#but yeah i would not recommend doing it unless you have a decent chunk of followers

[toshio]

Hello!! Hope you're doing well, just wondering if you make decent money from your onlyfans?

hey anon!

i'll be completely transparent LOL when you have a decent following and you open an OF it usually pops off the first month. the first month i made it in early 2023 i made like $10k in a month. it peaked then & there. LOL. but in my case, since i don't really wanna dive into actual collabs with p0rnstars (i just do solo content lol) i think people got bored and just unsubscribed which is totally fine, i still have a decent chunk of people who are still subscribed and it pays a decent chunk of my expenses. so yeah. just ask yourself if you're gonna go BALLS to the WALL with OF because if you're gonna expect to blow up and have all your bills paid with it while doing the bare minimum, it's probably not gonna work out. unless you're ridiculously attractive/have a nice body i guess. but even then it's still a lot of work i think.

overall i have other income streams that support my rent/car insurance/gas/groceries/bills etc. etc. like honestly, in 99% most cases you can't do OF as your main income stream unless you're a full blown adult content creator which is not the path i recommend for most people (unless it's your true passion then go for it!).

[captainsspnanon]

C2E59 - Perspective

Sorry for delay, I gave The Unsleeping City a go and had to finish it.  I personally prefer CR over D20, because I love the CR cast all RPing with each other, whereas in D20 it’s so heavily story focused, and RP seems to just be between PC and NPC, not PC and PC, but I’m going to give Fantasy High another shot, and then did get Dropout for some of the other campaigns.  All in all, I did enjoy it, and if you are someone who really wants more good story than lots of RP, I’d recommend D20.  (also a lot more comedy, just by the nature of the stories created and the settings leaning more into the absurd than the classic)

BUT BACK INTO CR, PLSKTHX

(and of course today’s a Thursday, so unless I finish this episode tonight, which is unlikely, I won’t finish it until after I watch the new one.)

….FUCK matt looks hot

nooooooooooo top camera is lower quality :(

(it is now several days after starting! XD  My focus is SHOT right now, I keep jumping from one thing to another to another.  PLUS I’m really wanting to start my Leverage rewatch, and then there’s this, and then there’s giving Fantasy High another go [on the third episode now] and then just all the cooking videos that I watch, not including actually reading and doing shit……...my brain needs to calm down!)

Let’s see how far I can get today before my brain nopes out.

YASHA CHARGING FORWARDS!!!!  (not at ALL influenced by Travis getting super hype in the corner, no sir)

Oh hey!  Is this the first Dwarven Forge sponsor for combat section?

“this will be a trick I learned from Brennan” re: the blue tack.  I had NO CLUE who Brennan was the first time I heard this, so this is super cool! Escape from the Bloodkeep looks like it aired on Dropout around Feb 2019, and this episode is from April 2019, so only a relative few months between (even including that I don’t know when the D20 stuff was actually filmed, because I think? that they have the entire season filmed before posting?)

Travis is SO EXCITED that the Charm Monster worked.  And for good reason!  This definitely was a big turning point of the encounter!  Actually, I wonder how the entire section of these few episodes would have gone had the Nein just killed the giants.  Never find out about their home, never find out about the rift machine, never get the scrap of fabric for scrying……. Unless Matt was going to have the giants start talking during the combat regardless to try to stop it from being one-sided, this is a case where a whole chunk of the campaign could have turned out very differently.

Yasha succeeded on a wisdom saving throw????  what is this out of character nonsense??!!! oh wait, it was for Hold Person.  Alright, proceed.

Yeah, Cat’s Ire! I want to see the cat claw mini next to the Bigby’s Hand mini from C1.  For whatever reason, it always feels to me like the cat claw is smaller, despite knowing that it’s big enough for Caleb to ride it in the cathedral fight.  I’m assuming this is just due to the perspective with the minis.

I actually got a decent chunk into the fight before I noped out from focus issues, but just didn’t have much to say because, yanno, combat.

A week later, let’s keep going!

POLYMORPH LET’S GOOOOOO!!!  Yes, I will likely be this excited every time someone casts Polymorph.  It was THE spell of this campaign, had incredible use both in and out of combat, and ranged for serious to humorous as needed. (Runner up iconic spells for C2?  Sending, Bless/Bane, and Spiritual Weapon are the three that come to mind)

A wild Foster appears!  Foster uses Refill Drinks!  It’s super effective!

Travis, while he gets all the credit he deserves for being an amazing RPer, does NOT get enough credit for his physical portrayals.  He mostly sits outside of his PC while at the table, but when he DOES do it, it’s fucking fantastic.  The ‘UH UH UH, DOWN’ head waggle and heavily downturned mouth??  Completely in character, and completely hysterical.  I love Fjord so much

Okay, the giant telling Caduceus that they were attacked by creatures with wings and long faces?  Ominous and also exciting.  Hearing it again now knowing what the creatures look like??  Absurd and humorous.  It’s SUCH an ugly mini, omg, it’s forever tainted my reaction to it.  And to be fair, it’s a strong creature with some terrifying abilities!  But it’s so GOOFY LOOKING.

“watched his life wither” it’s so cool to see how much Matt actually tells the group ahead of time, but because they don’t have the knowledge of what’s to come, even though he shares it all, it’s in such a way that they can’t predict.  He did the same with the information with the Beacon, and I’m sure much more that I’ve forgotten.

WAIT WHAT what is this shit with Soorna’s brother being killed by the creatures and then being undead? and possessed or shit I DON’T REMEMBER THIS AT ALL

I really appreciate how in C2, pretty much every PC aside from Yasha all had multiple instances of them taking the lead and handling big conversations.  If it’s more serious/analytical, usually Beau or Caleb take the lead. More demanding or bluster or submission?  Fjord (with a wonderful show of flipping between his dynamics).  Humorous or unexpectedly influential?  Jester and Nott.  And while part of it is just Ashley not having the opportunity to, it also makes sense that Yasha mostly sat back and let the others do the talking.  There’s no one set leader, no one style of voice, no one player who made sure to play the face.  After I’d finished watching and watching C1 (so therefore having the opportunity to forget a whole lot of C2), my remembrance was of Caleb, Beau, and Jester being the big talkers. This rewatch is really letting me appreciate Fjord, Nott, and Caduceus’ contributions even more.  They don’t have just ‘one off’ moments, nor do they just have their ‘big’ moments.  All are a steady contribution throughout the campaign.  (and, no hate here, but honestly?  I’m glad we didn’t have Molly throughout, because I really am unable to imagine his conversations and how he may handle things – especially considering Tal wanted to play him as fairly static in terms of character growth, so imagining early!Molly with his harshness and abrasiveness, unsoftened in the way Beau and Caleb are, is just jarring in my mind)

Oh, investigation checks.  I kinda feel bad that Beau got a 25 but basically just found junk, where Fjord got a 26 and got the humiliation material.  I know that technically they were searching different areas, but it’s just one of those things that feels a little bad.  I’d have thought that maybe it required the nat20, but Matt specifically asked “for a total of?”, implying that it did have a specific DC.

Jester pestering Caleb while he’s casting Comprehend Languages definitely gives me twinnie vibes, but also in a completely different way.  Full props to Laura and Liam – the three dynamics that they’ve presented in each of the campaigns is so different but feels so true.  I’m still early on in C3 (episode 30 airs tonight…..episode 29 is the one that I mentioned earlier XD) that they haven’t fully established how they will work in this one, but I’m SO looking forwards to it, SO SO SO MUCH.  Or even finding out if in C3 they end up having a very MINIMAL dynamic – like how Caleb and Caduceus, despite having a few good conversations, had much more of a minimal dynamic than the other C2 friendships.  It’s early enough in C3 that I don’t know! And what’s already been established can change!

Re: moorbounders “if they get killed, I’m going to kill you” “no you won’t, you love me” can I just mention how much I love Laura and Travis’s relationship with how they portray it when they’re streaming?  It’s so fucking adorable

I am pretty sure that I haven’t forgotten a moment, so I am gonna say FIRST INSTANCE OF YASHA EATING BUGS (yes spiders count as bugs shut up).  You can tell that she had this in her mind early on, Matt was describing the flesh and she was sitting there smiling and nodding while the other players/PCs were getting grossed out expressions.  She had the rat to eat before, but this is a step further.  (side note, yes I’m aware that insects are eaten in non-US cultures.  But I admit that it’s a hellova NOPE for me, especially with my phobia of bugs crawling inside my body).  I wonder how much of this was improv-ed in the moment and how much of it was something she’d already determined for Yasha’s backstory.

IT’S BEEN A WHILE!!!!!!!!!!!  First appearance!!!!!  I’m shocked that so many of them jumped on it instantly.  It made me think that it must have happened earlier, but I can’t find any earlier instance of it.

Sam making good use of travel time to have a conversation with Caleb about Nott’s feelings, and it’s so good.  It might not get touched on in depth at this point, but it brings up basically all of her worries.  Is she a bad person for immediately going out on an adventure again?  For WANTING to go out on the adventure again?  Will Yeza like who she is now?  He’s accepted her skin for the moment, but what about her mind?  Does SHE want to go back to being who she was?  So quickly laying out everything there, for an emotional journey that will take the rest of the campaign for her to go through.  And Caleb!  Being so supportive of her and her choices, but also fully reassuring her that Yeza will support her, disagreeing when she thinks it’s just for now.  Also – let’s give fucking full credit to Liam Oberon in this moment.  They’ve already had the Nott/Veth conversation when Nott first shared her story.  But then they also all understood the switch to Veth while Yeza was around.  And now, Caleb takes a moment to clarify even further ‘what would you like me to call you when we are not with Yeza’ and it’s BEAUTIFUL.  This is just a small aspect of it, but it’s a moment where a viewer can really take this and use it in their own lives for people that they may know, to ensure the comfort of those who struggle with their identity or how they present it.

HENRY CAMEO!

Okay first of all, Laura doing sad!Jester destroys me every single fucking time omg. Secondly, I’m actually not quite sure where she was leaving the possibility of the RP going.  I’m a bit disappointed that Travis didn’t engage with it.  While the moment ended up being silly kinda flirty kinda teasy, it feels like there was something big under the surface that got missed.  And because of my shitty memory, I can’t remember if it comes up again later or not!  (to be fair, Laura could have just been RPing Jester as low from being poisoned the night before, but let me read into things)

I appreciate Travis noping out as Matt is describing all the spiders that they’re seeing.  At this EXACT MOMENT, there is a decent sized spider RIGHT ABOVE my bed where the wall meets the ceiling.  It’s too high up for me to kill it, even if I stand on the bed.  As long as it STAYS there, or moves somewhere else, I’m...well, not fine, but ignoring it.  (I had to sleep with it there last night T.T) but if it comes down the wall?  It diiies.

...I just realized that everyone is individually mic-ed.  When did this happen????  I thought they had mics above them?  They’ve certainly hit them enough times.  Maybe because Ashley is back so they’re not seated properly under them?  Or maybe they’ve had the individual mics for a while and I’ve just completely failed to notice?  *starts checking things*  oh, they didn’t have them before break.  I’m guessing it’s for the kickstarter celebration after the show then, and they just decided to get it done during the break to reduce the amount of time they needed to get set up.

I still have mixed feelings with Frumpkin exploring everything ahead of time.  It’s great that the map gets cleared and the party has a vague idea of what they’re heading in to, but it takes the agency away from other players to discover it on their own.  I don’t remember how much Vax did this as well, I think it was frequently?  Or at least at the beginning.  Just glad that Orym doesn’t do it.  Yet.  It’s different when it’s different players doing it each time, but when it’s the same player each time, in multiple campaigns?  I’d hope that Liam checked in with the other players to make sure that they were cool with it.  It’s hard to argue with, because tactically it makes absolute sense to send Frumpkin, but that doesn’t always translate to fun.

Oh good, this was only a quick little exploration.  And once again the ‘does Frumpkin have darkvision’ question.  Matt should have just given Caleb a magic collar or something that let him have darkvision as a cat only. Dumbest 5e ruling.

Beau boosted with Holy Weapon is SO fucking badass, I wish it happened more often.  I actually only remember it one other time….CR stats has it a total of 8 times.  Episodes 59, 60, 69, 82, 95,105, 133, 139.

I….forgot about all these con saves.  Fuck we is in trouble

I hear a lot online about how Matt pulls his punches once Molly died.  Except Fjord nearly straight up died during this combat from having his hit point max reduced to 0 (thanks Cad for canceling the crit!), being targeted as an unconscious creature while an aggressive target was in range but ignored.  I disagree with this statement fully, for what it’s worth.  I also don’t get the argument of people who are desperate to see the party fall and PCs constantly die.  I get that it happened a lot in C1, but you know what also happened in C1?  The players got tired of it.  They talk about it in one of the Talks (have no clue which one, whether it was at the end of C1 or during C2) but they were resurrectioned out because of how emotionally taxing it was, especially to keep having it happen.  So much of the ‘waaaah’ online is that the people thing Matt is being too gentle.  IF he is (which I don’t agree with), then it’s likely something he decided after talking with the players.  Considering they shared their feelings online through Talks, it’s VERY likely that they would have talked with Matt and explained how they felt and what they would like going forwards.  And there is nothing wrong with having a more or less deadly game!  But this is where there’s a lot of preference that it taken from the point of the viewer basically ignoring what is likely preference on the parts of the players.

