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printondemandsuite · 3 years ago

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Print On Demand Suite Review & Recommendations

= 19,500 T-Shirt Designs — in 4 Clicks! Print On Demand Biz In A Box Four Software At The Price Of One Plus Video Course, Ebook & 100 Top Seller Design Templates

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Get Print On Demand Suite and I guarantee it will change the way you look at TeeSpring & Facebook forever…So what are you waiting for? Click the button below to get started…

Steal 19,500 T-Shirt Designs That Made$520,577 With FaceBook Ads… In 4 Clicks!

So you want to profit – by selling t-shirts online – with Facebook & TeeSpeing And, you want to get traffic with Facebook Ads? Great — that’s where T-Shirt TITAN 2.0 comes in…

Here’s My “Secret Summer 2021” Formula …

STEP ONE – 100 Profitable Niches

First, we choose a profitable t-shirt niche…

The more proven the niche, the bigger the profits.

The 100 most proven niches are pre-loaded into Titan 2.

Choose 4 categories – then pick from 150 niches…

There’s no “niche research”, so we can skip to Step 2…

STEP TWO

Next, I need to create a design. This is the most important step of all, which is why I use two powerful new approaches.

Firstly, I enter a keyword into my Tee Searcher software, which scours eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Zazzle, Redbubble & Wanelo – all the main t-shirt sites – for proven designs.

Instantly I know what sells for any keyword or niche.

Secondly, I type a keyword into my Idea Maker tool. This is preloaded with over 100 ideas which have already been proven top sellers for t-shirts on TeeSpring.

These have all sold well in different niches – it’s just a case of taking the same template and “spinning” it to our chosen topic!

fI simply enter a few “keywords” – and dozens of template ideas are generated in under 1 second for me to choose.

With Tee Searcher & Idea Maker, I now have a shortlist of great design ideas for my niche. Now onto stage three..

STEP THREE

Now I need to create my design, which is the image I’m going to upload to TeeSpring.

Once again this step is 100% automated using my Auto Designer software.

I simply enter the design – as text or images. And hit go.

The software formats the images and text into a complete design image. You simply pick the one you like, download the image, and upload it to TeeSpring.

Creating a design and a live TeeSpring campaign literally now takes just a few minutes!

Now it’s time to move onto the fourth and final stage…

STEP FOUR

We now launch our Facebook ad with a high degree of confidence that we will win.

There are several tricks I use here to perfect my targeting, create the perfect ad, and maximise my chances of profits. I’ll share them ALL in the members area. And I can’t wait.

But there’s one tip I’ll share with you right now.

It’s a way to get double digit click-throughs, 10 cents clicks and maximum returns…

This fourth software tool called Auto Model.

Auto Model lets you create images of attractive models wearing your tees in eye-catching locations.

These model images are unique – which means they get more clicks, better engagement and higher conversions than the plain images everyone else is using.

This gives us another advantage over the competition.

With FOUR software tools, Titan changes EVERYTHING for t-shirt marketers in 2020…

And That’s All There Is To It!

Print On Demand Suite only launch PROVEN tshirt designs, in the BEST niches, with the most ENGAGING Facebook images.

This allows us to spend a smaller amount of money and get larger returns – with lower risk.

No matter the exact design we settle on it… the niche we choose.. or the way we launch our ad… we are instantly “locked in” on the money.

We’re finally playing the t-shirt game with the deck stacked firmly in our favour….

This is the exact system that took me from zero to selling over $10,000 of t-shirts with TeeSpring.

Get Print On Demand Suite and I guarantee it will change the way you look at TeeSpring & Facebook forever…So what are you waiting for? Click the button below to get started…

And this is the exact system you’ve been crying out for, since you first heard about people making money with t-shirts.

Can you see how this is different to the other t-shirt systems out there?

19,500 Profitable T-Shirt Designs – in 4 Clicks(Here’s How This $5,000 Software Works)

… with 150 Proven Niches…

= 19,500 T-Shirt Designs — in 4 Clicks!

So Are You Ready To Take YourT-Shirt Business To The Next Level?

Are you in? OK great.

The first step is to click on the order button below.

I’ll send you an instant access to ALL 4 Print On Demand Suite software…

Ok, then all that’s left to do is buy this before this limited time offer

CLOSES FOR GOOD! Get Print On Demand Suite and I guarantee it will change the way you look at TeeSpring & Facebook forever… So what are you waiting for? Click the button below to get started…

Buy It Now, And You Will Also Receive These Time-Limited, Profit-Boosting Bonuses…

#best print on demand vendors #print on demand book #print on demand products #print on demand software open source #best print on demand sites 2021 #best print on demand suite #print on demand suite #print on demand suite review #print on demand suite OTO #print on demand suite upsells #print on demand suite OTO upsells #PODSuite #POD Suite

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dragogate · 3 years ago

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The Best Print On Demand Sites In 2022 And How To Choose One

In this article, we’ll give you essential things to keep in mind when selecting a Print on Demand service and the best Print on Demand sites in 2022.

https://dragogate.com/best-print-on-demand-sites-in-2022/4908

#best print on demand sites #print on demand #print on demand services #print on demand websites #print on demand sites #print on demand business #best print on demand #best print on demand sites 2021 #best print on demand vendors

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dimeeasy · 3 years ago

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10 Legit Ways to Build Passive Income Online

Whether you are a student looking to make some extra cash, a working professional wanting to build a side hustle, or a corporate escapee and whosoever who is starting to build an online business need to have some cash inflow for the further smooth flow of your business.

There are many sites out there saying make money like $100 a day with surveys, with google sites, etc. Of course, they may make you money for a certain period of time but are not long-term and passive.

You always need to look out for ways to make money that are passive. You need to earn money every month and double it. Here are my top creative ideas to make money online. These real methods have worked in past and will work now and then too.

Freelancing

You would have heard a lot of this from others. But yes, this is the first best way to earn some cash before starting out your business. It will help to get some extra money into your pocket as well as fund a little for your software if you are starting out. You can start freelancing with no investment upfront. It's FREE. You can make money online freelancing.

Don’t worry if you think you don’t have any skills. You can learn small skills by taking a free trial in skillshare. There are tons of gigs people are looking for to get their work done and with the right process, you can make money as a freelancer.

By the year 2027, freelancers are projected to make up the majority of the workforce in the United States, with 50.9% of the working population. In fact, at the current growth rate, it’s estimated that 67.6 million Americans will be freelancing by the end of 2021. That’s 42% of the American workforce! (Website planet).

What are you waiting for? Search in-demand gigs on google keywords and search trends. And yes, patience is the key. You need to wait a few weeks while you get your first gig. Start promoting your services on social media and find your spot.

Starting a Blog

As of 2021, there are more than 570 million blogs on the internet, based on activities reported by WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, Wix, Squarespace, and Medium (and this number is constantly growing) (firstsiteguide).

Now do not get overwhelmed, the one thing is though blogs are growing rapidly, and so are people reading blogs. Of course, blogs are saturated, but when you niche down and find your audience then you can achieve your space in this sea of bloggers.

Starting a blog, yesterday, today, tomorrow, is possible as long as you are using proper rules, like optimizing your SEO, giving unique content to your readers, and more. But, the best day to start blogging for your profit is today and now.

Let us look at some stats on why you should start your blog today

61% of online shoppers in the US say they made a purchase after getting a recommendation from a blog post

Companies that blog actively have 126% better lead growth

80% of bloggers say that they see positive business results from their blogging efforts

Blogs affect customers’ buying decisions as 47% of them go through 3 to 5 blog posts before the buying process (Firstsiteguide)

Give me a better reason why you should not start a blog after these mind-blowing facts.

You can start a niche blog, review blog, cooking blog, gaming blog, parenting blog, and more. Just write what you know or keep an eye on your competitors and outperform them. And blogging is the best for your long-term passive income.

Starting a YouTube channel

Now as we’ve known how YouTube has evolved to be like a video search engine, the platform has grown considerably and is been growing millions of YouTubers.

Again, let’s talk about some statistics about YouTube. YouTube has 2.3 billion users worldwide.

79 percent of Internet users have their own YouTube account.

YouTube viewers watch over a billion hours of video on the platform every day and generate billions of views. (YouTube, 2021)

YouTube is localized in more than 100 countries and is available in 80 languages. (YouTube, 2021)

Every day people watch one billion hours of video on YouTube (source-Oberlo)

Now, the real question is how to make money out of YouTube? Well, there is enough space for you to sink in. Are you a coach, fitness enthusiastic, a person with good communication, or even just an individual with no skills at all? You can make videos, monetize your YouTube account, and earn from AdSense and affiliate marketing.

Umm! Some people may say that YouTube is not for me. I don’t know how to make and produce videos. I don’t have any skills. Well, I have a solution for that. You can make money from YouTube absolutely by not showing your face at all.

Here are some of the niches you can make videos y not showing your face.

If u do not want to record videos, you can head up to free stock videos or images and give a voice-over and start making content.

If you feel shy to start, you will never get ahead. So, the one thing I want to tell to everyone who is shy to make videos and for my younger self, stop doubting yourself. Just do it, don’t care about criticism, success will follow you

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is when a person earns a commission for referring a product to others. For eg: You register yourself as an affiliate to promote certain products, when the person you promote the product click on your unique affiliate link and purchases through your link you earn a commission. A commission can range for each and every product.

And the affiliate marketing model is the best, safe model for beginners. You can drive traffic for free and for paid as well. You can be an affiliate marketer if you need a passive income, you don’t need to have any other customer support, you can work from home at your own comfort.

Now, how to register as an affiliate. First, think of what do you like the most. What products do you love using? Type the name in google and see whether there is an affiliate program or just see other affiliate programs in your niche. Choose the one you love so that you don’t feel tired and exhausted in the long run.

There are many other sites where you can choose your products from. You can take products from Click bank, Digistore24, Share a Sale, Jvzoo, and similar other platforms.

Here are the best affiliate platforms for you to choose from

How do you want to promote is the next question?

Well, you can create landing pages in click funnels, kartra, or builderall and promote them through ads. If you are on your budget, you could start a blog and promote it. You can write blogs for free on medium.com. It is a cost-effective way to sell your products. You can create a YouTube channel, talk about how you love using those products, and promote them, you could even use Pinterest to promote your blogs and landing pages.

We all know that Pinterest is a visual search engine and no doubt you can get quite a good sale from affiliate marketing in Pinterest

Once you get your first sale and testimonials you can start your Instagram page and build trust with others to promote the products and scale your business.

