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epicstuckyficrecs · 4 years ago

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2020 Half-year fic rec for Steve Rogers’ birthday!

I made a poll on Twitter to know if people would be interested in me doing a half-year “best of” fic rec like I did last year , and the response was overwhelmingly positive, so here it is! 😊 These are my favorite fics of the year so far! (in no particular order)

Complete

Two Colors, White and Gold by Carelica (Canon-Divergent | 36K | Explicit): He’s here, he’s alive. His hand is on a tree.

Deep Sea Diving by AidaRonan/ @bisexualstarbucky (Shrunkyclunks | 5,4K | Explicit): Steve’s wallowing in heat-related misery under a shade tree in Central Park when a man walks by in bright red booty shorts and a crop top. RIP Steve Rogers. It was nice knowing you.

Some things you do for money by pushdragon (BDSM AU | 72K | Explicit): Steve’s wholesome take on domination has suddenly become the hottest thing in the business. He should be cashing in on his newfound celebrity, but instead he’s distracted by the guy who works odd shifts in the club’s bar, fresh out of prison and damaged in ways that don’t show.

the hand you want to hold is a weapon (and you’re nothing but skin) by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid (Post-WS, Sex Pollen | 13K | Explicit): Steve gets sex-pollened. He handles it just fine, and then Bucky shows up.

Dear Mr. Postman by odetteandodile (Modern AU | 52K | Teen): “I’m um—your mailman,” Bucky says, lamely. Or—Steve and Bucky revive an old friendship, get married (but totally just as friends, for reasons), and navigate a few of the many trials of the heart that come with falling in love with your best friend.

good on my own (needed me) by mcwho (Modern AU | 12K | Explicit): There are some mistakes that could be made by anybody. Anybody. Bucky taught high school pretty much his whole life, and that was fine, those were kids, and he knew all of them anyway, which meant there was very little chance of him accidentally fucking any of his students during an impulsive post-marital-breakdown Grindr hook-up. Which is exactly what he had done with Steve.or: bucky has not let steve rogers fuck him since his sophomore year (Part 1 of himbo-verse)

Latte Art and Slow Dancing in the Dark by deadonarrival (Modern AU with powers, Daddy kink | 89K | Explicit): Bucky is a somewhat well-adjusted former army sniper that got his shoulder blown out. He took his discharge and went home to finish school. His best friends and roommates (Nat & Clint) are CIA agents and tip him off that their local Sbux is hiring. He gets a job there and meets none other than the hottest guy on earth. So how does one get a date in the most top secret government location in the US? What happens when that guy is more than just a hot dorito and wants to give Bucky everything he wants?

That Boy Is a Problem by 2bestfriends (Modern AU | 10K | Explicit): In which a twinky little goth punk named Bucky puts a leash around Steve’s dick and he’s really into it. (The leash is a metaphor. For now.)

bullet in a gun (but in the end, my time will come) by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid (Post-Endgame, Canon-divergent | 25K | Explicit): Post-Thanos, Bucky Barnes has happily settled into a life of peace and pining. That’s when alternate versions of the best friend he’s secretly in love with start showing up.

Like it’s the Only Thing I’ll Ever Do by howdoyousleep/ @howdoyousleep3 (ABO AU | 39K | Explicit): When Steve opens the door, Bucky feels like he’s been living in clouds for the past few days, maybe even his entire life. Steve is life, Steve is happiness, Steve is the sun. He has such a visceral reaction to seeing the Alpha that he feels his knees go weak, feels his body draw tight towards the other man, pulled in. Or big Alpha Steve moves into sweet little Omega Bucky’s apartment building and a roller-coaster build of a romance ensues.

A Company Man by mambo/ @whtaft (Modern AU | 75K | Explicit): No matter what it is, the truth is the same: Steve Rogers is in love with Bucky Barnes, a married man.

How to Fuck With (and Feed) Your Soulmate by BlueSimplicity/ @bluesimplicity73 (Soulmate AU, Shrunkyclunks | 114K | Explicit): It’s called the Grey Space; a patch of skin marking you as blessed and the first sign you have a soulmate. Steve Rogers didn’t have one when he crashed into the ice. But he did when he woke up in the future. The second sign is the Sense, a sharing of one the senses to help soulmates find each other. Steve’s Sense, taste, is rare, but he loves a challenge and a soulmate is a gift from the Fates. Except instead of a blessing, it’s a curse, since his soulmate is a dick. Bucky Barnes loves food and a homecooked meal is something he cherishes. When his Grey Space starts to itch, Bucky can’t help his excitement, since the Sense he and his soulmate share is taste. But not for long. Whoever he’s bound to has the blandest diet in the world, ignoring all Bucky’s messages. After weeks of putting up with tasteless food, Bucky decides to strike back.

Strangers in the Street by crinklefries/ @spacerenegades (Canon divergent | 15K | Teen): Every five years, Bucky meets the same tall, blond stranger.

Departure by Nejinee/ @nejineeee (Arrival AU | 80K | Mature): Captain America is recruited by the U.S. government to assist a linguist and her team of scientists in communicating with aliens after twelve mysterious space ships appear across the globe overnight.

Compatible - A Romantic Science Fiction Thriller in Four Parts by the1918/ @the1918 (Shrunkyclunks, ABO AU | 33K | Explicit): When young nanotech engineer Bucky Barnes finds himself falling head first in love with none other than Steve Rogers, he ends up getting a lot more of the Alpha than he– or science– could ever have imagined possible.

WIP

four dreams in a row where you were burned by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid (canon divergent, post-Endgame, 1945 alternate timeline | 10/? | 58K | Mature): When Steve uses the last of his Pym Particles to travel to 1944 and save his best friend, he doesn’t have a plan beyond leaving behind the battlefield and living his life alongside the people he loves. But the life that finds him is not the one he expects.

A Matter of Trust by chicklette/ @chicklette (Singer Bucky, Fake relationship | 7/13 | 26K | Explicit): At 43, James Barnes is a washed up old man. He’s got a dozen Grammys in the hall closet, an agent that can’t get him a deal, a decade-old case of writer’s block, a moody teen-aged daughter, and the gorgeous actress Natasha Romanova for an ex-wife. Enter Steven Grant Rogers, struggling twenty-something, orphan, and someone who has no idea who Barnes is. The two men meet by accident, doing nothing more than passing the time in a quiet bar. But when a pap gets a shot of the two men embracing, Bucky takes it as a chance to finally come out as bisexual, and his agent makes him a proposition: Ten new songs and one very sweet boyfriend will get him a new record deal that will maybe, just maybe put him back on top. Now all he has to do is write the songs, convince the kid, and not fall in love. Should be easy, right?

Bespoke by the1918/ @the1918 (Shrunkyclunks, ABO AU | 6/10 | 61K | Explicit): “I love you, too. So fucking much,” Steve answered. His voice sounded cracked and exhausted, an exposed nerve ending in the shape of a man. “Some days I still don’t believe you’re real. Feels— feels like somehow, I’ve always loved you. Even when I didn’t know you.” Bucky smiled softly at that and felt his heart threaten to explode. Still straddling his lap, he reached a hand up to cup Steve’s cheek. “You’ve always known me,” he stated, simply. “I was made for you, remember?” (Part 2 of Compatible)

Series

couldn't get the boy to kill me by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid (Shrunkyclunks, SHIELD Agent Bucky | 12 works, complete | 74K | Explicit): Captain America and the Winter Soldier are a terrifying duo on the field, working together with a well-oiled precision that tears through their enemies. Captain Rogers and Agent Barnes are distant coworkers, all polite nods and mission briefings. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are fire and gasoline; it never ends well.

the hero's shoulders by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid (Shrunkyclunks, Post-CW, canon divergent | 3 works, not complete | 32K | Explicit): Sequel series to couldn't get the boy to kill me

Honorable mention for Where The Interstate Ends by paperstorm/ @paper-storm because it was posted last year but I only read it recently!

#stucky #stucky fanfic #stucky fanfiction #stucky fic #stucky fic rec #half year fic rec

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truerescreatuconfessions · 3 years ago

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The past few days have been like a slap in the face so I'm sorry but I'm have to say this. I apologize to everyone but this is going to be long. I am aware that Pat will probably never see this post so it's pointless, but I have to say it anyway.

First, I'm going to start with a positive. Thank you to Lilith for being brave enough to pass on that anon message to Pat. Thank you also to Burrito for giving us a place to voice our concerns where they can't be shut down, whether Pat chooses to listen or not.

Now to business. I'll start with you Pat, on the off chance that you'll someday read this somehow. As people have said, no one is complaining about your recolor OAK. Please stop trying to turn it to that because it's not that. What we are complaining about is the absolute silence with which Dan received not one but 6 OAKs. The fact that many people on staff had no idea this was an option while Rumor, who I'll get to in a bit, also got one. I have spoken to many staff and ex-staff and not a single one of them knew that OAKs were ever part of staff pay or rewards. The ones I've spoken to also hadn't ever heard of this OAK test in any way. The way it was handled with Dan covering it up and saying "we were testing to see if there was interest" was clearly him backpedaling and now it just sounds like people are just rushing around to cover his ass. I don't have to repeat what at least a dozen people have said on this blog but I will. You don't gauge interest by quietly adding a dozen OAKs to the site and saying "oh, if someone finds them completely by accident then people are interested, otherwise no one cares." You gauge interest by posting a poll, by asking people in a place where everyone can voice it, and by making it front-and-center. I know you said you aren't talking about the subject anymore, but you skirted around the sheer number of OAKs Dan got by pretending we didn't say anything about them.

About the bans you claim "never happened." There is screenshot evidence from Kina, dozens and dozens of them, that Dan cheated for her and others. Ok, screenshots can be doctored, what about the video she sent in? Was that also doctored? If those right there aren't compelling enough evidence to ban Dan, why were four people banned for screenshots? Hell, Zuzu, Shinigami, and Shinohara were all banned for speculating that Dan was cheating during the name clearing. Zuzu was allowed to return, the other three were not. What rules did they break? Did they cheat? No, they talked, exactly like you constantly encourage us to do, about how they felt and what they thought was going on. They were banned. So please Pat, never tell us that "no one is banned for voicing an opinion" because that is categorically untrue.

You might tell us there are other reasons behind the scenes. Ok, let's say that's true. Why were they banned within a day or so of those screenshots coming to light? Why was that the catalyst moment? No one else was banned and unless they had a secret cheating ring with exactly 0 other people involved it sure sounds like those screenshots were the reason.

Also please never say Dan doesn't give special treatment to people. Rumor has been banned multiple times for cheating and abusing staff tools. He still gets an OAK. Omni is a known hacker, still enjoying the site like nothing ever happened. Juke was literally banned for running a hate blog, which is still active when anyone is brave enough to post on it, currently not only back but on staff.

When Rumor was banned, he got to move all his pets to Dan's account and they were kindly returned when he was allowed back on the site. Kina also moved all her pets before she was banned but that was determined to be "unfair" and "not allowed" so they were all returned to her account. Then a conveniently-timed name clearing happened.

Let's look at that name clearing for a second. Dan repeatedly and constantly told us that he was busy and didn't have time to refresh on the site all day for the clearing. Amazingly, he was online for every single clearing. Every last one of them. The odds of that are astronomical when you consider he claims he sleeps, eats, goes out with friends, and works 8 hours a day. He also got tons of incredible, high-value names. These facts are the reason Hell and the rest suspected him of cheating in the first place and honestly that seems like a fair assumption.

You say we need to speak up, but we did. Half a dozen people on that discord said they felt horrible about something and you basically swept it under the rug by saying "oh, it took longer than planned and we didn't say anything publicly but it'll be there soon I promise. Now never speak to me about this again and I refuse to respond anymore." There's been no information anywhere on Res about anything regarding this other than a quick post Dan made only after he was called out multiple times for the number of OAKs he suddenly had.