I forgot that the NPC got the kill!!  I guess ‘cause it wasn’t as hyped up for the “How Do I Want To Do This” moment with Obann – Matt even still says the normal HDYWTDT.

LOL Liam is never going to let anyone forget what happened with Kynan.  STILL SALTY.

I don’t think I’m going to watch their kickstarter wrapup.  I watched it the first time, and I’d rather go to the Talks, or jump back into Fantasy High (still not vibing with this one as much as I did for The Unsleeping City, but they do two of it so I feel like I have to)

@suicidallyreckless

[undeniablycandycane]

I saw your post on the previous drama in the Night at The Museum fandom and I would like to say that if we're going to keep the peace in the fandom we need to respect not everyone will like every ship and may even dislike certain characters. But on the other hand it might be best not to put down a ship unless it is offensive in some fashion. Like the people who ship Ahk/ Kah which is incestuous. Or shipping a teenage Nicky with anyone over their teens or someone too young for him.

Additionally some people will use any subject as a reason to harass other people so don't put down all to people being toxic in the fandom. Some people are just really nasty and look for any excuse to take their problems out on people.

Yeah, things have been quiet and I haven't seen any new problems arise recently, fortunately. Respecting people's ships and character headcanons is just basic decency. I hope people have learned their lesson. Being a total ass isn't tolerated here, and anyone who tries is going to be shunned if they're found out. When all that shit happened, I was so furious and I wanted to make sure that the culprit understood that we as a community won't tolerate that behavior.

That being said, I completely agree, anything problematic or harmful such as incest/underage shipping (minor with adult [excluding like, a 17 and 18 year old dating or something] or minor x minor nsfw content) should be exempted from that rule.

Still please don't send someone death threats over it. I know it's awful shit but it's not okay to even send death threats or 'kys' messages at all, but especially when a huge chunk of these people that do these kinds of ships are impressionable kids who don't know any better; we need to challenge this thing in a civil, non-harmful fashion and set an example. Do no harm, take no shit. Explain to them why it's wrong and how it could hurt people and the community, or you may end up making people think "people who are against x thing are mean and uncivilized!" And that's no good for anyone. Let me reiterate, many or even most of the people that do these things are kids. There's a difference between scolding/criticism, and straight up bullying. Don't cross that line into bullying, especially towards kids. Be decent. There's a lot of stuff I fell for as a teenager, so I know what I'm talking about. Teens are more inclined to find justification in what they're doing, if those that oppose them are hostile or threatening towards them. (Plus, you know, they're KIDS.) |this is meant at everyone in general and not you specifically|

That aside, yes. Some people are just nasty. How you deal with them is up to you, but I'd recommend condemning them but not giving them a "reason" to bite back, and just ignore them if they continue to be a bother because a lot of people do it for attention, and when they don't receive that attention they get bored. I want us to have a comfortable and safe atmosphere and I think we have the power to make it so. Don't forget to have fun. That's what we're here for in the first place right?

[victorluvsalice]

Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to finally finish up that ship meme from @kalidels that I’ve been meaning to do for ages, right? ^^; Yeaaah. . .well, better late and on an appropriately-themed day than never. I had a lot of fun filling this out, and can totally recommend it for anyone who wants to do something neat for one of their own OTPs.

A little more explanation for the various sections beyond the cut:

Love Languages -- While I think they’d use all five, and I was tempted to circle “Physical Touch” for the sole reason of “an Alice who likes you will let you touch her,” the category title is “MAIN” love languages, and those are the ones that immediately came to mind when thinking about them and how they might express love. Alice would want to spend time around her paramour, rather than just be on her own; Victor likes giving (and receiving) little gifts; and they both like to demonstrate how much they love the other person via doing things for them. It’s a pretty decent dynamic.

Checkboxes: I think most of these are self explanatory, though Victor got “confesses first” because, thinking about my fics, he’s usually the first one to say he’s in love with Alice -- even if it’s not always to Alice. XD And yes, I do usually picture Alice as the Big Spoon -- I like the image of them cuddling in that manner. :) The purple ones are the ones where I couldn’t decide on one or the other, or considered it a tie for other reasons (text on image is included in quotations):

Initiated First Kiss -- “Could go either way!” As aptly demonstrated by Alice initiating in “Secundus,” but Victor initiating in “Remembering You”

More Experienced -- “I don’t think either is ‘more experienced’ -- their lives are too different to properly judge” Mostly because I couldn’t figure out who would be more experienced generally -- Victor lived a reasonably sheltered life as the son of the richest man in a tiny village, buuut Alice spent a good chunk of her life catatonic in an asylum. Kind of a draw. (And if we’re talking sexually -- yeah, they’re both on an even keel, given Alice is gray-ace and Victor very repressed.)

Normally Cooks -- “Alice cooks, Victor bakes” Based entirely on my headcanon that Victor would like baking things for people. XD But yeah, they work together in the kitchen, with Alice being more skilled with making proper meals and Victor treats. :p

Graphs: These were a bit tricky, but I’m satisfied with the placement of Victor and Alice in each. As for each in turn --

Pet Names -- They feel more like something Victor would use than Alice, and he’d stick to stuff like “darling” and “love” -- Alice, when she does use them, sometimes likes to get a little sillier

Jealousy -- They both enjoy spending some time alone, so I put them both on the “needs space” side. As for actually getting jealous, it’s not likely for either, but it’s more likely for Alice than Victor -- Victor’s more likely to fall into self-loathing and wondering how he could measure up.

Expressing Affection -- I don’t see either as full-on PDA all day every day, especially when we’re in the canonical Victorian era for both -- they’re both more on the reserved side, unless they’re alone. I also put them both in the “words” section because, while I personally like imagining them cuddling, using their words is probably more canonical for them. (And, again, something they’re more likely to do in public.)

Attachment -- I put Alice just across the line into independent because she can and does get on fine alone -- but I think she would get nervous about losing someone she loved after what happened to her family. Victor’s definitely more prone to the separation anxiety, though. But they’re both pretty protective of the other.

Songs: Okay, I have a whole freaking tag of songs I love for them as a couple, so why these particular three? Well. . .

“All The Way 4 You” by Poets of the Fall -- one of my favorite Valicey songs in general, which always gives me some incredible Valice feels whenever I listen to it. Shoo-in for the top slot.

“Lights Down Low” by MAX -- the semi-official Valice wedding song! Ever since I found out the artist proposed to his girlfriend with this song, and then did a music video with their wedding video to it, it’s been permanently linked with Victor and Alice getting married in my mind.

“Me!” by Taylor Swift and Brendon Urie -- I love the music video for this song, and it gives me fun bouncy Valice vibes -- not to mention the mental image of Victor holding an umbrella over him and Alice while rainbow rain pours down around them, which I adore. :)

[themedplanets]

Galaxies #4 +5

Yeah guess who got distracted and basically marathoned Beastars instead of doing the things I should?  Or doing whatever this thing is.  It’s me.  I read it.  The comic is good.  Also goes to the horny-hellscape-dimension but it’s actually woven into the narrative instead of just incidental and uncomfortable.  Honestly would highly recommend assuming you can deal with the general content.

Anyways, the comic I’m actually talking about.

#4 Is a decent enough resolution to it, follows through on the set up and hey, definitely an impact on the setting and likely the story as a whole.  And in theory the whole Insecticons eating bros sequence is good and creepy/effective, but unfortunately I was just sitting there thinking about what this would be tagged as on Ao3.  

I wanna like them but they’re just so very into eating dudes and then covering each other in pale stringy goo.  Which is uncomfy to look at with my human eyes and perceive with my human brain.

And the ending makes sense, as far as the Constructicons implied to be going off to do their own thing.  But thematically & emotionally it feels a little weird for them to kill a mess of people that didn’t really do anything to them, and destroy a city they built themselves, then just.... Road trip?  Like, they didn’t functionally do anything to get back at the government besides give them a scandal and some lost profits.  

It feels like no matter what happened after wrecking up the place they should be on track to go back to Cybertron (Unless they were, like, upset and scared by their actions, but that pretty obviously wasn’t the case).  But I’d imagine the main plot won’t be ready for them to roll up for a good chunk of time, so Galaxies had to just kind of put them back in the toy box at the end of their story, no matter what.

Art-wise...  God this is personal but I hate it when an artist just pops a filter over something and it’s just like.  A .png of something else.  It makes it harder for me to visually read what’s happening half the time, and the other half it makes the part of the image with the pattern look flat and incongruous with the rest of the image.  

#5  Is....  Extremely mixed!  I like getting to see more alien cultures and Deathsaurus just bullying the shit out of the aliens due to a lack of oversight was a good dimension to take as far as fleshing out the world.  And all the stuff at the start of the comic about Cliffjumper being mistaken for Bumblebee was fun.  

Am interested to see where it’s going.  And Hooray for a character that is demonstrated to be in some way inconvenienced by energon rations that isn’t purposefully handicapped Harrison Begeron style.

Am a bit disappointed by the whole Deathsaurus just punching through a wall to conveniently reveal the hidden energon.  Just, very narratively convenient in a noticeable way that the aliens just happened to store their secret stash in the adjacent room, and that Deathsaurus luck-of-the-draw reveals it (Because there’s no indication of him deducing they were right on the other side of the wall in advance.).

Mainly I just wish that the center of all this conflict wasn’t the literal shit of a sapient species.  And how much touching and eating of it there is.  I could do without that.  The Ao3 tags have doubled in quantity, including an, at this point legally mandated “Dead dove: do not eat”.  

Plus entirely personally... I just like the The Pirate Dad of Party Planet flavored Deathsaurus better than the “I shall be pettily cruel and eat literal shit for personal benefit” we got.  But that’s just me directly comparing him. might grow to like the new Deathsaurus as a different character.  Assuming the, uh, specific thing doesn’t becoming a character-defining habit.  Or that at least other characters think it’s gross.

[asksds]

Uh more of a question to the mun,,, but how’d u get followers? Since this isn’t a fandom blog, it’s probably harder to get them. Just wondering, since I was thinking of starting an oc blog myself,,,

((Oof okay: In my particular case I had a little bit of a following via deviantArt already, which I did get due to some fanart here and there and some Naruto-OCs (in fact, I started sds parallel to an askblog for my Naruto-OCs, but I deleted that one pretty quickly). I believe it was during the time I made My Little Pony Fanart too, which blew up my following for a while? Though that might’ve been a little later, I don’t quite recall. Having the other sinblogs join up was also a boost, since they had their following as well and after some crossovers some people got invested in the various blogs. Also, I started the blog when I was rather young and had a lot of time, so I often did daily updates which helped get people interested. So really, it was just lucky timing (and having cute girls as the protagonists doesn’t hurt).

But really, my following, while decently impressive, isn’t super-huge. After 7 years it’s at 1381 currently and it’s been somewhere around that number for at least a year I’m pretty sure (I regularly weed out bot-followers and I’m fairly certain a big chunk is still bots), and of those 1300 only about 20-30 actively engage. But needless to say, I treasure those people deeply ( •⌄• ू )✧

I would recommend that unless you get to be part of a blog-fandom of some kind, try not to start out with an askblog, but get people interested in your characters first. Do something with the characters, show that you’re excited for them, and also just do something with them to get a feel for them. I personally always found that once I actually engage with a character for a while, they usually change in some way from the initial concept I had in mind. But yeah, I find that if you’re passionate about them and eager to share things, people end up getting curious as to why, and maybe catch your enthusiasm.

Also keep in mind that OC-Content is likely not the way to go to get a huge following, unless you combine it with something else popular (like nsfw-content or fandom-crossovers or... dragons or something) so it’s more of a for-fun thing. If you’re happy with that, you’ll definitely do well!! Good luck with your plans!!))

[sofiadragon]

My father made it very clear to me that I could not choose atheism, as he had, without doing the work necessary to understand my choice. His opinion remains that young children can not really say that all/a specific religion is not for them because their experience is too limited. As teens and young adults there is both a drive and a responsibility to question and seek answers. Those who never do so are running on blind faith (no matter what belief system they have) and some traditions are more accepting/prepared for what (I was raised to believe) should be a natural part of a young person's development. Plenty of people do question and only become more sure of their faith, a faith that is no longer blind as it was when they were younger. Some traditions incorporate this, but OP is right that many Christian communities put blind faith up on a pedestal like some grand virtue... and many ex-christians still value their feeling more than their thinking.

