large (100,000+ page) websites, and the first thing I do when we begin our engagement is look at their 404s/410s and which ones of those have inbound external links. We then map out the 1:1 redirects and redirect those. This always shows a good gain in organic search traffic, and then we build on that momentum from there. John Doherty CEO at Credo / @dohertyjf

  In the answer, John mentions a few things:

  Broken pages: First, we have the broken pages. Broken web pages are bad for the internet and, thus, bad for your website.

  Why you ask?

  Well, to understand why we first have to understand what a broken page actually is. A broken page is simply a page that doesn’t exist. You see, it’s not actually the broken page that matters, but the link that’s pointing to it.

  A page doesn’t really exist until another page links to it.

  When Google crawls a website, it always starts from the root domain. It crawls https://www.yoursite.com and then looks for links.

    Let’s assume that the first link the crawler finds is under the About Us anchor text and it links to https://www.yoursite.com/about-us/ but the page returns a 404 response code, because there’s no resource on the server at that address.

  When Google’s crawler finds 404 pages, it wastes time and resources and it doesn’t like it.

  In theory, there is an infinity of 404 pages, as you could type anything after the root domain, but a 404 page doesn’t really take form until some other page that exists links to it.

  Now broken pages can occur due to two factors:

  You delete a page that has been linked to (broken link due to broken page)

Someone misspells a URL (broken page due to broken link)

  Both the linking website as well as the linked website containing the 404 have to suffer. If you have too many broken links on your site, Google will be upset because you’re constantly wasting its resources.

  Backlinks: The second point John makes is regarding the backlinks pointing to the broken pages. As previously mentioned, some may occur due to people misspelling a URL, which isn’t your fault.

  However, if you have 10 websites that link to one of your pages and you delete that page because you think it’s no longer relevant, then you’re losing the equity that those 10 backlinks were providing. Bad for SEO!

  The cognitiveSEO Site Explorer is great for finding out backlinks that point to broken pages on your website:

    You can also have internal broken links, as well as external broken links pointing from your website to 404 pages on other sites and you should also fix those! Soon, on the 12 of December 2018, cognitiveSEO will launch its OnPage module which you’ll be able to use to determine if you have any broken internal links so make sure you check it out!. Here’s for the first time a quick preview to it. 

    Big websites: After that, we see that John mentions something about big websites. Why? Pretty simple. It’s easier to mess things up on a big website. On a small website, you might have one or two 404s but they will be easy to spot and very easy to fix.

  They might have some backlinks each, but not much is lost. However, when you have hundreds of thousands of pages, that link equity scales up pretty quickly.

  Redirects: Lastly, there are the redirects. John tells us that to fix the issue, he always does the proper redirects. By using a 301 redirect from the broken link/page to another page that is relevant, we can pass the link equity from the wasted backlinks.

  For maximum effect, don’t just redirect to the homepage or some page you want to rank if it’s not relevant. Instead, link to the most relevant page and then use internal links on relevant anchor texts surrounded by relevant content sections to pass the equity to more important pages.

  This is the type of SEO fix that might bring invisible results ‘overnight’. Thanks, John, for this wonderful input!

  2. You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

  Another issue that is generally related to bigger websites is the ‘thin content’ issue.

  One very common mistake sites make is that they publish way too many poor quality pages on their site. As a result, Google sees the site has a lot of “thin content” and lowers the site’s rankings across the board. ERIC ENGE CEO at Stone Temple / @stonetemple

  Although not always the case, when you have a small website, it’s pretty easy to come up with some decent pages. However, when you have a site with thousands of pages, the effort required to have qualitative content on all of them is a lot bigger.

  Thin content pages are pages that have no added value to what’s already on the web. Google doesn’t really have a reason to index the site so you’ll either end up in the omitted results or get this message in your Search Console:

    The message above is a manual action, which means that you’ll have to submit a review request and someone hired by Google will actually take a look at your website to determine if you’ve fixed the issue. This might take a long time, so be careful! However, it’s possible that the algorithm ‘penalizes’ your website without any warnings, by simply not ranking it. 

  Matt Cutts, the former Head of Spam at Google puts it like this:

    The thing is, thin content doesn’t always mean the site requires text. Why am I saying this? Well, Matt Cutts mentions doorway pages as an example but doesn’t really give an alternative to them. What if you do have a website that offers the same service in 1,000 cities? Should you write ‘unique’ content for each page?

  The truth is there’s no alternative to doorway pages. They’re either thin content or they have unique qualitative content. However, there’s much more than content when it comes to ranking. So if you have a car rental service, it’s not necessary to add filler content to every page, but you have to do other things well. Structure it very well, make sure your design is user-oriented and maybe consider having a blog to add relevant content to your website.

  I talk more about this in this article about doorway pages alternatives.

  However, although it does take a lot of time to add original content to every page, it might be worth the shot if you really want to stand out. Google has absolutely no reason to include you in the search results if the info you’re providing is already there, exactly in the same manner.

  Again, the CognitiveSEO OnPage Tool which will be launched on December 12, 2018 can help you identify pages with thin content.

  Thin content is a very big issue these days, especially for bigger eCommerce websites and should be treated as such. Thanks, Eric for this great addition to our list of mistakes!