Instagram Influencer

Do you love making TikTok videos, always want to be active on social media? Then here is your chance to start earning being an Instagram influencer.

You can start by creating content about the topic you want to talk about the most. If creating a YouTube channel feels a bit challenging, grow your audience and monetize them through Instagram. Feel free to talk about what you feel.

Collect your follower's email IDs. Once you become consistent with the audience and platform, the content you are generating makes a digital course or something you think to monetize your people. Giveaway a lot of freebies, checklists, and many other things to lead your audience to the product you are offering. Build trust with them and try to use all of Instagram's available channels. Use carousals, reels, IGTV, go live to show behind the scenes of your work, and more!.

Staying consistent is the key to grow your audience on Instagram.

Starting a T-Shirt Business

Whether you’re an artist, writer, designer, or entrepreneur, physical products can be the perfect canvas for monetizing your creativity. Yes, you heard that right. You can start your own merch for free. Starting an online T-shirt business is booming in this era an why don’t you be one of them. You do not need to hold any inventory, just design your t-shirt online and publish it.

Let me make it clear. So what is print on demand? How to start your free t-shirt business

Print on demand is a process where you work with a supplier to customize white-label products (like baseball hats or tote bags) with your own designs to sell them on a per-order basis under your own brand.

That means you don’t pay for the product until after you’ve actually sold it, so there’s no need to buy in bulk or hold any inventory yourself.

Plus, with print-on-demand services, everything after the sale, from printing to shipping, is handled by your supplier. Once you’ve set everything up, it takes only a few clicks to fulfill an order once you’ve made a sale.

You can use print-on-demand services to:

Test a business idea or new product line for an existing business without the risks that come with buying inventory.

Monetize an audience you’ve built. Printing on demand is a great option if you’re a YouTuber, cartoonist, or social media influencer who wants to spend your time creating content instead of fulfilling orders.

Create original products for a niche of customers. For example, apparel for people who are passionate about gaming.

Easily print one-off items—t-shirts, books, shoes, bags, wall art, phone cases, clocks, laptop skins, mugs, and so much more. You can send these as gifts or keep them for yourself and your team (source-Shopify)

You can get started with print on demand for almost free with teespring, redbubble, printful . Or you can start your online store on Shopify and sell them as a custom branding.

Do not worry if you are not a pro in graphic designing. You can design your t-shirt on canva and paste the design on your t-shirt too. This is a legitimate and easy business for beginners online. You can promote your merch by using SEO, keywords, and various social platforms.

Let's take a look at the print on demand statistics:

This statistic depicts the market value of the custom t-shirt printing market worldwide from 2016 to 2025. In 2016, the global custom t-shirt printing market was valued at 1.16 billion U.S. dollars, and was forecast to reach a value of 3.1 billion U.S. dollars by 2025.

This is insane amount the industry is making from print-on-demand only.

COVID-19 impact Fabric face mask accounted for 11.14% of all goods sold through Printify in September 2020. (Printify)

A 2020 survey revealed that about 96% of millennials and Gen Z have concerns about how the ongoing pandemic will impact the economy. (BigCommerce)

With more people staying at home and focusing on home improvement projects, the Home & Living category is on the rise, with the first 6 months of 2020 seeing a 243.77% growth. Both canvas gallery wraps (2.19%) and premium vertical posters (1.35%) are in TOP15 products sold by Printify merchants. (Printify)

According to Merkle’s report in 2020, roughly 79% of consumers plan to be more conservative with how much they will spend shopping online during the pandemic. (Merkle)

In the first 6 months of 2020, Printify monthly active users have grown by 69%, with registrations up 39%. (Printify)

62% of sellers in the United Kingdom changed their marketing plan because of the pandemic. Moreover, only 14 percent of businesses have decided to stick with their original marketing strategy for 2020. (Statista) ( All sources- Printify) Read more at: https://printify.com/ecommerce-statistics/ And these are just stats alone. Don’t wait now. Start your print-on-demand business right away.

Online Tutoring

Again, online tutoring is gaining massive demand in this digital age. During the pandemic the online tutoring business was a boom and it will be more in the coming years. Just teach people what you know. There are many people in this world who want to learn and are ready to pay for it.

Whether you know to speak English, or drawing, graphic designing, marketing, business, or anything that matters, turn your own skill into a business

You can tutor in paid platforms like cambly, Oakary, iTutor, or just start teaching in YouTube and create tour own course and sell it. You can create courses and teach in udemy too. People all over the world are searching to learn skills and may be you can teach them what you know and monetize your skills.

Amazon KDP [ Selling E-books and low content books ]

As I told you print on demand is a big thing and so does amazon KDP is too. What is KDP? Amazon KDP is nothing but kindle direct publishing. KDP allows you to self-publish eBooks and paperbacks for free. Amazon gives you direct access to your book on Amazon and allows you to create a product detail page for your book. It also gives you the option to expand your book’s availability on a global scale, making it more accessible for readers around the world. Publishing with KDP gives you full rights to your book, which is not something a traditional publishing house typically allows.

What types of content can I publish through KDP?

KDP allows you to publish eBooks (Kindle) and paperback books. However, KDP does not allow the creation of magazines, periodicals, or spiral-bound books.

Content types typically published using KDP include but are not limited to the following:

Novels

Book Series

Children’s Books

Comics

Cookbooks

Journals

Poetry

Textbooks (source: amazon.com)

Selling Photography

Are you a photographer? Are you making enough money? If no then this will help you , if yes you are gonna make an extra dime.

You can sell your beautiful photos on Getty Images, Pexels, Shutterstock, Adobe Stock and many more sites and earn money whenever your image is downloaded. If it is a subscription-based site then your earnings will be more. You can post your beautiful images on Instagram and become famous. Ultimately you can collaborate with various brands for their product photography.

If your camera is lying there near you, take it and start clicking pictures and sell your photos online.

Selling on Etsy

Etsy is an online market place that works as an intermediary between customers and artists, crafters of handmade items or collectors of vintage products. The company engages in customer to customer (C2C) or peer to peer (P2P) e-commerce in which both the seller and the buyer are private individuals or micro-businesses. This is in contrast to other forms of internet commerce such as B2C or B2B (source: Statista).

Let's head to our facts about how profitable it is to sell on Etsy

Etsy had over 2.5 million sellers at the end of 2019, and we can only expect that this number has increased.

Etsy sellers live all over the world, in 234 countries

62% of Etsy sellers are based in the US.

California is home to the most Etsy sellers with 14% of US-based Etsy shops. (credits: veeqo)

Etsy is a huge commerce platform, with an especially strong US presence. Plus, the fact that most sellers are multi-channel retailers—and also selling their products on marketplaces like Amazon and Shopify sites—suggests that the platform isn’t just for amateur makers. It’s for eCommerce businesses.

So if you’re already selling handmade or vintage products on another platform, it’s worth it to expand and start selling on Etsy.

If you’re starting a business, it’s important to run the numbers before setting up shop—or at least quitting your day job. Etsy does have associated costs, though it’s worth noting that the listing and transaction fees are lower than other platforms, like Amazon and eBay. (cre: veeqo)

So, if you can start your print on demand you can sell it on Etsy too. If you are good at handicrafts Etsy is the best place to promote.

Conclusion

So here are the top 10 ways where in you can make legitimate money online. You can try all these methods one by one. Well, everyone will look for quick methods to make money online, but those won’t suffice for long run.

If you should build a strong business online you need to stay consistent no matter what. Staying consistent will help audience grow along with you on your journey to make money online. For beginners starting out these methods will help you in starting out to make a dime or two.

One thing I need to make particular is you will not see results instantly. You need to try and try, keep on trying. Whether it is 2 weeks, 1 month or 3 months, you should not stop. Keep up that grind and let’s start the digital lifestyle. Start by making money online fore free with these methods and start investing in ads and make the business run for you in long run.

#passive income #makemoney #make money online #remote jobs #jobsearch #building a business #freelance #social media #education #money tips #earnmoneyonline #make money blogging #make money on instagram #make money now

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robinjohnmorgan · 3 years ago

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Wishing you all, my Seasonal Best Wishes. Thank You everyone who has supported my writing in 2021, it has been such a thrill to know you enjoy the stories I write, and it means a great deal. As we look to a New Year, I send out my best to you all, and hope you have a safe, healthy, and peaceful New Year. All 8 Heirs to the Kingdom, Curio Chronicle’s, Rise of the Raven books by Robin John Morgan, are available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other online retail book sellers’ sites, in print, and all digital formats. You can order or download, every day of the year. These books are all Print on Demand (POD). #robinjohnmorgan #heirstothekingdom #violetcirclepublishing #httk #vcp #reading #books #fantasy #adventure #rurallife #humour #sliceoflife #bookseries #author #author #magic #postapocalyptic #distopian #fiction #bowmanofloxley #lostswordofcarnac #darknessofdunnottar #queenofthevioletisle #crystalsofthemirroredwaters #lastarrowofthewoodlandrealm #bridgeofsequana #circleofdarkness #thecuriochronicles #abigailssummer #riseoftheraven https://www.instagram.com/p/CX3hynEsFC_/?utm_medium=tumblr

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fredfilmsblog · 4 years ago

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Introducing! The FredFilms Professional Library

There’s nothing like a book!

As you can imagine, after over a lifetime of producing cartoons I’ve amassed a pretty extensive archive of amazing art. I’ve tried to share a lot of it on social media, but you know, there’s nothing like a book. And, as a collector of books of pop culture collections* I figured that maybe I’d add to my own stacks.

Every once in a while I get the urge to organize some of the material, and because of the magic of printing-on-demand**, voilà! The FredFilms Professional Library.

Below you’ll find descriptions the first seven books in our library. Because on-demand color printing can be expensive, I’ve also included PDFs for each of them.

* My bookshelves include more record cover anthologies than you can imagine, almost as many movie poster books, pop music posters, lots of photography, T-shirt books, condom containers... I’ll stop now.

** I use Amazon’s print-on-demand paperbacks. Many of us would prefer not to use Amazon whenever possible (unlike Google’s assertion, Amazon does not claim to not be evil) –personally, if I can’t shop locally, I use my local store’s Bookshop.org site– but the truth is that it’s easiest for most people to use Amazon.

…..

PDF: The MLaaTR Sketchbook…

#1The MLaaTR Sketchbook: By the artists from My Life as a Teenage Robot

Edited by Rob Renzetti, Alex Kirwan & Eric Homan

Original, penciled concept artwork from My Life as a Teenage Robot, the hit show created by Rob Renzetti and art directed by Alex Kirwan.