I absolutely agree that people should broaden their experiences if they are rejecting an aspect of the culture they were born to. I took world religion and psychology electives in college, and I know that's only possible for a certain type of person, but that was my answer to my father's requirement. I studied a number of religious faiths from Hindu to New Age Wicca. I chose to pay for a class that gave me a foundation to start from and that made it a lot easier for me. It's hard to Google or use a library card catalog when you don't know the proper terminology (yes, I'm old enough to have used actual cards in tiny drawers for this. The internet has only made this sort of thing easier to do.) This can be done with only some books and an open mind, and many religious leaders are happy to talk to a respectful and curious outsider. Call, ask when is a good time to talk with someone about their faith, and be honest that you lost yours. Respect them if they give/recommend something to read before you talk with them.

Now, I don't mean to gatekeep atheism. If someone says they are atheist and when asked says "the Christian faith makes no sense to me" or something like that then that's fine, and I certainly can't claim I reaserched every world religion in depth, I can only say that I looked into several religions and decided that atheism was my answer. What I take objection to, who my father taught me I had to do better than, are the people who have never looked at anything but the church/temple they grew up in say "all religions are garbage" or "no faith makes sense to me." The people who, out of ignorance or malice, make a lot of bigoted and disrespectful statements in public.

It would be like someone saying they hate salad dressing when they had only ever tasted types of vinaigrette. Unless and until they try something else, even just a quick taste, they can't really say they hate all salad dressing. They just don't know what else is out there, and in a young person that ignorance is understandable but in an adult it becomes willful. They rejected a decent chunk of their cultural identity and then didn't look for an alternative, and yeah I'm going to judge that when they talk as if all religions are like the one they didn't like.

The unknown unknown is vast, but if you are going to take a strong stance on something you have to beat it back far enough to see how that pit yawns wide and unfathomably deep.

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while but from a Jewish perspective-

Culturally Christian non-religious people/atheists are some of the most obnoxious motherfuckers you will ever meet.

They will take their religious trauma and apply it to every religion that isn’t Christianity like they’re all the same thing in a different color and font. Culturally/formerly Christian atheists will deadass be like “Actually all organized religions are bad because [insert some aspect that applies to Christianity only]”

No Kyle. I do not feel like I have to “blindly listen to what I’m told from an ancient book”. A big part of the religion is literally about having conversation with the holy text. Not every religion is your southern Baptist church you attended until you were 17.

(Obviously this doesn’t apply to guys who just Doesn’t believe in any god and is chill about it before I get any “But I don’t”s in my notes.)

[justwosothings]

NFTs and Crypto are unfortunately the big investment trend right now and with the Crypto bros getting into sports they're pulling all the athletes in. It's still new and unless you have a lot of money to burn I don't recommend. A lot of uncertainty around it. It's so bad for the environment too. Sam is so popular she can actually make a good chunk selling her image right now though.

I'm all for the girls making as much money as they can but I hope they have good knowledge and advisors. Wonder what Steph thinks of all this working in the investment banking business and all.

Crypto can be a good investment but you haven to actually know what you’re doing. Investing in something because some athletes promoting it majority of the time means that’s not the one to invest in. So much uncertainty around it.

I obviously work in finance so people I work with talk about this a lot and honestly yeah stay away unless you’ve got a financial advisor that know what they’re doing. Crypto is like stocks but way more volatile. You don’t just invest in stocks without knowing what you’re doing (or you shouldn’t anyway) so idk why people treat crypto different when it’s mostly a lot riskier. You only make decent returns if you invest a lot. And for example with something like bitcoin it’s too late to make decent money on. To be profitable you would want to put decent money into a low value cryptocurrency that people are expecting to increase in value. But of course that’s also gambling with your money. I wouldn’t advise it unless you’re willing to lose the money. So for someone like Sam and Kristie to put some extra cash into these things isn’t a terrible idea but for the average person like I say unless you’re happy to potentially lose all your money, stay away.

[rigelmejo]

i found the little prince on the same site i found xiao mao stories on, so that’s great. i can now look up words by clicking them. so of course i did what i tend to do - and i reread chapters 1-3 actually looking up all the unknown words. It can’t hurt as review I suppose? And I comprehend things a lot more clearly the second time reading through. 

...although I know I am... defeating the point of extensive reading if I’m... intensive reading lol. Although... eventually the two things merge when you don’t have to look many words up? ;-; maybe?

anyway in a few days I’m gonna do my goals met post or whatever and. All I know is WHATEVER my study plan was? It ended up becoming lots of extensive reading (chinese), audio (chinese, french), flashcards (japanese). Also some miscellaneous writing (chinese), and writing/grammar reading (japanese)... but to be fair it was not very much.

 I also got so much done I’m really proud of myself tbh. Like. For japanese I got 318 grammar flashcards done, 430 vocabulary flaschards done. To me that is a big deal because once I passed 300 grammar cards, 100 vocabulary cards, I officially had reviewed all of the japanese I had studied years ago and moved onto completely new material for me. That just blows my mind. I reviewed roughly what I used to know in like 2 months maybe? And now I’m learning genuinely mostly new material which is so cool to me. Also I know that years ago I started reading manga and playing video games Before I covered this much studying, so at this point I am more prepared than I was last time I did it. For whenever I choose to do it again. 

The main thing that I think was not a success was listening reading method. I want to do it so bad, I like it in concept, I need listening comprehension improvements, and I like reading! But genuinely the fact I have to stay on the task for long durations of time is just so freaking hard for me. I have been able to do it in 20 minute bursts, but I still overall NEED like 1 hour a day along with the ‘breaks in between’ if I want to finish at a decent stopping point I can start from again later. It is really hard to do if I have anything else significant planned for the day. Maybe I will try it one weekend day or one day off. I realize now why the person who initially explained the idea tended to do listening reading for 8-10 hours a day for a week to a month. It is MUCH easier to do if you can do it for long periods of time - if for no other reason than KEEPING PLACE in text is so much easier if you DONT have to leave the text regularly. And then also, so much of its learning method involves repetition of common word usage of the book, so lots of consistent regular input of the words (like doing it a week to month straight) will provide more regular review of words than doing it one hour every week. 

I want to try this method so badly, and I think it would help my chinese a lot at any level (since I still have a long way to go before I have a “natural listening” ability of material of that complexity), or my french (because I know a lot reading wise I just need to turn that into listening comprehension). I have had some success doing step 2 of the listening reading method - and I know its simply because when text matches the audio it is so much EASIER to stop doing it, return later, and easily find your place to continue from. However, the issue with step 2 is - while it allows me to improve listening comprehension of words I know, it does not allow me to pick up new words as easily. And genuinely I DO think step 3 helps more with listening comprehension - because you have to rely so much on listening comprehension ALONE to follow where you are in the text (its also why that step feels so intense and is so hard to keep your place in). 

So anyway. Step 2 has been quite easy, and I have actually managed to do it a bit this month. But step 3 is just. So difficult for me to get myself to do. For Francais Par Le Methode Nature, now that audio exists I’m basically listening to that and then also reading along with the text when I miss a word (which is more just comprehensible input with a transcript?). With MoDu, I listening to the audio while reading the chinese and glancing at the english for some key definitions (I don’t feel it challenged me to practice listening very much though). With the little prince, I played chinese audio and followed along to the text (mostly to match sound to new words I picked up when I read beforehand). With the xiao mao smiling cat story, I also played audio after I read it, to match audio up with new words I’d picked up - that time by listening then glancing at the text when I didn’t recognize a word when listening. So yeah like, I have been doing variations on step 2 sort of, so I suppose I’ll see if it produces any significant benefits for reading or listening. I also listened to tianyake audiodrama yesterday without looking at the subs and that was cool because it was a test of my actual listening comprehension a little (except easier to follow since I know the story).

I also think doing L R with a parallel text is much easier - again, because you can easily keep track of where you are in the audio so for people like me who NEED 10 minute breaks constantly it makes the activity much easier. I am using a parallel text for MoDu now and I think that’s why I was able to do about an hour and 30 minutes this week. I was doing sort of step 2 (so it was easier), and I had a parallel text so I didn’t get confused.

other notes?

In a way I’m glad I studied primarily simplified chinese, because it kind of helps me keep japanese more firmly ‘separate’ in my head. Some japanese kanji look like the simplified, many look like the traditional hanzi, and some I think may be simplified in a different manner. Japanese kanji do not mean exactly the same thing usually, and their multiple pronunciations can get confusing for me. So when the kanji looks different from the hanzi - i recognize traditional hanzi somewhat, so I can usually still recognize them and their meaning, but I don’t immediately think of them when I’m writing/typing/reading chinese unless I’m on a traditional text website/novel/show. So when I see the more traditional looking kanji, I can usually recognize them if its a familiar character, but my brain doesn’t so automatically jump to its chinese pronunciation. Which kind of helps me to keep my japanese pronunciations Separated from my chinese ones. Right now some of the hardest words for me to remember the pronunciation of are when the kanji are the same as a chinese simplified word (全然， 全部，方向). They’re easy to remember the definition of, but the pronunciations that come to my mind are pretty much automatically chinese.  

Also the Nukemarine LLJ decks are really helping, there’s a reason I like using them ToT. All the vocabulary is presented individually, then in sentence examples, all with audio. And lots of audio and reading practice so I can practice both. The grammar decks, which go along with Tae Kim’s Grammar Guide, are more challenging but understandable even without referencing tae kim’s grammar guide (which is great cause i’m too lazy right now to read a grammar guide). Mostly though, I just love the improvement I see from it? It’s structured well, so you get a lot of grammar foundation, kanji foundation, vocab foundation, and the different courses reinforce each other. 

I recently opened clozemaster to try the japanese fast track again - every so often my mind wonders if I could learn a significant amount from Clozemaster alone lol and I want to test it. I do genuinely think if you used Clozemaster it would work as well as that old 10k chinese or japanese sentence srs flashcards methods (which did work for people they just sound awful if you hate flashcards like me). Sometimes I use clozemaster as a ‘graded reader substitute’ to bridge the gap in my reading skills so I can push into reading native material easier. I did that for french and it helped a lot then I stopped using it once I could read novels. I did that with chinese and it helped a little. But I read in chinese so much I ultimately study more stuff when I just read so now my actual vocab is ahead of where I am in clozemaster when I try it for chinese lol. So like... usually I read it as an upper-beginner aid to break into reading target language materials that aren’t for learners. 

Well, I love contemplating if I could just learn a language FROM clozemaster sentences primarily as the study method though lol. Well, once I tried testing that with japanese years ago! It was brutal! I was a mid-beginner who’d studied for 1-2 years, and it was brutal! So many unknown kanji, unknown grammar, it was a mess lol! Just barely doable, would not recommend trying as a complete beginner. Well this week I tried to use Clozemaster japanese again - and it went super easy. One unknown word a sentence, or no unknown words and I marked the sentences mastered. The ideal difficulty for using clozemaster to improve, and I did not find the sentence grammar or kanji too intense to figure out. So the Nukemarine LLJ studying is helping a lot. I must have a bigger base of understanding than I did last time I tried clozemaster japanese, just because the activity is so much easier.

and an observation about me? I am super motivated by challenges apparently. Specifically when I hear something’s been done, worked, and then want to test it myself to see if it does. It’s why I was able to study 2k chinese words last year - someone else did those specific words, then started reading, and I wanted to know if I could copy that (it did help, though in retrospect there’s slightly easier ways lol!). 

This month? I read some stuff about how graded readers help with reading speed - now bam I am devouring easier reading materials (I read 53 chapters so far this month, counting shorter graded readers as 1 for ever two chapter chunks). I realize the reading material is much easier for half of this, so its closer to 30 chapters read in terms of length - but that’s still a good amount of reading in a month! And I finished reading 3 books this month! Also I read recently that extensive reading helps with vocabulary, and making future reading easier. So SINCE extensive reading is so much easier with these books more to my level, I’m testing that by reading a LOT lol. And that tip also motivated me to find an ease rating for what I’m reading/plan to read, which I’m sure will help me pick reading material in the future more based on actual needs. Like if I want to intensive read I can pick a ‘harder’ text, if I want to extensive read I can pick an easier rated text closer to my current ‘ease’ level (or a little harder), or if I want to extensive read something hard I can know its hard and read a translation beforehand. Basically just... the info I found about extensive reading really MOTIVATED me into doing it. 

There’s finally audio of Francais Par Le Method Nature, and even that motivated me to listen to multiple chapters to just test if the book works! I know the book works, I’ve read like 200 pages of it before and its basically a huge factor in what helped me move into novels from graded readers in french... its dated but I love the book so much and wish the same technique style textbooks were in more languages. I read the preface yesterday, which is so much easier for me to read now versus when I first read it lol which just shows it helped once. And it covers 3000 words chosen from frequency indexes, introduces everything in french in a manner to help students comprehend the meaning from its context, includes a pronunciation line guide below text (though now that audio exists its so nice to use!). This book’s designed to get a learner able to move onto target language materials for native speakers afterwards, and it SHOWS. I never even completed the book and only read it and it helped so much. I’m finally listening to it now, and in awe of how comprehensible the audio on its own is. Anyway this book’s concept always felt like something I wanted to test and proved if it worked so, if I have time...