  3. You Have Duplicate Content Issues

  Very closely related to thin content pages are duplicate pages, which are even worse. Andy Drinkwater (I know, that’s his real name! Pretty cool, right?) from iQ SEO knows this very well:

  Probably the one that is the most prevalent through the audits that I conduct, is the duplication of pages. This tends to often be done because site owners might have read (or believe) that multiple pages targeting the same or similar phrases, is a good thing. Page duplication/keyword cannibalisation leads to Google seeing a site that is trying too hard with its SEO and is often heavily over-optimized (not something that they want site owners doing). ANDY DRINKWATER Founder at iQ SEO / @iqseo

  Duplicate pages can occur due to many factors. For example, one client of mine had a badly implemented translation plugin, which created duplicates of the main language for the pages that did not have any translations. Bad for SEO.

  I have to admit, however, that I’m kind of surprised that any said people would do this voluntarily to themselves. Although… I did have one client that asked me why his competitors ranks with two pages for the same keyword. On his own, he might just have duplicated his pages, who knows?

  Either way, duplicate content is bad. Not only that you’re not providing anything of value and you’ll get into Google’s omitted results, but you’re wasting Google’s resources and that might eventually affect your entire website.

  I swear I did not cherry-pick these answers, but again, Andy’s input fits perfectly with our soon to release OnPage module. You’ll be able to use the tool to easily identify which pages are 100% exact copies of others and even which pages only have similar content.

  Duplicate content is definitely an issue affecting many websites. Thanks, Andy, for sharing this with us!

  4. You Target out of Reach Keywords

  It’s good to have big dreams, but sometimes, too big dreams can overwhelm and demoralize you. If you want to be able to lift those 250 pounds, you first have to be able to lift 50.

  Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media tells us that people should set realistic keywords:

  By far, the most common SEO mistake is to target phrases that are beyond reach. Even now, in 2019, a lot of marketers don’t understand competition. They target key phrases even when they have no chance of ranking. There are a lot of mistakes you can make in SEO and a million reason why a page doesn’t rank. But this is the big one. Andy Crestodina Co-Founder at Orbit Media / @crestodina

  Often times, competition is hard to explain to clients because authority and page rank are often times misunderstood or far too complex subjects. Thus, Andy has come up with a little system to better and more easily explain how people should target their keywords.

  Because it’s difficult to explain links and authority, I’ve started using a short-hand way to validate possible target phrases:

If you have a newer, smaller or non-famous website, target five-word phrases.

If you’re relevant in your niche, but not a well-known brand, target four-word phrases.

If you’re a serious player with a popular site, go ahead and target those three-word phrases.

Here’s a chart that helps make that recommendation…

  Source: Orbit Media

  I feel the need to point out that although there’s always been a correlation between lower search volume and higher word count, that’s not always the case. Many of you probably consider long tail keywords to be keywords with more words in the phrase but the term ‘long tail’ actually comes from the search graph:

    So, theoretically, you can find high search volume, high word count keywords and also low search volume, low word count keywords. Some of these two or three keyword phrases might even have very low competition.

  More on the true meaning of long tail keywords can be read here.

  However, as Andy stated above, it’s pretty difficult to understand what ‘low competition’ really is in terms of SEO so, since there’s a correlation between low search volume and high word count, there’s a big chance you won’t go wrong with it.

  When you’re first starting out, it’s always better to start targeting lower competition keywords and build your way up. Thanks, Andy, for the input and also for the very useful chart!

  5. You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

  Since we’ve just talked about what keywords you want to rank for, why not talk a little about keywords you’re already ranking for? Cyrus Shepard, ex Mozzer and current founder of Zyppy knows the value of ranking keywords data very well:

  I regularly see websites make the mistake of only optimizing for the traffic they want, and ignoring the traffic they have. Lots of sites perform an “SEO optimization” when they create content: choosing keywords, writing titles, structuring headlines, etc. Sadly, a lot of folks stop there. After you publish and receive a few months of traffic, Google freely gives you a ton of data on how your content fits into the larger search ecosystem. This includes the exact queries people use to find you, which is also an indication of what Google thinks you deserve to rank for. By performing a “secondary optimization” around this real-world data, you take guessing out of the equation and take advantage of more targeted opportunities, hopefully leading to more traffic. Cyrus Shepard Founder at Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  You know… you probably have no idea what keywords you’re actually ranking for. You’re probably thinking “I already rank for them, why should I care?”

  Well… the truth is that you might get some traffic from keywords you already rank for, but not all of it. If you’re getting 5 searches from a keyword that has 100 monthly searches, you’re probably not on 1st position because the average CTR for 1st position is around 30%.

  It’s either you’re number 5 or below or you have really bad CTR and won’t last long in the top spots. If you’re on position 5+, then there’s still room for improvement.

  You can monitor the keywords you’re already ranking for in your website analytics or by using Google Tag Manager on your website and adding Google Analytics to it. There’s a good amount of info in the Search Console as well.

  You can also use the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool to easily identify terms which you should add to your content to make it more relevant for specific keywords:

    Cyrus talks more about this here. Make sure you give it a good read! Cyrus, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us!

  6. You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

  If your SEO moves rely on unconfirmed theories, then it’s pretty much likely that you won’t be ranking high very quickly. 