This 2nd edition has 122 black & white pages with larger images and a new cover.

Purchase The MLaaTR Sketchbook at Amazon.

…..

PDF: Original Cartoon Shorts...

#2 Original Cartoon Shorts Edited by Eric Homan & Fred Seibert

Short cartoons have always been the lifeblood of animation, and for 3 decades their creators have been a vital spark for our productions. We’ve made limited edition postcards honoring them for almost as long.

158 full color postcards, including The Fairly OddParents, Bee and PuppyCat, Bravest Warriors, and Adventure Time.

Purchase Original Cartoon Shorts at Amazon.

…..

PDF: Original Cartoon Title Cards...

#3 Original Cartoon Title Cards Edited by Eric Homan & Fred Seibert

Please, consider the unconsidered art of the original cartoon title card.

3rd Edition. 90 new pages. 300 full color original titles from hit cartoon series, including Adventure Time, Castlevania, Bee and PuppyCat, Bravest Warriors, Wow!Wow!Wubbzy!, The Fairly OddParents, and more.

Purchase Original Cartoon Title Cards on Amazon.

…..

PDF: The Complete Frederator Postcards ...

#4 The Complete Frederator Postcards Edited by Fred Seibert

Every postcard ever.668 full color illustrations, with 72 never published and 5 bonus designs from the archives. Including

Bee and PuppyCat, Adventure Time, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, Bravest Warriors, Catbug and Castlevania.

Be advised! This book is very expensive, a result of 500+ color pages with the lack of economy of scale from print-on-demand. So sorry.

You can purchase The Complete Frederator Postcards on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

…..

PDF: Wit and WIsdom in the Land of Ooo...

#5 Wit and Wisdom in The Land of Ooo By Pendleton Ward & the Adventure Time Crew

Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward has created a world of artists and writers who love all the boys, dogs, princesses, kings, monsters, vampires, and zombies in the Land of Ooo. And they've all got some very interesting things to say.

"The answer was so simple... I was too smart to see it!"

“I'm not jealous, I'm weird.”

“We have to stay pure!”

“You're creepin' me the math out!”

“Did she say diarrhea who?”

“I never knew being fat and lazy was so rewarding.”

“Math this.”

“A biiiiig nerd.”

258 of the original black and white storyboard sketches.

Purchase Wit and Wisdom in The Land of Ooo on Amazon.

…..

PDF: Original Cartoon Posters…

#6 Original Cartoon Posters 1995-2021 Edited by Pancho Nakasheff & Fred Seibert

25 years of limited edition poster releases. New Edition, 52 additional pages, 108 color illustrations!

You can purchase Original Cartoon Posters 1995-2021 at Amazon or Bookshop.org.

…..

PDF: Best of Original Cartoons…

#7 The Best of Original Cartoons By Fred Seibert Edited by Pancho Nakasheff

A selection of the best original cartoons produced by Fred Seibert. Adventure Time, Castlevania, Bee and PuppyCat, Bravest Warriors, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!, The Fairly OddParents, and more.

584 full color illustrations, 264 pages.

You can purchase The Best of Original Cartoons on Amazon or Bookshop.org.

#FredFilms Professional Library #books #cartoons #animation #postcards #postcard #posters #poster #Frederator #title cards

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welllpthisishappening · 4 years ago

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Welllp These Are Books: the March 2021 Edition

There aren’t even any pictures! Except in that one book where there were pictures! It was weird! This was a weird book month! Back at it again with thoughts and opinions about a whole mess of books that no one explicitly asked for, but I’ve got lots of thoughts and opinions and they only count if I share them on the internet. Seriously, someone let me go to a baseball game soon. Obligatory warning for spoilers and vaguely unhinged rants under the cut. As always, feel free to come tell me what else I should be reading at literally any time ever.

Best Book of the Month Honors Goes to This Book, Even Though They Called It Halftime at a Hockey Game. A Hockey Game!

The Dating Plan by Sara Desai

Daisy Patel is a software engineer who understands lists and logic better than bosses and boyfriends. With her life all planned out, and no interest in love, the one thing she can't give her family is the marriage they expect. Left with few options, she asks her childhood crush to be her decoy fiancé. Liam Murphy is a venture capitalist with something to prove. When he learns that his inheritance is contingent on being married, he realizes his best friend's little sister has the perfect solution to his problem. A marriage of convenience will get Daisy's matchmaking relatives off her back and fulfill the terms of his late grandfather's will. If only he hadn’t broken her tender teenage heart nine years ago… Sparks fly when Daisy and Liam go on a series of dates to legitimize their fake relationship. Too late, they realize that very little is convenient about their arrangement. History and chemistry aren't about to follow the rules of this engagement.

— Ok, it’s important to know that I really did love this book. It hit all my trope-wants. Childhood friends, incredibly stupid misunderstandings, pining, seriously God the pining, fake engagement, BANTER. It was all going great. I was occasionally swooning. They kept making out! And then! THEN. They went to a hockey game. On a date. A fake date. Cool, cool, cool. All tropes, all the time right? Not so fast, internet! Because these self-proclaimed Sharks SUPER FANS referred to intermission as “halftime was coming up.” Halftime! At a hockey game! That’s—that’s not how hockey works! If this hadn’t been “traditionally” published, I probably could have let it slide. But that was not the case. This was a “real” book with, I can only assume, real editors. All of whom saw the words halftime and hockey near each other and we’re like YEAH, PRINT THAT SHIT. I read that at nearly one in the morning and seriously considered waking Justin up to be like CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS IS IN A REAL BOOK? Anyway, it was still real cute. Everyone lived happily ever after. It made want to eat samosas.

This Book Had Pictures, It Was Weird

Clean Sweep by Ilona Andrews

On the outside, Dina Demille is the epitome of normal. She runs a quaint Victorian Bed and Breakfast in a small Texas town, owns a Shih Tzu named Beast, and is a perfect neighbor, whose biggest problem should be what to serve her guests for breakfast. But Dina is...different: Her broom is a deadly weapon; her Inn is magic and thinks for itself. Meant to be a lodging for otherworldly visitors, the only permanent guest is a retired Galactic aristocrat who can’t leave the grounds because she’s responsible for the deaths of millions and someone might shoot her on sight. Under the circumstances, "normal" is a bit of a stretch for Dina.

And now, something with wicked claws and deepwater teeth has begun to hunt at night...Feeling responsible for her neighbors, Dina decides to get involved. Before long, she has to juggle dealing with the annoyingly attractive, ex-military, new neighbor, Sean Evans—an alpha-strain werewolf—and the equally arresting cosmic vampire soldier, Arland, while trying to keep her inn and its guests safe. But the enemy she’s facing is unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. It’s smart, vicious, and lethal, and putting herself between this creature and her neighbors might just cost her everything.

— So, Ilona Andrews is a name that keeps coming up because when I borrow a book from the library I have to go through Kindle and Amazon is like...here are some other absurd fantasy romances you’d enjoy. Also, one of her other series had been recc’ed to me. Only problem? The first book in that series is the only book in that series not available at my library. So, I was like, ok, I’ll start this one instead. It was...weird. Honestly, it felt like I’d been dropped in the middle of the story and the narrator was like, well why don’t you already know what’s going on? In theory the world building was cool. (I was not expecting alien werewolves, lemme tell you that!) But also it all felt very rushed and the end just sorta happened.

In Which I Continue to Love “Same Verse” Books & No One Else Had Sex in the Port Jeff High School Dugout. For Which I Was Grateful

Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey

Rosie and Dominic Vega are the perfect couple: high school sweethearts, best friends, madly in love. Well, they used to be anyway. Now Rosie’s lucky to get a caveman grunt from the ex-soldier every time she walks in the door. Dom is faithful and a great provider, but the man she fell in love with ten years ago is nowhere to be found. When her girlfriends encourage Rosie to demand more out of life and pursue her dream of opening a restaurant, she decides to demand more out of love, too. Three words: marriage boot camp.

Never in a million years did Rosie believe her stoic, too-manly-to-emote husband would actually agree to relationship rehab with a weed-smoking hippie. Dom talking about feelings? Sitting on pillows? Communing with nature? Learning love languages? Nope. But to her surprise, he’s all in, and it forces her to admit her own role in their cracked foundation. As they complete one ridiculous—yet surprisingly helpful—assignment after another, their remodeled relationship gets stronger than ever. Except just as they’re getting back on track, Rosie discovers Dom has a secret... and it could demolish everything.

— Listen, one of my absolutely favorite tropes that I do not think gets enough love in the world is COMMITTED LONG-LASTING RELATIONSHIPS. And, like, ok, sure the premise of this was that they were separating in that long-lasting relationship. But no one really believed that, did they? Rosie and Dominic were real cute and their banter was good and I wasn’t totally skeeved out when they literally fucked on the kitchen floor. So, I think that’s saying something. Also, also! I seriously appreciated the realism of this book because no one on Long Island would ever call Manhattan Manhattan. It’s the city. Every other borough gets a name, but Manhattan is just the city and I nearly cheered when they said that. But also, no one’s taking a cab from Port Jeff to the Meatpacking District. You know what that would cost? God.

Tools of Engagement by Tessa Bailey

Hair, makeup, clothing, decor... everything in Bethany Castle's world is organized, planned, and styled to perfection. Which is why the homes she designs for her family's real estate business are the most coveted in town. The only thing not perfect? Her track record with men. She's on a dating hiatus and after helping her friends achieve their dreams, Bethany finally has time to focus on her own: flip a house, from framework to furnishings, all by herself. Except her older brother runs the company and refuses to take her seriously.

When a television producer gets wind of the Castle sibling rivalry, they’re invited on Flip Off, a competition to see who can do the best renovation. Bethany wants bragging rights, but she needs a crew and the only member of her brother's construction team willing to jump ship is Wes Daniels, the new guy in town. His Texas drawl and handsome face got under Bethany's skin on day one, and the last thing she needs is some cocky young cowboy in her way.

As the race to renovate heats up, Wes and Bethany are forced into close quarters, trading barbs and biting banter as they remodel the ugliest house on the block. It's a labor of love, hate, and everything in between, and soon sparks are flying. But Bethany's perfectly structured life is one kiss away from going up in smoke and she knows falling for a guy like Wes would be a flipping disaster.