A minor complaint that I've seen a dozen times on the SB is that new items keep getting quietly released so anyone that does quests suddenly finds themselves failing them because they don't have the items stocked up. Honestly makes me happy I don't waste time with quests. Maybe one or two items doesn't warrant a full update, but isn't that exactly what the changelog is for? For minor additions, fixes, updates, etc?

Another minor complaint I've heard from a few sources is that people continue to spam the SB with copy paste from the site. There was even a forum post about it that no staff addressed, unless that's changed since I last checked. I've seen it happen constantly while staff are on the SB with no policing of it. Why should users listen to this rule, which was added because enough people complained about it happening, when staff don't bother to uphold it?

Now to Rumor. His latest blog honestly boils my blood in so many ways. If his real information was given out and doxxed then that is absolutely disgusting and I do not stand for that. No one deserves it. I am starting this section by saying that because I want to make it clear that it's not ok that that happened, if it did. That doesn't mean I like him or agree with any other part of that blog.

Yes, I'm sure he worked long hours as a CM. You know who else did? Gunmetal, Dess, a bunch of other CMs. Someone else? All the artists, all the support and mods, all the writers. His blog makes it sound like it was just him putting in the hours and that it was purely his idea about all those events. Remember, before we got to a point where staff didn't know what was going on with events because no staff talk, staff used to all contribute together to events. Or maybe they didn't, I don't know, but they at least knew what was going on so I assume they had some input. I remember a time when asking on the SB about an event with staff around, regardless of their position, meant you could get an answer. Nowadays we have staff that have less idea than the users what's going on with an event. Staff like development, who you would assume would know everything about the event that they helped create, or mods, who should probably at least get an overview of the event if they're going to be able to help users.

Speaking of other staff helping with events. Is Rumor pretending he wrote every piece of those events on his own? Why are no writers mentioned anywhere in his list of people that spent many long hours working? He obviously can't pretend he drew everything for the event, but is he implying he wrote everything?

You say people on that list are "deserving" of OAKs Rumor. Schemes has been staff for almost no time compared to some of the old staff that you decided didn't deserve listing. Juke was banned and then unbanned, obviously more deserving than the ex-staff that still frequent the site and have never been in trouble.

Now let's turn to the thing that made me want to scream. You say to "just speak up" more. I've seen at least 8 different people, off the top of my head, told to "stop talking about it" in the SB when they voice a concern and it goes on longer than one or two sentences. Not a single one of the people I'm thinking of was being rude or starting something, they were trying to express themselves and basically being told to shut up. Often they're told to "take it to the forums" which works about as well as just saying it out loud in a room alone. No one reads the forums. Or at least very few people. Staff never responds to suggestions, not staff that can make those changes anyway, mods do sometimes and rarely an artist. Posting in the suggestions forum is like yelling into the void and hoping the void yells back. The absolute only way to be heard in the suggestion forum is advertising it nonstop on the SB and even that barely gets any staff looking.

You say this lack of communication is the reason many people have quit? Yes, that's very true, the exact opposite way you imply. People have left the site often because their feelings are silenced and their opinions completely ignored. No one reads their posts, staff don't respond to them except to tell them they're wrong or to tell them to stop talking about things, and their friends get banned for nothing while staff are allowed to continue cheating with no consequences. So you're right about that, people do leave over the lack of communication, but it's the lack of communication and understanding from staff that drives them away.

I know Pat will probably never see this, but if he does, or if someone is brave enough to link it, maybe he'll hear it. At this point considering his reactions to the people that are trying so very hard to make their voices heard on the Discord I doubt it but I can always hope.

#Rescon #RescreatuConfessions #TrueRescreatuConfessions #patrick #lilith #burrito #dan #rumor #kina #hell #zuzu #shinigami #shinohara #omni #juke #gunmetal #dess #schemes

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currantlee · 4 years ago

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German Postillon articles about the US Election translated

@theeeveetamer sent me this post in which someone translated German Postillon headlines about the US Election. Der Postillon is a German satire website disguised as a newspaper, kind of the German equivalent to The Onion.

So, I translated one of the articles for her and it was really, really fun. So I thought I might do more and share it on my blog so hopefully more people can have a laugh!

But first of all...

Gotta keep the American Spirit on this blog everyone!

Before I continue though: Please keep in mind that the Postillon is a satire website! None of the news in this post are actually true, it’s just meant to have a good laugh. I am repeating this again: none of these are actually real! I also want to make clear that none of those were written by me, I merely translated them! Credit to all the original texts and pictures goes to the Postillon. Except for the American flag. Credit to flickr for that one.

Anyways, let’s go and hopefully have some laughs.

Experts are certain that Donald Trump is going to win the Election because 2020 has been a shitty year so far anyways

Washington D.C. – Joe Biden hopes to put an end to Trump’s presidency after four years: he is clearly ahead in the polls on this Election Day. Despite that, most experts are sure that Trump will win – because so far, 2020 has been a shitty year anyways!

“If you look at the average of the national polls, Joe Biden is currently more than 8% ahead of Trump,” politic scientist Marianne Waters from the renowned Princeton University explains. “This means that his lead is way greater than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. Under normal circumstances, you’d say that he’s already won the Election.”

She pauses for a second. “But now, please think about what a fucked up mess of a year 2020 has been so far! And then, think again about whether or not the American people are that fucked up in their brains to elect this human catastrophic failure for four more years! We’re talking about a year in which a global pandemic is going rampant across the planet anyways, we’re seeing islamistic and nazi terror attacks at the daily and entire havens are exploding ‘completely by accident’! Is there anybody who seriously believes in a sensible result of this election?!”

At least, scientists aren’t fully ruling out the possibility of Biden winning the Election. However, because this is 2020, the chance of an asteroid hitting the earth five minutes after this has happened is nothing but small.

– Der Postillon, 3rd of November 2020 (Original title: Experten sicher, dass Trump gewinnen wird, weil 2020 eh schon ein Scheißjahr ist). Translated by Seaberry Siren

“Oh Shit!” – Putin completely forgot to manipulate the US Election

Moskow – How can one be so scatterbrained! Wladimir Putin just realized to his very own horror that he completely forgot to manipulate the US Election. Now, his candidate Donald Trump is in trouble.

“Bljad! {T/N: Russian for “crap”} I knew I forgot something really important!”, Putin says. “But due to all the inner politics, the corona virus and all the other countries our hackers need to manipulate elections in, I totally forgot about the United States! This is just great!”

He turns to his assistant. “Dima! USA! Can we turn something around there? ... No? ... Really?! And if we deliver arms to the... How are those guys called again... Proud Boys? WHAT?! They already have enough of those?!? Oh well.”

However, in the end, Putin puts up with the situation after all: “Ah, we’ll see. Maybe everything will turn out fine one way or another.” He turns to his assistant again: “Dima, make an appointment with Donald Trump jr. as soon as possible! I heard he is is just as dumb as his father and has political ambitions as well. We’ll survive Biden until 2024.”

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: “Ach Kacke!” – Putin hat völlig vergessen, US-Wahlen zu manipulieren). Translated by Seaberry Siren with help from Theeeveetamer

Employees of the Oval Office try to stop Trump from tweeting “CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!”

Washington D.C. – While votes are still being counted all over the USA, dramatic scenes start to unfold in the White House. Currently multiple employees are trying to prevent President Donald Trump from grabbing his smartphone in order to tweet the words “CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!”.

“No Mr. President!”, an assistant shouts as she holds Trump’s arm. “Don’t do this! I have a family! I don’t want a civil war! Jack, restrain him, damnit! Anna, don’t stand there and stare so stupidly, help us! Ian, put his smartphone as far away as you can!”

In the meantime, countless citizens of the USA are wondering why Trump didn’t tweet anything for more than seven hours.

“Leave me alone!”, Trump cries as he desperately tries to reach his smartphone. “They want to steal my election by letting every vote count! Even those of the Democrats! I WANT TO SEE BLOOD!!!”

Meanwhile, outside of the White House, more and more people are speculating that Trump could accept a possible loss due to his silence on Twitter.

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: Mitarbeiter versuchen Trump davon abzuhalten, "CIVIL WAR!!!! Kill all Democrats!" zu twittern). Translated by Seaberry Siren

Not that as well! Half-Blind 100-year-old man who counts all the votes by his own dies of old age

Harrisburg – Oh no! Everything is going to take even longer now! James Reed, the 100-year-old man tasked with counting all the votes of the US Election surprisingly just died.

“Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to task one man of his age with the counting of millions of votes,” the chief of the Electoral Office stated. “Unfortunately, he was the only one with a license for this important job.”

After the closing of the polling stations, Reed, who was responsible for counting the votes since the 1970s, traveled from state to state in order to count all the votes.

“He took his job very seriously. He’d often take 20 minutes in order to count a single vote,” an election assistant recalls as tears of gried run over her cheeks. “But just after he counted 92% of the votes at Michigan, he suddenly fell from his chair.”

The doctor who was called immediately could only confirm the death of the 100-year-old man.

The worst part is that Reed didn’t get to name a successor before his passing. This is why the authorities are desperately searching for a new person able to lift sheets of paper, read printed letters, ánd count one by one at the same time. Due to the American education system, this is going to be a challenge {T/N: Germans throwing a bit of shade here when their own education system isn’t something to be proud on either}.

– Der Postillon, 4th of November 2020 (Original title: Auch das noch! Halbblinder 100-Jähriger, der allein alle US-Stimmen auszählt, an Altersschwäche gestorben). Translated by Seaberry Siren

US Election: Trump lies way out in front

Washington D.C. – A good chunk of the votes of the US Election have been counted by now and there seems to be a trend: Donald Trump clearly lies way out in front! As expected, the President of the United States is taking the lead in the traditionally Republican states. But even in the Swing States, he already sees himself as the winner, even if it’s only with very little sanity.

“Trump clearly lies way out in front,” the politics expert Dean Jefferson affirms. “As in: he stands in front of an audience and lies their heads off!”

Many didn’t expect that Trump could lie way out in front this comfortably at this point of the cote count. Other less optimistic individuals had predicted a neck-and-airhead race {T/N: in German that’s Kopf-an-Hohlkopf-Rennen, literally head-on-airhead race} from the beginning.

– Der Postillon, 5th of November 2020 (Original title: US-Wahl: Trump lügt vorne). Translated by Seaberry Siren

Damned mess of a US Election STILL isn’t over!

Washington D.C. – FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!!! At some point, enough is enough, isn’t it? The damned mess of a US Election STILL isn’t over after three days of counting the votes because the people in some Federal States apparently can’t manage to count the ballots!

Seriously: can they even count at all? Didn’t they know that the voters like to turn their ballots in with a vote on them and that you have to count these votes in order to determine a winner?!?

An average election of the Federal Congress {T/N: they mean the German Federal Congress, also known as the Bundestag} is finished, predicted and decided one second after closing the polling stations {T/N: Yes, German elections are that boring}. An official end result is provided in the next morning at the latest! How in the world can the Americans be trundle as fuck like this?!?

Suggestion: we ignore the entire shitshow over there for the next few weeks until those idiots have punched their faces in and once the victor is clear, there is one short headline: “Winner of the US Election: [insert winner’s name here]”. Then this whole crap would... WHAT?? Biden takes the lead at Georgia by 900 votes? Wowowowow! Just a moment please, I’ll have a look at the livetracker. Did CNN already comment on this? Nate Silver already tweeted as well... This has to be it for Biden! Now it can’t take much longer!

OH MY GOD, HOW EXITING!!!

