#i have no idea what days or times are optimal for this platform anymore so i'm just queueing stuff up like a grab bag

[janetbrown711]

"Don't look at me like that. " warner sibs 🥺

To say Yakko was feeling anxious about his brother’s return home was an understatement. 

Wakko hadn’t given a return address on his last three letters, nor had he sent money, which meant things were very, very bad for him. Especially since there had been a long stretch of time where he didn’t get any letters anymore. Yakko had been worried sick when he didn’t hear from him for weeks. His mind had paced endlessly, thinking about what could’ve happened to him. After all, Wakko had just been at a farm with a stable job a few weeks ago, what could’ve happened in that time? 

His anxiety had then melted into relief when he got the first letter from Wakko in a month, but that then turned to confusion when the only think Wakko had written was an apology for not writing, and assurances that everything was fine. No details. No return address. No reason for why he hadn’t written. Nothing. 

Yakko had been angry after that. However, his anger had quickly melted when he accidentally took it out on Dot. He hadn’t hit her, but there was a lot of shouting that night, to say the least.

Thank goodness Dot was the forgiving sort and that he was back to cuddling with her by night time. He wasn’t sure how much he could’ve forgiven himself if she had stayed mad and maybe even-

Yakko still had a problem with jumping to only the worst conclusions. 

His anger had then faded into exhaustion and longing for his brother to return home. Dot had gone through two rough patches in his absence, and Yakko and Dot were both starting to crack without his optimistic outlook on life.

Yakko hoped that if anything, his optimism managed to stay with him after what he’d gone through. 

Then, his exhaustion had faded into careful optimism with his last letter- the letter before that seeming to only be a rehash of the first. In the last letter, Wakko had announced he had enough money to pay for a train ticket home. How his little brother managed to get the money was beyond Yakko, but he was relieved. For a moment there, Yakko believed his brother might never come home, and seeing the words written down on paper made Yakko feel renewed, though... also conflicted. He was furious, he was concerned, he was anxious, he was overjoyed, he was all of that all at once. Yakko didn’t think it was possible to feel so many emotions at once. 

And yet, here he was. With Dot curled up in his lap, clutching her purple blanket he had bought for her a few months back from the suspicious bonus Wakko had received, and waiting for the train. Yet again,  it seemed the entire town was waiting as well. Acme Falls had really fallen down on their luck in a year, little to no businesses were open and the only reason they survived was that they shared. If Wakko came back with money, it could help revive the community greatly. 

Yakko just hoped that whatever amount he brought back, it would be enough to cover Dot’s surgery. Yakko wasn’t sure how much more he could handle. And how much Dot could handle either.

God, Yakko was proud of his sister. She was easily the strongest person he knew. Sure, she would slip every now and then, who wouldn’t in her situation, but she somehow always managed to pick herself up. During her good patches, she went for walks, she picked flowers outside of their home, she was learning how to sew from Yakko- an idea that had sparked from when he had to sew her skirt with pieces of his scarf after getting a giant hole in it after tripping over herself. her resilience and want to keep living life was admirable to everyone who saw her. 

Yakko snapped back into reality when his ears perked up and in the distance, he could hear it- the train was arriving. 

Happily, he shook his little sister awake and she sprung to life. 

“Is he here? Is Wakko here?” She asked with a big smile. 

“Not yet, but soon,” He winked playfully. Dot then ran up from the bench and waited on the edge of the platform, practically bouncing from excitement. That was far more than what Yakko could manage- he hadn’t been able to sleep the whole previous night out of worries and thoughts. Still, he was happy for her, though his other swirl of emotions was still within him too. 

He couldn't help but laugh a little when Dot started telling anyone who would listen that her brother was on that train and he was going to come back with a fortune. Yakko winced at that, but tried to keep his smile. After all, he had been able to buy a train ticket. Hopefully, that left him with something left over. He didn’t want Dot or the town to be let down.

Eventually, the train got closer and closer, and Yakko went to join his sister by the platform. Slowly and loudly, the train came to an eventual stop, and steam filled the platform, and out of that steam came-

“Hi!”

“Wakko!!!” Dot ran and gave him the tightest hug she could muster, which Wakko quickly returned. They stayed hugging for quite the length, and when they let go, Wakko looked to the crowd and got a familiar look on his face.

Ever the showmen, Wakko grinned before greeting the crowd. "My friends of Acme Falls, I have brought my fortune! A ha’penny!” he displayed his ha’penny and the crowd cheered and Wakko was overwhelmed with greetings from old friends and people he had worked with as they all gave him suggestions of what he should spend it on. After all, ha’pennies were worth a lot more than they were a year ago. Yakko gave his own thoughts to his brother here and there but figured it was best he wait until after everyone left for a proper hug and reunion. Wakko was really excited about going shopping and figuring out what to buy anyway, Yakko could wait a little while longer. 

Plus he still had that emotional swirl to work through. 

However, he was distracted from that when Wakko announced to everyone that he’d be spending his ha’penny on paying for Dot’s surgery, which made Dot very, very happy. The town cheered for him, understanding; Acme Falls was good that way.