  Josh Bachynski, science freak and renowned Google stalker, is very fond of this. He recommends that people should take a more scientific approach when it comes to search engine ranking factors because, in the end, it’s an algorithm:

  The biggest mistake people are making in SEO these days is in not using scientific methods to determine their theories about ranking factors and instead just wild guesses which of course are not as good and eventually will be completely off and they won’t be able to rank and have no idea why. Josh Bachynski Vlogger on YouTube / @joshbachynski

  The point Josh is trying to make is that you should always test your SEO methods before you actually implement them and you should test them the right way.

  One good example here we can give is the content pruning technique. We tried it and it apparently worked. Our organic search rankings started to rise. However, the test was not isolated, so therefore it wasn’t really scientific. We don’t really know if the organic search traffic increase was due to the content pruning or other factors because this happened over a longer period of time.

  This can be said about other tests, as well. Most of the time people approach search engine optimization from multiple angles at the same time and it really is difficult to attribute growth to only one factor. You can read more about the content pruning technique here.

  He also tells you not to trust Google a lot. I tend to agree. Here’s one example: “social media isn’t a ranking factor”. Take it as is and you will completely ignore building a social media marketing strategy. However, if you also take into account that social media can bring your website some backlinks, then you might reconsider things. Sure, blindly posting on Facebook daily while getting 0 likes is a waste of time, but get some engagement going and you’ll definitely see how it can boost you up.

  You can check Josh’s YouTube for more on his scientific approach on things and how he determines his ranking factors. It’s also kind of funny to watch how he keeps poking Google officials with a stick.

  7. You Over-Complicate Things

  On a completely different note, many people over-complicate things when it comes to search engine optimization. This is mostly true, especially for beginners or startups that want high organic search rankings in a record amount of time.

  Although what Josh says is true, that you should test your theories and choose your techniques wisely, most of the times it’s just better to stick to the basics.

  Kevin Gibbons, CEO at Re:Signal knows this very well and points it out in his answer:

  The biggest mistake I find people making in SEO is that they over-complicate things. SEO can be very simple. Start with what’s the goal and find the easiest way to hit your target. If you start with identifying the real opportunity, you won’t go far wrong – but quite often people are doing what they think is best, without understanding what question they are answering. e.g. we just need more links… that might be correct, but first identify why – as it might not be the real problem to solve. Kevin Gibbons Founder & CEO at Re:Signal / @kevgibbo

  Kevin makes a really good point. I’ve recently had a client that told me about her previous local SEO expert and his work. I was shocked! Over 100 backlinks built in the past 6 months (that’s a lot for the Romanian market), while the title of the homepage was still only the brand name, written in capital letters. Literally, no page on the website was targeting any keywords with the title! Unforgivable!

  Thanks, Kevin for the answer and the awesome presentation you gave at the 2018 WeContent Content Marketers’ Conference in Bucharest, Romania.

  On the same note we have Aleyda Solis, international SEO speaker and consultant with astonishing results:

  From SEOs: Overlooking the SEO pillars while trying to chase specific algorithm updates. I see many putting so much effort trying to identify the factors behind some of the latest updates that might have affected them while overlooking that at the end is about addressing the principles and fundamentals that will help them grow in the long-run: From relevance, organization and format of information to better addressing the targeted queries to user satisfaction, … It’s normal to have the need to keep updated and trying to identify potential causes that could potentially affect our SEO processes, but at the same time we should avoid getting obsessed with them and falling into the “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO is an ever-changing domain and you have to constantly keep an eye for major updates such as the mobile-first index update. However, these updates follow a real issue, which is that most websites aren’t mobile friendly and most users now use mobile devices to perform their searches.

  But constantly running after the next update, shifting your strategy 180 degrees or abandoning the essentials to pursue some rather unsure things won’t do any good.

  Although it’s good to stay up to date with things (and you should), it would be a better idea if the foundation of your strategy were based on the basics of SEO, the long-lasting ones.

  Aleyda was kind enough to give us two answers so keep reading:

  8. You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  Big words of wisdom here from Aleyda. I kept this one for the end because it’s so true and many SEO specialists will resonate with it. Most of the time, it’s not even the SEOs that make the biggest SEO mistakes, but the clients themselves:

  From other specialists (developers, designers, copywriters) as well as business owners: Implementing certain actions thinking that SEO “can wait” to be included later on in the process, without taking into consideration than doing it so might mean to having to “re-do” the whole project sometimes just because there wasn’t a timely validation in the first place, that can help to save so much in the long-run. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO can often be postponed because it seems like other things are more important. Many people build their website with “I’ll start SEO later” in mind, just to wake up to the reality that their website is built completely wrong and major changes are required in order to make it SEO friendly.

  Business owners would rather hire PPC experts than content marketers. They only ask an SEO consultant on their opinion after most of the development for the website has been done.

  For example, this study found out that ‘load more’ buttons convert better than pagination when it comes to eCommerce. Read it and you might immediately want to switch to ‘load more’ buttons or build your website that way from the beginning. However, you might completely ignore the fact that you’ll basically remove hundreds of pages from your site and hide their content under some JS that there’s no guarantee Google will ever see. Good for conversion, but bad for SEO.

  If you want to see good results with SEO and also minimize costs, you should start with SEO as soon as you start developing your website. Otherwise, things will only be harder and they will take more time.

  Thanks, Aleyda, for sharing your experience with us!