Nukemarine’s LLJ i’m pretty good at sticking to, because its structured and has a claim about what I’ll be able to do when I’m toward the end of it - read japanese. The courses used to be called Standard Guide to Japanese Literacy SGJL. They were originally made to help japanese learners push into reading - and a lot of the related immersion tips/activity that go along with the guide also contribute. I imagine it got renamed something more general - Lets Learn Japanese LLJ - either because it wasn’t quite enough for novel reading, or it made more sense to call it something broader. 

I would love to have the motivation to test Listening Reading Method and prove if it works or not and how much ToT. It frustrates me so much I can’t remain focused long enough to do it multiple hours a day (whereas shows and books I can, since I can take breaks easily between moments). I already tested several hours doing it (specifically step 3), and I can confirm it at least improves listening comprehension of what you already partly-know. The little L R i have been able to do, boosted my listening comprehension of shows/audiobooks/audio dramas NOTICEABLY within a few hours of doing it, and with every few more hours I do it. So as a upper-beginner/low-intermediate learner (?) L R step 3 helps a lot with dragging listening skill up to match reading skill. And it doesn’t take much to see benefits. But I haven’t done L R enough to test how much totally new material you can learn from doing it - I’ve done enough to pick up a few words and phrases, but most of the benefit was half-learned words becoming more fully learned and instantly recognized in listening instead of requiring me to pause and think and get lost. 

[irawhiti]

@forcesensitivebantha they're actually pretty different usually! i was trying to fit this into a reply but it got way too long sorry LOL

basically they're coldwater but can tolerate near freezing to 35c since they're so hardy. they prefer between ~15-20c which is generally incompatible with cherries since they prefer around 22c but my cherries have a decent chunk of various wild neocaridina sp. genetics. i've been doing an unofficial breeding project for awhile to try and fix the fucked genetics in rcs and mostly use the term cherries as shorthand for my vague hybrid neo sp. shrimp since that's what they started off as and they look pretty similar still. anyway because of that everyone sits fine at around 18c :) basically if you keep docile coldwater shrimp happy and don't care about losing some of them then yeah a yabby would be able to go in with them fine with a few adjustments imo.

the best environment would be a creek setup with plenty of hides and plants, yabbies get territorial too so you need a lot of ground space if you want to have more than one (tbh i'd recommend just having one since they can get huge anyway) but really they're very easygoing with tanks and they'll adapt to anything where they feel hidden and comfortable in clean water. they're kind of an alternative kid's aquarium pet to goldfish and bettas here because they're so hardy unfortunately :/

also yabbies are omnivores and once they get big enough if you keep them with any smaller fish, shrimp, snails etc they WILL get eaten. they're actually hunting shrimp in the first pic i posted lol, this is ideal for me since they kill off any sick shrimp and i have a very big colony of cherries so they haven't made a noticeable dent whatsoer. but if you have a designer tank with $30 amano shrimp then probably don't put a yabby into it <3

tldr; they're pretty different to your average shrimp setup but can cohabitate if you're okay with losing a few shrimp. they're really fun to keep and super hardy but they do get territorial so they have to be kept alone unless you want to go to stupid amounts of effort

i found my yabby again! they're getting so big! they were cherry shrimp sized when i got them and look at them now, hunting the cherry shrimp. i dangled my finger in front of them a few times and they pinched me but it didn't even leave a mark since they're still little

[graceivers]

Review #67 - I Only Have Eyes for You

I Only Have Eyes for You Author: Bella Andre Genre: Contemporary Romance, Pregnancy & Babies Rating: ★★½ Recommendation: not worth it; once was enough Summary: Sophie Sullivan has been in love with Jake McCann since forever. Always seen as the nice sister of the family clan, Sophie sets out to change that and show Jake what kind of girl she can be. Jake can’t resist her, yet his past demons and some stark differences between the two of them threaten to ruin what ties them together.

Female Lead: Sophie… meh. I think I had less of a problem with Sophie’s character and more of a problem with the way Andre chose to describe Sophie—meaning I was quickly annoyed by the whole ‘nice’ thing. The supposed image of Sophie being the nice twin sister in the Sullivan clan droned on and on. I got it the first time. I didn’t need to be constantly reminded. Sophie didn’t need to be constantly reminded. Why did everyone need to have judgments and images of people? Why couldn’t they just be them? I liked Sophie because she was quiet but could also show boldness and spontaneity. I liked that she had close relationships with her family, that she was a bit of a hopeless romantic. She was kind of useless around Jake, though, which was not my favorite. Those situations showed a type of indecisiveness and flightiness that I did not enjoy much at all. It was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts—Andre hammering down the ‘nice’ and meek image of this character and then subsequently fulfilling it when it came to her relationship with Jake despite the author’s previous attempts to illustrate that Sophie was supposed to be more than that. Male Lead: I did not like this dude. I thought I would during the first fourth or so of the book, but nope, that didn’t happen. In the beginning, I liked the idea that Jake was secretly enamored with Sophie, but refused to let those feelings show, which led him to push her away. There was a decent angst setup there that I enjoyed right up until the point where he left Sophie after they had sex for the first time together. Then it all went downhill. Like, big time. Jake became an annoying and kind of pseudo alpha male that put Sophie’s indecisiveness to shame. One minute he was demanding Sophie to move in and marry him literally five minutes after finding out she was pregnant after he had ignored her for over two months, the next minute he was pushing her away and yelling at her. Figure it out, dude. Seriously. Stop making demands and pretending you’re in control when you should be groveling. Plot & Writing: So, I saw this book was free on iBooks and decided to download it after seeing decent reviews on Goodreads and having previously read(ish) another one of Andre’s books in this series. To say the least, I Only Have Eyes for You wasn’t my favorite. Overall, all contents of the book seemed forced to me from the plot, to the characters, to the trite scenarios Andre wrote to create her conflict that didn’t garner much of my interest.

First of all, the ‘two and a half months later’ note? Yeah, no good. Obviously I understood why Andre wanted to skip some time given that she made Jake skip out on Sophie the way he did and to incorporate Sophie’s pregnancy. Still, no good. The decision was especially unfortunate juxtaposed next to the fact that the majority of the rest of the book took place in about a week when Sophie and Jake were trying to figure out what to do since she was pregnant with his babies. Andre’s complete lack of pacing here did the book no favors. How was I to believe in character and relationship and plot development when the author skipped out on two months only to cram everything into a week’s worth of time?

Likewise, Jake and Sophie’s relationship seriously suffered from not only pacing issues but also lack of communication and trust and other things that couples probably need to make their relationship last. They rarely talked to one another about the serious and important life stuff. Jake just avoided all that plain and simple. And I got that he had demons that he didn’t want Sophie to know about, but come on. You cannot all but force the girl to marry you and be okay with it if you’re not going to give her anything to work with. And then, when his secrets did come out, all he did was yell at her. Did I mention that I did not like Jake? The relationship seemed forced enough, and he just went on and made it even more unnatural. I wasn’t feeling the chemistry between these two much at all.

Also, side note. No, I didn’t need to know what exact disability Jake had that made him more or less illiterate for a good chunk of his life. What I could not believe, though, was that he got through school and graduated and got a diploma without any of his teachers noticing. Even back then with different standards or whatever, I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I didn’t think he would even make it to middle school if he legitimately could not read at that point. Frankly, the hole in Jake’s disability history took me out of the story because I couldn’t stop wondering how he graduated high school without being about to read. It just didn’t make sense! Favorite Part(s): The mini flashback after kid-Jake and kid-Zach got into a fight at school, and they were sent home, but no one was there to take kid-Jake home so the Sullivan matron just took him to their house. And she gave them milk and cookies and left them to their own devices to work on their reading project together without berating or punishing them. Bless Mary Sullivan. Final Thoughts: I was rather disappointed with I Only Have Eyes for You. Less because I expected the book to go a certain way and more because Bella Andre seemed like a fairly established indie author of romance novels, so I thought what so many people liked would be something I might enjoy as well. More and more, I’m coming to the conclusion that that isn’t the case. I Only Have Eyes for You lacked a natural chemistry between the leads, poor character development, and a bland plot that didn’t engage me. I suggest you skip unless you’re an undying fan of Andre’s books.

[livefromtheloam]

Jam and Rage Filled Cookies

So. You may find yourself angry and frustrated without a decent outlet. These cookies are perfect for that, especially at one in the morning on a Monday night. 

Ingredients:

About ¾ cup butter, which is like a stick and a half Like ½ cup sugar A couple drops of vanilla extract (honestly any schnapps would be fine here too) 2 eggs, separated Around 1 ½ cups flour A little cinnamon Most of 1 jar fruit jam or preserves or jelly or whatever you have lying around 1 Misto full of olive oil More Old Bay than you expected 1 dollop of Thousand Island dressing

Directions:

Start by accepting that there’s nothing in your life you can change right this minute except the quantity of freshly baked cookies. You could look up another simple generic recipe or follow my simple generic recipe. You’re already here, so you might as well just do what I tell you to do.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. You should probably do this later because it’ll take way longer to prepare the dough than you expected, but the heat will help to soften up the butter you didn’t take out of the fridge because you only just decided to make these cookies a few minutes ago. It’s also pleasant on a cool autumn day, unlike this sweltering swamp pit that October is turning out to be.

Throw the butter into a big bowl and put it on the stove. Hope and pray that it’ll be soft enough once you put the sugar and egg yolks in. Oh yeah, separate the eggs and put the whites in a ramekin.

Once the butter, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla extract are in the bowl, start whisking. This isn’t going to work, so cut the butter into little chunks and try again.

It’s important to whisk this instead of using a mixer because this is how you transfer your negative emotions to the dough. A mixer’s cold, robotic blades just don’t have that personal touch.

Whisk until your arm hurts, and then about five more minutes than that because you can still see butter chunks. You can also start taking pictures here if you think it will make an interesting write-up. If you’re a professional, maybe stage the beginning of the process at a later time so it looks like you intended to do that all along. No one needs to know just how improvisational this is.

After a while, it’ll come together real nice, probably. Once you’ve accepted that this is as good as it’s going to get, transfer the flour and cinnamon a little at a time to the mix. This will absolutely get caught in your whisk, so start kneading. At this point you can start shouting at it, but the raw animosity from your savage claws should do the job nicely. Don’t forget to get the rest of the dough out of your whisk.

Wash your hands and put some parchment paper on a baking tray. I’m told you can put the cookies right onto the cooking surface, but we’re fancy and also don’t want to clean up more than necessary.

Roll the dough into a ball. Who cares how big it is, just make them all around the same size as the first one. I don’t recommend making one giant cookie, but if you do let me know how it turns out. I’m curious now. Once you put the ball onto the sheet, shove your thumb into it to make an indent. The jam is the best part of these cookies, so make sure the hole is nice and big, but doesn’t come through the bottom.

At some point you’re going to get tired of this and will probably have more dough than you can fit on one sheet. Make a couple extra balls and plop them down wherever there’s room.

Just eat the remaining dough. This was always going to happen, so just enjoy the ride.

If you have a tiny fancy spoon, great. If you don’t, a plastic wonton soup spoon will do just fine. Chop up the jam or you’ll get cubes. They’re cute and all, but it’ll definitely drip over the side when you bake it. Fill all the cookies with jam except one.

Use this last one to experiment. I used Thousand Island dressing, but you can fill it with whatever you want. Whatever it is, no one can judge you.

Put them in the oven and set a timer for eight minutes. They won’t be done, but that’s a good time to look at your cookies and start to feel pride at a job almost done.

Spray some oil onto a frying pan and cook up those egg whites I’m sure you didn’t forget about. We don’t waste food in this house.

Season however you like, but make sure you season. I used a little too much Old Bay, but salt and pepper are fine too. An egg white omelette is a healthy snack while waiting for unhealthy snacks to cook.

A few minutes after your alarm goes off, check the cookies. Those blobby ones without jam are perfect test specimens for sticking a toothpick into. Try not to burn yourself. If the toothpick comes out mostly clean, then they’re mostly done. Use a towel or mitts to take the tray out unless you’re my sister who used to work at a bakery. She can do it barehanded.

Let them cool and take a bite out of the plain one. Good, isn’t it? Well, if you followed this recipe exactly to the letter it would be. It might still be a little undercooked but who cares at this point?

While you wait for your cookies to cool, clean up your mess. Future you will hate you more than you can possibly know if you leave a bowl full of uncooked cookie dough in the sink.

Chances are you’re done at this point in every sense of the word. Your rage should be fully transferred to the boiling lava hot cookies that you can’t safely eat until tomorrow. Cool them however you want and go to bed much less aggravated than you were before you started this whole thing.

You can write about the experience afterwards if you want. I did.

Fall asleep cursing yourself for not adding salt to the cookies. Again. Seriously, why do you keep making this mistake?

[waqasblog2]

11 Actionable SEO Techniques For More Organic Traffic in 2019

Looking to boost your SEO in 2019? Try this list of actionable, easy‐to‐understand SEO techniques on for size.