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: Verdammte Drecks-US-Wahl immer noch nicht zu Ende!). Translated by Seaberry Siren

“If I can’t have it, then nobody will!” – Trump sets the White House on fire

Washington D.C. – A victory of Joe Biden in the US election is becoming more and more likely. But the answer to the question whether the Democrat is really going to move into the White House could be decided by a completely different factor than the votes – because apparently, Donald Trump is trying to burn the White House down now.

“If I can't have it, then nobody will!”, the US President says as he spreads gasoline at strategic points while he starts laughing manically: “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!”

Shortly after, the Oval Office is up in flames. “Let’s see how Sleepy Joe will rule from a burned-down ruin!”, Trump exclaims with a shrill voice as he adds more fuel to the fire. “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Burn, my little fire, burn!”

Directly before publishing this article, Trump realized that this wasn’t the best idea as he cut off his own escape route with the last bits of the fuel. “Oh! So this wasn’t very clever... IVANKAAAAAAA!! The Democrats set me on fire! Rescue the best president of all time!!!”

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: “Wenn ich es nicht haben kann, soll es keiner haben! – Trump setzt Weißes Haus in Brand). Translated by Seaberry Siren

"Enough!” – The Queen reclaims the United States for the British Empire

London – She’s got enough of this nonsense! Queen Elizabeth II. announced the return of the United States to the British Empire. A new, freshly assigned gouverneur will arrive in Washington shortly and take over the government business.

“We have been watching this unworthy ham without doing anything for far too long,” the Queen declared in a fiery speech. “It is time to return the colony where it belongs: into the lap of the United Kingdom. The experiment is hereby ended.”

Shortly after, the British Navy occupied important havens at the East Coast. On friday afternoon, Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and Miami had already been seized.

Apparently months of the global pandemic, national economic instability and a tiring election campaign did the trick: a wide range of the US population greeted the British soldiers euphorically and vowed to be loyal to the British Crown. “Long live the Queen!”-chants echoed through the streets.

Washington D.C. is still in the hands of the rebels lead by Donald Trump. However, observers believe that the British troops will seize the capital next week. According to the Queen’s orders, Trump will be put into chains and brought to Great Britain by ship in order to spend the rest of his days in the Tower of London by water and bread.

– Der Postillon, 6th of November 2020 (Original title: “Jetzt reicht’s!” – Queen unterstellt USA wieder der Britischen Krone). Translated by Seaberry Siren

#Politics #Satire #Translation #US Election 2020 #USA #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #Wladimir Putin #Queen Elizabeth II.#German #German Humor #Humor #SeaSi translates

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makeste · 5 years ago

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BnHA Smash!! 01 and 02: Smash!!Might is a Fucking Menace

okay, so. I have about a million other things I should be doing instead, including (1) responding to asks and/or finishing in-progress metas, (2) reading Vigilantes, and last but not least, (3) actually making a dent in the ever-increasing backlog of Actual Work That I Really Should Be Doing Instead.

so naturally I’m procrastinating by taking my first stab at reading BnHA’s cute 4-panel omake spinoff series, BnHA Smash!! IT JUST MAKES SENSE. look, I have exactly one thing I felt like actually doing and not procrastinating today, so I might as well do the thing. basically it’s my attention span’s world and I’m just living in it.

anyway! so apparently this series was scanlated by good ol’ Fallen Angels. that’s right; prepare yourselves for some very creative cursing, fellas. other background info for anyone who, like me, is unfamiliar with this spin-off: this series debuted on November 9, 2015, a little over a year after the original series. said original series was currently at chapter 66, meaning the Final Exam arc was just wrapping up.

so now that we’re all properly oriented, let me go over a few disclaimers real quick and then we’ll get started!

all comments are my unspoiled reactions from my initial readthrough of the chapter. I did a quick edit for grammar and clarity afterward, and added a few ETAs in the process, but aside from that there are no changes.

I’m aware that not everyone may be familiar with Smash!! even if they’ve read/watched the original series, so I’ve tried to make this recap comprehensible even if you haven’t read the spin-off. that being said, it’s probably more enjoyable if you have, so you can either purchase the first volume from Viz here, or read the chapter online (I don’t want to link directly, but the spin-off is available on most of the usual sites. literally just google “read mha” and you’ll find some good options).

this readthrough contains a handful of sorta-kinda spoilers for the BnHA manga, although there are no direct spoilers. just an indirect reference to a joke in chapter 242, as well as a reference to a theory which as of now is in no way canon. but just to be on the safe side I’m posting a heads-up.

and I think that’s it! so here we go.

so we’re opening with a brief summary of the series. people have superpowers and shit’s nuts. you know the drill

there’s also a brief description of the way that the superhero economy works, complete with Mt. Lady’s employees unionizing and demanding better pay

...what

guys I keep staring at this and thinking that surely, SURELY it doesn’t say what I think it says. sidekick... what... manager??

you know what? Viz unfortunately doesn’t include this series as part of their subscription package (WHAT AM I PAYING YOU FOR, VIZ), but it does at least include a free preview of Smash, and I bet you that this, the first fucking page of the series, is a part of that preview. so... let’s see...

okay, see, this actually makes sense! so did the FA scanlating team collectively all have a fucking stroke?! just, what??

this is one of the reasons why I had difficulty reading Vigilantes too, tbh. those early chapter scans were, uh. but at least Vigilantes has a Viz scanlation too. I don’t want to spend 10 bucks just to read one volume of this, but we’ll see. anyways

so now there’s a strip about baby!Izuku watching his favorite clip of All Might saving one hundred people from a bus accident or whatever

lol Inko you should not have left your shrewdly calculating four-year-old son unattended omg

TWELVE MONTHS’ WORTH OF TEXTBOOKS HOW CAN THIS EAGER YOUNG MIND RESIST

and this is why you don’t leave your credit card info saved on the computer when you have kids. life lessons learned today

this is the first indicator we have ever had that baby!Izuku wasn’t perfect and was, in fact, capable of being a little shit and giving his mom plenty of gray hairs in his own special way. ngl, I fucking love it

also 12,800 yen is about $118 USD, which is honestly a really good deal for a year’s worth of textbooks. he got three boxes of books! I just googled the average cost of college textbooks, and the google article said the average student spends about $1200 a year. so this is a fucking steal tbh

OH MY GOD INKO HOW MANY TIMES MUST HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF BEFORE YOU LEARN

at least install a fucking adblocker ffs. you’re lucky quirk supplement ads are the worst of the ads he’s getting! PARENTAL CONTROLS

now we are cutting to a comic about baby!Izuku defending another boy from my problematic fave, as seen in page one of the original series!

lmaooo

I’m not clear on how much of this spin-off can actually be considered canon. my understanding is that it is Horikoshi-reviewed and approved, even though he doesn’t actually write it. but it’s obviously a humor series, so a lot of it is just going to be jokes. that being said, I think my approach is going to be “if it’s not completely ridiculous and doesn’t contradict the actual manga, go ahead and consider it canon”

(ETA: I might change this up after reading the first two chapters. most of these strips would have terrifying implications if they were actually canon sob.)

anyhoo, this actually does contradict the manga in that we saw this encounter play out very differently. but I kind of wish it was canon regardless because looool. these cocky preschoolers and their fucking Battle Tears

the next comic is Mt. Lady accidentally stepping on a guy’s face and the guy being way too fucking happy about it (read: having a fucking nosebleed and taking an upskirt shot). we’re just going to skip this entirely. this is another problem I was having with Vigilantes too. you know, for all my complaints about Mineta and such, BnHA as a whole is so much tamer than it could be, and I need to give Horikoshi credit for that. he mostly knows where to draw the line, and to his credit he’s also much, much better about this kind of thing than he was when he first started. maybe Mineta’s standings in the character poll results are helping to clue him in

anyway, I’ll mostly just skip past the iffy stuff because I don’t have patience for it and there’s still plenty of other stuff to cover. so on to the next strip

which features a bunch of reporters fawning over Mt. Lady’s flashy quirk while Kamui Woods laments in the shadows

and yet we know this kid will have a prominent rise within the next six months. it’s so strange to revisit the start of the series and see how much things have changed in such a short time

oh my god

no one who dresses up as a giant mushroom could possibly have good intentions. I. just

and look at the fucking disappointment in Deku’s eyes. KAMUI WOODS HE BELIEVED IN YOU!

now some strange man is coming up to Deku and is all HEY YOU, YOU’RE A HERO OTAKU, TELL ME WHAT TO BUY MY SEVEN-YEAR-OLD SON FOR HIS BIRTHDAY. better not ask him unless you’re prepared to shell out $120 bucks for some fucking textbooks

hey, what!!

WE DIDN’T EVEN GET TO SEE WHAT HE BOUGHT HIM? unless it’s the action figure the kid appears to be holding? but I’m just going to go ahead and assume Izuku recommended the number one best gift that any seven-year-old child would love, i.e. a giant sword

now it’s a sludge monster omake!

so Izuku is trudging home all depressed after CERTAIN INCIDENTS, and Sludgey is glooping his way out of a sewer towards him

oh no All Might

my biggest takeaway from this is the fact that the entire second half of chapter one takes place after All Might has emerged from a fucking sewer. I forgot all about that somehow. or maybe it never fully processed until just now. but omg. this entire chapter must have smelled so fucking bad. these poor kids

wow All Might

sure called that one wrong. ah well nobody’s perfect

looooool

lmao, Smash!!All Might appears to be quite a bit more vain than the original. wow dude

btw, friendly reminder (and I think this is something that was actually pointed out to me after one of the recaps; that’s one of my favorite things about doing these) that All Might, after saving Deku, actually read his notebook before signing it. super-fast, I guess, because he’s the best. but yeah, so he knew exactly how smart and observant Deku was, and how much he wanted to be a hero. his decision to pick him as his successor didn’t just come out of the blue; even before the “my body moved on its own” thing, there was a lot Deku had going in his favor. this is one of those little details of which BnHA has so many, and which I love

lmao what the fuck

ngl this version of the series would have been amazing in its own way. but yeah. so this is why we clearly can’t assume everything in Smash!! is canon lol. but I can already tell I am going to enjoy the shit out of this series

now we’re cutting to Deku running at Sludgey in order to save Kacchan, oh shit. the most dramatic part of chapter one. clearly no moment is sacred

sob what

I don’t understand this strip at all. is this supposed to be a serious moment inserted unexpectedly among this multitude of joke strips? or did I miss the punchline? heeeeelp

(ETA: okay so. my best guess is that All Might wrote all over Deku’s life-saving advice, and so the joke is that Deku no longer knows what to do when assaulting sludge men because HIS NOTES ARE RUINED. idk. what does 25 P mean??)

now All Might has Done The Thing and saved my boys, and now Mt. Lady is helping with the cleanup. scooping up all the bits of sludge and putting it in trash bags

oh my god

nope nevermind. nope. nope

-- shit. okay, you know what? this first chapter has been a real in-your-face reminder of the fact that the sludge monster was not made of cute sparkly 2018-trending-fad slime, but was in fact composed of RAW FUCKING SEWAGE. (ETA: to be clear, I’m pretty sure the joke in this strip is that she accidentally picked up dog-doo during her clean-up. but still, the fact that it was indistinguishable from the rest of the gunk speaks for itself.) I think I forced myself to gloss over this fact originally due to the nope factor. but just. Izuku and Katsuki were both choking to death on this shit?? and just, how the fuck did they make it out of this not traumatized

and also, like. All Might was straight up going to leave Izuku alone afterwards, just, “well enjoy your autograph, fine citizen” and blasting off out of there. and everyone fucking saw Katsuki almost suffocate to death later on, and after giving him a pat on the back they fucking let him go off on his own too? and you can’t even make the argument that this was Just Another Day In Quirk Society either, because more than a year later, Katsuki is still a bona fide fucking celebrity from the media coverage of his attack. it clearly was not something that happens every day. in conclusion, these kids are resilient as fuck, and thank god for that because people apparently just do not give a shit, holy christ

anyway. at least Mt. Lady had gloves

OH MY GOD

I FUCKING KNEW IT OH MY GOD. THE ROIDS. MUSCLES LIKE THAT DON’T JUST GROW ON TREES, I DON’T CARE HOW MANY LBS OF GARBAGE THIS KID HAULED OFF THE BEACH. THIS BOY BEEN HITTIN THE JUICE

Smash!!Might is so fucking shady omfg. probably sells cheap counterfeit electronics on Amazon

oh shit and that’s the end of the fucking chapter lol. that’s it?? that was only eight pages. fuck it, let’s read another. but first here’s Horikoshi’s note on the spin-off

so he really feels that Neda gets the spirit of the series and understands him. that’s very encouraging. the best spoofs and parodies are done out of love. I really think I’m going to enjoy this series

so! onward to chapter two

so here’s All Might dressed as Mr. 2 Bon Clay from One Piece, I guess??