  Conclusion

  If you’re an SEO or a digital marketing professional and you’re making any of these mistakes, take action immediately to fix them, as they affect your websites dramatically! Hopefully, this list of common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and onward will be useful to you and your team.

  What SEO mistakes have you done so far? Share it with us in the comments section so that we may all learn from it!

The post 8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

from Marketing https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/20859/major-seo-mistakes/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[wjwilliams29]

8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts

There are many attributes that an SEO must have in order to be successful, but one of the most important ones is being willing to improve all the time. Improvement doesn’t always come from making things right. In fact, the only way you’ll really improve is by failing, over and over again.

  However, when it comes to SEO, a mistake might pass by unnoticed. You might not have any idea that you’re doing something wrong. Now, there are thousands of horrible mistakes that you could be making, like not adding keywords in titles or engaging in low quality link building.

  But here are some more subtle, modern mistakes that SEO might make these days.

  In order to find out people’s most common modern SEO mistakes, I decided to ask a number of renowned SEO experts the following question:

  Can you think of one major SEO mistake that is holding people’s websites back today?

  Some of them were kind enough to take some of their time and share the wisdom with us, so keep reading because there’s top quality information lying ahead in this list of 8 SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and later on!

  You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

You Have Duplicate Content Issues

You Target out of Reach Keywords

You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

You Over-Complicate Things

You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  1. You Don’t Fix Broken Pages with Backlinks

  Broken pages are really one major issue for websites, especially if they have backlinks pointing to them through those web pages. Ignoring broken pages can be a big mistake.

  John Doherty, Founder & CEO at Credo, a portal for connecting digital marketing experts with businesses, knows this and marks it as one of the biggest mistakes people make, as well as one of his team’s top priorities when optimizing websites:

  One major SEO mistake that I see holding back websites these days is not fixing their site’s broken pages that have backlinks pointing to them. I work with a lot of very large (100,000+ page) websites, and the first thing I do when we begin our engagement is look at their 404s/410s and which ones of those have inbound external links. We then map out the 1:1 redirects and redirect those. This always shows a good gain in organic search traffic, and then we build on that momentum from there. John Doherty CEO at Credo / @dohertyjf

  In the answer, John mentions a few things:

  Broken pages: First, we have the broken pages. Broken web pages are bad for the internet and, thus, bad for your website.

  Why you ask?

  Well, to understand why we first have to understand what a broken page actually is. A broken page is simply a page that doesn’t exist. You see, it’s not actually the broken page that matters, but the link that’s pointing to it.

  A page doesn’t really exist until another page links to it.

  When Google crawls a website, it always starts from the root domain. It crawls https://www.yoursite.com and then looks for links.

    Let’s assume that the first link the crawler finds is under the About Us anchor text and it links to https://www.yoursite.com/about-us/ but the page returns a 404 response code, because there’s no resource on the server at that address.

  When Google’s crawler finds 404 pages, it wastes time and resources and it doesn’t like it.

  In theory, there is an infinity of 404 pages, as you could type anything after the root domain, but a 404 page doesn’t really take form until some other page that exists links to it.

  Now broken pages can occur due to two factors:

  You delete a page that has been linked to (broken link due to broken page)

Someone misspells a URL (broken page due to broken link)

  Both the linking website as well as the linked website containing the 404 have to suffer. If you have too many broken links on your site, Google will be upset because you’re constantly wasting its resources.

  Backlinks: The second point John makes is regarding the backlinks pointing to the broken pages. As previously mentioned, some may occur due to people misspelling a URL, which isn’t your fault.

  However, if you have 10 websites that link to one of your pages and you delete that page because you think it’s no longer relevant, then you’re losing the equity that those 10 backlinks were providing. Bad for SEO!

  The cognitiveSEO Site Explorer is great for finding out backlinks that point to broken pages on your website:

    You can also have internal broken links, as well as external broken links pointing from your website to 404 pages on other sites and you should also fix those! Soon, on the 12 of December 2018, cognitiveSEO will launch its OnPage module which you’ll be able to use to determine if you have any broken internal links so make sure you check it out!. Here’s for the first time a quick preview to it. 

    Big websites: After that, we see that John mentions something about big websites. Why? Pretty simple. It’s easier to mess things up on a big website. On a small website, you might have one or two 404s but they will be easy to spot and very easy to fix.

  They might have some backlinks each, but not much is lost. However, when you have hundreds of thousands of pages, that link equity scales up pretty quickly.

  Redirects: Lastly, there are the redirects. John tells us that to fix the issue, he always does the proper redirects. By using a 301 redirect from the broken link/page to another page that is relevant, we can pass the link equity from the wasted backlinks.

  For maximum effect, don’t just redirect to the homepage or some page you want to rank if it’s not relevant. Instead, link to the most relevant page and then use internal links on relevant anchor texts surrounded by relevant content sections to pass the equity to more important pages.

  This is the type of SEO fix that might bring invisible results ‘overnight’. Thanks, John, for this wonderful input!

  2. You Publish Too Many Poor Quality Pages

  Another issue that is generally related to bigger websites is the ‘thin content’ issue.

  One very common mistake sites make is that they publish way too many poor quality pages on their site. As a result, Google sees the site has a lot of “thin content” and lowers the site’s rankings across the board. ERIC ENGE CEO at Stone Temple / @stonetemple

  Although not always the case, when you have a small website, it’s pretty easy to come up with some decent pages. However, when you have a site with thousands of pages, the effort required to have qualitative content on all of them is a lot bigger.