— It should first be noted that in the three books of this series, I could not and cannot understand why Bethany’s brother was such a monumental dick. He was just...he was a dick. His marriage was awful. How long was his wife pregnant without him knowing???? I digress. This continued to be cute, Bethany was a legit heroine as far as those rom-com things go, Wes was very Texas and that got a little over the top, but they had sex in a bed like normal people so that helped. Oh, except that one time on the construction site. Whatever, this book was cute. This whole series was cute, really, and I was a big fan of the happy little wrap-everything-up with a bow ending.

Romance That Happens In Point Two Seconds Is...Unbelievable

Too Hot to Handle by Tessa Bailey

The road trip was definitely a bad idea. Having already flambéed her culinary career beyond recognition, Rita Clarkson is now stranded in God-Knows-Where, New Mexico, with a busted-ass car and her three temperamental siblings, who she hasn't seen in years. When rescue shows up---six-feet-plus of hot, charming sex on a motorcycle---Rita's pretty certain she's gone from the frying pan right into the fire . . . Jasper Ellis has a bad boy reputation in this town, and he loathes it. The moment he sees Rita, though, Jasper knows he's about to be sorely tempted. There's something real between them. Something raw. And Jasper has only a few days to show Rita that he isn't just for tonight---he's forever.

— For as much as I loved the Port Jeff series by my new pal Tessa, this one was...oof. Too much, guys. Too much. Fucking in trucks. Fucking in back offices. The whole book lasted, like, three days. And keep in mind this is coming from someone who has written like two million words about Killian Jones, self-loathing champ 250 years running, but Jasper’s self-loathing was a little over the top. Like, let’s not objectify dudes, but also...I don’t know guys. Maybe the other books in the series are better? I was mostly just annoyed by Rita.

What the Hell Happened at the End of This Book?? Seriously, I Have No Idea

The Queen’s Assassin by Melissa de la Cruz

Caledon Holt is the kingdom's deadliest weapon. No one alive can best him in speed, strength, or brains, which is why he's the Hearthstone Guild's most dangerous member. Cal is also the Queen's Assassin, bound to her by magic and unable to leave her service until the task she's set for him is fulfilled. Shadow of the Honey Glade has been training all her life to join the Guild, hoping that one day she'll become an assassin as feared and revered as Cal. But Shadow's mother and aunts expect her to serve the crown as a lady of the Renovian Court. When a surprise attack brings Shadow and Cal together, they're forced to team up as assassin and apprentice. Even though Shadow's life belongs to the court and Cal's belongs to the queen, they cannot deny their attraction to each other. But now, with war on the horizon and true love at risk, Shadow and Cal will uncover a shocking web of lies that will change their paths forever.

—WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED AT THE END OF THIS BOOK??? I figured out the so-called twist like...two chapters in. Fine, ok, whatever. It’s YA, this is not rocket science and I was interested enough in Cale and Shadow to see how it all played out. Only it didn’t really play out! Because the whole end was just this like four chapter retcon of basically EVERYTHING ELSE THAT HAPPENED and I genuinely could not believe it was happening. It didn’t make sense?!? Like with the plot? Also, spoiler, good thing Shadow and the other king haven’t consummated their marriage yet since she and Cale totally fucked after her wedding? What is YA? Why is Amazon telling me this is a Teacher’s Pick? Why hasn’t my hold come through on the sequel yet so I know what happens next?

Low-Stakes Romance Was Real Boring and All The People Were Boring In It

The Ten Rules for Faking It by Sophie Sullivan

As birthdays go, this year’s for radio producer Everly Dean hit rock-bottom. Worse than the “tonsillectomy birthday.” Worse than the birthday her parents decided to split (the first time). But catching your boyfriend cheating on you with his assistant? Even clichés sting. But this is Everly’s year! She won’t let her anxiety hold her back. She’ll pitch her podcast idea to her boss. There’s just one problem. Her boss, Chris, is very cute. (Of course). Also, he's extremely distant (which means he hates her, right? Or is that the anxiety talking)? And, Stacey the DJ didn’t mute the mic during Everly’s rant about Simon the Snake (syn: Cheating Ex). That’s three problems. Suddenly, people are lining up to date her, Bachelorette-style, fans are voting (Reminder: never leave house again), and her interest in Chris might be a two-way street. It’s a lot for a woman who could gold medal in people-avoidance. She’s going to have to fake it ‘till she makes it to get through all of this. Perhaps she’ll make a list: The Ten Rules for Faking It.

— I am a broken record. Shouting. From the highest hilltop. Just because you think someone is cute when you’re technically not supposed to be dating them does not mean you get to be anything less than nice around them! It’s not cute! And part two, which often goes with part one: rom com dudes have GOT to stop lying or hiding or otherwise avoiding telling people who they really are. It’s a convoluted, passably lazy way of writing and dropping a third-act bomb on the story. Don’t do it. Stop doing it. We’ve moved past the need for hidden identities. Unless he’s, like, a spy or something. Um...this was a weird book. I know Everly had anxiety and that became a PLOT POINT, patent pending, but she was also not super relatable? Which is crazy considering my very real, rather undiagnosed anxiety. Chris was boring. The whole plot, as this title suggests, was very low stakes and no one actually seemed to remember that their jobs were ever on the line? Did Everly and Chris have a conversation before they decided they liked each other? Who can say, really.

Shipped by Angie Hockman

Between taking night classes for her MBA and her demanding day job at a cruise line, marketing manager Henley Evans barely has time for herself, let alone family, friends, or dating. But when she’s shortlisted for the promotion of her dreams, all her sacrifices finally seem worth it. The only problem? Graeme Crawford-Collins, the remote social media manager and the bane of her existence, is also up for the position. Although they’ve never met in person, their epic email battles are the stuff of office legend. Their boss tasks each of them with drafting a proposal on how to boost bookings in the Galápagos—best proposal wins the promotion. There’s just one catch: they have to go on a company cruise to the Galápagos Islands...together. But when the two meet on the ship, Henley is shocked to discover that the real Graeme is nothing like she imagined. As they explore the Islands together, she soon finds the line between loathing and liking thinner than a postcard. With her career dreams in her sights and a growing attraction to the competition, Henley begins questioning her life choices. Because what’s the point of working all the time if you never actually live?

— YOU NEED TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE TO DECIDE YOU LIKE THEM. AUTHORS REALLY REALLY NEED TO LEARN HOW TO BUILD ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS. IF THEY ONLY LIKE EACH OTHER BECAUSE THEY KISS WELL IT’S NOT A GOOD RELATIONSHIP. AND THIS IS COMING FROM ME. Back at it again with the annoying so-called heroine who was just...occasionally real mean to Graem for no reason at all? Also her name was Henley. Which is not a great reason to dislike her, but here we are.

Apparently I Read These Books Out Of Order. Who Knew?

Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

It is a truth universally acknowledged that only in an overachieving Indian American family can a genius daughter be considered a black sheep.

Dr. Trisha Raje is San Francisco’s most acclaimed neurosurgeon. But that’s not enough for the Rajes, her influential immigrant family who’s achieved power by making its own non-negotiable rules:

· Never trust an outsider

· Never do anything to jeopardize your brother’s political aspirations

· And never, ever, defy your family

Trisha is guilty of breaking all three rules. But now she has a chance to redeem herself. So long as she doesn’t repeat old mistakes.

Up-and-coming chef DJ Caine has known people like Trisha before, people who judge him by his rough beginnings and place pedigree above character. He needs the lucrative job the Rajes offer, but he values his pride too much to indulge Trisha’s arrogance. And then he discovers that she’s the only surgeon who can save his sister’s life.

As the two clash, their assumptions crumble like the spun sugar on one of DJ’s stunning desserts. But before a future can be savored there’s a past to be reckoned with...

A family trying to build home in a new land.

A man who has never felt at home anywhere.

And a choice to be made between the two.

— Surprise, apparently this was the first book in the series. I did not know. It didn’t affect my enjoyment of the Persuasion version in this same ‘verse, which is also strange because I liked the Persuasion one way better. There was a lot of medical in this. And not super uplifting medical, either. This was like...oh the Jane character (I guess???) has cancer and either she’s going to go blind after having a surgery (also she was an artist, so you see how this was a problem) or she’s just going to decide to die. Wait, what? That came out of left field, really. Also DJ and Trisha were not nice to each other. Like, I know this is Pride and Prejudice so there has to be some of that at the start, but it wasn’t like Trisha ever really went through the Darcy-required time at Pemberly. She just decided she liked DJ and told him and it was as awkward as Jane Austen intended it, but then we got more medical and everything was cool. It felt very rushed and shoehorned into a modern setting and the Persuasion one was better. You can’t have Darcy’s growth without the Pemberly stuff. You just can’t.

In Which I Didn’t Like a Nickname??? Is the World Ending??

Crazy Stupid Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

Alexis Carlisle and her cat café, ToeBeans, have shot to fame after she came forward as a victim of a celebrity chef’s sexual harassment. When a new customer approaches to confide in her, the last thing Alexis expects is for the woman to claim they’re sisters. Unsure what to do, Alexis turns to the only man she trusts—her best friend, Noah Logan. Computer genius Noah left his rebellious teenage hacker past behind to become a computer security expert. Now he only uses his old skills for the right cause. But Noah’s got a secret: He’s madly in love with Alexis. When she asks for his help, he wonders if the timing will ever be right to confess his crush. Noah’s pals in The Bromance Book Club are more than willing to share their beloved “manuals” to help him go from bud to boyfriend. But he must decide if telling the truth is worth risking the best friendship he’s ever had.

— If Noah was going to call her Lexa, then her name should have been Alexa and not Alexis. That’s it and that’s all. Also, the story was n u t s. Estranged dads and kidney failure and they got together so fast in this book. Which usually is cool by me, but I really could not get over the nickname and the estranged family was mean to Alexis. Lexa. HER NAME SHOULD HAVE BEEN ALEXA, IT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE. Also Noah was a former hacker? The estranged family accused him corporate espionage or something? A lot happened in this book, guys. Her name should have been Alexa.

Dumb Brother Was Dumb™ Everyone Else Was Real Cute

The Off Limits Rule by Sarah Adams

I have found rock bottom. It's here, moving in with my older brother because I'm too broke to afford to live on my own. It's okay though, because we've always been close and I think I'm going to have fun living with him again.   That is until I meet Cooper...   Turns out, my brother has very strong opinions on the idea of me dating his best friend and is dead set against it. According to him, Cooper is everything I should stay away from: flirtatious, adventurous, non-committal, and freaking hot. (I added that last part because I feel like you need the whole picture.) My brother is right--I should stay away from Cooper James and his pretty blue eyes. He's the opposite of what I need right now.   Nah--who am I kidding? I'm going for it.