“you know what’s funny? dressing a man in girl’s clothes LOL.” guys can we grow the fuck up. and also acknowledge that All Might can look good in anything, so this questionable gag wouldn’t have even landed anyway. you work that tutu All Might

lmao check out the past users of OFA here

All for One for All theory fucking confirmed lol. just look. that’s him in the back of the conga line. clearly

so Deku is all “hell yes why would I possibly say no??” but then

HIS LIMBS. lmao. sign here

in all seriousness, given the shit this kid has been through since the part of the series, All Might probably should have gotten him to sign a liability waiver of some sort. not that it would have stood, since Deku is underage! anyways Deku you totally have grounds to sue the shit out of the Symbol of Peace should you ever choose to do so. and the trend of Smash!!Might being shady af continues yes please give me more I love it

so now All Might is giving Deku his fitness plan which has a really elaborate name

given that this is Smash!!Might, I can’t help but wonder if this plan is in actuality some sort of MLM scheme. All Might are you trying to get Deku to do Herbalife

lol what in the fuck

the original series skipped right over a hell of a lot, it would seem. like the time Deku traveled to Arizona and fought coyotes in a poncho

I’m starting to suspect that Neda-sensei might be on some sort of substance. “let’s see what jokes can I make about chapter 2 of BnHA. I know, I’ll send the protagonist to a fictionalized version of the American Southwest in a sombrero, and then turn him into a 65-year-old oil tycoon.” naturally

lmao that’s really it, that’s the strip. moving right along. okay??

now Izuku is staring at the intimidating piles of Beach Trash and is all “I HAVE TO PICK ALL THIS SHIT UP?”

omg Deku no

somebody call Marie Kondo. Deku none of this is salvageable. not even to reuse in a color page photoshoot spread four years from now

OH SHIT

PROVED ME WRONG OH SNAP. SHOWED ME RIGHT WHERE I COULD PUT THOSE SASSY TAKES. MY BAD DEKU I’M SORRY

anyways I don’t know what Smash!!Might is so upset about. he probably wove some kind of clause into the contract Deku signed that allows him a percentage of the profits. unless Deku already spent it all on textbooks

what the fuck is this fucking series lmao

time for a round of “what is All Might casually crushing in this panel?” is it (a) a cardboard box, or (b) like, a mini-fridge or some fucking shit. IT COULD BE EITHER. IT MAKES EQUALLY AS MUCH SENSE EITHER WAY. “HEROES THESE DAYS ARE [FLEEEEEEX] OBSESSED WITH BEING FLASHY”

holy shit no wonder he ran away to the Sierra Nevada. it’s only a matter of time before this freak fucking kills someone

NOW WE’RE CUTTING AWAY TO KAMUI WOODS DRESSED LIKE A DAFFODIL, IN THE SAME FUCKING COMIC STRIP, BECAUSE REASONS

my jokes about the mangaka being high as a fucking kite when he wrote this are gradually becoming less jokes and more serious inquiries??

lol so he coincidentally just stumbled across All Might and Deku at this exact moment

AND IT WAS A FUCKING REFRIGERATOR OH MY FUCKING GOD

do you guys remember during the final exam when All Might beat the everloving shit out of Deku and Kacchan, and everyone was all “JESUS CHRIST WOULD YOU LEARN TO FUCKING HOLD BACK A LITTLE THEY ARE CHILDREN YOU MANIAC.” but now we can see plain as day that he was, in fact, holding back. anyways Smash!!Might is terrifying as shit and if this had been the main series I would have already pegged him as the final villain by this point

here he is now wearing an old-timey bathing suit but looking more like an escaped convict than anything else

this panel is actually canon. I’ve decided. this 100% definitely happened at some point. especially the swimsuit

now two bikini babes are walking up and they’re all “IS THAT ALL MIGHT??” with excited sparkly eyes because they don’t know that he’s actually a deranged con artist who crushes refrigerators like empty soda cans. this spin-off has truly opened my eyes

LOOK AT THIS SKEEVY FUCK. JUST LOOK

AND NOW HE’S RUNNING OFF AND LEAVING DEKU TO DROWN IN EXHAUSTION, SON OF A

“SUDDEN BUSINESS” KSJLDKF SMASH!!MIGHT IS A FUCKING MENACE TO SOCIETY AND ALSO DOES NOT GIVE ONE SINGLE FUCK. NOT ONE!! HE’S OUT THERE FUCKLESS, AND NO ONE IS SAFE

now Deku is approaching his mom all serious and says he wants to change up his diet

and she’s looking at the menu he prepared all impressed and thinking that she might join him. as long as it’s for your health, Inko. if this manga starts making jokes about your weight, I will beat it over the head with Deku’s textbooks

OMFG

THIS WENT IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION I WAS EXPECTING, AND THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING I’VE EVER READ WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. the whole fucking family is on the juice. and the fucking mangaka is on some special juice of his own oh my stars

now we’re cutting to Mt. Lady stomping on a car

thank fuck no one was actually in there. also does she not wear shoes

and also, it only just occurred to me that she must be another person with a special quirk costume, because her suit shrinks and expands along with her. Hagakure and Momo are really getting shafted by the costume design team here. they need to fire some people

anyway so Mt. Lady slipped on this carelessly placed vehicle and fell down and crushed an entire building whoops

bruh, you think you’re “ow.” let’s hope that building was empty too

and now she’s toppling another building just fucking because, I guess. and saying she can’t do urban areas

lmao and now the sidekick [CENSORED] manager from chapter one is back to guilt-trip her omg

I need this man to show up in every freaking chapter. please. respect my wishes

and now Izuku is standing on top of his collected pile of garbage screaming in victory

I only just realized that there’s still a big old Pile O’ Trash on this beach, though. someone needs to haul all of this junk away. or else get All Might and Mt. Lady to crush it all with a combined effort

oh shit here it comes y’all, the famous “eat my hair” scene. potential comedy gold right here omg

lol what the fuck

this man is a fucking billionaire and he’s out here clipping coupons and deleting pictures of his son in order to make room for them smdh

okay now we’re doing the hair scene

oh. oh no. I know where this is going sob please keep this comic rated PG for the children Neda

motherfucker they really --

Smash!!Might is a straight-up felon. this man has no fucking scruples. that’s okay Midoriya-shounen, if you don’t want to eat my hair we could just try some REDACTED, jesus christ I am going to need some bleach for my eyes after this

OR LET’S JUST STRAIGHT UP GO THERE WHY NOT

lmao sob. well, two chapters in and we’ve established that no territory is off-limits here. it’s a brave new world. wow

so that’s it! our introduction to BnHA Smash!! I enjoyed it a lot and I will definitely be reading more! I’m not sure what kind of schedule I’ll keep, but this is a really good procrastination manga thus far, so knowing me I might actually work my way through this relatively quickly. especially since the Manga At Large is on break this week. anyways my deepest apologies to the many people who have been requesting for me to start Vigilantes instead. I just need something lighter right now, and this is a good fit. one of these days I’ll get my shit together with the other two spinoffs as well.

#bnha smash!!#boku no hero academia #midoriya izuku #all might #midoriya inko #mt. lady #kamui woods #bnha smash!! 01 #bnha smash!! 02 #makeste reads bnha #the pile o' trash is a legit plothole though you guys #are we just supposed to pretend it magically vanished #they really drew deku standing shirtless on top of a heap of garbage #and in the very next panel declared that the beach was spotless??#so what is the truth #someone #answer me

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isadorcs · 5 years ago

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╰☆╮ LANA CONDOR ─ ISADORA ROSS identifies as DEMI-FEMALE and uses SHE/THEY pronouns. they’re a DANCER, ARTIST, & REALITY COMP STAR, and they’re only TWENTY-TWO ! they’re said to be +PASSIONATE, but also -DARING. i guess that’s why they’re known as THE UNEXPECTED in the tabloids.

death tw, car accident tw, general thievery ?

like this post to plot w her and i’ll message u !!!!!!!

so i know i gave a bit about her in the poll but i wound up kind of combining her and evangeline bc i could so ??? here’s an updated isadora info

B A C K S T O R Y

isadora ross was adopted at birth by nicholas and aria ross. they brought her into their home and spoiled her rotten as best they could. isadora never wanted for anything in her early years.

at the age of six her mother died suddenly of an undiagnosed tumor.

nicholas didn’t know what to do and wound up bringing in aria’s mother, francine, into their home to help him care for young isadora.

isadora never liked her grandmother, her rules were too strict for a young and wild child like isadora. and she hated being cooped up so often.

nicholas threw himself into his work and spent fewer and fewer hours at home. by the time isadora was twelve her father died in a car accident from falling asleep behind the wheel.

isadora was left completely in the care of francine and the pair did not get along. francine was not accepting of isadora claiming to feel different and was not pleased when her granddaughter started calling herself “demi-female” and using different pronouns.

she had been dancing since she was three years old, focusing mainly on ballet & tap.

at the age of fourteen, isadora ran away from home after a fight with her grandmother. she took only a handful of things, including her grandmother’s credit card and ran off to europe, ditching the credit card after landing in the paris airport.

isadora began working as a street painter, making enough to maintain a room in an apartment of an older woman. they would also cook and clean for the woman who couldn’t do much for herself.

one day as they were painting isadora was commissioned to paint something for someone and that’s how it was discovered that she could copy something simply by memory.

a thief found her work and offered isadora a large sum of money to paint five copies of one painting. which she did, because she needed the money.

isadora soon became a part of a criminal crew as a forger and thief. they were small enough to get in and out of places usually undetected, and their forgeries were good enough to pass as real works until they were inspected by a professional.

the crew got caught when isadora was eighteen, but isadora managed to get away and go back to america. they are wanted in 5 countries under the alias “the ballerina” but no one ever got close enough when they were making swaps to get a photograph so no one knows it was her.

coming back to the states, isadora bought an apartment in manhattan and began working as a maid in a hotel, careful to hide her wealth in other places so no one knew how much she was really worth.

at nineteen they gave birth to a son, adrian. it’s rumored that he’s the son of someone she knew in europe, but isadora never comments on that subject farther. in fact, they keep their son out of instagram posts and social media entirely.

last year isadora sent in audition tapes for both survivor and big brother and was selected for the big brother show. they were pretty unknown and a silent person on the show. no one expected them to win. but they were behind some of the biggest blindsides, through casually mentioning names and things they’d overheard. no one realized it was isadora behind it until they were evicted and watched back, or were in the jury house with others.

they won the show with losing only 2 of the jury members votes, one of which was because it was a showmance voting for their other half.

with winning a reality competition under their belt, isadora returned back to the city to her son and began working on other projects. they’ve been a dancer in a broadway show, an artist working on an art show, and

they’ve opened up a “big brother/survivor/amazing race” training camp. where you sign up for either a 3 or 6 week course for one of the shows and you’re tested to your abilities for different competitions and social games.

they are doing their best to not be doing too much art lately. if anyone sees their paintings its possible that they could be caught.

it’s rumoured that she will be going on survivor this upcoming season but she has yet to comment.