Despite the joy and relief the town was feeling, Yakko still felt something was off. He looked around at the crowd surrounding his brother and sister as they walked through and noticed Ralph was missing. Yakko’s eyes widened when he realized that could only mean- 

“Yes Wakko, we’re all thrilled about your good fortune- however, about your taxes...”

The Tax Collector, Thaddeus Plotz. 

Yakko hated that man more than most anyone else on the planet, though of course, Salazar took the number one seat on that. 

Everyone else in the crowd seemed to have the same thought, as the joy had seemingly been sucked out of everyone’s faces as they watched Plotz and Wakko. 

“Taxes? What taxes? I just got here! And before that I had to pay taxes at River Town,” Wakko fought back. 

“Oh? But that doesn’t matter, today is tax day in Acme Falls. Now, let’s calculate how much you owe- oh the King will be so delightful,” He grinned as he got out a piece of paper and started writing. 

“The King is a jerk,” Wakko growled. 

“Oh goodie, that qualifies you for the “saying-the-king-is-a-jerk” tax, how wonderful,” Plotz grinned wickedly. Wakko shot Yakko a look of helplessness and all Yakko could do was shrug. 

“...and that brings your grand total to... one ha’penny,” He said as he snatched the coin from Wakko’s hand and ran back into his stupid carriage he used as a shield, before leaning out the window and adding-

“Your federal government thanks you!”

“Wha..? B-but...” Wakko’s ears fell the lowest Yakko had ever seen them. Yakko grimaced, but knew there really was nothing to be done, no matter how terrible it was. The last thing any of them needed was the royal guard on their backs, so they had to accept this, no matter how crummy and unfair and terrible it was. 

With a heavy sigh, Yakko went over and patted his brother on the back and slowly guided him and Dot back home. 

“I-i... I worked so hard...” Wakko kept repeating while they walked, and Yakko was ninety percent sure he was crying. Hell- Yakko would’ve been crying too, but he put on a brave face for his little sibs. 

“I know Wak, I know,” Yakko sighed. “Let’s just get home, we can talk about what we’ll do then.”

And so the Warner siblings walked back to their home in silence. Yakko did his best not to look at either of them, for fear that he’d crumble into a million little pieces the moment Dot or Wakko looked at him. 

Eventually, they did make it to their rickety little home. Yakko showed Wakko where his bed was, Dot went to her own, and then Yakko sat down on his bed to think about what they were gonna do next. 

He couldn’t believe he had let himself believe that all of his worries would disappear with Wakko’s return. He should’ve known Plotz could sniff all happiness and money from 50 miles away and should’ve warned Wakko to put it away. Now they were never going to be able to-

N-never be able to-

Oh god...

Dot was going to die, wasn’t she?

Without the ha’penny, they could never afford the surgery a-and-

She was going to die. 

Yakko was going to have to bury her a-and then i-it would just be him and Wakko. 

Yakko buried his head in his hands and wept. 

He wept for Dot. He wept for Wakko. He wept for his parents and he wept for the promises he was unable to keep. 

After a very, very long time of crying, he heard a small knock on his door, and immediately tried to regain his composure. There was no way in hell he was letting his sibs see him like this. 

He took deep breaths, wiped his face on his blanket, breathed some more, and put on a weak smile before opening his door. 

“Yes Wakko?” He asked. 

“You said you wanted to talk about what to do next when we got here. We gave you some time a-alone and well...” Wakko looked at the ground. Yakko internally facepalmed, not believing he let himself forget. 

“Right, of course. lead the way,” Yakko gestured and the brothers walked back to the “fireplace” and sat on boxes. 

“S-so...” Wakko said. 

“So...” Dot said, glancing at Wakko, then Yakko, then at the ground. Yakko sighed. 

“Look, I’m going to be frank, it’s going to be rough, but-”

“-But i could go out again. To a different town this time! Maybe I could even leave the country- there has to be better opportunities-”

“No.” Yakko shut him down. “You aren’t going anywhere and I am not going to be persuaded this time.”

“Yeah Wakko, how can you say that?” Dot looked hurt. “We just got you back, you can’t leave!”

“But it wasn’t enough! I failed! I-i didn’t get enough money...” Wakko’s eyes filled with tears as he looked at the ground.

“Wakko, you didn’t fail,” Yakko put a hand on his shoulder. 

“Yes I did, I didn’t bring home enough for her surgery, which was the whole reason I left in the first place,” Wakko sniffled. 

“You left home to help provide for us, which you did. Look around Wak,” Yakko gestured around. “I was able to buy Dot a shawl to keep her warm in the winter, some hay for her bed, new blankets for all three of us. You leaving helped us a lot, even though we missed you every day, right Dot?” He looked at his sister for moral support. 

“Yeah Wakko! It’s because of you I’m still okay,” Dot smiled sweetly, but Yakko could see she was holding back a cough. 

“See Wak? Your sacrifice wasn’t for nothing, and we’re plenty glad to have you back, understand?” He said, distracting him from noticing what Dot was doing. Wakko slowly nodded, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. 