— This was cute, mostly mindless fluff. Hit some trope high points, including, obviously, best friends sister. Only the brother in question was a Neanderthal and I really thought people were going to make out more while said brother was on his business trip. I got it for free off Amazon. Which I think should explain a lot. Like, story-wise. Sorry, free Amazon books. Don’t be insulted.

Prose, Prose, Prose, Please Someone Have a Conversation

Trick by Natalia Jaster

In the Kingdom of Spring, Poet is renowned. He's young and pretty, a lover of men and women. He performs for the court, kisses like a scoundrel, and mocks with a silver tongue. Yet allow him this: It's only the most cunning and manipulative soul who can play the fool. For beyond the castle walls, Poet guards a secret. One the Crown would shackle him for. One that he'll risk everything to protect. Alas, it will take more than clever words to deceive Princess Briar. Convinced that he's juggling lies as well as verse, this righteous nuisance of a girl is determined to expose him. But not all falsehoods are fiendish. Poet's secret is delicate, binding the jester and princess in an unlikely alliance—and kindling a breathless attraction, as alluring as it is forbidden.

— The purplest of prose. Mauve prose. Royal purple prose. Lavender prose. There was so much writing here. So much. Too much, some might say. I say. Actually. If we want to get specific. And that was a shame, really, because when Briar and Poet actually had a conversation, they were interesting to read about. Also, the world building here? Yeeeesh. The so-called, wait for it, FOOL TRADE played a prominent role and that was...super cringe. Super Cringe. That being said, I asked Justin what I should read next and he thought it was funny that a book was just called...

Dare by Natalia Jaster

In the Kingdom of Summer, they say she's wild. Locked in a cage by the sea, Flare dreams of escape. She dreams of a lost world, known only in legends. The island is calling to her. And she won't let anyone keep her from it. Especially not him. They say he's cruel. Jeryn has crossed the ocean for the Trade, to bargain for those fierce, imprisoned creatures that make his skin crawl. By law, they're subjects meant for experimentation. And easy to despise. One girl in particular. But on the cusp of transport, the tide rages. That hidden island awaits. Stranded, the prince and prisoner must fight to survive. In a mysterious rainforest, they must band together...if they don't slay one another first. Or become something more to each other. Something just as dangerous.

— This was Justin’s fault. He could not believe this book was just called Dare. It should have been called “We’re going to weirdly force what is basically slavery into this story and then a prince is going to fall in love with an escaped slave and we’re also going to call that ROMANCE.” y i k e s. Remember that one story that took place over three days? This was the complete opposite. Years! They were shipwrecked for years! They got saved, spoilers, the DAY they started having sex. What are the odds, right?? And then MORE YEARS passed. Multiple years! Five years! They couldn’t actually be together because of that aforementioned slave trade. What the shit, man? Natalia, ya gotta be kidding me with this. The internet claimed Trick was good and a solid follow to reading ACOTAR and that there was this whole verse and it was also good. The internet was wrong.

Nothing Happened, Everything Happened, I...Hated It

Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Kristin Cashore’s bestselling, award-winning fantasy Graceling tells the story of the vulnerable-yet-strong Katsa, a smart, beautiful teenager who lives in a world where selected people are given a Grace, a special talent that can be anything from dancing to swimming. Katsa’s is killing. As the king’s niece, she is forced to use her extreme skills as his thug. Along the way, Katsa must learn to decipher the true nature of her Grace… and how to put it to good use. A thrilling, action-packed fantasy adventure (and steamy romance!) that will resonate deeply with adolescents trying to find their way in the world.

— I can’t believe this was a book. Katsa was so annoying! Like, listen, I know her life was sad. And she was a pawn being used against her will. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever. The tone of the whole book was so strangely formal and Poe was strangely in love with Katsa? Who obviously didn’t want to get married because she was WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR. Or kill people, as the case may be. Only she wanted to make out with Poe? Only ONLY they didn’t even really get together at the end? I could not believe the end of this book. I nearly threw my Kindle across the room. Once again, no apologies for spoilers because do not read this book, but HE WAS BLIND? Katsa had to leave him behind to save his cousin and he just ENDED UP BEING BLIND? AND THEY NEVER GOT TOGETHER REALLY?? What the fuck? Seriously. Steamy romance, my ass. Nothing happened. The villain got defeated in point two seconds. There are other books in this universe? No, thanks.

#book recommendations #book rec #fantasy recommendations #book recs #laura reads books #this was longer than i realized it was going to be #documentation of a very weird book month #but we're almost back on track now because i am LOVING a darker shade of magic #welllp these are books

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enjoy-the-small-thingsxx · 4 years ago

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#Auspol #TonyAbbott

Get this:- (What began as a plague of anonymous fact-checkers attempting to elevate their preferred politics, has metastasised into a truth manufacturing line with the same quality control as a Wuhan mask factory.) NAILED IT.

Probably the best article you will read today and will most likely be ignored because its long it needs to go viral.

(Spectator)

I hope you all have a good memory, because you are going to need it.

Modern political events are being re-written in real-time – dare we say it – ‘whitewashed’ by the unanimous vote of the unelected press. What began as a plague of anonymous fact-checkers attempting to elevate their preferred politics, has metastasised into a truth manufacturing line with the same quality control as a Wuhan mask factory.

There is a danger that the only faithful record of our era will be the one decaying inside our memories. It is a shame that civilisation has fallen back into this bad habit of allowing the powerful to coerce the truth, seizing control on a scaffolding of lies. That said, there is never anything new regarding the squabbles of humanity. The dramatic events of the past few weeks are, in the proper historical context, a tired repeat of the poorly produced saga of our species. These episodes have different authors and a fresh cast, but their underlying story remains the same.

Liberty creates prosperity. Prosperity creates power. Power creates tyranny. Tyranny creates civil upheaval.

After this, the way forward is uncertain. More often than not, the battle for liberty is lost and the citizenry can do little more than lament the freedoms that were so easily and swiftly surrendered to the mob.

If we are to successfully defend our democracy, preserving the historical record is essential. Failure to do so will leave us in the goldfish bowl of fortune, circling the water with Big Brother looking in – distorted and immense on the other side of the glass.

In 2021, our history is guarded by Silicon Valley. We rent space on their cloud servers and entrust companies like Amazon and Google with our private information – usually without reading their terms of service. One accident at a hosting centre or arbitrary censorial act has the potential to erase businesses and memories. Most people place so much faith in these companies that they do not bother backing anything up for safekeeping.

Our civilisation is awash with data hosted by corporate third parties. While most of us are old enough to remember an age before digital streaming, our youngest generations have lived their lives in the palm of Big Tech. They have entwined themselves with these companies in such a way that any attempt made by the wider community to threaten Silicon Valley’s empire will be resisted by devout technological serfs.

When did Social Media’s control of the historical record begin?

Wikipedia was a shiny new thing when I was in high school. Instead of traipsing to the library to locate a reference book that probably wasn’t even filed in the right place, we were gifted this crazy website out of nowhere. Wikipedia was essentially crack for the academic class, providing instant gratification for knowledge-seekers. Type in the question and voila! all the work was done for you. No more waiting in line at the photocopier with an idiot attacking a paper jam with a pair of scissors.

It was like cheating, and that was certainly what our teachers called it. Despite having this glorious database of seemingly infinite knowledge, no one was allowed to use it for anything other than time-wasting ‘wiki-surfing’. (If you haven’t done it, don’t start.)

Our teachers had two objections to the rise of Wikipedia.

The first was a (perfectly reasonable) fear that it would make our inquiring minds lazy. With everyone receiving instant answers, there was no opportunity to stumble over the complexities of a topic. Wikipedia left classrooms in danger of forming monotonous opinions.

Which brings us to the second concern. Wikipedia was given authority over the truth because of its usability, not quality.

Conceived in an open-source environment, it invited thousands of users to post entries about topics which other users then edited – collaborating to create a vast network of information that quickly outstripped the dictionary cabal. With enough people interacting, it was assumed that the truth would win out. Generally speaking, that was the case.

It later became obvious that absolute freedom over information in a publishing environment had a few flaws – namely – humans could be real little shits when they set their minds to it. A common muck-up day activity involved editing the school’s Wikipedia entry with the level of hormone-induced humour that you’d expect.

As usual, politics ruined everything.

The official pages of contentious public figures were the first to be vandalised by bad actors attempting to defame and damage their political opposition. These budding propaganda agents soon learned that subtle changes were the most effective because they went unnoticed for longer. Slight edits to history could be compounded over time, gradually altering the accepted truth until it became the only truth.

As an intellectual product, Wikipedia was simply too good to die from its wounds. It fed off the accumulation and summation of vast quantities of knowledge. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, thesauruses – they all joined this digital abyss, leaving our language vulnerable to shifting definitions. As Wikipedia’s traditional market competition learned, information grows too fast to filter through layers of validation. If you can’t keep up, you die off. This is the exact same dynamic playing out between legacy media and social media.

Wikipedia’s influence over society became so acute that it suffered censorial attacks by the European Union when the commission launched Articles 11 and 13 in 2019. This caused a crisis of intellectual freedom across the world that went largely unreported by the mainstream press. In response, Wikipedia blacked out swathes of the European continent until amendments were made. Extraordinary, considering the inflexibility of the EU.

Things declined rapidly with the rise of Cultural Marxism. Wikipedia became the choking canary, wiggling its legs at the bottom of a mine shaft while a cuckoo took up residence. Its articles have since been heavily edited to bring them in line with the prison cell of social justice. Instead of recording knowledge, Wikipedia’s primary goal is to avoid causing offence, leaving the site rife with contradictions and politically correct fiction. It capitulated to these censorial demands and maintained its position as caretaker of (revised) information.

For all the power Wikipedia has, it pales in comparison to social media – a conglomerate in charge of the real-time recording of history. Forget editing the facts; they aren’t even making it to print.

With the US election over, the next information scandal will revolve around medical tyranny. When China’s Covid-19 became a Catch 22 for the global political class (who are terrified that private citizens will sue them for incompetence), discussion surrounding vaccines became intrinsically linked with the survival of those in power.

Medical advances have always created conflict between healthcare, politics and corporate – especially with the global vaccination market worth almost $US60 billion in 2020.