P E R S O N A L I T Y

isadora is a kind person, always wanting to help others out.

one of the big things from when they were working with the con crew was that they made sure to help people less fortunate with the money they would get from their jobs.

they are very passionate in everything they do. they give everything their all.

isadora throws herself head first into everything they do, falling in love with everything.

they are also kind of impulsive and daring, usually finding trouble in the oddest ways.

“oh?? this store is closed ?? but someone needs food?? i can pick the lock it’s okay.”

this also leads them to be kind of controlling and bossy. they want things to go their way.

isadora also is good at putting on a facade. they can con people, from previous work as a thief and grifter, which helped her on the competition.

not really family oriented, except for her son. isadora doesn’t talk much about her parents or her other family, but she will gush about her son all the time.

C O N N E C T I O N S

a childhood friend, probably from school or maybe someone who she met on like aim ( throwing it bACK A BIT Y’ALL ) and kept in touch with them.

a dancing buddy, someone who she has practiced with and they’re close maybe.

a best friend, likely someone she met when they ran away from home and moved to europe, wandering around on their own. this person would know the majority of isadora’s past.

exes, isadora didn’t date much, so there would be a couple of exes. they usually had relationships lasting not too long, most of the time it ended amicably but we can always figure out some dramatic thing too.

pen pals, someone who izzie had a writing relationship with. maybe set up through elementary school programs or a friend of the family, it would be someone who they’ve kept in touch with for all these years.

close friends

ride or die

past hookups

neighbor(s) / maybe a roommate or smthn ?

ex best friend

enemies

#excessintro #❏−−− a wild hope appears ツ

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acesinspace · 7 years ago

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Due to the lack of fic involving aro/ace Luke, despite it being a fairly prevalent idea, @astriiformes and I hosted a fic drive. Prompts were submitted to this blog, and 14 fics resulted from 9 authors. I’m leaving the prompt list here, and the collection open if people want to continue to add to it.

I’ve arranged the fics somewhat by era and prompt:

Original Trilogy

From the prompt “...Palpatine planning the same kind of conversion tactic that he used on Anakin, only to be deeply confused when Luke’s strongest bonds are his friends.”

A Thousand Candles by astarsdarkheart

Most humans - and most other life forms that Sidious knows of - have a very specific, and very predictable, weak point. Leveraging it to bring the next generation's Skywalker in line should solve a great many problems. But that requires finding the one unique weak point. And Commander Luke Skywalker does not make that easy.

Corruption by Augustine94

Palpatine is determined to corrupt Luke Skywalker. This should be easy, just like it was for his father. Trouble is, the method that corrupted Anakin doesn’t seem to be working on Luke.

From the prompt "Some time after they find out the whole sibling thing, Luke and Leia are having a quiet bonding moment, and talk about personal things from their childhood.” ... “and Leia is like “Say, could it be that you’re ace?”

After the Battle of Endor by iippo

Luke and Leia get to know each other as brother and sister. Set directly after Return Of The Jedi.

Love, Firelight, and Warmth by SilverInk

Post-ROTJ, Luke and Leia have a quiet bonding moment; Leia helps Luke figure out that he's ace.

Other Prompts:

Cosmos by Fiachra

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together” - Carl Sagan

Figuring yourself out can be tough, but being surrounded by good friends can make all the difference.

He's Beauty, He's Gr-ace, He's getting real tired of the puns, Han by PirateArrowXAB

He expected confusion. He fretted about tentative nods and clarification of what exactly he meant by asexuality, the night ending with awkward conversation and stilted goodbyes.

He wasn't expecting Han to laugh, make a joke, laugh more and fall asleep on the floor, especially given that that was the usual end to their late night drinking sessions.

Ace Pilots by squireofgeekdom

Luke finds a community almost by accident within the rebellion. There are puns.

Outsiders by Szarka

Han has the brilliant idea to bring his friends to a strip club without warning them first. Leia enjoys herself. Luke less so.

Expanded Universe

From the prompt “Some scene with Luke and one of the “love interests” that the eu writers loved giving him (and then killing them off…) except that there’s no romance or sexual attraction involved...”

A Pilot and a Sharpshooter by Augustine94 (@physicsandfandoms)

Nakari and Luke have a much needed talk after the events on Omereth.

A/N: This fic diverges from that prompt a bit because I was conscious of not wanting to overwrite the existing representation of an interracial relationship. So I wrote this as Nakari being bi or panromantic and asexual, and Luke being asexual and questioning his romantic orientation but being somewhere on the aromantic spectrum.

Sequel Trilogy

All are canon divergent from The Last Jedi unless otherwise marked.

From the prompt: "AroAce Luke talking to an aspec/aro/ace Rey or other sequel trilogy characters and helping them understand their identity and just being an awesome mentor/guide."

Connections by squireofgeekdom ( @squireofgeekdom )

This ended up a little less 'helping Rey to understand her identity' and more just starting along the pathway to a greater awareness of the scope of labels and experience out there - talking about attachment in an aroace context and universal connections.

Bonds by Augustine94 (@physicsandfandoms)

Luke and Rey have a talk about relationships and the Force. Other Tags: Background Finn/Poe

Storge by Mostly_Angst_Whoops

Storge (/ˈstɔːrɡɪ/, from the Ancient Greek word στοργή storgē): familial love. Rey and Luke have a lot in common. Other Tags: Background Finn/Poe/Rose

Other Prompts:

The Greatest Adventure of All by Fiachra for PirateArrowXAB

It did occur to Luke that he had no idea of what a cool uncle actually did. Sure, Uncle Owen was cool in his own way, if you squinted, but other than that Luke hadn’t a clue.

Brother and Sister by Augustine94

Leia kissing him is… confusing to say the least. Really anyone kissing him is confusing. (Not Luke / Leia) (TLJ canon compliant)

**If you don’t like these headcanons, there’s no need to interact with this post.**

Thank you to everyone who participated! This was a great success, so I’ll probably run another fic drive in a few months. I’ll create a poll to determine which character is the focus next time around.

#Luke Skywalker #asexual #aromantic #aroace #ace #aro #ace fic #aro fic #Luke #Fic Drive #Fic Drives #Rey #Leia #Nakari #Han #Finally posted this compilation long after I said I would #sorry it took so long #life happened

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jennielim · 4 years ago

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news-monda · 4 years ago

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daveliuz · 4 years ago

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cciportfolio · 5 years ago

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Customer mindfulness

I would just like to point out that this is a complete re-write of this post since all my work on this project was deleted by accident :).

BEGINNING THE PROJECT

We were put into groups of two in order to tackle the brief that was to be given. We were told that we should focus on analysing the customer for this module as sometimes when you are given a creative brief you can often get too swept up in the aesthetic of the product rather than the functionality. There needs to be a balance in order for the thinking process to be more structured.

We were asked to choose between three different briefs to work on so I went with the music label as after listening to the description for each brief as I felt I would have more scope in terms of creating a campaign that I would be interested in working on.

INITIAL RESEARCH FOR AG RECORDS

After being given some information about our chosen brief, my partner and I decided that we should do some research into the music industry and music labels in specific in order to ask informed questions when we meet our client. This is what we came up with:

1. Do any proceeds go to charity or a cause?

2. what social media are you currently using and are you willing to promote any of your music on these platforms or one of our choosing?

3. Do you believe in a stable A+R team?

4. In terms of digital distribution are you in collaboration with any platforms such as Spotify or Apple music?

5. Do you consider yourself an indie label?

6. Do you offer a performing rights license to your artists? how do the contracts work?

7. In terms of promotion are your campaigns structured and can we have access to them?

8. Do you collaborate with any student-led brands? would you be willing to?

9. Do you work with artists with any genre?

10. Are you funded by any councils?

1ST MEETING WITH CLIENT

After meeting with the client: Micheal Gatt, my partner and I were able to clear up some things that we were unsure about. We were also able to make the first draft of a creative brief for ourselves to begin working on. I will list below the things that we learned at the client meeting.

1. Acid Grass Records is a student-led project or M.Gatt would like it to be.

2. There is the option to use analog processes for the creation of new work which is a USP for the label which we can use later on to the market the label.

3. they have no social media presence at the moment but would like an Instagram and are open to suggestions about other platforms but do not want a website.

4. AG records do not currently receive funding for the project from the university but this marketing campaign will be used as a tool to help convince the dean that they should receive funding,

5. style- 90′s style design desired. Gatt is open to a re-branding of the logo etc

6. audience- everyone is allowed access to the label but the main target audience is Kingston university students and is free to join. AG records want to gain more people from campus’s other than K hill.

benefits for the audience include: free recodings, more experience, students currently own all rights to their work and anything they produce.

7. when- sessions run on Wednesday's 4-7pm at Kingston hill.

8. PACE- is currently the only channel used to find the label.

9.events- events can be organised but AG records may not have the time to organise this themselves as they only have a few hours every Wednesday.

10. AG records are a part of Visconti studios at Kingston hill and would still like to be associated with the studio.

1ST DRAFT OF CLIENT BRIEF

MISSION STATEMENT

As a collective, we aim to provide our clients with a diverse range of creative solutions with a view to ensure trust and guidance for artists within the label.

RESEARCH PLAN

My partner and I decided to focus our research by setting 3 objectives each for our 2 audience segments. This would allow us to retrieve more focused answers so that when we use the correct research methods for each objective. In order to collate research which gives a focused result, my partner and I decided that we should have three main objectives to base our research on. See below:

Primary audience (type A- music enthusiasts in and outside the university): Rony

1. To understand channels in which my customer is most comfortable using when selling and promoting their music.

(Instagram poll)

2. To investigate what is the demographic and behavioral economics of my customers in order to understand why they would want to work as part of this kind of label

(interview of musician- audience persona|)

3. what kind of role our audience plays within the music industry.

(online research)

Secondary audience (type B- students from all campus’): Jordanna

1. To understand the channels in which my customer/s are most comfortable using when looking for jobs or for simply a beneficial vocational use of their time as they are students looking for good job prospects.

(Create a questionnaire to discover why).

2. To find out what type of website and social media pages my customer visits.

(infographics and bar charts using online research)

3. To investigate what is the demographic and behavioral economics of my customers in order to understand why they would want to work as part of this kind of label.

(questionnaire to create customer persona research)

*These three statements may be subject to change depending on whether there will be enough time to do sufficient research on two audience profiles. In my opinion, I believe that in order to achieve the marketing goals of the client, the label will need to attract a secondary audience first in order to obtain their main goal of attracting the primary audience to join their label. This will be discussed with the client upon the next meeting.

ACTION PLAN

Whilst managing the project I felt that to create an action plan before collating research ( in order to understand the customer fully) would not be beneficial in this case as the client's understanding of their customer base is too large a scale for the start-up of the label. Therefore, I will be creating this document following my research.

OUR VISIT TO AG RECORDS- VISCONTI STUDIOS

During our visit to AG Records, we discovered that the label is still in the development process in terms of establishing a name for itself and its lack of diversity. speaking to the client Micheal Gatt, we also found that he was adamant about letting us know how important getting the students more involved in the running of the label is to him as he feels that he is doing all of the grunt work himself. We also came across the fact that the studio only opens once a week and there is not much staff to increase the opening times. After being told that AG is an independent label we assumed that it had its own studio, but it shares its space with Visconti, drama, and theatre classes.