  Thin content pages are pages that have no added value to what’s already on the web. Google doesn’t really have a reason to index the site so you’ll either end up in the omitted results or get this message in your Search Console:

    The message above is a manual action, which means that you’ll have to submit a review request and someone hired by Google will actually take a look at your website to determine if you’ve fixed the issue. This might take a long time, so be careful! However, it’s possible that the algorithm ‘penalizes’ your website without any warnings, by simply not ranking it. 

  Matt Cutts, the former Head of Spam at Google puts it like this:

    The thing is, thin content doesn’t always mean the site requires text. Why am I saying this? Well, Matt Cutts mentions doorway pages as an example but doesn’t really give an alternative to them. What if you do have a website that offers the same service in 1,000 cities? Should you write ‘unique’ content for each page?

  The truth is there’s no alternative to doorway pages. They’re either thin content or they have unique qualitative content. However, there’s much more than content when it comes to ranking. So if you have a car rental service, it’s not necessary to add filler content to every page, but you have to do other things well. Structure it very well, make sure your design is user-oriented and maybe consider having a blog to add relevant content to your website.

  I talk more about this in this article about doorway pages alternatives.

  However, although it does take a lot of time to add original content to every page, it might be worth the shot if you really want to stand out. Google has absolutely no reason to include you in the search results if the info you’re providing is already there, exactly in the same manner.

  Again, the CognitiveSEO OnPage Tool which will be launched on December 12, 2018 can help you identify pages with thin content.

  Thin content is a very big issue these days, especially for bigger eCommerce websites and should be treated as such. Thanks, Eric for this great addition to our list of mistakes!

  3. You Have Duplicate Content Issues

  Very closely related to thin content pages are duplicate pages, which are even worse. Andy Drinkwater (I know, that’s his real name! Pretty cool, right?) from iQ SEO knows this very well:

  Probably the one that is the most prevalent through the audits that I conduct, is the duplication of pages. This tends to often be done because site owners might have read (or believe) that multiple pages targeting the same or similar phrases, is a good thing. Page duplication/keyword cannibalisation leads to Google seeing a site that is trying too hard with its SEO and is often heavily over-optimized (not something that they want site owners doing). ANDY DRINKWATER Founder at iQ SEO / @iqseo

  Duplicate pages can occur due to many factors. For example, one client of mine had a badly implemented translation plugin, which created duplicates of the main language for the pages that did not have any translations. Bad for SEO.

  I have to admit, however, that I’m kind of surprised that any said people would do this voluntarily to themselves. Although… I did have one client that asked me why his competitors ranks with two pages for the same keyword. On his own, he might just have duplicated his pages, who knows?

  Either way, duplicate content is bad. Not only that you’re not providing anything of value and you’ll get into Google’s omitted results, but you’re wasting Google’s resources and that might eventually affect your entire website.

  I swear I did not cherry-pick these answers, but again, Andy’s input fits perfectly with our soon to release OnPage module. You’ll be able to use the tool to easily identify which pages are 100% exact copies of others and even which pages only have similar content.

  Duplicate content is definitely an issue affecting many websites. Thanks, Andy, for sharing this with us!

  4. You Target out of Reach Keywords

  It’s good to have big dreams, but sometimes, too big dreams can overwhelm and demoralize you. If you want to be able to lift those 250 pounds, you first have to be able to lift 50.

  Andy Crestodina from Orbit Media tells us that people should set realistic keywords:

  By far, the most common SEO mistake is to target phrases that are beyond reach. Even now, in 2019, a lot of marketers don’t understand competition. They target key phrases even when they have no chance of ranking. There are a lot of mistakes you can make in SEO and a million reason why a page doesn’t rank. But this is the big one. Andy Crestodina Co-Founder at Orbit Media / @crestodina

  Often times, competition is hard to explain to clients because authority and page rank are often times misunderstood or far too complex subjects. Thus, Andy has come up with a little system to better and more easily explain how people should target their keywords.

  Because it’s difficult to explain links and authority, I’ve started using a short-hand way to validate possible target phrases:

If you have a newer, smaller or non-famous website, target five-word phrases.

If you’re relevant in your niche, but not a well-known brand, target four-word phrases.

If you’re a serious player with a popular site, go ahead and target those three-word phrases.

Here’s a chart that helps make that recommendation…

  Source: Orbit Media

  I feel the need to point out that although there’s always been a correlation between lower search volume and higher word count, that’s not always the case. Many of you probably consider long tail keywords to be keywords with more words in the phrase but the term ‘long tail’ actually comes from the search graph:

    So, theoretically, you can find high search volume, high word count keywords and also low search volume, low word count keywords. Some of these two or three keyword phrases might even have very low competition.

  More on the true meaning of long tail keywords can be read here.

  However, as Andy stated above, it’s pretty difficult to understand what ‘low competition’ really is in terms of SEO so, since there’s a correlation between low search volume and high word count, there’s a big chance you won’t go wrong with it.

  When you’re first starting out, it’s always better to start targeting lower competition keywords and build your way up. Thanks, Andy, for the input and also for the very useful chart!