‘Trust the experts’ simply isn’t a good enough mantra for social media to invoke during its censorial binges when we have hard evidence that experts often make horrific mistakes. Thalidomide was available over the counter for years before it was found to cause birth defects. Despite mounting complaints in the public sphere, it was deemed safe across the medical spectrum. In the end, it killed two thousand children and left ten thousand with serious physical abnormalities. Without public pressure, it would have killed more.

Vaccines carry similar risks. While they save millions of lives, they can be wildly unpredictable in their medical infancy. It is imperative that the government maintains public choice and consumer transparency across social media platforms to ensure that alarm bells ring when something goes wrong.

Silicon Valley has inserted itself into the pandemic, no doubt due to political pressure, by announcing plans to ban users from reporting or discussing side effects related to Covid19 vaccines. They claim that these measures are in the interest of public safety, but Big Tech is not a medical institution, nor should it be allowed to silence the necessary feedback to protect its political and corporate friends.

Under their heading ‘Our Expanded Approach’, Twitter detail their intent:

Twitter has an important role to play as a place for good faith public debate and discussion around these critical public health matters. […] Using a combination of technology and human review, we will begin enforcing this updated policy on December 21, and expanding our actions during the following weeks. We will enforce this policy in close consultation with local, national and global public health authorities around the world, and will strive to be iterative and transparent in our approach. We remain focused on helping people find credible health information, verifying public health experts, and updating our policies in an iterative and transparent approach.

If anything goes wrong with a Covid-19 vaccine, don’t expect to hear about it.

Who are these public health experts allowed to dominate the market of information? Absolute authority demands intense scrutiny. Let us run one example.

The World Health Organisation is one of Twitter’s verified sources. They are a medical bureaucracy that has conducted itself appallingly during the Covid-19 health crisis. When Covid-19 emerged, the WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party suppress reports about the severity of the virus circulating inside Wuhan. It released incorrect information about Covid19’s transmission and deliberately ignored Taiwan’s dissenting medical evidence because of regional politics. The WHO then looked the other way when China bullied nations with accusations of racism if they tried to close their borders. When it became clear that a pandemic was underway, the WHO assisted China in concealing the (previously acknowledged) origin of the virus while allowing the Chinese Communist Party to avoid a mandatory independent investigation into ground zero of the pandemic.

This is the same ‘trusted’ WHO that has been caught editing medical advice to keep up with propaganda circulated on social media. Two prominent examples come to mind. The first is their flip-flopping over mandatory mask-wearing after various world leaders put their careers on the line by interfering with constitutional rights. To justify medical mandates, the ‘science’ behind mask-wearing was altered by the WHO after the political decision to enforce them had been made. Warnings printed on the boxes of these masks still contradict the WHO’s advice.

The second and most concerning manipulation of information by the WHO relates to the long-held definition of herd immunity. Our medical understanding of herd immunity has not changed since the arrival of Covid19. What has changed is the effectiveness of the vaccine in relation to the grand promises made about it by politicians who used its existence to initiate financially devastating lockdowns.

Both of these releases are by the same department at the WHO (the emphasis in red is mine for clarity):

9th June, 2020: Herd Immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or immunity developed through previous infection. This means that even people who haven’t been infected or in whom an infection hasn’t triggered an immune response, they are protected because people around them who are immune can act as buffers between them and an infected person. The threshold for establishing herd immunity for Covid19 is not yet clear.’

13th November, 2020: ‘Herd Immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached. Herd immunity is achieved by protecting people from a virus, not exposing them to it. Read the Director-General’s 12 October media briefing speech for more detail.

The second statement from the WHO erased the natural phenomena of herd immunity – which remains the dominant method by which human populations overcome disease – and replaced it with an absolute mandate to vaccinate. The true definition of herd immunity survives with people who remember studying it prior to the edit and anyone in possession of medical books that cannot be so easily manipulated.

It doesn’t help that these institutions in charge of reality are headed up by some of the world’s shonkiest people.

When asking questions about why the WHO has acted inconsistently and bizarrely concerning China’s role in the pandemic, it is worth noting that China played an instrumental role in putting its Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, into power. His ascent was vocally opposed due to positions held within the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – an ethnically-based party that has been the dominant force in Ethiopian politics for nearly thirty years. Tedros served as Health Minister despite the regime being recognised as a serial offender against human rights.

In an open letter against Tedros, it was noted that inside an eight-month period, eighty thousand Ethiopians were imprisoned in gulags run by the TPLF where they were tortured for holding a different political opinion. Party officials stole billions from public and state-run projects. Dr. Abiy Ahmed, the current Prime Minister as of 2018, later admitted that the regime Tedros served under was essentially a terrorist state.

Tedros’ own actions were called into question regarding his handling of a Cholera epidemic – which he incorrectly renamed as ‘Acute Watery Diarrhoea’ even after Cholera was confirmed. A letter signed by the Amhara Professionals Union suspected this inaccuracy related to Tedros covering up a public health crisis to protect the tourist industry – an action which prevented aid organisations from intervening. The open letter further accused Tedros of actively marginalising health care treatment based on ethnicity, resulting in a disproportionate mortality rate among the Amhara people.

This is the man Silicon Valley allows to fact-check your opinion. In addition, Big Tech is heavily invested in the pharmaceutical industry and does not disclose its financial interest in the silencing of information regarding side effects that could harm its profits.

The control that these corporations exert over our access to information has gone far enough that it may never be unpicked.

We are now at the point where the facts of history are so distorted that activists can claim, without contest, that the months of Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots were entirely peaceful, then use this false claim to validate their censorious reaction to the ‘unprecedented’ Capitol Hill riots.

Fearing that their despicable actions would be covered up, I kept a sample of the direct incitement to violence propagated on Twitter by activist groups it publicly endorsed. You can view the archive here – including images of burning public buildings and captions that read: ‘this is what justice looks like’, ‘all pigs burn’ and ‘riot 2020 – burn this motherfucker down – eat the rich’.

The manipulation of truth within our civilisation is nearly impossible to believe. We already know that you can convince people of fabricated facts if you bombard them with enough marketing material from certified sources – especially if it supports their preferred world view.

The twenty-four hour news cycle that created a heightened sense of drama to pull ratings, has transformed into a full-time propaganda house. The media are over-feeding the goldfish as they swim around in stagnant water.

Why would anyone, including Silicon Valley, seek to corrupt the story of humanity?

Simply put, it is to install a political party into government who will not punish them for breaking antitrust legislation or the Communications Decency Act – both of which carry serious penalties if convicted. Big Tech corporations are free to continue making money in their lofty oligarchy while a political party has solidified its position in the absence of opposition.

In truth, politics has become the law, with information as its accomplice.

https://spectator.com.au/2021/01/welcome-to-the-age-of-the-goldfish/

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ogbonnaohakwe · 4 years ago

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How To Make Money Freelancing Online In 2021: The Definitive Guide

This is the beginner guide on How To Make Money Freelancing Online In 2021: The Definite Guide Part 1.

Freelancing can end up being a great way to make money for individuals who do it part-time or full-time. The way to make money freelancing is to be dedicated and create a good reputation. Without these two things, it will be hard to find jobs and generate new ones in the future. There are a lot of different types of freelancers out there; including web design individuals, people who have blogs, and writers. How to make money freelancing in Nigeria in simple steps. With all of these opportunities, there are a lot of ways on how to make money freelancing for anyone who has the skills.

Freelancing is probably one of the most well-known ways of making money online. It is by no means the only way but if you have a skill that you can offer others, such as writing, editing, photography, graphic design, or many others, you can become a freelancer. Just choose something you are good at or have a passion for doing and you should be able to make money doing it.

WATCH RECOMMENDED VIDEO ON HOW TO SOURCE FOR PRODUCTS ON ALIEXPRESS & ALIBABA

How To Make Money Freelancing, Probably one of the best ways to get started is to look into reputable freelancing sites like Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, or even PeoplePerHour.com that connect skilled freelancers with individuals who want to hire them. There are a few of these and you should take a look at three or four of them at least.

Most of these sites have both free membership and paid memberships. Once you find one or two that have a layout and system that appeals to you, get a free membership and start bidding on projects. You should be able to get a job or two and this will be enough to let you figure out which site is your favorite.

Generally it is recommended that you stick with just one site – especially if you are going to become a paying member. There should be more than enough work on just one of the big sites to keep you making money online, so there is no reason to pay for more than one membership.

A lot of people are intimidated by the idea of getting onto a bidding site and competing with other freelancers for work, but you really shouldn’t be. It is true that you won’t win every project – in fact, you may only get one in every five or ten – but the important thing is that you bid what you think you are worth. Some freelancers think that in How To Make Money Freelancing, undercutting everyone else is the best way to win jobs. But most buyers are more likely to go with the provider who gives a reasonable bid and crafts a good proposal than the provider who just has the lowest price.

As you complete jobs and get the feedback you will become more comfortable with your timetables and prices. This will make it easier and easier for you to get jobs. How To Make Money Freelancing 2021 guides

This also applies to the other common method of finding freelance work – having your own website. By creating a website or blog about yourself and the services you offer, you are basically setting up a sales page for yourself. Many freelancers will say that their website is their most important tool.

READ ALSO 5 Best Ways to Make Money Blogging for Beginners In 2021

You don’t have to have a website right away, especially if you are still figuring out exactly what kind of services you want to offer. But you should consider getting one as soon as possible. This is because you can reach out and introduce yourself to potential clients as well as stay in contact with established clients.

While becoming a freelancer may seem like a big challenge, the fact is that it is something that anyone with selling skills can do. If you start small and on a part-time basis you shouldn’t have any trouble finding your strengths and moving up to bigger projects and paychecks.

Some people may ask these questions on hot to make money freelancing online:

How can I make $100 a day on the internet?

Here are the sure ways to make $100 a day online freelancing: Start a dropshipping store Run a print-on-demand store Sell custom products online Sell handmade crafts on Etsy Sell products on Amazon Create digital products Start an affiliate marketing business Build online courses Sell freelance services

How can I make money right now?

Start a Shopify ecommerce store and sell dropshipping products online Sell virtual assistant or freelance services on websites like Fiverr or Upwork Sell used stuff on Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace Do micro-tasks on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk program Tutor kids online in English Rent your unused space on Airbnb Drive for Uber or Lyft Create information products Become a Tasker on TaskRabbit Trade in items on Gazelle or Amazon for gift cards

There many ways you can make money online in Nigeria from freelancing and doing affiliate marketing.