We told him our initial ideas concerning the running of the social media accounts after we hand them over. We suggested that we should be targetting creative students to help maintain these but also students from all campus’ that could help with other aspects which he was open to. We realised that the client still wanted to stick with his original USP after we spoke to him. Leaving AG records, we felt that we could create marketing campaigns that reach various audience types within the one campaign but it will hopefully progress into something more than what we started.

AUDIENCE TYPE B

OBJECTIVE 1- To understand the channels in which my customer/s are most comfortable using when looking for jobs or for simply a beneficial vocational use of their time as they are students looking for good job prospects.

CUSTOMER PERSONA RESEARCH

I believe that customer personas should be crafted from using a combination of both raw data (what you can draw insights from) and educated guesses using your intuition. Customer personas are used to inform the marketer what kind of segments within their customer range is going to be. By studying each of their behavior patterns (both online and in real life) the marketer can make informed decisions on where they should place their product in order to reach their intended audience.

After scouring various websites for research that I will reference below, I came to the conclusion that the information that I had access to online did not allow my results to be as specific to my objectives which is what I needed. Therefore, I feel that collecting first-hand research would be more suitable alongside what I have already gathered online. I then put together a questionnaire that included nominal questions and interval/ratio questions which will hopefully make the analytical process quicker and easier for myself. I also decided that the questions that I would ask would need to be specific using direct and simple language. I came across an online article that also suggested that I avoid asking provocative questions at the beginning of the survey such as gender or race-related questions as this is proven to influence how people respond to the questions asked differently.

I chose to begin the research for customer type B (Kingston University students - all disciplines). I carried out this research by creating a questionnaire that would touch upon subjects that I felt brought out answers about audience behavior such as, questions that touched upon the idea that the audience is emotional, distracted, impulsive and inconsistent.

CUSTOMER PERSONAS AND JOURNEY MAPPING

After visiting the studios, I was able to envision a clearer idea of what kind of audience that the label was trying to reach. My partner and I decided to split the research in half as it would benefit us in terms of time management but also due to the fact that we have two types of customers it would make sense to be focused on analysing behavior patterns for the two separately and then come together following this to begin to think about what we should for the marketing plan.

I will use the answers that I will gather from my sample to collate audience personas that will be informed by real answers.

AUDIENCE JOURNEY MAP-

My partner and I decided to create a customer journey map detailing the user experience of a competitor student-led label in order to evaluate the problems with their social media accounts. we chose to use our own audience profiles and described their experience when visiting our competitor's Instagram and website pages.

OBJECTIVE 2- To find out what type of website and social media pages my customer visits.

OBJECTIVE 3- To investigate what is the demographic and behavioral economics of my customers in order to understand why they would want to work as part of this kind of label.

....

AUDIENCE TYPE A

My partner Rony decided to begin the research for audience type A: music enthusiasts and outsiders. He carried out this research by creating a questionnaire that would touch upon subjects that he felt brought out answers about audience behavior such as, questions that touched upon the idea that the audience is emotional, distracted, impulsive and inconsistent. These are his findings...

OBJECTIVE 1- 1. To understand channels in which my customer is most comfortable using when selling and promoting their music.

.....

OBJECTIVE 2- To investigate what is the demographic and behavioral economics of my customers in order to understand why they would want to work as part of this kind of label

OBJECTIVE 3- what kind of role our audience plays within the music industry.

.....

WHATS NEXT?

FURTHER RESEARCH ON SUCCESSFUL SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS

BEGINNING THE MARKETING PLAN- OBJECTIVES

BRAND GUIDELINES AND DESIGN PROSPECTS

CONTENT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

FEEDBACK FROM CLIENT

TESTING MY STRATEGY & USER JOURNEY MAPS

PROMOTION OF LABEL STRATEGY

LAUNCH

CONCLUSION

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labourpress · 8 years ago

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Peter Dowd speech at the close of tonight's Budget debates

Peter Dowd MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, speaking at the close of the Budget debates tonight, said:

Mr Speaker, last week the Chancellor painted a rosy picture of the nation’s finances.

He claimed the Conservative Party’s stewardship had been nothing short of miraculous.

A relaxed Chancellor attempted jokes throughout his speech.

The Prime Minister shoulders shook with amusement.

Many members opposite chuckled away.

Some of the more experienced Members opposite were watching cautiously, as the nose dive gained velocity.

The Chancellor got it wrong – big time.

Within hours he was attacked by many of his own backbenchers.

He was left hung out to dry by the Prime Minister.

Unsurprisingly, he has faced universal criticism over his plans to raise national insurance to 11 per cent for millions of people who are self-employed.

As Sir Michael Caine, playing the character of Charlie Crooker in the iconic Italian Job movie said to his bumbling side kick.

“You’re only supposed to blow the doors off!”

Well, the debris from the explosion is still in descending.

A manifesto pledge broken - pure and simple.

And since last Wednesday No.10 and No. 11 have been in a briefing war with each trying to blame the other for the fine mess.

Ostensibly, No.10 suggests the Chancellor sneaked the NI rise into the Budget.

Apparently, other shocked Cabinet colleagues have indicated that he failed to mention, that it would break their manifesto pledge.

It’s worrying, Mr Speaker, that Cabinet Ministers don’t know what manifesto commitments they made or perhaps they don’t care?

Then again the Government has an insouciant attitude towards its manifesto commitments.

First, the Government committed to getting rid of the deficit by 2015 – a promise broken.

Second, they said it would be pushed back to 2019/20 - another broken promise.

Third, they vowed the debt would start to come down after 2015 – another broken promise.

The Government will have virtually doubled the debt and doubled the time they’ll have taken to get it down.

And this is what they call success and fiscal credibility?

They seem to think that they can simply press the reset button when it comes to meeting their own fiscal rules and no one will notice.

The flip side of John Maynard Keynes’ approach, namely when I change my mind the facts change with it.

When the Government’s misses a deadline it's modus operandi is to set a new one and brazenly move on.

The immutable Tory law of economics – make it up as you go along.

What happened to the long term economic plan?

Well, it didn’t last very long? Mr Speaker

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have their finger prints all over every single financial decision that has been made during the last seven years.

It’s no surprise that they have come under criticism from many in their own party including the former Member for Witney.

Or the former Chancellor, Lord Lamont, who called the NI debacle a “rookie error”.

Otherwise known, in the real world, as gross incompetence.

But regrettably it’s other people who will pay the price for that incompetence.

Mr Speaker, turning to Brexit, I’ll mention it even if the Chancellor doesn’t, it’s the tenth anniversary since the production of

“Freeing Britain to Compete: Equipping the UK for Globalisation”

This publication was a wide ranging policy document authored by the right honourable Member for Wokingham and friends.

It was endorsed by the then Shadow Cabinet which included the current incumbents at numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

The publication was hard to track down as it has been removed from the Conservative Party website and for good reason.

But I found a copy.

Its contents were toxic and all the more so in the wake of the subsequent global financial crisis and remain so.

But in the light of Brexit, and the resurgence of the honourable member for Wokingham’s influence, it will soon be getting a second run out.

Mr Speaker, it is worth appraising the House of a few of the nuggets contained in its pages.

It includes policies such as the abolition of inheritance tax.

Charging foreign lorries to use British roads.

The potential abolition of the BBC licence fee, which it refers to as a poll tax.

The watering down of money laundering regulations.

The deregulation of mortgage finance.

Because it’s the:

“lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.”

Try telling that to someone whose house has been repossessed.

It goes on:

“we need to make it more difficult for ministers to regulate, and we need to give the critics of regulation more opportunity to make their case against specific new proposals.”

Remember this document, dated August 2007, was rubber stamped by the current Prime Minister and Chancellor at the same time Northern Rock was about to go under.

It continues:

“the Government (the Labour Government) claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money.”

That is not quite the case but the taxpayer, at its peak, had liabilities for the banking crisis of £1.2 trillion.

But, Mr Speaker, many people did believe the banks were stealing their money.

It refers to wanting:

“reliably low inflation, taking no risks by turning fiscal rules into flexible friends.”

As for Europe, in search of jobs and prosperity, it says:

“An incoming Conservative Government should go to Brussels with proposals to deregulate the whole EU…”

No wonder they wanted to bury the evidence.

It’s the autobiography of the hard line Brexiteers.

It’s the Tory blue print for a post Brexit deregulated Britain.

It’s a race to the bottom.

These policies are a telling narrative of the views of the fundamentalist wing of the Conservative Party.

The Prime Minister is a hostage to the far right of the Tory Party.

She is on the hook.

The stage directions are coming from Wokingham, Haltemprice and Howden, North Somerset and Chingford and Wood Green with occasional guest appearances by the Foreign Secretary.

The forlorn, melancholic Chancellor is briefed against because he may just have a less hard-line outlook as far as Brexit is concerned.

These are the dusted off policies of the hard Brexiteers who will stop at nothing until Britain becomes a low wage, low tax, low regulation economy.

They want to turn our country into the bargain basement of the western world.

They have the Prime Minister in tow.

Parliamentary scrutiny is a hindrance.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has put Kamikaze pilots in the cockpit.

The Chancellor knows this too well and that is why reportedly he is putting aside £60 billion, equivalent to a year’s worth of borrowing on the national debt to cope with the trauma.

It’s not Brexit proofing the economy but rather proofing the economy from the toxic ideology of the hard Brexiteers.

Mr Speaker, ultimately, it comes down to choices and values.

The Government’s choices in this Budget are informed by their values and they are not the same as the vast majority of people in this country.

The Government propose to increase Insurance Premium Tax from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, a regressive measure which will be a further hit on household finances and act as a deterrent to families wanting to obtain proper insurance cover.

It was a surprise to see this measure in the Autumn Statement, coming as it did from a government which constantly uses the high cost of insurance premiums as an excuse for curbs on victims’ right to claim compensation for their losses, with particularly damaging effects for those injured in accidents at work.

We will oppose this rise.

And while the Government drives up insurance price for millions of families, it has chosen to forego £73 billion of revenue to give corporations and the wealthy few tax handouts between now and 2021.

A choice we would not make.

Their choice is informed by the value they put on elites and corporations, many of whom readily avoid paying their fair share of tax.

They plan to loosen the rules on the Business Investment Relief, increasing the scope for non-doms to avoid tax when they bring funds into the UK.

This is straightforwardly a giveaway to non-doms, which we will oppose.

There is little evidence that this relief has had a significant impact on inward investment since it was first introduced in 2012.

And there is little genuine reason to believe that expanding the relief now will do anything but give non-doms even more advantages over millions of UK taxpayers.

These and other tax cuts for elites and corporations come off the backs of public sector employees who have foregone pay rises for years.

Or those in the private sector whose wages and salaries remain in the doldrums and will for another decade or more.

Or the self-employed who are increasingly driving our economy who will see an increase to 11 per cent in National Insurance contributions.

We would make a different choice. We reject the kick in the teeth to self-employed people.

Not only does it hit many on low to middle income but will it raise anywhere near the £2 billion the Treasury projects?

It may also deter many people from setting up their own businesses, from innovating and excelling.

It’s a moratorium on aspiration.

We would choose not to give tax breaks to those who do not need them.

Mr Speaker, in this Budget the Government claims it’s giving lower and middle earners, the NHS, social care agencies, the self-employed, schools, businesses, pubs, the strivers, the entrepreneurs the thumbs up.

Mr Speaker, in practice, this Budget is not giving a thumbs up to all those people.

On the contrary, it’s two other digits being put up to those people.

That’s another choice that Labour would not make.

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mathematicianadda · 5 years ago

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That which we call an identity

I’m grateful to Jemma Sherwood and Rob Low for reading an early draft of this and for their comments thereon. All opinions are, of course, my own.