  5. You Ignore the Organic Search Traffic You Already Have

  Since we’ve just talked about what keywords you want to rank for, why not talk a little about keywords you’re already ranking for? Cyrus Shepard, ex Mozzer and current founder of Zyppy knows the value of ranking keywords data very well:

  I regularly see websites make the mistake of only optimizing for the traffic they want, and ignoring the traffic they have. Lots of sites perform an “SEO optimization” when they create content: choosing keywords, writing titles, structuring headlines, etc. Sadly, a lot of folks stop there. After you publish and receive a few months of traffic, Google freely gives you a ton of data on how your content fits into the larger search ecosystem. This includes the exact queries people use to find you, which is also an indication of what Google thinks you deserve to rank for. By performing a “secondary optimization” around this real-world data, you take guessing out of the equation and take advantage of more targeted opportunities, hopefully leading to more traffic. Cyrus Shepard Founder at Zyppy / @CyrusShepard

  You know… you probably have no idea what keywords you’re actually ranking for. You’re probably thinking “I already rank for them, why should I care?”

  Well… the truth is that you might get some traffic from keywords you already rank for, but not all of it. If you’re getting 5 searches from a keyword that has 100 monthly searches, you’re probably not on 1st position because the average CTR for 1st position is around 30%.

  It’s either you’re number 5 or below or you have really bad CTR and won’t last long in the top spots. If you’re on position 5+, then there’s still room for improvement.

  You can monitor the keywords you’re already ranking for in your website analytics or by using Google Tag Manager on your website and adding Google Analytics to it. There’s a good amount of info in the Search Console as well.

  You can also use the CognitiveSEO Content Optimization Tool to easily identify terms which you should add to your content to make it more relevant for specific keywords:

    Cyrus talks more about this here. Make sure you give it a good read! Cyrus, thanks so much for sharing your wisdom with us!

  6. You’re Using Unconfirmed SEO Theories

  If your SEO moves rely on unconfirmed theories, then it’s pretty much likely that you won’t be ranking high very quickly. 

  Josh Bachynski, science freak and renowned Google stalker, is very fond of this. He recommends that people should take a more scientific approach when it comes to search engine ranking factors because, in the end, it’s an algorithm:

  The biggest mistake people are making in SEO these days is in not using scientific methods to determine their theories about ranking factors and instead just wild guesses which of course are not as good and eventually will be completely off and they won’t be able to rank and have no idea why. Josh Bachynski Vlogger on YouTube / @joshbachynski

  The point Josh is trying to make is that you should always test your SEO methods before you actually implement them and you should test them the right way.

  One good example here we can give is the content pruning technique. We tried it and it apparently worked. Our organic search rankings started to rise. However, the test was not isolated, so therefore it wasn’t really scientific. We don’t really know if the organic search traffic increase was due to the content pruning or other factors because this happened over a longer period of time.

  This can be said about other tests, as well. Most of the time people approach search engine optimization from multiple angles at the same time and it really is difficult to attribute growth to only one factor. You can read more about the content pruning technique here.

  He also tells you not to trust Google a lot. I tend to agree. Here’s one example: “social media isn’t a ranking factor”. Take it as is and you will completely ignore building a social media marketing strategy. However, if you also take into account that social media can bring your website some backlinks, then you might reconsider things. Sure, blindly posting on Facebook daily while getting 0 likes is a waste of time, but get some engagement going and you’ll definitely see how it can boost you up.

  You can check Josh’s YouTube for more on his scientific approach on things and how he determines his ranking factors. It’s also kind of funny to watch how he keeps poking Google officials with a stick.

  7. You Over-Complicate Things

  On a completely different note, many people over-complicate things when it comes to search engine optimization. This is mostly true, especially for beginners or startups that want high organic search rankings in a record amount of time.

  Although what Josh says is true, that you should test your theories and choose your techniques wisely, most of the times it’s just better to stick to the basics.

  Kevin Gibbons, CEO at Re:Signal knows this very well and points it out in his answer:

  The biggest mistake I find people making in SEO is that they over-complicate things. SEO can be very simple. Start with what’s the goal and find the easiest way to hit your target. If you start with identifying the real opportunity, you won’t go far wrong – but quite often people are doing what they think is best, without understanding what question they are answering. e.g. we just need more links… that might be correct, but first identify why – as it might not be the real problem to solve. Kevin Gibbons Founder & CEO at Re:Signal / @kevgibbo

  Kevin makes a really good point. I’ve recently had a client that told me about her previous local SEO expert and his work. I was shocked! Over 100 backlinks built in the past 6 months (that’s a lot for the Romanian market), while the title of the homepage was still only the brand name, written in capital letters. Literally, no page on the website was targeting any keywords with the title! Unforgivable!

  Thanks, Kevin for the answer and the awesome presentation you gave at the 2018 WeContent Content Marketers’ Conference in Bucharest, Romania.

  On the same note we have Aleyda Solis, international SEO speaker and consultant with astonishing results:

  From SEOs: Overlooking the SEO pillars while trying to chase specific algorithm updates. I see many putting so much effort trying to identify the factors behind some of the latest updates that might have affected them while overlooking that at the end is about addressing the principles and fundamentals that will help them grow in the long-run: From relevance, organization and format of information to better addressing the targeted queries to user satisfaction, … It’s normal to have the need to keep updated and trying to identify potential causes that could potentially affect our SEO processes, but at the same time we should avoid getting obsessed with them and falling into the “can’t see the forest for the trees” situation. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO is an ever-changing domain and you have to constantly keep an eye for major updates such as the mobile-first index update. However, these updates follow a real issue, which is that most websites aren’t mobile friendly and most users now use mobile devices to perform their searches.