Important Steps On How To Make Money Freelancing Online In 2021

Discover the most crucial steps on how to make money freelancing online, although there are too many steps to take, below are the listed and most comprehensive steps to follow to make money freelancing online in Nigeria.

Advertise on Existing Websites:

How to make money freelancing online in 2021 is by advertising your skills on an existing website to attract clients to your profile and work. People who already have their own website can easily generate more money each month by advertising on it. There are a lot of potential advertisers that will pay website owners to advertise their brand or product. This could be a blogger giving away free products that the company sends in or simply putting up some banner ads. When more people click on the banner ad, more money will be made. Website owners who use advertisers that will target their regular visitors have really good earning potential. A good example of such site you can join in Nigeria is Expertanire.com

READ ALSO How To Get Google AdSense Approval On Your Blog In 2021: Tricks And Best Practices In 2021

Join a Freelancing Website:

Freelancers can easily find new jobs by joining websites that are designed for them. These are free for most members to join, although there might be fees associated with jobs once they are completed. People who need work done will post their job up on the site for all freelancers to see. Individuals who are interested can easily bid on the project if they are qualified. The poster will then be able to look at the profile of the freelancers who bid on the job to see who the best choice is. Although this can be competitive, it’s a great way to make money online for anyone who has a special skill.

Start a Website And Teach:

Anyone who has special skills can easily teach others how to use them online. Like my website, you can see that I offer different services and mentorship programs, you might want to check it out. This could be via a newsletter or even through video sessions on Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc. Most people are willing to pay for these things because they are less expensive than taking a real class in person. Freelancers who are skilled and can teach others will have a lot of earning potential online. When more people find out about the classes this will increase the number of people who desire the service.

Become A Writer

There are a lot of different websites that allow freelance writers to join for absolutely no cost to them. They can then find people to write for and get paid whenever the articles are accepted. These websites vary in how they work. Some writing websites are meant for writers to find random people to create articles for. Other sites are meant for writers to find regular people they can work for all the time. The pay will vary based on the types of articles that are written, how long they are, and a lot of other factors. An example of such a site is Fiverr.com

Selling Products

Some freelancers can turn their knowledge of how the internet works into large profits just by selling things! There are a lot of different websites that allow people to sell products to people all over the world. This could be through an auction site like eBay or a marketplace like Amazon; there are a lot of different choices out there. If someone is good at selling and knows how to navigate through the site, they can end up making a lot of money.

There are even photography websites where photographers can sell their pictures to websites or just list them for buyers to find. In addition to this, there are art websites where artists can sell their creations to buyers who want unique items. The best part about these is that sellers can set their own prices for each of the different pieces. A lot of people have made businesses out of these types of websites.

Like in this my website, I created a space where I sell all my digital products, from courses and books some freelancers or digital marketers do create a section on their blog where they sell eBooks and Videos as well, I think you should give it a shot, it worth trying

Read more: https://ogbonnaohakwe.com.ng/how-to-make-money-freelancing-online/

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marshmallowdonutsprinkles · 4 years ago

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Guide to buying Pokémon Center JP merch

Hey guys,

So after getting an ask from an anon this morning, I decided to rush a guide to buying the trainer merch that released yesterday (or technically the 24th if you have a means to buy from the Japan-exclusive Pokémon Center’s online store), just in case there are others who don’t know what to do or where to go. Some of y’all have favs in this merchandise line called Pokémon Trainers 2 (Pokémon Trainers originally came out ~July 2019). Pokémon Trainers 2 contains merchandise of Leon, Raihan, Piers, Gloria (SWSH female protag, sorry Victor), Bea, Nessa, Erika, Serena, May, and some dudes from the subway? No idea who those are as the only gens I’ve played were 4 and 6-8.

Merchandise includes (but is not limited to) pins, keychains, shirts, sketchbooks, plushies, phone cases (iPhone only, rip us android users), switch cases (rip switch lite users), towels, etc. So if you want to try and get something from the Japanese Pokémon center and have no way to do it, hopefully this can help you :) so you don’t overspend like I did

TL;DR: It’s Amazon Japan and proxy services. Amazon Japan is more reliable (and cheaper) because you don’t have to pay for service fees and for someone to buy your item, and then turn around to pay international shipping like a proxy service. Amazon Japan is one payment and ships pretty fast. The only downside I would say is that by the time items appear on Amazon Japan, they’re being sold out in other places, like Pokémon center running out of preorders within hours of the merch release date (the site literally crashed for about 2 hours on the 24th. I’m blaming it on the fact they dropped Leon and Raihan merch the same day).

If your item can be bought on Amazon Japan and you don’t mind waiting, use Amazon Japan. If your item cannot be bought on Amazon Japan (explanation below) and/or you don’t want to wait Amazon Japan to have it up just to have it sold out within a day, use a proxy you’ve researched and know is reliable and ships to your country.

I first bought merchandise from the Japanese Pokémon center last year, when they released Leon’s cape as a blanket (it’s super soft btw). The Japanese Pokémon Center does not ship internationally, which is annoying to every person with a non-Japanese address. Luckily, there are pretty much two ways around it that can prevent you from booking a flight to Japan to get one (1) item.

1. Amazon Japan

Amazon.co.jp is just that-Japanese Amazon. Japanese Pokémon Centers have their own section on Amazon Japan called the Pokémon Store (ポケモンストア ). My Japanese is basic at best, but with google translate and a little background knowledge, I can maneuver as much as I need to. I would put a link to it right here, but because tumblr eats post that have links in text, it would make this post meaningless. Therefore, I’ll just show you the search method

A. Type in amazon.co.jp Pokémon center into google search, This should pop up:

B. If this comes up, click on the second link titled “Amazon.co.jp: Pokémon Store: Toys & Games” as that’s where you want to go. Once there, you’ll be greeted by a bunch of Japanese text, which will either be a blessing or a nightmare

C. When you are on this page, click on the link titled “ポケモンセンターオリジナル” (translation: Pokémon center original). This basically takes you to the page that has items exclusive to Japanese Pokémon centers. As someone not fluent in Japanese, this is really the only link I need the worry about on Amazon Japan.

You’ll then be greeted by the merchandise available for sale:

As I am typing this, some items are already sold out. Plushies for Leon, Raihan, Piers, are gone (of course you are). In fact, some items are even straight up missing from Amazon Japan. Let’s say the item you want is sold out on Amazon Japan or, like the anon I answered earlier, the item you want isn’t here. Then what? TBH, your only choice is eBay or the Pokémon center online (which is all in Japanese. Godspeed)

If your item isn’t here, the search gets a bit tricky, but it doesn’t mean hope is lost (yet).

I don’t know how often Pokémon does this, but for some items on their online site, they have a message at the bottom. Let’s look at Leon’s plushie for example:

If you check the black box, it pretty much says “due to popular demand, we are accepting more preorders!”. JP Pokémon Center Online had preorders open the September 24 at 10AM JST, so you could’ve preordered your items before Amazon Japan put them up on the 26th JST. This time, they are accepting more preorders for specific items until: 1) they run out of stock (again) or 2) October 11, 2020 11:59 JST hits. Whichever comes first. Unfortunately though, because this is stock #2 for Japan’s Pokémon Center, your items won’t be shipping until February 2021. If you were lucky to get your item in stock 1 or Amazon Japan, that ships October 3 2020.

2021年2月 is February 2021. If you’re forgetful like me, it’ll be hilarious when you wake up ~5 months later after preordering and you get a random package you forgot you paid for😂.

So you’ve found another chance to get your item, but Pokémon Center doesn’t ship outside of Japan. You live in Not Japan. Now what?

2. Proxy service

Proxy services are..services (:P) that can either preorder the item for you, or physically go to the Pokémon center stores located across Japan to buy the item for you. They then ship it to your house. Japanese proxy services are able to do this because they are simply located in Japan, allowing them to have a Japanese address to place preorders or head to the stores themselves. Unsurprisingly, they are more expensive than just using Amazon because you have to pay someone to do this for you. TBH, expect to pay at least 2X the price of the item you want when using a proxy. (For example, Leon’s plush is 2200 yen which is equivalent to 20.83 USD as of 2020. I paid around 52 USD for mine, including international shipping. Now imagine buying for 2 people. Yeah.)

Let’s use anon’s desired item for an example of using proxy. The anon who sent me an ask today wanted the buttons/pins, which are these(I think lmao)

Like all things business, there is a catch.

Lucky for anon, Pokémon center is (currently) taking more preorders for this item (black box) up until October 11 JST, or until they run out of stock again. Unfortunately, these items will now ship in February of next year (dark blue box). However, there is one thing you really need to look at for:

The fine print.

It’s bad enough if you can’t read Japanese, but Japanese fine print? Even worse. Thankfully, all you need is google translate for that.

Some items being sold in this merchandise have a fine print. They have a limit as to how many you can buy, or, in some cases, you can’t get a specific design. I’ve noticed this with the T-shirts, keychains, and buttons (although it’s listed as Can badges rather than buttons).

F-in-the-chat-for-fine-print message #1: 1 item per person:

F-in-the-chat-for-fine-print message #2: You cannot pick the design (in other words, if you buy this item, you get a random design/character):

It sucks for us, but from a business perspective, they most likely acknowledge the fact that everyone and their mom is going to buy a Leon/Raihan/Piers/Nessa/Bea T-shirt/keychain/badge vs. an Erika/Serena/May T-shirt/keychain/badge and as a result they’ll have a lot of left over items that have little to no demand. They sense a heavy bias, so they put down this limit that you can’t pick the design and it’s only random. In the case of the buttons/can badge, you either have the option of buying all 19 badges (which is why it’s priced at 6270 yen which is ~60USD) or you buy a single, random button/badge for 330 yen (3USD). Although I just checked, and those items are sold out with currently no chance of restocking. So anon, if you’re reading this far, it’s either you buy the entire package of 19 badges (and resell the rest) or you have to try your luck on eBay.