This post is inspired by something that I see crop up now and again in discussions with other Maths teachers. It usually manifests itself as a rallying cry to use ≡ in place of = in identities and reserve = for equations. My standard response is to mutter something about identities being equations and leave it at that. But in the latest round, Jemma Sherwood challenged me, in the nicest possible way, to explain a bit further. This is that explanation.

Although I’m going to state my case here, I’m well aware that there are different opinions. In matters of opinion, such as this, agreement and disagreement is less important than that all sides think. So if what I write seems to you wrong, that’s fine so long as it makes you think about why you think that it is wrong.

I’m actually going to give two answers to the question “Should we use ≡ for identities?”. Both are “No”, but for different reasons:

No, because it is trying to solve the wrong problem.

No, because, in the words of Inigo Montoya: “You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.”

The second answer is the one that I usually mutter about when I come across this idea of using ≡ but it’s the first that is the important one.

In preparation for writing this I posted a poll on Twitter with four mathematical statements and asked which of them were identities. The four statements were:

$\sin (180 n) = 0$,

$a^{2} + b^{2} = c^{2}$,

$ (x + y)^{2} = x^{2} + 2 x y + y^{2}$,

if $2 x + 6 = 10$ then $x = 2$.

You may wish to ponder what your answer would be before continuing.

For Some Values of True

From the discussion that ensues whenever anyone posts about ≡, the rationale for insisting on it would seem to be that students find it difficult to distinguish between identities and equations so using notation to clarify the difference would be a good idea.

Seems reasonable. But to my mind, it’s trying to solve the wrong problem.

In the comments around my twitter poll, someone linked to the Wikipedia entry on Mathematical Identity which starts (emphasis mine):

In mathematics an identity is an equality relation $A = B$, such that $A$ and $B$ contain some variables and $A$ and $B$ produce the same value as each other regardless of what values (usually numbers) are substituted for the variables.

Another person gave a similar criterion for an identity which involved, as I understood it, putting “$\forall x$” at the start (or whatever unbound variables existed in the expressions).

The poll wasn’t long published before someone made a comment that slightly let the cat out of the bag. They queried the $\sin (180 n) = 0$ and said that it would be okay if $n$ was an integer but that I hadn’t made that clear. (Actually, they also queried the fact that I’d written $180$ rather than $180^{\circ }$; I must confess that one was due to me not being bothered to hunt down a unicode degree symbol but it really just underlines my point.) After that, some others remarked that they wanted to change their vote as they hadn’t noticed that.

So just putting $\forall x$ or $\forall n$ in front of an expression and seeing if it is still true isn’t a valid test of anything. We have to provide a context for the variables, and that allows me the freedom to make any of my equations into an identity or not.

$\sin (180^{\circ }n) = 0$ is an identity with $\forall n \in \mathbb{N}$ but not with $\forall n \in \mathbb{R}$.

$a^{2} + b^{2} = c^{2}$ is an identity with “$\forall a,b,c \in \mathbb{R}$ where $a$, $b$, $c$ are the sides of a right-angled triangle with $c$ the hypotenuse”, but is not an identity with just $\forall a,b,c \in \mathbb{R}$.

$(x + y)^{2} = x^{2} + 2 x y + y^{2}$ is an identity with $\forall x,y \in \mathbb{R}$, but is not an identity with $\forall x, y \in M_{2}(\mathbb{R})$, the space of $2 \times 2$–matrices.

“If $2 x + 6 = 10$ then $x = 2$” might surprise you: it is actually an identity with $\forall x \in \mathbb{R}$ since it then asserts that for any real number $x$, if $x$ satisfies $2 x + 6 = 10$ then $x = 2$. However, it is not an identity in $\mathbb{Z}/12\mathbb{Z}$ since both $2$ and $8$ satisfy $2 x + 6 = 10$.

To be a valid mathematical sentence, an identity requires a context. My contention is that the real problem behind the equation vs identity debate is that students are filling in the missing context for themselves and often getting it wrong. And once the context is made explicit, we no longer think of the identity as anything special and no longer need special notation for it.

I would also contend that the distinction between a double and triple line is not sufficient. If someone is having difficulty with the difference between an equation and an identity then an extra horizontal line will not make it clear.

None other than the great Don Knuth once said that in a mathematical document it should be possible to replace all the bits of maths by “blah” and for it to still make grammatical sense. I strongly suspect that my students do the opposite and replace all non-maths by “blah”. For example, fill in the “blah”s in these two questions and consider how the different possibilities would lead you down different routes to an answer:

Blah $x^{2} + 5 x + 6 = 0$

Blah $x^{2} + 5 x + 6$

Then add in the fact that a novice learner is likely to overlook the fact that the second doesn’t have an “$= 0$” in it and try to “solve” that quadratic.

If we make the context clearer, we are lessening the work that the student has to do to understand what they are being asked to do. And this is not an artificial weakening: context becomes more and more important the deeper one goes into mathematics. In school, certainly pre-16, it is a safe assumption that the context is “numbers”. It is only later that students learn that the context could be vectors, functions, matrices, sets, objects, morphisms, groups, rings, fields, manifolds, sheaves, schemes, … if I missed your favourite, I apologise.

But even a context of “numbers” can be misconstrued. How many students look at an answer with extreme puzzlement when it turns out to be a fraction? They were expecting a whole number.

And wouldn’t it set up expectations for quadratics and trigonometry much better if we consistently said “Find all (real) numbers $x$ for which …” instead of just “Solve”? And “Show that for all real numbers $x$ …” instead of just “Show that”?

The language doesn’t even have to be that formal, we don’t need $\forall $ or $\exists $ in Y7, but it should make clear the context. It can even be something like “I’m thinking of a real number, call it $x$; it satisfies $2 x + 6 = 10$. What is it?”

So What, Exactly, is an Identity?

I have very few memories of my own time at school, but one that I do recall very vividly is my A-level Chemistry teacher announcing at the start of the course that everything we’d been told up to then had been a lie. “Sodium,” he declared, “doesn’t want to lose an electron. It doesn’t want anything.”

It was dramatic, I’ll give him that, but it did make me lose a bit of faith in Chemistry. For all I knew, everything I was going to be told in A-level would also be a lie (spoiler: it was).

I try my utmost not to do the same in my own teaching.

Of course, I can’t tell my students the whole truth. When teaching about negative integers, for example, I don’t set up an equivalence relation on pairs of positive integers and prove that the operations of arithmetic descend through the relation. What I aim for is the following thought experiment: suppose that one of my students did go on to do a mathematics degree, possibly even further, and encountered some fancy part of mathematics that recast something that they’d learnt in school. What I would hope is that they would feel that the recasting fitted in with the story that they already knew. That if they ever came back to visit, they’d say, “Now I understand why you told the story that way.”

So when I consider something like identities, I think about how the concept is used later on and try to use that to inform how I talk about it in school.

And that’s a bit tricky with identities because, in my mathematical experience, they all but disappear. The Wikipedia page does rather give the game away when it says (emphasis mine):

In other words, $A = B$ is an identity if $A$ and $B$ define the same functions. This means that an identity is an equality between functions that are differently defined.

Thus once we are happy talking about functions, the need for the word identity disappears.

When I think of the word identity, the first concept that springs to mind is the identity function (or, rather, the identity functions since there are rather a lot of them), which might happen to be representable by the identity matrix. There’s also the identity element in a group or ring.

The closest I get to the concept of identity under discussion here is in a topic called universal algebra. Very briefly, this is the area of mathematics that studies operations like $+$ or $\times $ in the abstract. Such operations satisfy relations which are sometimes called identities. These are things like $x + y = y + x$. The catch is that in this area, the identities are imposed. They don’t occur by accident but by design.

This idea of imposing identities also chimes with where I see the ≡ sign used. I don’t think of it as “is identically equal to” but as “is equivalent to in this context”. The classic situation is in modular arithmetic, where I will happily write things like $4 \equiv 1 \mod 3$, by which I mean that in the context where I ignore multiples of $3$ then I can view $4$ as equivalent to $1$. In the wider context of integers then I know that $4$ and $1$ are different, but in the smaller context of modular arithmetic then I can consider them equivalent.

So I feel that I should exercise caution in using the term “identity” to refer to what is an equality of functions, and where the term is used differently later on. Particularly because, as I argue above, using ≡ is unlikely to solve the underlying issue of establishing context.

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thisdaynews · 5 years ago

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The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Pass Gun Control

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-real-reason-obama-didnt-pass-gun-control/

The Real Reason Obama Didn’t Pass Gun Control

After every mass shooting, there’s a new ritual: sharing an old Twitter post from a British columnist that says: “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

But “America” decided no such thing after the December 2012 elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Poll after poll in early 2013 showed a near-unanimous consensus of Americans supporting legislation to close all loopholes in the background check system, and smaller majorities backing bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. A bipartisan background check bill, drafted by Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey, won the support of a Senate majority. It was defeated, four months after the tragedy, by a filibustering Senate minority.

Story Continued Below

America’s gun control majority hasn’t decided that the murder of children is a “bearable” cost for preserving our constitutional freedoms. It simply hasn’t figured out how to overcome the intense opposition from the gun rights minority, in a system of government designed to give disproportionate power to lightly populated rural areas, where love of gun rights runs deep, and intense minority opposition, a category that includes gun owners. Figuring it out is crucial for gun control advocates, and it requires a better understanding of why the gun control push failed after Sandy Hook.

One easy culprit is the Senate’s filibuster rule. A background-check bill like Manchin-Toomey would likely pass without a filibuster—even red state Democrats like Manchin and Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama support universal background checks. But everyone knows that a background check bill isn’t a panacea; several of the most recent mass shooters were young men without criminal records who legally obtained their weapons.

More ambitious gun legislation remains a harder sell. Democrats put an assault weapons ban on the Senate floor in 2013, and it received only 40 votes, with several swing state Democrats who are still in the Senate—Colorado’s Michael Bennet, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, Maine’s Angus King (a nominal independent), Montana’s Jon Tester and Virginia’s Mark Warner—voting against it.

The main problem gun control advocates had in 2013 was not the rules but the lack of a mandate, the product of Democratic squeamishness about gun control going back several years.

Many Democrats had been uncomfortable with gun control since the moment President Bill Clinton enacted the assault weapons ban in 1994, over the private opposition of the House Democratic leadership. When Democrats were decimated in the 1994 midterm elections, including Speaker Tom Foley, gun control was blamed. (In his autobiography, Clinton wrote that the National Rifle Association “could rightly claim to have made [Newt] Gingrich the House speaker.”)

Then the 1999 Columbine school shooting rekindled Democratic interest in gun control, and Vice President Al Gore cast a tie-breaking Senate vote to pass a measure requiring background checks for purchases at gun shows. But the Republican-led House teamed up with conservative Democrats, still scarred by the 1994 backlash, to squelch it.

The gun issue then dogged Gore’s 2000 presidential bid. Under pressure from his lone primary rival Sen. Bill Bradley, Gore endorsed a ban on cheap handguns, along with a photo-license requirement for purchasing other handguns. Gore futilely tried to downplay that stance during the general election, and some Democrats attributed his defeat to it. Shortly before Election Day 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry awkwardly tried to leaven his support for renewing the assault weapons ban, which Republicans had just let expire, by going goose hunting.

And so Barack Obama released an approving statement during the 2008 presidential campaign when the Supreme Court declared that the Second Amendment enshrines an individual right to bear arms, and proceeded to flip several states with significant gun-owning constituencies. In his first term, Obama did not push for gun control measures after the fatal mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas; an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater; and the Tucson, Arizona supermarket that cut short Rep. Gabby Giffords’ congressional career. He continued to keep quiet on gun control in the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

The Sandy Hook massacre, which took place one month after the 2012 election, upended Obama’s second-term legislative agenda. The national trauma resulting from the murders of 20 small children was so profound that Obama reasonably concluded this was not a time for caution and calculation. In January 2013, Obama proposed a long list of measures, including bans on assault weapons ban and armor-piercing bullets and a limit on the size of magazines.