Most lists of SEO techniques are quite vague:

Yeah, right… *hits back button*

In this post, we do away with ambiguity and focus on a handful of actionable SEO techniques that get results. Let’s go.

1. Improve titles and descriptions to boost CTR

SEO isn’t just about ranking. *gasp*

Let’s say that you rank #1 for a keyword with thousands of monthly searches. You won’t get traffic unless people actually click on your page in the search results.

That’s why it’s important to optimize for clicks. But how?

Two main things affect your click‐through rate (CTR):

These are the two HTML tags that show up in the search results…

An example of how the meta title and description look in Google’s search results.

… and they’re all you have to win to click.

So you need to make them as enticing as possible by:

But here’s the thing: no matter how hard you try to get this right, things won’t always work out.

Sometimes people just won’t click on your site in the search results. And therein lies the opportunity:

To do this, use the Organic keywords report in Ahrefs Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic keywords

This report shows all the keywords for which your site ranks.

Just over 60,000 in this case.

Now, we’re only interested in first‐page rankings as that’s where our efforts will have the most significant impact. So before doing anything else, let’s filter the report for first‐page rankings.

Let’s also filter for keywords with search volumes of 200 or more.

That will weed out the keywords with little to no traffic potential.

Sidenote.

This number is somewhat arbitrary. Feel free to use a higher or lower threshold.

Finally, we’ll exclude all owned SERP features.

Next, export the data to CSV.

Now, make a copy of this Google Sheet and import that CSV into the tab labeled “Import here.”

Go to the “Results” sheet and you should see something like this:

This shows the pages where you stand to gain the most by improving CTR.

These are the ones you should aim to improve.

Sidenote.

Even though we excluded owned

Here’s what the sheet does in a nutshell:

To give an example, imagine that we have a page that ranks for just two keywords:

Right now, we get a 10% CTR on “keyword 1” and a 5% CTR on “keyword 2.”

(10% * 1,000) + (5% * 500) = 125 visits/month

But here’s the thing: the average CTR for position #1 is ~27% for unbranded keywords in the US, and ~15% for position #2.

So we’re performing well below average here.

If we could somehow improve CTR to hit the average, the maths would look more like this:

(27% * 1,000) + (15% * 500) = 345 visits/month

That’s a traffic increase of 176%!

2. Boost underperforming pages with internal links

Internal links are backlinks from other pages on the same website.

The blue words in this sentence form an internal link to our anchor text guide.

Why are they important? Because they aid the flow of “authority” around your website.

Many also believe that internal link anchors (the clickable words) influence Google rankings. This is something that Google’s John Mueller has all but confirmed on a few occasions.

Most links do provide a bit of additional context through their anchor text. At least they should, right‽

— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 23, 2017

Now, it’s important to note that you should have a good internal linking structure to begin with.

We recommend using a “silo” structure, which looks like this:

But sometimes, you might want to boost certain pages with internal links.

Here’s how to do it:

a) Find suitable underperforming pages to boost

For this process, I’m going to assume that you already have a list of keywords for which you want to rank. If you don’t have this, well, I recommend checking out our SEO basics guide, because that’s SEO 101.

Got it? Paste the list into Ahrefs Rank Tracker. This tells you where you rank for each keyword in your target country.

Here are some of the target keywords I’m tracking for posts on the Ahrefs blog:

It’s important to note that you don’t need to paste every keyword variation in here. Just paste in the main target keyword for each of your pages and posts.

Next, filter for keyword rankings in positions 2–5.

It’s also worth excluding your SERP feature rankings, just to give a clean data set to work with.

Here’s how to do that:

You should now be left with a list of keywords for which you currently rank in positions 2–5.

By default, the list of keywords in Rank Tracker is sorted by estimated organic traffic from high to low, meaning that the keywords sending the most traffic to your site are at the top of the list.

For example, the keyword “SEO basics” sends an estimated 400 organic visitors to our site each month…

… and this is from ranking in position 3!

So imagine how much more traffic we could get from that keyword if we ranked just one position higher! Probably lots more, right?

Right, but actually, there’s no need to guess…

If we hit the caret on the page currently ranking above us, then select the Organic Keywords report, we can see exactly how much more organic traffic that page gets from our target keyword:

Hit the caret on the page ranking above you, then select “Organic keywords”

The estimated organic traffic to the page currently ranking in position 2, via Ahrefs Site Explorer

Here, we can see that the page ranking above us gets an estimated 494 visits per month from the keyword “SEO basics” vs. our 400. That’s 23.5% more!

Conclusion: If we could somehow boost the ranking of our page from position 3 → 2, then we’d see a ~23.5% increase in traffic from this keyword!

Here’s another thing:

Our SEO basics guide not only ranks for “SEO basics,” but also 246 other keywords…

If we can boost the “authority” of the page through internal linking, chances are we’ll boost rankings for some of those other keywords too… which means even more traffic!

Got a page that would benefit from a boost? Keep reading.

There are two caveats this process in that the page ranking above you should have:

NOTE. Looking at the relative UR of top‐ranking pages is a useful gauge by which to judge opportunity. But it’s not definitive. There are many reasons why a page could be ranking higher than yours (better on‐page SEO, etc.)

b) Find relevant places from which to add internal links to the target page

Now we have a suitable page to boost, we need to find suitable places from which to add internal links to that page. There are two ways to do this.

Google site: search

Go to Google and search for site:yourdomain.com “topic of the page you want to boost”

In this case, we could search for site:ahrefs.com/blog “seo basics”

This finds all the pages on your site that mention the phrase somewhere in the copy. In other words, contextual internal linking opportunities.

Here’s a page that mentions the phrase “basic SEO”:

Looks like this would be a good place from which to add an internal link to our guide.

Best by links

Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer, enter your domain, then check the Best by links report.

This report is sorted by URL Rating (UR) by default so it shows the most “authoritative” pages on your site. In other words, a list of pages from which an internal link could transfer a decent chunk of authority.

Skim the list looking for topically‐relevant opportunities.

Here’s one that would probably work for the case at hand:

This page has lots of authority, and it’s also about link building—a subtopic of SEO.

If we look at the page, it doesn’t take long to find the perfect contextual internal linking opportunity.

Let’s update that.

3. Reclaim lost ‘link juice’ from dead pages with backlinks

Backlinks aren’t always easy to acquire. In fact, they rarely are.

If you’ve spent time, effort, and possibly cold hard cash building links, it pays to ensure that they’re not pointing to dead pages. Such links are effectively wasted.

To do this, use the Best by links report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > Sort by Referring domains

This report will show dead pages with backlinks.

Why are these bad? Simple. Dead pages no longer technically exist. They prevent any PageRank (authority) from those backlinks from flowing around your site.

Luckily, such issues are quite straightforward to fix. You can either:

4. Use the “Middleman Method” to boost the authority of “money” pages

Building links ain’t easy, but building links to “money pages” can feel near impossible.

… they’re all a nightmare when it comes to link building.

Solution: use the “Middleman Method.”

It goes something like this:

In effect, the blog post becomes the middleman.

This is actually an SEO strategy we use at Ahrefs to boost our landing pages.

Here’s the Internal backlinks report in Site Explorer, filtered to show internal links to our Keywords Explorer tool from our blog posts:

72 internal links!

In other words, we link to our Keywords Explorer landing page from within blog posts all the time. And some of our posts have some serious page‐level authority.

Now, if you already have informational content related to the “money page” you want to boost, this process is easy. Use the internal linking tactics mentioned in point #3 to find contextually‐relevant opportunities.

If you don’t already have such content, then you need to create something that has the potential to earn a fair few links.

There are lots of ways to go about this, but here’s a simple starting point:

Learn more about how to execute this strategy here.

It’s always preferable to build direct links to your “money” pages if possible.

That’s because the middleman takes a cut of “authority.” Not all the link juice gets transferred to your money page via internal links. Some of it flows through other internal links on the page, and some will remain with the page itself.

But while this may seem like a negative, that often isn’t the case.

That’s because the ‘middleman’ page may rank for informational keywords, which will send more targeted traffic your way. That can be invaluable to your business.

5. Win more featured snippets

Featured snippets are the search results that look like this:

In 2016, we studied 2 million search results and found that featured snippets show up for 12.3% of searches. We also found that 8.6% of clicks go to the snippet.

But what you may not have realized is that Google pulls these snippets from sites that already rank in the top 10. And, overwhelmingly, from one of the pages ranking in the top 5 positions.

Sidenote.

We’re 99.58% certain this is the case.

Here’s what all this means:

If you rank in the top 10 for a query where Google shows a featured snippet but don’t yet own it, then there’s scope to get more traffic by winning the snippet.

To find such opportunities, use the Organic Keywords report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter your domain > Organic Keywords > SERP features > Featured Snippets > Filter for top 10 rankings

If you see this symbol, it means you already own the snippet for that keyword.

For every other keyword, a competitor owns the snippet and therein lies the opportunity. It’s just a case of trying to understand why they own the snippet and not you, then optimizing accordingly.

Now, I’ll be honest; there’s no hard and fast rule here.

Still, most of the SEO community seems to agree that to win the snippet, the format of your content needs to align with search intent.

For example, we rank #4 for “how to become a marketing manager,” but don’t own the snippet.

That’s likely because people want a step‐by‐step process, as indicated by the current snippet.

Our guide isn’t in that format.

So, in this case, reformatting that guide as a step‐by‐step process could help to win the snippet.

Is it worth it?

If we take a look at the Organic Keywords report for the page that does own the snippet, we can see that they get an estimated 238 visits per month from the snippet alone…

… and roughly the same again from the other nine snippets the page owns:

Conclusion: By winning the snippet, we could potentially increase traffic by 200%+.

6. Refresh existing content

Sometimes content that used to perform well in the search engines ceases to do so.

Case in point, our list of the top Google searches:

If we enter that URL into Site Explorer, we can see that estimated monthly organic traffic dropped by more than 56% (!!!) between December 2017 and February 2018:

In absolute terms, that meant ~3,000 fewer visits per month coming our way.

But some of you likely noticed that after the drop, traffic skyrocketed! That’s because we refreshed and republished the article with new stats and figures.

The question is, how do you find posts and pages that are likely to benefit from a content refresh?

a) Use trial and error

Let’s face it, this is something that happens over time.

So it’s usually old posts and pages that suffer from traffic drops.

Try popping a page published over six months ago into Site Explorer, then look at the Organic traffic graph.

If the graph drops off like Niagara Falls 🇨🇦, then it’s ripe for a refresh.

b) Use Google Analytics

If you’re a Google Analytics user and would prefer to do this more methodically, then keep reading. What follows is a method for finding these pages at scale.

To begin, go Google Analytics and navigate to the Landing pages report.

Google Analytics > Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages

Then set your period to the most recent full 12 months (e.g., Jan 1, 2018 — Dec 31, 2018), filter for organic traffic only, and add “month” as a secondary dimension. You should end up with something like this:

Export the report as a CSV.

Sidenote.

It’s also worth excluding junk URLs using the inbuilt exclusions filter in Google Analytics. For example, before I exported my report, I excluded URLs containing “?”, “/author/”, and “/category/”.

Next, make a copy of this Google Sheets template.

Import the CSV into the “IMPORT HERE” tab. (File > Import… > Upload CSV)

Navigate to the “Result” tab. It should look something like this:

There are sometimes legitimate reasons for traffic drops that aren’t anything to do with “freshness” such as:

Always investigate the reasons behind any traffic drops before rewriting or refreshing content.

What this does is compare how last month’s traffic to each page compares with its best month. The results are then sorted in descending order, with the biggest traffic drops first.

You can then further investigate the pages with big traffic drops in Site Explorer or Google Analytics.

It’s also worth checking the SERP of the primary keyword for each page for signs of freshness as a ranking factor. E.g., the current year in the titles of the top‐ranking pages…

Or recent publish dates:

Such things show that Google is prioritizing freshness in the SERP.

That may increase the likeliness of a content refresh being successful for that page.

You can also search in Content Explorer and filter for republished pages, then look at the trend over time.

If people are regularly republishing content on the topic, then it indicates that the topic relies on freshness.

7. Look for low‐hanging content opportunities

In 2018, we analyzed almost a billion web pages. We found a positive correlation between the number of referring domains to a page (links from unique websites) and organic traffic.

Translation: the more links a page has, the more organic traffic it’s likely to attract.

But here’s the thing: there are outliers to this general rule.

Some pages rank and attract tons of search traffic with very few backlinks… or even no backlinks at all. The keywords for which these pages rank are low‐hanging fruit (i.e., topics that you rank for without many backlinks).

So how do you find these pages?

Enter Content Explorer.

Content Explorer is a searchable database of over a billion web pages. Enter any word or phrase to see all mentions across the web, plus some useful SEO metrics for each result.

Here are the results for “protein powder”:

That’s 68,300 web pages that mention this phrase!

Now let’s filter these results to find only pages with:

In other words, pages that get a lot of organic traffic without many backlinks.