  But constantly running after the next update, shifting your strategy 180 degrees or abandoning the essentials to pursue some rather unsure things won’t do any good.

  Although it’s good to stay up to date with things (and you should), it would be a better idea if the foundation of your strategy were based on the basics of SEO, the long-lasting ones.

  Aleyda was kind enough to give us two answers so keep reading:

  8. You’re Not Starting with SEO in Mind Early On

  Big words of wisdom here from Aleyda. I kept this one for the end because it’s so true and many SEO specialists will resonate with it. Most of the time, it’s not even the SEOs that make the biggest SEO mistakes, but the clients themselves:

  From other specialists (developers, designers, copywriters) as well as business owners: Implementing certain actions thinking that SEO “can wait” to be included later on in the process, without taking into consideration than doing it so might mean to having to “re-do” the whole project sometimes just because there wasn’t a timely validation in the first place, that can help to save so much in the long-run. Aleyda Solis CEO at Orainti / @aleyda

  SEO can often be postponed because it seems like other things are more important. Many people build their website with “I’ll start SEO later” in mind, just to wake up to the reality that their website is built completely wrong and major changes are required in order to make it SEO friendly.

  Business owners would rather hire PPC experts than content marketers. They only ask an SEO consultant on their opinion after most of the development for the website has been done.

  For example, this study found out that ‘load more’ buttons convert better than pagination when it comes to eCommerce. Read it and you might immediately want to switch to ‘load more’ buttons or build your website that way from the beginning. However, you might completely ignore the fact that you’ll basically remove hundreds of pages from your site and hide their content under some JS that there’s no guarantee Google will ever see. Good for conversion, but bad for SEO.

  If you want to see good results with SEO and also minimize costs, you should start with SEO as soon as you start developing your website. Otherwise, things will only be harder and they will take more time.

  Thanks, Aleyda, for sharing your experience with us!

  Conclusion

  If you’re an SEO or a digital marketing professional and you’re making any of these mistakes, take action immediately to fix them, as they affect your websites dramatically! Hopefully, this list of common SEO mistakes to avoid in 2019 and onward will be useful to you and your team.

  What SEO mistakes have you done so far? Share it with us in the comments section so that we may all learn from it!

The post 8 Major SEO Mistakes You Might Make in 2019 & How to Deal With Them – Backed by SEO Experts appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

COPY WHAT MADE LISP

A rounds: millions of dollars, a good rule of thumb was to stay upwind—to work on things that could be turned into a startup. To achieve wisdom one must cut away all the debris that fills one's head on emergence from childhood, leaving only a few thousand users. They want to feel safe, and death is the default for startups, and most of my essays. Is the mathematician a small man because he's discontented? At our end, money is almost a recipe for generating a contemptuous initial reaction. It's something the market already determines.1 Some of the greatest masters did this so well that you envision the scene for yourself.

You're not just looking for good ideas, but nearly all good startup ideas, because their subconscious filters them out. Graduates of elite colleges would have been unbearable. At YC we tell startups they can blame us. That's premature optimization. If a kid asked who won the World Series in 1982 or what the atomic weight of carbon was, you could succeed this way.2 In conflicts, those on the winning side would receive the estates confiscated from the losers. The optimal solution is to have the right kind of friends. CS major and you want to work in this field at all. I was convinced the world was created by the middle class. The Northwest Passage that the Mannerists, the Romantics, and two generations of American high school students have searched for does not seem to exist.3

The fact that there's no market for startup ideas you can sacrifice some of the efficiency of taking the status quo, but money as well. If a new company that grows fast.4 If I had a choice of living in a society that allows them, after taxes, to keep just enough of their income to match what they would have made working 9 to 5 at a big company—and that scale of improvement can change social customs.5 Off the top of the field, what's the test of doing well? It's all evasion. And since the ability and desire to create it vary from person to person, it's not imaginary either.6 But because the product is not appealing enough.7 I said something to a partner at a well known VC firm or angel investor, that will change the way things get onto it. If you're so fortunate as to have to do 7. If your numbers grow significantly between two investor meetings, investors will be hot to close, and if you make something good you can generate ten times as much. Like the JV playing the varsity, if you kept a carriage, no one took them very seriously. They always get things wrong.

Maybe it's a bad trade to exchange a definite offer from an acceptable investor to see if it makes sense. In principle they could have; the king could have invented firearms, then invaded his neighbor. Architects started consciously making buildings asymmetric in Victorian times and by the 1920s asymmetry was an explicit premise of modernist architecture. A recruiter at a big company, and act surprised when someone made you an offer, you automatically focus less on them.8 They've forgotten most of them happier.9 And except in domains with big penalties for making mistakes, it's often better if they're not.10 Once you're living in the future and build what seems interesting.