In the event your item isn’t sold out but is not on Amazon Japan, you want your proxy service. I only started using a couple for this merchandise only, as I was buying merch for 2 people and Pokémon center has a strict limit of 1 per person. Plus, items I wanted weren’t even on Amazon Japan. I have some proxy service ideas below:

A. White Rabbit Express. This is my first time using them. They managed to get my items, but because they were late in preordering, one item is coming this year, and another coming next year. This means I now have to pay international shipping twice since the items are too far apart in ship dates to put in one package to be shipped internationally. Hooray. Salt aside, their service fees are a bit expensive (12% of the price of your order) but they do their job, I suppose. They work M-F 10AM-7PM JST, so the time difference made it harder for me to communicate with them (we’re 13 hours apart). They do respond relatively quick though, and always update you on the current situation. They have cheap shipping options...which are not being used in some countries due to COVID-19. Because I live in the US, a lot of shipping businesses are not shipping to the United States. Therefore I’m stuck with spending 20-30USD on international shipping alone instead of the usual 6-10USD. Reviews say they are trustworthy, and I currently believe they are, albeit a bit slow when it comes to preordering a limited item. On the bright side, they allow refunds as long as they didn’t pay for the item yet. Make sure to read their FAQ.

B. Zenmarket. Reviews say they are good. I haven’t use them so I don’t have personal experience. They have a flat service fee of 300 yen which is super cheap. They take forever to tell you how much an item costs so you can pay for it, though. A scary moment if the item you're looking for is limited and highly sought after. Again, COVID-19 knocked out some shipping services so always double check what services are shipping to your country despite the pandemic.

C. Sunyshore Store. A service specifically catered the Pokémon items. Their prices are expensive, and they said it was due to the high demand, which I just think is a bit..eh😒 I avoided them once I saw I would have to spend about 70 USD for a plush that’s not even that big. If I’m spending 70 dollars for a Leon plush, it might as well be the real Leon, tf.

D. Meccha Japan. They have a 5% off coupon (PKJ5) if you spend a certain amount (I think it’s 50 USD?) but I’m not sure. Prices are okay as it includes international shipping. They are currently out of stock for some Pokemon Trainers merch such as Leon and Raihan plushies, but they plan to restock in October 3-10. My only peeve is that their restocking period is like 3AM EST lol.

E. Hello Japan. hellojapan.shop is their website. I bought my Leon plush off of here literally the day before Amazon Japan had it, so I spent more money that I should’ve. Prices listed don’t include shipping, but that might depend on where you are in the world. They have a cancellation fee of 30% which is quite high, so I decided to take my L and not cancel my purchase to buy it on Amazon Japan. There is nowhere listed on their site what their office hours are. Their only form of contact seems to be just email.

F. Others. While checking around the internet I ran into other proxy services such as FromJapan, tenso.com, buyee.jp and remambo that help in buying things off the pokemon center. I didn’t look into them so I don’t have anything to say about them, other than buyee,jp has a million and one fees, and remambo at least allows you to cancel orders (before they buy them obviously)

G. Ebay. Ebay sucks due to the fact that resellers are shooting up the prices for these items. I literally saw a Leon plush being sold for 180 USD a couple days ago. I’d have to be out of my mind to buy any toy for that much money. If you shift through the overpriced resellers though, there are a couple decent ones. When you make an ebay account, you can message the seller and ask questions about the product before making your decision.

That’s pretty much it! There may be better, more informative guides on google if you search a bit but if this guide helps at least 1 person, I’d be totally content with that. Good luck with merchandise hunting! If you have questions you can reply to this post, message me on anon, or just shoot me a dm.

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield

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iraqdinar · 4 years ago

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Wikileaks Email Shows Man Emailing Intelligence Contractor to Ask About Iraqi Dinar, Vietnamese Dong Revaluations (RVs)

What documents has Wikileaks published relating to the rumored IQD/VND RVs? (Part 1)

By: Peter Egan Jr.

A 2010 email published to Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files” shows what appears to be a random man emailing an employee of a Texas-based intelligence contractor to inquire about what his firm knew or didn’t know regarding the long-rumored revaluation (”RV”), essentially a massive and instantaneous change to the foreign exchange rate of a national currency. Technically, a country can revalue its currency to either increase or decrease the value of the currency, however in this context, with these two particular countries it’s typically discussed in the context of an upward trajectory being the bullish position among speculators. This is the case even as Iraq just this past couple week devalued the Dinar relative to the US dollar.

The dinar trade on third-party sites like eBay, where users buy and sell Iraqi Dinar at generally inflated prices, is alive and as healthy as ever. At one point in July and August sellers were fetching nearly 300% of the actual exchange rate, and are still selling for much more than IQD has traditionally traded for on secondary markets, although the price has subsided a bit, largely due to a giant increase in supply after word made its way around the Dinar forums and YouTube shows about how much IQD was selling for, while demand has dipped with many investors and speculators possessing a common misconception that the 2020 Presidential election was won by the candidate who actually lost (badly). Dinar speculators have a very large faction who believe that the Iraq currency’s relative worth is to be decided in large part whether the incumbent US President remains in office. Even still, comparing the exchange rate Xe lists against the market rate as determined by the amount IQD is actually trading for againt various other currencies leaves a surprisingly wide gap that begs the question of why the market is willing to pay so much more than it (the market) is being told the high-risk, speculative investment is worth.

If we take the email Mike Whims of the now-defunct Rare Buyer LLC sent to Solomon Foshko of Stratfor, which Wikileaks described as a “global intelligence firm” headquartered in Texas, it likely has something to do with a long-rumored revaluation of one or both of Iraq and Vietnam’s currencies.

Whims in a 2010 email to “[email protected]” that ultimately made its way to Foshko, who appears to have no prior connection to Whims and whose position reads “Global Intelligence,” wrote the following:

Email subject: “STRATFOR Group Sales - Inquiry”

Email Body:

“Interested in foreign currency revaluations. My current interest lies with Iraq and Vietnam. Do you have any analysis that might help determine when a currency revaluation may occur such as what happened with the Kuwaiti dinar?”

The message made its way to Mr. Foshko, who replied with the following:

Mr. Whims, I have forwarded your question to our analysts. They may contact you. I did a search of current analysis available on our site, but did not find anything related to the Kuwaiti dinar. Regards, Solomon Foshko Global Intelligence STRATFOR T: 512.744.4089 F: 512.473.2260 [email protected]

I reached out to both parties via email (this is New Year’s Day so I am reluctant to call until Monday) to request comment and additional information and clarification. Neither has replied as of this story being published. That said, I don’t expect either to reply on New Years Day, and will update this story with any replies should either or both respond to my inquiry.

Stratfor knew (or thought they knew) something regarding an IQD RV by 2011

Another Stratfor email exchange published to Wikileaks references a plan by the Iraqi government to remove three zeros from the currency, a plan which ultimately failed and for which the then-Iraqi government suffered heavy criticism.

Kamran Bokhari writes in an email to Stratfor analysts:

There is a plan to drop the three zeros off the current Iraqi Dinar as part of an effort to raise its value. So if someone has the old currency (the one printed after the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003) and turns it in will he/she get the same amount of dinars or will they get less as per the difference in value?

Bokhari was speaking of the plan by the Iraqi government as described by Albawaba as: “a plan to remove three zeros from the dinar, replacing current banknotes with new ones.“

The article touches upon the inherent difficulties and challenges faced by a nation the size of Iraq in a project of such a massive undertaking as a total currency revaluation.

According to Mazhar Mohammad Saleh, an expert in the Iraqi Central Bank, in a speech with the ALHAYAT of London, “our problem lies in the timing of the currency exchange, as we need to select a suitable time for implementing the project without obstacles.”

The Central Bank planned to remove three zeros from the Iraqi dinar, after suffering from inflation and the decline of the currency during the nineties, due to economic sanctions.

The following quote from the story is also noteworthy:

The most important change after deleting the zeros, is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation, simplifying the payment system in Iraq.

In the second paragraph quoted, the article claims (accurately, IMHO) that the decline of the Iraqi Dinar is directly tied to economic sanctions stemming from Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Then in the final paragraph quoted, the article states that the most important step once “deleting the zeros” is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation.

That last part is significant. If the United States Treasury does in fact hold untold trillions or even quadrillions of Iraqi Dinars from the initial postwar “currency swap,” and/or all of the USD auctions and USD cash pallets delivered to the Central Bank of Iraq, a number known to be at least $40 billion USD as of 2008, and that number has only increased in the 13 years since, although the US government has not revealed by how much or even how much IQD it holds period; then untold trillions could be removed from circulation just by the US exchanging their Dinars back for US Dollars and/or digital currency assets following a revaluation. Iraq could repossess those Dinars and have a giant bonfire with them, at least in theory. Then there are all of the American, Canadian, British and Australian currency speculators who hold IQD in their portfolios who would be looking to swap their suddenly valuable IQD for a currency they can use to buy and sell. While that number surely pales in comparison to the US Government’s holdings, it’s still likely nothing to scoff at, particularly in 2020 with Americans having nearly two decades of hearing about how the Iraqi Dinar would experience a rate change that would lead to windfall profits for American currency speculators. The Dinar is trading at 2.5 times its value (as defined by exchange rate) in US-based secondary marketplaces. One such marketplace where American consumers buy Iraqi Dinars is eBay. Compare those prices to the prices listed at Xe when you look up the formal exchange rate.

It’s been three decades since the economic sanctions that crippled the IQD were enacted and there seems to be a growing global consensus that it’s time to revisit the sanctions and review whether or nor they’re still appropriate and still serve a purpose that isn’t entirely punitively enacted against people, many of whom weren’t even alive when the events that provoked the enacting of the sanctions occurred.

To recap, we know that in 2011, Iraq did plan to at a bare minimum redenominate its currency. Some would argue that the 2011 plan constitutes a revaluation. Semantics aside, if the sanctions are what crashed the currency and have hindered it for three decades, if those sanctions are lifted simultaneously with a major rate change accompanied by Iraq repossessing hundreds of trillions of Dinars from citizens and countries across the globe and presumably removing them from circulation, there’s definitely an argument to be made that the concept of the “Iraq Dinar revaluation” is anything but a scam, and may not only be very real, but also very plausible despite the fact that elements within the media will tell anyone who will listen that Iraq’s situation with its currency bears no resemblance to the 1990-1991 Kuwaiti currency situation and that the same outcome is not possible in Iraq.

If it does finally happen in 2021, and there’s a lot of smoke that would seem to suggest that 2021 might be the year of the Dinar, the “Dinar Scam,” as it’s come to be known, will be remembered as all the people, publications and networks who for the better part of a decade have tried their best to convince anyone who will read or listen that investing in the Iraq Dinar is something only stupid people do, and that smart intellectuals like those in the media like to ridicule such simpletons while at their cocktail parties in their ivory towers.

It would be an end to the saga all too fitting considering that the same people calling the Dinar RV a scam are the world’s premiere pathological liars and have a proven track record of being among the most intellectually dishonest people in all of humanity.

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