Now we’re down to 53 results, one of which is this page:

Not seeing results in Content Explorer? Loosen the filter to show pages with up to five, or ten, or twenty referring domains.

If we hit the “Details” caret and check the “Organic keywords” tab, we see that it’s ranking for keywords related to high protein muffins. And they all have a low Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores.

This all but confirms our theory that this is a low‐competition topic.

So if you happen to run a fitness‐related site, this topic could be a source of easy traffic.

8. Convert unlinked mentions to links

Sometimes people will mention your business online without linking back to you.

Here are a couple of examples of that happening for Ahrefs:

Unlinked mentions like this can occur for many reasons. But, more often than not, I’d say that it comes down to forgetfulness rather than malice.

It can be frustrating either way. Luckily, there’s a simple solution:

Now, there are quite a few ways to find unlinked mentions. I wrote a full guide here.

But for now, let’s keep things simple and use Content Explorer.

Content Explorer > enter brand name

This search will return all the pages that mention your brand, many of which will be linked mentions.

You can get rid of these by pasting your domain into the “Highlight unlinked mentions” filter.

Content Explorer will then highlight pages from sites that have never linked to you.

These are unlinked mentions.

Using the “highlight unlinked domains” filter will include domain‐level links. That means the page in the search results will only be highlighted if there are no links to your website from the entire domain. So, the mention on the page may be an unlinked mention, but we won’t highlight the page if the site already links to you from elsewhere.

This is useful because it makes sense to focus on the building of links from new websites.

If you want to pursue all opportunities, even those from sites that have linked to you before, then read this.

From here, I recommend toggling “one page per domain.” That will ensure that there’s only one page from each site in the results.

Next, hit “Export” and check the “Only pages with highlighted domains” checkbox.

Now, work your way through the sheet and check each of the linking pages. Decide whether you want to pursue the unlinked mention on a case‐by‐case basis.

Look at whether:

Got your list of prospects? Find their email addresses and reach out with a simple:

It’s as simple as that.

Note that most of the links built using this tactic will be homepage links. As long as you have a good internal linking structure, that’s a good thing. Some of the “authority” from those links will flow to your other pages.

Check back once a month and filter for pages added in the last 30 days for a constant stream of new opportunities. Alternatively, set up a brand alert in Ahrefs Alerts.

9. Plug content gaps to boost the traffic potential of your page

A content gap is when competitors have content about a topic that you haven’t tackled.

For example, the Moz blog, Backlinko, and Yoast.com all have articles about 301 redirects links. We haven’t tackled this topic yet.

But content gaps can also occur at the page‐level.

To illustrate what I mean, take a look at our guide to doing a competitive analysis.

It’s a thorough guide, if not a little old (published late‐2017).

Sidenote.

We updated this guide since I started working on this post. The guide you see at that

But does it tackle everything it should?

Let’s find out by firing up Ahrefs’ Content Gap tool for our page, and also plugging in a few of the top‐ranking sites for “competitive analysis.”

Site Explorer > enter your URL > Content gap

This tool looks for keywords that the other pages rank for in the top 100, but we don’t.

This time, I’m going to select the option to “Show keywords that all of the below targets” rank for. I’ll also tick the “At least one of the targets should rank in top 10” checkbox to keep the results as relevant as possible. Then I’ll hit “Show keywords.”

16 results, many of which are subtopics that fall under the topic of competitive analysis.

The fact that our page doesn’t rank for any of these keywords shows that we’ve likely neglected to mention such things in our guide.

Solution: Issue a minor update to the post or page to talk about the things we’re missing.

For example, we could add a section about “competitive analysis in marketing.” Or about various “competitor analysis models.”

Not only can this help the page to rank for such keywords, but it may also increase the “topical relevance” of the page. In turn, that may boost rankings for other related keywords.

What that means: Google is an algorithm. They look at the content on your page to understand what it’s about. By talking about things related to your primary topic, you effectively increase Google’s confidence in what the page is about.

Learn more about topical relevance in our guide to on‐page SEO.

10. Take advantage of your competitors’ dead pages to build links

Most websites have some dead pages, including your competitors.

And if your competitors’ dead pages are relevant (or at least semi‐relevant) to your business, and have backlinks, then there’s scope to win those backlinks for yourself.

I’ll explain how this works as we go, but first, we need a way to find our competitors dead pages.

For that, we can use the Best by links report in Site Explorer.

Site Explorer > enter competitors domains > Best by links > add a “404 not found” filter > sort by number of referring domains from high to low

Look at the list of URLs and to see if any are relevant/semi‐relevant to your business.

In this case, the topic of avoiding penalties is related to SEO, which is what we talk about on the Ahrefs blog. It has links from 29 referring domains.

Let’s hit the caret and click the “View on Archive.org” link to see what it once was.

As expected—it was a blog post about avoiding Google penalties.

The thing is: because the page is dead, 29 people are now linking to nothing but an error page.

So let’s see if we have anything similar on the blog that might serve as a relevant replacement for those dead links. And… it looks like we do:

This guide talks about pretty much the same thing—how to avoid Google penalties.

quick tip

Not got a relevant replacement already? Create something.

Learn more about executing this technique in our full guide to broken link building.

Great. Now let’s take a look at the Backlinks report for the dead page in Site Explorer.

This effectively gives us a list of people that we can reach out to, and alert about their broken link. But we’re not only going to alert them; we’re also going to kindly suggest our guide as a relevant replacement.

Of course, we could reach out to all of these people…

.… but because we’re only interested in building high‐quality links, I’m going to add a few filters to narrow down our list of prospects:

There we have it—a list of 17 people from whom we can potentially win links.

Now all we need to do is find their email addresses, and reach out to them with a simple email along the lines of:

11. Use Pixsy to look for image theft

Images on the web often get stolen and embedded elsewhere without attribution.

If you have any popular images on your site, then you may have an opportunity to build some quick links. Here’s how in a nutshell:        

Sounds simple, but how do you go about it?

Use Pixsy—a free tool that scans the web for occurrences of your images on other websites.

So, the obvious starting point is to gather some images to let Pixsy work its magic on.

I recommend first compiling any of your owned images that are likely to be popular—infographics, etc. For example, if I were doing this for Ahrefs, I would round up all our branded graphics and pop them in a folder.

Next, upload the images to Pixsy.

Pixsy will then scan the web for other places the images appear.

Here are the results for the few images I uploaded from the Ahrefs blog:

Looks like they appear on 125 other sites!

Now, before we get too excited, it’s worth noting that some of the pages on which these images appear already link back to us.

So what you need to do is go through all the pages Pixsy found and check the source code for a link back to your site. If it exists, hit “ignore.” If it doesn’t, add the URL of that page to a spreadsheet, along with:

PRO TIP

Checking the source code for all the results in Pixsy can be a time‐consuming task. So it’s worth hiring a VA to do this for you. Give them clear instructions and it shouldn’t be a costly job. Alternatively, you can use the custom search function in Screaming Frog.

Once you’re done, find their email addresses, then reach out with a friendly but firm email stating:

Using an outreach tool like Buzzstream, Mailshake or Pitchbox should simplify this process. Mail‐merge fields are your friend.

Final thoughts

SEO techniques are plentiful. This post lists only a few of the many tactics you can use to increase traffic to your website.

Still, my hope is that these are actionable and simple enough, even for those new to SEO.

Looking for even more actionable ways to improve SEO? Check out our list of 75 SEO tips.

This content was originally published here.

[manicmustard-blog-blog]

Keto = Bacon.  Bacon = :)

Once again yes I'm a lazy bastard and haven't written anything in a while, mainly because my life consists of work, working out and playing video games.  I live an exciting existence.  Much like a unicorn that bathes itself in hemp oil and then considers setting fire to itself just to feel the itchy goodness of the warming flames as they gently caress its pink genitals and set fire to the universe.  But of course that would be way too exciting so no.

Instead I tend to wait till something interests me sufficiently enough to write about it and to be honest, I've had enough of political bullshit recently so I really can't be arsed to discuss that.  Except of course to say that we're all going to hell, the Earth is fucking doomed and we might as well eat fucking cake.  Because on the one hand we have lefty lunatics that want to change history to make themselves feel comfortable in their safe space while simultaneously forcing several genders on every man woman and child ("No Lucy, you're not a girl, you're actually a fucking manbeast from the planet Zod, now go play with your imaginary penis") and on the other hand we have people who want to see gays and young people shot into the sun.  It seems few people have balance and more and more people go far on one side or the other and then defend "their side" like a fucking religion.  I'm more centre-right wing and can see obvious plus points from both (yes, I'm switzerland, sue me) but seriously, life is too short so fuck all of that.  Like I said, we're all doomed and quite frankly it's about time.  Now where's my fucking cake?

But seriously.  Today I'm going to do another article about the whole fitness/weight-loss bullshit (and....that's 90% of your readership closing the tab) because yes, it's what I do, yes I'm slightly obsessed and yes it seems to work.  So on with business.

Now, I've recently reached another plateau.  To be exact, I did about a month or so ago.  Nothing new, when you lose a LOT of weight, it won't happen just once.  It'll happen several times.  Now there's scientific reasons for this, ranging from metabolic adaptation, to hormone-changes and all kinds of other shite, but let's just call it the magical Fairy that frags diets in the arse and leave it at that.  So yeah, once again I was working out, dieting and the scales were sitting kinda still.  How fucking boring right?

So yet again.  I decided to change things up.  Now previously I've upped my workouts, dropped bad habits, added intermittant fasting and a few extra supplements and they've got me through a tough patch.  But this time I decided to try something that I've read about a LONGggggg time ago, which quite frankly sounded so good I've left it as my "magic bullet" for when I really hit a hard patch.  And recently, I hit that hard patch.  With my bum.  No.  Only joking.  Metaphor motherfucker.  Harf harf.

So what did I do?  I went Keto.  And by that I mean I tried something called the Keto diet.  Now, it sounds complicated and if you google it you'll get weighed down with a million fucking technical bits and bobs that explains in a very boring fashion how it works - but basically, in laymens terms it's a slightly ripped off version of the Atkins diet from the 80s/90s, which in turn was a ripoff of a diet done in the 50s/60s to cure epilipsy.  So anyway, does the cunting thing work?  Glad you asked!

In short, you eat less than 20g of carbs a day.  This starves your body of carbs, your body then does magic and adapts to consume fat and protein more effectively and instead of running mainly on glucose, your body then runs on ketones!  Like I said magic.  So, the obvious advantage to this is that you get to eat cheese, bacon, butter, sausages, steak, pork, mince etc etc.  As long as it's got a decent protein/fat content and virtually no carbs, you're good!  Of course, you have to keep in a calorie deficit to lose weight because as with any diet, it always comes down to calories in vs calories out.  Simple.

So the advantages?  Well, from my own personal experience, I feel less like I'm on a diet.  Don't get me wrong, I still have spells during the day when I'm hungry (especially when I do a mini fast till midday/afternoon) but the hunger is much less intense.  Also, the food being based on fat and protein takes longer to break down and generally leaves you satisfied for longer.  Oh and results!  First week I lost 11lbs, (no doubt mostly water weight) and this week I've lost 3lbs.  So in that area I'm quite happy.

Only downsides obviously are no bread, no milk, no rice, pasta and obviously no sweets/chocolates/shite whatsoever.  But on the flipside keto isn't necessarily a diet to live on forever, but it does seem to be an effective way of burning through your belly fat by making your body consume fat as a primary resource.  No doubt, I'll go back to a balanced diet at somepoint when I'm bored of it.  But honestly, having bacon, eggs and garlic mushrooms cooked in butter as my first meal of the day makes a hell of a change from the usual oats and soup that I have for breakfast/lunch.

So would I recommend keto?  Absolutely.  You'll piss like a racehorse from all the water you're drinking, your fridge will be full of chunks of animal-flesh (mmm, tasty!) and you'll buy butter by the ton.  But.  If you do it right, you'll lose weight and feel pretty decent.  Unless of course you eat the butter by the stick like somekind of fucked up dairy lollipop.  In which case, you're doing it wrong and I don't envy your toilet.

[inyri]

Equivalent Exchange (an SWTOR story): Chapter Fifteen- Legacies

Equivalent Exchange by inyri

Fandom: Star Wars: The Old Republic Characters: Female Imperial Agent (Cipher Nine)/Theron Shan Rating: E Summary: If one wishes to gain something, one must offer something of equal value. In spycraft, it’s easy. Applying it to a relationship is another matter entirely. F!Agent/Theron Shan. (Spoilers for Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.)

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Legacies

15 ATC. Rakata Prime.

If it was uninhabited, this would be a beautiful planet. The view from the landing zone, white sand beach and pristine water as far as she can see, makes her wish for a bathing suit and a drink with a little umbrella in it. The pieces of wreckage do rather spoil the scenery, though, and if her experience on Tatooine is anything to go by she’s guessing the natives aren’t friendly.