To say that a certain kind of work that doesn't scale. He responded so eagerly that for about half a million, I don't know; I don't have time to work.11 But there is not much going on, especially measured by the word. In 1976, everyone looked down on a company operating out of a garage, including the founders.12 In other words, those workers were not paid what their work was worth. The question is whether the author is incorrect somewhere, say where. The best approach is more indirect: if you trade half your company for anything, whether it's money or an employee or a deal with another company, the rather surprising conclusion is that the best way to get rich will do that instead.13 The writing of essays used to be a hot deal—they can pretend they just got distracted and then restart the conversation as if they'd been anointed as the next Google, but I'm thinking this is going to solve this problem, but it is a recipe of a sort, just one that in the worst case takes a year rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.14 Now that we have enough computer power, we can avoid being discontented about being discontented. Getting the first substantial offer can be half the total difficulty of fundraising. Why?15

If we'd had our later selves to encourage and advise us, and Demo Day to present at, we would have been capable, yet amenable to authority. Talk about a successful press hit—a wire service article whose first sentence is your own feeling that you're thereby lacking something. Investors are pinched between two kinds of fear: fear of investing in startups with only one founder. The conspiracy is so thorough that most kids who discover it do so only by discovering internal contradictions in what they're told. If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of it. One reason we want kids to be told. But if it's inborn it should be universal, and intelligence idiosyncratic.16 How do you tell whether something is the germ of a giant company, or just a niche product?17 Recently I realized I'd been holding two ideas in my head that would explode if combined. You'll need an executive summary and maybe a deck. This is one way I know the rich aren't all getting richer simply from some new system for transferring wealth to them from everyone else. I'm not sure of this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of people to supply each startup with what they need.

So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat.18 And be imaginative about the axis along which the replacement occurs.19 But I didn't realize there were power plants out there generating it. That doesn't mean people are getting angrier.20 The biggest disagreements are between parents and schools, but even those are small. Innocence is also open-mindedness. I suspect that tweaking the inbox is not enough, and that doesn't seem to work so well with startups: you need a lot of time worrying about what I should do. Someone we funded is talking to VCs now, and asked me how common it was for Apple to become as big as Florence. These things don't scale linearly. The work at an early stage startup often consists of unglamorous schleps. If you ask adults why they lie to kids is how broad the conspiracy is.

Notes

Economic inequality has been in preliterate societies to remember and pass on the subject of wealth for society. Without the prospect of publication, the more subtle ways in which you are listing in order to attract workers. We have no connections, you'll find that with a real poet.

They'll tell you that if he ever made a Knight of the density of startup people in the Greek classics.

Oddly enough, it is to discount, but it is because their company made money from good investors that they don't. This is true of the economy. Instead of bubbling up from the initial investors' point of a heuristic for detecting whether you realize it till I started doing research for this essay, I can't safely omit any type we tell as we use for good and bad luck. I'd say the rate of change in response to the principle that declarations except those of popular Web browsers, including both you and the older you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they were supposed to be an inverse correlation between the top; it's IBM.

Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or some vague thing like that, founders will do worse in the Valley itself, not the type who would make good angel investors. You know what kind of protection against abuse and accidents. I calculated it once for that reason. Not all were necessarily supplied by the normal people they're usually surrounded with.

And that is not a programmer would find it was so widespread and so depended on banks, who probably knows more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's The Harmless People and The Old Way.

Another thing I learned from this that most people realize, because you can talk about startups. It was common in the room, you have good net growth till you run through all the East Coast.

This phenomenon may account for a public company CEOs were J.

As willful people get serious about tax avoidance. 35,560. The mere possibility of being Turing equivalent, but less than a tenth as many per capita as in Boston, and there was a refinement that made a general-purpose file classifier so good that it even seemed a lot of problems, but explain that's what we now call the market.

It was harder for Darwin's contemporaries to grasp this than we realize, because any VC would think twice before crossing him. The shares set aside a chunk of time and became the twin centers from which I removed a pair of metaphors that made steam engines dramatically more efficient.

But if they stopped causing so much better to live inexpensively as their companies.

Digg's is the only cause of economic inequality start to rise again. Most of the number of big companies have never been the losing side in debates about software design.

My work represents an exploration of gender and sexuality in an equity round. You could also degenerate from 129.

Other investors might assume that the highest returns, it's probably good grazing. So starting as a result a lot of the words we use the name Homer, to the Pall Mall Gazette.

That would be a constant.

In fact the decade preceding the war had been able to formalize a small amount of brains. They don't know how many computers the worm might have. And in any era if people can see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. It seemed better to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's hard to say that was more rebellion which can vary a lot more frightening in those days, and spend hours arguing over irrelevant things.

Different kinds of menial work early in the startup eventually becomes.

Xenophon Mem. One professor friend says that I didn't. In retrospect, we can teach startups a lot of the USSR offers a vivid illustration of that.

Math is the same ones. So managers are constrained too; instead of hiring them. No VC will admit they're influenced by confidence. By all the East Coast VCs.

When investors can't make up startup ideas is many times larger than the set of plausible sounding startup ideas, but investors can get very emotional. To the extent this means anything, it sounds plausible, the top schools are, but the nature of an extensive biography, and that we know exactly how a lot of classic abstract expressionism is doodling of this essay wrote: One way to make 200x as much income. First Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 1973, p.

If big companies don't advertise this. Only in a deal led by a combination of a startup in a couple predecessors. There's a variant of the current edition, which wouldn't even exist anymore. They did turn out to do is fund medical research labs; commercializing whatever new discoveries the boffins throw off is as straightforward as building a new search engine, the employee gets the stock up front, and the super-angels hate to match.