And yet he began his gun control push from a position of political weakness. He had not campaigned on gun control, let alone a specific set of gun control proposals. He couldn’t influence lawmakers with clear evidence of red- and purple-state voters who were dedicated to his proposals. No broad-based gun control movement was in place to apply grassroots pressure (despite the efforts of billionaire Michael Bloomberg to build one with his Everytown for Gun Safety organization).

Meanwhile, the National Rifle Association had cultivated for decades a movement of single-issue voters, fostering a cultural identity around gun ownership that fortifies its legal and constitutional arguments. We now know that the NRA leadership was internally conflicted about how to respond to the unique horror that was Sandy Hook, but the ultimate decision to continue its unwavering defiance against any gun restrictions worked perfectly, and kept most Republicans (and a few Democrats) in line.

Today, gun control advocates are more optimistic because support in polls for their ideas is strong, the NRA has been distracted by internal strife, and President Donald Trump has hinted that he could push for a background-check bill or a red-flag bill. If Trump shocks us all by challenging the NRA and breaking its back, he will have done the Democrats’ job for them. But it remains very hard to fathom that Trump, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would get behind any bill that draws the NRA’s vehement opposition. And any bill that had the NRA’s blessing would not be much of a bill.

The next serious opening for gun control legislation, then, will most likely be when Democrats get control of the White House and the Senate, however narrowly. But to be better positioned than Obama was in 2013, Democrats have to run on gun control now and run on it hard.

Some gun control advocates argue that Democrats have been running on the issue, noting that in the 2018 midterms, most of the candidates endorsed by Everytown and Giffords’ pro-gun control political action committee won, and that 15 House Republicans with “A” ratings from the NRA were replaced by Democrats with “F” ratings.

However, it’s all too easy for winning candidates to wrongly assume that nominally running on an issue means you have won the public’s commitment on it. In George W. Bush’s victory lap after his 2004 reelection, he declared, “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it [on] Social Security and tax reform.” And it’s true that he had campaigned in part on a plan to partially privatize Social Security. But he learned the hard way that just because he said something on occasion on the campaign trail, that didn’t mean the voters were paying close attention.

Once Bush began his second term with a concerted push for Social Security reform, Democrats mercilessly hammered the plan. Public polling for it was limp. After months of flailing and frittering away all that political capital, Bush shelved the plan.

The lesson is that Democrats have to not just run on gun control, but also make it central to the 2020 election. That means campaigning on gun control not only in the immediate aftermath of traumatic mass shootings, but on all the other days when gun violence is still happening off our TV screens.

Most of the approximately 36,000 annual gun deaths are not from mass shootings and not from assault-style weapons. About 22,000, slightly less than two-thirds, are suicides. Others result from domestic violence, routine crimes and accidents. Of the homicides, nearly two-thirds are from handguns, not military-style assault rifles. These quieter deaths, unlike domestic terror incidents with high body counts and flamboyant weaponry, happen every day. They must be talked about every day if a movement fueled by a strong sense of urgency is to be built. Presidential candidates could begin every stump speech with a recounting of the gun deaths that happened in the past week, to drive home the point that every day without action is a day when someone needlessly dies.

Such a strategy is not without significant political risk. There is a reason why Obama did not try to build a robust gun control mandate in 2008 and 2012: He probably would have lost critical swing states like Ohio, Iowa and Colorado.

And it’s one thing to run on universal background checks, which have almost universal political appeal but limited policy impact. It’s another to run on more aggressive yet more controversial proposals like federal licensing, mandatory buybacks and ammunition limits. The co-chair of Iowa’s Des Moines County Democrats recently told POLITICO that some of those proposals, which have been embraced by several candidates in the current presidential field, amounted to “crazy talk” since “there’s a pretty heavy gun culture out here in Iowa, even among Democrats.”

But if Democrats are serious about enacting gun control, then they will have to show that seriousness now. Otherwise, this time won’t be different, and the next time won’t be different, and gun control debate really will be over.

#control #Foreign #Obama #Politics

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onlinemarketingcourses · 6 years ago

Text

The rise (and further rise) of Google My Business spam

Back in 2017, Google proudly told the world that it had eradicated 70 percent of all fake Google Maps listings in the two years prior. They put this down to innovations in machine learning and new business verification techniques.

Two years on, and it seems the machines are today wearing dunce caps and verification is just not working. How else do you explain Google My Business listings like these slipping through the net?

Here are today’s rejected edits: #stopcraponthemap pic.twitter.com/a2vQAJ1rgo

— Brandon Schmidt (@brandonschmidt) March 11, 2019

You’ll note that not only are these spammy, keyword-stuffed business names but that the supposedly trusted Local Guides trying to suggest edits to report them are having their edits rejected. We’ll come on to that in a little bit, but for now let’s take a look at how we got here.

GMB is the new local business home page, social network and feedback channel, conversion path, and…

Over the last couple of years, Google has been going all-in on expanding the functionality and potential use of its Google My Business profiles, elements of which appear in the Knowledge Graph, in Google Maps, and in the Local 3-pack.

Due to this increased use and visibility, and new social features like the introduction of a ‘Follow’ button for Google Maps users and ever-more-prominent Google Posts, consumers are being driven to consider a business’ GMB profile as a single source of truth, even over and above the local business website.

Because of this, GMB has become a wedge driven between consumers and businesses. Searchers can no longer get a first impression of a business created and tailored by the business itself. That first impression now belongs to Google, and for better or worse, search marketers have to make exceptionally good use of the wide range of available GMB features to ensure that their businesses or clients can stand out against their competitors.

With GMB now such a critical part of the consumer’s journey, it’s inevitable that people would seek to take advantage of weaknesses in the system in order to benefit their businesses’ positions. Thus we have Google My Business spam, and with it no end of keyword-stuffed business names, fake listings, fake reviews, and more.

The real impact of Google My Business spam

You might easily dismiss it as a non-issue, but whereas other instances of spam can be easily filtered out using technology, no such filter exists for GMB, and so spam on this platform can have far-reaching impacts.

These impacts have been well-documented in a recent BrightLocal poll that focused specifically on GMB spam. 77 percent of respondents felt that GMB spam made it harder to deliver good rankings for their own businesses or their clients.

Still not convinced it’s an issue? Imagine it this way: you’re a local SEO professional following every bit of best practice under the sun to optimize a website for the right search terms, to feed GMB the right data, and to generate great reviews. You put hours into this work and finally rank well for the required local search terms.

And then you look up the business one day and you see these…

4 fake spam results, 3 don’t have a website listed. #stopcraponthemap pic.twitter.com/BnCgU88qNG

— Jason Brown (@keyserholiday) March 8, 2019

GMB spam isn’t just unfair, it risks damaging the reputations of Google My Business as a trustworthy source of information as well as the many industries which seem to be more likely to take part in GMB spam, like auto repair, locksmiths, garage door contractors, and (though they really should know better) legal professionals.

And although GMB spam isn’t a new problem, it seems to be getting more prevalent. The aforementioned poll asked how listings spam had grown in the previous year.

Fifty-nine percent believed it had increased, and 25 percent of them said it had increased significantly. So the question I find myself asking today isn’t just why is there so much GMB spam it’s “why is there so much now?”

Who you gonna call…?

For a time, Google Gold Product Experts and spam-fighters like Joy Hawkins, Ben Fisher, Jason Brown, and countless others, gave their free time over to helping business owners report spam for removal in the (soon-to-be-defunct for reasons I’ll come to) Spam and Policy board in the Google Advertiser Community Forum. Sure, you could tweet @GoogleMyBiz or message them on Facebook, but this was a great way to add plenty of detail around a spam report and engage with someone who really cared, one on one.

Then Google took over.

For reasons I’m not personally privy to (but would love to hear your theories about in the comments below), Google made the decision to close the GMB Spam forum and instead encourage people who discover spam to report it via a new online form, stating simply:

“We’ll close the Spam board on this community, so please use the new form to report spam-related issues.”

“Complaints submitted through this form will be reviewed in accordance with our guidelines for representing businesses on Google Maps.”

As sad as I was to see the forum close, I rather foolishly believed that this was a sign that Google was going to finally take spam seriously, writing on the BrightLocal blog at the time,

“This week Google finally took a big step towards acknowledging the damage GMB spam does to consumers and businesses alike.”

What a fool I was. I thought that having human staff at the other end of these complaints showed Google was starting to care more, and that the use of a standardized form meant that the process of actioning complaints would be simpler.

Sadly, right now it seems I was wrong. Just follow the popular #StopCrapOnTheMap thread on Twitter and you’ll see an even more steady stream of Local Guides and spam-fighters sharing sadly comic examples of particularly egregious and obvious cases of GMB spam.

Even before this new wellspring of spam, Joy Hawkins spoke on an InsideLocal webinar about the efficacy of making ‘suggested edits’ to spammy GMB profiles (now one of the only recourses for Local Guides trying to fight spam), saying:

“I think it works less and less. It used to work a lot better when Map Maker was around because peers could review your edits, but we’re seeing suggested edits being less useful in most cases. Google’s turnaround time is about 3-4 months, we’ve been finding.”

So we already have a case where:

Google My Business is critical to business success

People are taking advantage of its weaknesses

Google has made efforts to make the spam-fighters toothless

Spam still works, and “the situation is getting worse, not better” (as Joy Hawkins again testifies below)

Looking today, 20-30% of the listings ranking for a personal injury lawyer term in a major city were fake. The situation is getting worse, not better. #StopCrapOnTheMap

— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) March 11, 2019

Then lots and lots of Local Guides started having their accounts suspended for no apparent reason…

Nice job @localguides – 6 years of MapMaker and your program, Level 10 with over 100k edits, only to end up like this… pic.twitter.com/6bMzn0FGLj

— Michael W. Jones (@MJonesOTSC) March 7, 2019

The above is a particularly bad example of Local Guides being stripped of their accounts without reason. While Google’s aim might have been to automatically delete the accounts of Local Guides behaving dubiously (a noble aim, I’d add), when dedicated Local Guides are unceremoniously removed from the program without warning, one has to question Google’s overarching approach to spam removal.

As always, this all comes with the customary silence from Google.

So what can we do about it?

Although the above might come as depressing reading, I must stress that the vigilance of good SEOs trying to do right by their local business clients is very heartening to see, so there is hope.

Google might be clumsily breaking the tools in our spam-fighting arsenal, but we’ll always have heroes like Dave DiGregorio (below) to thank for helping to spread the word about other, clever ways to identify spam:

Great little tip: Looking for spam listings on Maps? Use the search operator ‘allintitle’ to find them easily

Ex: ‘allintitle:car accident lawyer’ https://t.co/gbsTt4i9jt

This will find GMB listings with ‘car accident lawyer’ in the title – which we know, are most likely spam pic.twitter.com/gYcvM9Mby7

— Dave DiGregorio (@deegs20) March 13, 2019

In the meantime, keep building up those Local Guide levels, keep suggesting edits, keep filling out Google’s “Business Redressal Complaint Form,” keep reporting spam to GMB Twitter and Facebook and stay positive.

I still have faith that one day, once Google realize that the issue is damaging trust in their products (and, obviously, stopping business from advertising with them), they’ll invest in far better technology to finally #StopCrapOnTheMap.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jamie Pitman is Head of Content at local SEO tool provider BrightLocal. He’s been working in Digital Marketing for nearly ten years and has specialized in SEO, content marketing and social media, managing successful marketing projects for clients and employers alike. Over this time he’s blogged his heart out, writing over 300 posts on a wide variety of digital marketing topics for various businesses and publications.

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