Still, Nine strips down to her undershirt while she waits to review the mission parameters, letting the sun shine on her shoulders. It’s hot, after all, the warmth a pleasant change from the chill breeze of Manaan; maybe she’ll even manage a hint of a tan. (Probably not. Probably sunburn and more damned freckles, but one can hope.)

She’s also pretty sure, as she bends to lay her jacket on the Nightshrike’s steps, that that ‘pub agent’s staring. When she looks back over her shoulder his sightline flicks upward about two degrees, settling on her back holster.

Definitely staring. Hm.

“My eyes are up here, Republic.”

He blinks, then gestures toward the small of his own back. “Just looking at your holdout.”

“My holdout. Really.” She turns fully around, drawling out the words in amusement. “Assessing my weaknesses?”

Theron- she should use his name, since the four of them seem to be stuck together for the time being (a Sith Lord, a Cipher, an SIS agent and a Wookiee- a list that ought to end with “walk into a bar,” really)- shrugs. “Let’s call them limitations, if we’re pretending to be friendly. Don’t you worry you can’t draw it left-handed?”

“Very diplomatic of you. But,” she says, lifts her right hand and waves at him as she twists her left behind her back, drawing the little blaster and bringing it forward for him to see, “limitations are for amateurs. Modified release. And a centered holster gets in the way of my rifle.”

That might have been a nod of approval; not exactly a chatterbox, him. “Fair. I’m ready when you are, by the way.”

She crosses back over to where he’s standing, looks over the planned route on the map projected onto the side of Jakarro’s ship. “I didn’t realize there were still this many Rakata alive.”

“Outside of this planet, there aren’t. There were more a few hundred years ago, from what I’ve read, when Revan was here. But ever since the Star Forge was destroyed this place has been pretty much off limits.” Theron gestures toward one of the larger pieces, a colossal shard of twisted metal at least a quarter-kilometer long. Three whole sentences in a row- that’s the most he’s said since they all left Manaan. She might actually be winning him over. “They’re dying off, little by little.”

“Normally I’d call that hypocrisy,” she says, “but given the first Rakata I met tried to turn an entire research base into cybernetic slaves, I’d call it good riddance. And didn’t Revan want to use the Star Forge? It looks an awful lot like he blew it up.”

He shakes his head. “You don’t know the story, clearly.”

“Not really, no. I know Revan was a Jedi and then a Sith and then a Jedi again, and then he tried to kill the Emperor and ended up imprisoned for three hundred years.” Until you idiots let him out and he tried to build another army, she doesn’t say. She’d read some of the Revan dossier, years ago, but they were focused on weaknesses then, not deep details of the man’s biography. “We don’t focus on Jedi history much.“

“That’s-” he clearly wants to add something more, but bites his lip- “that’s the very short version, yeah. You’re missing a pretty big chunk out of the middle. But no, he tried to use it the first time. The second time he came back to- he destroyed it, that time, so it wouldn’t be used.”

She waves a hand dismissively. “Like I said, Jedi history’s not my thing.”

He shrugs and turns back to the map as Lana comes striding down the exit ramp.

“Are you ready, Cipher?” Lana, too, looks to the map. “Feel free to bring whichever of your crew you prefer. Jakarro’s agreed to be our distraction, so he’ll be heading out momentarily. I’ve tracked Darth Arkous and Colonel Darok to the temple complex here-” she points- “which is your destination. On arrival, confirm target presence and activity.”

“Wait. I thought we were all moving on the temple together. If they engage I’m going to need more than a two-man team, especially with a Darth in play.”

“Avoid direct engagement unless absolutely necessary. Jakarro will be nearby, and we’ll be monitoring you from the shuttle here and providing remote support. We need to figure out what they’re doing before we decide on a plan of attack.” Lana continues marking points of interest with careful swipes of her finger along the projection: the temple and an adjacent courtyard; a few villages along the shoreline; further inland, a stone circle with-

She eyes the map dubiously. “Is that a rancor?”

“Yup.” Theron reaches across and adds sharp claws and pointed teeth to the drawing. “Also recommend not engaging the rancor. Take the long way around.”

“Noted.” She flips him off and turns back to the Sith Lord. “Seriously, though, I’d be happier with a four-person team. I can only cover two with my generator, but can’t Theron-”

He shakes his head. “I don’t have stealth equipment with me. If you’re going in cloaked, you’re better off letting me slice from here.”

She arches an eyebrow at that. If he was involved in the Republic’s strike on Korriban in anywhere near the same capacity Lana had been for Tython he must be fairly high up the food chain, but he’s not dressed like it; as far as she can tell he’s got two pistols and probably a holdout but no longer-range guns, no decent melee weaponry, no poison, minimal armor and now no stealth. She’d pulled his dossier on the way from Manaan, though it didn’t tell her much- he’s been active a few years longer than her so he’s probably a few years older, but no codenames, a few vague links to old missions but nothing concrete which means either he’s never gotten caught or, if he did, he killed his captors. If that’s how the SIS supply their elites, no wonder she’s run circles around every ‘pub agent she’s ever met.

(Hunter didn’t count.

Hunter wasn’t SIS. And in the end, when she slipped her collar, broke free of the leash Hunter used to drag her by, she put a round straight through that bitch’s head.)

“Your people don’t give you much in the way of kit, do they?” Glancing in his direction again, she gives his gear another once-over. “You- oh, dear. You are a field agent, aren’t you? Not that there’s anything wrong with data analysis, of course, but-”

“I am not,” he narrows his eyes at her, lip curling in irritation, “a desk jockey. I can handle myself just fine.”

“Oh, I bet you can.” She grins. The expression on his face is somehow familiar- she’s sure they’ve never met before, but he reminds her of someone that she can’t quite place. It’ll come to her eventually, she’s sure.

(Lana giggles.

Oh, shut up, you.)

She ends up bringing Temple; she can still use more practice with stealth and Lana and Theron keep promising, even as they finalize the route and Jakarro takes off along the path toward the first village, that it’s just a scouting mission. She hooks the little camera over her ear, connecting the cable to her transmitter so they’ll have visual. Get in, report, hold position. Easy.

So of course it goes to complete shit less than an hour in.

The attack on the village should have drawn the Rakata guards off the shoreline path. They should have all been chasing Jakarro by now, but instead they’re fortifying the watchposts with more guards and trained beasts, fleeing the villages like cowards but running straight into her path at the same time. She and Raina get past the first two by skirting along the water’s edge but the third’s a problem- they’ll either have to wade and risk being heard, or try to get up over a rock outcropping that takes them dangerously close to the beasts.

She signals; Temple nods, and she draws her pistol and her knife, just in case, as they head up over the rocks.

They would have made it. Halfway past the guards a little sliver of loose stone goes sliding down the cliff face, though, and hearing the noise one of the creatures turns its head, takes a deep sniff- and looks straight at Temple, growling. The Rakata beside it huffs and raises a hand.

They freeze, too late.

She shoves her down as an arc of lightning takes a chunk out of the ledge above their heads and the debris breaks their stealth field. After that it’s messy, six Rakata and four warbeasts between the two of them, and even as she gets her generator up again and they wade into the sea to try to purge the scent of blood from their armor she can hear alarm klaxons sounding all the way up the coast.

“The coast route’s a no-go.” She hisses into her transmitter. “We’re blown. Requesting extraction plan from Watchpost Gamma.”

“I’m not so sure. The main complex is still quiet.” Lana answers back, her tone less confident than her words. “The alarm doesn’t appear to have reached them yet. Keep going.”

She pulls Temple into an alcove as a patrol team moves past their position. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this op. Reroute me, but I’d be ready to move in if I were you.”

“Take the right-hand path from your position,” Theron chimes in. “It’ll take you inland.”

“Past the rancor.”

“Right through it.” He sounds entirely too smug. “Unless you don’t think you can handle it?”

He’s trying to goad her, of course- it’s the favorite pastime of rival agencies since the dawn of the modern age, when they’re not actively trying to kill each other- and she isn’t going to fall for it that easily. Beside her, Temple rolls her eyes. Cocky bastard, she mouths, and she grins and nods agreement. “Watch and learn, Republic. Watch and learn.”

One can’t sneak past a rancor, not really. It’s got far too keen a sense of smell and even after their quick salt-water bath there’s still enough blood and enough sweat in their armor for a hunting species to pick up. The best she can hope for, then, is to turn the surroundings to her advantage; she gives Raina and her sniper rifle a boost up onto one of the standing stones around the ring where the creature prowls.

Still hidden, she creeps from the shadow of one stone to the next, gets back behind and downwind of the rancor and raises her knife, signaling up for the first shot as the field around her flickers out and-

She catches sight of the Rakata chief out of the corner of her right eye just before he closes on her and has just enough time to duck; his staff whips through the air above her head and she dodges, rolling forward through the rancor’s legs. A rifle shot takes it between the eyes and it roars, stomping, as she dives forward again.

“You could have mentioned the clan chief.” She has to shout to be heard over the bellowing as she peers around a pillar, launches a shock dart straight at the charging figure.

“Hold on-” Theron again, accompanied by a very loud metallic bang- “Lana’s meditating again, and I lost visual for a sec there. What are you- oh. Well, you’ve got him contained now, right?”

“For the next ten seconds, at least.” She gets around the Rakata as his limbs twitch. Her knife can’t cut through the ceremonial collar at his neck so she slashes at the backs of both legs before he can turn. “Are you two trying to get me killed?”

(Of course we weren’t, Lana huffs indignantly. It wasn’t well-scouted, yes, but-

I realize that now, she grins. But I didn’t have the best track record with SIS or the Dark Council at that point, remember. For all I knew, someone had put both of you up to taking me out.

I suppose you have a point.

She shoves another biscuit into Lana’s mouth. Of course I do. Now stop interrupting.)

“Don’t be-” he sighs. “Look, we’ll have better intel when you get to the temple. I’ve got about three-quarters of their the surveillance system sliced and I’m working on the last few now.”

The chief’s slower now, at least, staggering around and toward her as a flash off Temple’s rifle sight warns her out of the line of fire. “You’d better. I don’t do suicide missions.”

The shot, unlike her blade, gets through the collar just fine, and with no further distractions the rancor, too, goes down in relatively short order. It’s a shame they haven’t got time to take the teeth and claws- the last time she fought a rancor she’d had Vector and Doctor Lokin go over the corpse; Lokin had needed rancor bile for his research, for whatever reason, and they’d sold the sharp bits at the Mandalorian Enclave for a pretty sum- but the noise of its death has drawn a crowd, a tight phalanx of guards approaching over the rise of the hill.

Just in time, her generator recharges, and they sneak carefully away toward the temple complex.

The building itself is massive in a way that reminds her more of Korriban than Dromund Kaas. The courtyard fans out around the temple in all directions, great stone steps drawing one’s eye up to the high spire in the center, flanked by rough-hewn statues of a masked and hooded figure.

Revan. Fucking Revan, again.

When they’d raided the Foundry the rest of the strike team swore up and down that Revan had died. (Herself, she’d gotten thrown head-first into a pillar and spent the last moments of that desperate fight in stunned semi-consciousness. Not her finest moment.) He couldn’t have survived it, they said, all that lightning, even though he hadn’t left a body behind- that sometimes happened, apparently, with particularly powerful Force-users. His dream of a droid army, at least, had been quite thoroughly quashed.

They’re trying to build an army too, this group of conspirators, so she supposes it makes sense they’d end up here. Their plans on Manaan had failed- Rakata technology there, as well- and there must be some functionality left in that ancient temple. Was that what they’d been looking for in the archives on Korriban and Tython? Maps to ancient places, long lost to living memory. Places like the Foundry, like the Star Forge that used to fill the sky here…

But why?

Theron’s voice in her ear derails her train of thought. “Hey. I’ve got visual on the temple and… um. Did you bring any ion grenades with you?”

“Only two.” She pauses. “It’s cyborgs again, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Augmented soldiers in a cordon around the entrance. Human, this time, but the tech looks a lot like what you described from the underwater facility.”

“How many?”

Silence for a moment, then- “Four? No. Six, and one in heavier armor.”

She sighs.

“Too many?”

“I’ll manage. Where’s Jakarro?”

“Close,” Theron says. “But loud. You get backup or surprise, not both.”

That’s an easy choice. “Surprise, always. Keep him clear.” He knows the protocols, she hopes, or they’re all in trouble. “Requesting radio silence.”

“Copy that. Await your all-clear.” The channel clicks off. Not entirely useless, then. Good.

The heads-up did help. She gives Raina the second grenade and they split off a hundred meters out, the range on their synchronized generators just enough to let them flank the cordon from each side of the wide staircase; the grenades drop all the soldiers, their augmentations overloaded and sparking, leaving just the commander- who, of fucking course, has a rocket pack and another six cyborgs-

No. Another dozen cyborgs, in two separate waves.

Still, she manages. She always manages, though there’s a long scorch mark across her chest where she got too close to the commander’s downdraft by the time they’re done and Raina’s got a graze along her left thigh that’s left her limping. As the other woman presses a kolto autoinjector against her leg, the needle triggering with a soft hiss, her earpiece chimes, then chimes again.

“I thought I called silence, Theron.” Now that they’ve a moment to rest her left shoulder’s hurting, too, a dull wrenching ache, and she rolls it backward and forward. “And it was eighteen Void-damned cyborgs, not six, so you’d better have good news for me or I am really going to be very cross.”

“I’m afraid it’s more bad news, Cipher.” Lana sounds strange, distracted, her words slurring together. (I remember that. I had a terrible headache, Lana says. I was hearing Revan even then, but I didn’t know it… it was just a roar. Like sticking your head in a turbine.) “Arkous knows you’re coming, and they’ve got a shuttle on the roof. You may have to engage after all- we can’t afford to let them escape again.”

“You’re on your way, I hope.”

“Yes, but-”

She flicks the tip of the transmitter with her fingernail and gets twin yelps in reply, which serves them right because they’re going to get her killed and she is not going to die here, not today. “Let me guess- but you’re not sure you can get here in time.”

“No. We can get there, but Darok just fired up the turrets and I can’t get into that part of the security grid remotely. Going to need a distraction to be able to land near the tower.” Theron’s still trying to slice in, probably, given the amount of clicking in the background.

“How lethal of a distraction?”

“The goal is still live capture, if at all possible,” Lana says, her voice a little clearer.  

She grumbles under her breath. She can hear Jakarro across the courtyard, so it’ll be three on two (the droid doesn’t count); those still aren’t ideal odds, though if she can foist Darth Arkous off on the Wookiee… well. It’s something. “Oh, all right. Shall I do it without armor, too? It’ll be an extra challenge, if you’re going to handicap me anyway.”

That earns an unamused huff from Lana, and, over the continued terminal noise, a muttered I’ve got cameras on top of the tower, right?

“You’re still transmitting, Theron. Moving to intercept.”

She imagines him blushing as she and Raina and now Jakarro, too, bounding up the steps four at a time behind them, fight their way through the entrance to the main temple, through the halls and up the turbolift to the shuttle platform.

In the end it didn’t matter.

Darok and Arkous were never going to surrender, never going to let themselves be taken alive, and she kicks herself for not suspecting the Revanite connection sooner; it explains so easily how they’d ended up here, following in the footsteps of a dead fool, though the Revanites had deeper roots than she’d imagined. She thought they’d stomped out the last of that heresy years ago, when she’d exposed the leader of their cell on Dromund Kaas- but she’d never followed that through, distracted as she was by the destruction of Jadus’ Dominator. Clearly, at least a few of the rats had dodged the trap.

She’d left her transmitter wide open while they’d fought, and as Jakarro gives Darok’s body one last ferocious kick she slumps against the rooftop console to nurse her bruised ribs and get the perimeter guns powered down. Opening the holoterminal and a slicing channel, she catches her breath as Theron and Lana flicker into view, side by side.

“You heard all that, I hope?”

“Heard and felt- the colonel is dead, too? I sensed Darth Arkous’ passing.” Her expression dour, Lana shakes her head. “It’s a shame they wouldn’t say any more.”

Theron’s shifting from foot to foot, fidgeting with his datapad. “I’m pulling data now, but there’s not much here. Damn it, we may never figure out what they were really up to. They were building an army for someone, but-”

“We’ll- oh-” Lana flinches, eyes scrunching shut as her face contorts in pain, and she staggers for a moment. “Something’s coming.”

(And to think I used to envy you that mind-reading thing, she says, nudging Lana teasingly. It seemed so useful.

It is, sometimes. But it’s hard to control. One ends up- she nudges her back, two fingers prodding at the side of her neck- seeing things one wishes one hadn’t.)

The ship’s already darkening the sky when she looks up, the figure projecting from it nearly half again the height of the tower and looming high overhead like something out of a nightmare, all cape and hood and mask and-

Raina ducks out of sight; Lana’s staring, eyes wide, up at the figure, and Theron’s gone pale and quiet and his lips move, silent- she told me he wasn’t dead, she knew-

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” She rests her hands on her hips, scowling upward in the general direction of its face, if it can see her at all. “Revan. I’m pretty sure I killed you.”

***

I don’t remember Theron saying that. Lana turns her head, eyebrow a perfect arching question mark. Who did he mean, she?

She shrugs. I assume he meant his mother… I’m not sure, actually. But you remember the rest of what happened after that, don’t you?

Lana nods. We should have waited for you on the beach, but Revan’s flagship was firing on us, too. Splitting up seemed the safest option. Then by the time I made it back to Vaiken, the death warrant was already active. Arkous’ failsafe must have kicked in the moment he died, and the word of a Darth, a Dark Council member, even posthumous, against mine-   She shrugs. I ran, and hoped you’d get my message.

And Theron did the same, and Jakarro. I only slipped the net by virtue of not technically actually existing, I think- it wouldn’t work now, not with the old Minister gone, but he used to wipe my dossier once a month. It made it rather difficult to pin me down.

Lana grins at that. A trick I wished I could have replicated, but no such luck. So it was quite a relief, really, when you showed up on Manaan again, though I’m not sure Theron felt quite the same.

He said he was glad to see me. The pillow beneath her head’s gone flat; she fluffs it carefully, and settles back down. Although asking for a mutual debriefing may have been pushing it just a little too far.

(Stuttering out a denial, he’d blushed so hard his scalp turned pink. Oh, Force, he was cute when he blushed.)

***

Up next: Best-Laid Plans, in which the rest of what was supposed to happen in this chapter actually happens (they got chatty and we’ve got a schedule to stick to, here), we spend New Year’s Eve on Port Nowhere, and a rescue on Rishi brings two truths to light.

[missfart]

"Sandra Lee is the Devil" semi-homemade Pasta Bolognese

I love Food Network. I love it. So much. I've seen almost every show and love each and every Food Network chef like family. All except one; Sandra Lee. Sandra Lee, for those who don't know, had a "cooking show" (I use the term loosely) where she made canned chili dogs and boxed cakes and chased them with absurdly complex and boozy cocktails. It's a train wreck and actually who am I kidding it’s amazing television. I love it. However, there is something to be said about semi-homemade. I don't disagree with the principle behind good eating on both a time and money budget. It can be incredibly hard and expensive to make completely scratch made meals every night. So let's explore a dish that doesn't require you make every little thing, takes about a half hour, and costs under $20 for 4 people. Pasta Bolognese. Perfect for winter time when it's freezing out and you want something hearty you can reheat for days. (Vegan and Vegetarian friends should stick this through, because I’ll show you how to tweak this at the bottom. Unless you’re really squimish about raw meat pictures, which there will be a few.)

Part 1: Your Ingredient List 1 Jar of the red pasta sauce of your choosing (Newman's Own Sockarooni is my personal favorite, but you're the chef. I would not recommend a low quality brand like Prego or Kraft unless that is your only option.) 1-1.5 LBS of ground chuck (more beef yields more of a stew like sauce while less gives more of that traditional, looser, pasta sauce) 1 onion, finely minced 3 cloves garlic, finely minced 1 half pint heavy cream 1 box of penne (more or less depending on how many you're feeding, but this sauce recipe can feed 6 people comfortably or 4 people to the point of stuffed. Also, it MUST be a strong noodle like something in the penne family or the cavappati category. Fusilli, riggatoni, anything that is built to not go limp when up against thick meat sauces. Shells, spaghettis, linguinis, stuff like that won’t be the same.) 3 Tablespoons all purpose flour Extra virgin olive oil (you’ll need a bit at different intervals so keep it handy) Spices (of the Italian variety) Salt (OPTIONAL) Balsamic vinegar Apple cider vinegar Brown sugar Red wine Vodka Tomato paste

Part 2: Cooking 1. Dice up your onions and garlic, then get them started on medium in a large pan with about a table spoon of olive oil. Sweat them down for about 7 minutes. TIP: you want this minced finely, so using a push chopper is totally worth it here.

Vince isn’t lying. It’s good white people bullshit to have around the kitchen. Slap that shit.

Mmmmm yes. Sweaty perfection. Moving on.

2. Get your water for your pasta boiling while the onions sweat. You want to salt your water enough to wear you can taste it, but don't listen to the people who say you have to have it like ocean water. Too much salt for this recipe.

3. While you let the water come to a boil, add in your spices to your onions and garlic. I happened to have this blend on hand.

This is a pretty straight forward blend to make, and basically what any Italian spice blend will call for give or take. You can add in your personal favorite blend or take away anything you don’t like.

4. The water should be done coming to a boil, so now add your penne. The perfect al dente penne is 10 minutes and done. 11 minutes is fine, 12 minutes it’s completely cooked through 13 you’ve gone entirely too far and ruined everything.

5. While the pasta is cooking, add in your beef to the onions. Use your spatula and break it up. Keep adding olive oil so it doesn't get too dry and burn. 

6. Add your second round of spices (same as the first) and mix. This is all up to taste, so do what you want. You can use dry and get away with it, though fresh is always more pungent. It really depends on what you’re going for. I like dry here because of the earthy tones cured spices give when used correctly.

7. Now it's time for your optional additions. I personally trust my Russian friends with about a half cup of potato or grain vodka, a nice big shot of apple cider vinegar and a drizzle of balsamic. You can add a number of things to sway your sauce the way you want it. A little brown sugar and half a cup of red wine can make for a sweeter sauce with a sharp bite, while tomato paste and balsamic makes a more sour and acidic sauce with a natural umami flavor. My personal combo makes a much more tangy flavor from the balsamic and acv with a smooth and savory after taste from the vodka. Once you've added in whatever, give it a good stir and let it sit. 

This vodka is Russian and bad ass smooth. It’s not going to leave a bitter taste after the alcohol burns off like you get with squash, or corn. It’s also pretty inexpensive and makes for a good martini as well as being very good at melding tomato flavors with cream. Eyeball about a half cup and stir.

Its ya boy, Braggs ACV. Take a shot glass, fill it, toss it in.

Let this all stew for a bit, maybe 5 minutes, while the pasta finishes.

8. Your pasta should be done. Dump it into your strainer and let it sit in the colander for a bit. Don't worry about it going cold, the sauce will heat it back up.

9. Your meat mixture is ready to be floured. Add in 3 tablespoons a spoonful at a time while stirring. Once all of that is combined, add in up to half a pint of heavy cream.

I had about a pound and a half of beef and I like it thick and rich, so I toss the whole thing in. Less means a more marinara type sauce, more means something like a tomato bisque almost.

This mixture right here is an amazing starter for biscuit gravy btw. Throw some coriander, fennel, and paprika with some brown sugar and cream, and bam. Sausage gravy. However, we will save my biscuits and gravy recipe for another day. 

10. Open your pasta sauce and dump that shit right in there. Get it all in there. Stir it up and salt to taste.

Mmmmmmmm bitch. That’s what I’m talking about. You can loosen things up with some diced tomatoes, more red wine or vodka, even a little water. I personally love having thick sauce for this because it sticks to the pasta well. Either way, let this sit for about 5 more minutes on low while you dress your pasta.

11. Chefs will all debate about putting olive oil on pasta. Put it in the water, don’t, put it in after, don’t put it on at all, whatever. Personally, I think this recipe benefits from a little olive oil for taste. Making fresh pasta and dressing it with a little oil each time will also help loosen up the sauce which tends to thicken on it’s own in the fridge when you’re reheating it.

12. Once that’s done, use a ladle and spoon on the desired amount of sauce for the amount of pasta you’ve made. I like more sauce than is necessary, but to each their own. Don’t dump it all in there because too much and the noodles just sorta fall apart.

Fuck yeah look at that. Tasty af.

So steamy the camera can’t even focus.

13. Your final step is to plate this stuff. It’s best in a bowl with hand grated Parmesan cheese off the wedge. A good chunk of fresh stuff only runs you $5. That may be a little pricey, but it is much more worth it than the green shakey can, not that there is anything to be ashamed about for the shakey can. 

There you go. Serve with your favorite vodka drink or some good red wine. Or water. Or milk. Whatever.

[VEGAN FRIENDS LOOK HERE]

To tweak this for a plant based diet, there’s going to be a few changes though they’ll be minor and maybe even less expensive. The first being is that you’re going to have to invest in a decent ground beef substitute called TVP. It sounds scary, it’s not. It’s textured vegetable protein from soy, so dried tofu basically. What you’ll do is combine 1/2 a cup of TVP with 1 cup water and let it soak for 30 minutes. After that’s done, you can follow the recipe as is. The only difference is going to be your choice of nut milk. I have found that the tomatoes and a heavy hand with spices can actually stand up to using coconut cream here and it makes for the best heavy cream substitute, though it won’t be as Italian tasting in the end. Still just as good, however. I personally recommend an unflavored almond milk creamer. You will have to be careful that you don’t get it too hot or it can “break.” Nooch makes a great topper here. Maybe even a few chopped salted cashews.

However you decide to do it, bone apple teeth as the kids are saying.