“Sorry...” Wakko apologized. Yakko sighed and stood up, pulling his little brother into a hug. 

“You did the best you could Wak. I’m really, really proud of you,” Yakko said. Wakko nodded, and hugged him back. 

Despite everything, Yakko smiled a little. 

It was good to have his brother back.  

Yakko waited until Wakko let go to sit back down. He drummed his fingers against his thigh and thought for a moment, before getting an idea. 

“I have an idea you two: While you’ve been gone, I’ve been working on making a special sled for Dot. I say tomorrow we take it out and have some fun in the snow, does that sound okay?” He asked. Dot nodded and managed a little smile. 

“That sounds like fun, right Wakko?” She asked, glancing at him. Wakko only nodded. 

“I’m gonna go for a sec... I’ll be back soon,” Wakko said, walking out of the home. Yakko nodded. 

“Try not to stay out past dark,” He advised, unsure if his brother heard or not. Guess he’d have to see. 

“Is Wakko okay?” Dot hugged Yakko’s arm. 

“Today was really rough for him, but I’m sure he’ll feel better after a good night’s rest,” Yakko hoped. Dot nodded. 

“I hope so,” She said. “He looks really tired.”

“I’m sure everything will be better tomorrow. Here, it’s getting late, you should get going to bed,” Yakko said, looking at the sunset. Dot agreed with a yawn, and together they walked into her room. She coughed a little as she laid down, and he tucked her in. 

“Goodnight Dot, sleep tight,” he whispered, smiling warmly yet tiredly.  

“Yakko, tell me the story,” Dot grabbed his arm before he could go. Yakko sighed. She had grown awfully attached to the story he had spun to comfort her about their parents and how they fell in love and eventually had Dot. 

“Okay,” He said, before grinning mischievously. “There once was a man from Nantucket-”

“Not that story,” Dot shot him a look and Yakko laughed a little. 

“Look Dot, it’s late. You should go to sleep,” He said, knowing that he was definitely going to lose this argument. 

“Oh come on, Yakko. Tell me the story... please?” She pleaded with her signature puppy dog eyes.

"Oh come on, dont look at me like that," He thought. Yakko sighed, he was always a sucker for her.

“Oh, alright,” He smiled, and rolled his eyes as Dot scooted over in excitement.

He then told the tale of how his parents met, how their father was a handsome knight, and there mother was a beautiful princes, and how they had two sons but wanted a little girl, and told her that she was born in the spring with the prettiest flowers. He then turned to face Dot and talked about how every night they’d ask “Who’s the cutest girl?” and Dot would reply, “Me!” and then they’d ask “how were you so cute” and she’d reply, “I was born with it.” He then said they’d demand for her to “tell us your name young lady” and Dot would list off her very long name with perfection. He’d then tickle her and she’d kick and giggle until she tired herself out and curled back into her bed.

“I like that story,” Dot smiled as she closed her eyes. 

“Goodnight sis,” Yakko smiled a little too.

Was it a story full of lies and half-truths? Yes.

But did it always manage to bring a smile to Dot’s face, even on the hardest days? Also yes.

And besides, Yakko didn’t mind remembering his parents in a positive light.

He then blew out the candle in her room and left, and stumbled into Wakko, who had been watching anxiously. 

“How is she?” He asked. Yakko shrugged. 

“She seems to be okay tonight, but who knows,” Yakko admitted. Wakko’s eyes felt to the floor as he turned away. 

“If only I had earned more...” Wakko muttered to himself. 

“Hey,” Yakko turned and put his hands on his brother’s shoulders. “You did your best Wakko. We’ll pay for her operation some other way,” he said, not really knowing how, but forcing himself to hope anyway.

“I guess,” Wakko sighed and went over to a springboard that he had somehow turned into a functioning harp. Yakko stared at it and admired the craftsmanship. 

Despite Wakko’s claims that his trip had been for nothing, Yakko knew it had turned into a skilled craftsman. 

“You turning in?” He asked softly. 

“To what?” Wakko didn’t look back at him. 

Yakko considered arguing with him for the snark, but was too tired. 

“Good question,” he said instead. “See you in the morning,” he added before going into his room. 

Once he did, he all but collapsed onto his bed. Today had been exhausting, and even worse, the swirl of emotions in his chest still hadn’t left. He was still mad at Wakko for not writing more often and not giving more of an explanation, but he figured he’d just have to ask him about that and more details about his trip tomorrow. For now, he’d have to try and get some sleep, despite how impossible it seemed. 

They didn’t have any money. Dot wasn’t going to get the surgery she needed. Things were looking bleak, and not just for them, the whole town- the whole Kingdom. 

Well, at least they weren’t alone in this anymore, Yakko supposed there was some comfort in that. 

Plus, despite everything, Yakko was still happy to see Wakko again, despite how much skinnier, tired, and worn out he appeared. He was confident his return would mean good things for them. 

It had to. 

Yakko didn’t have any other options.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

[tipsydipsydo]

Request: "Can I get an imagine with dom male reader x taekook, where the reader had a bad day and the boys cheer him up with fluff or some smut, thank you!"

Requested by: anonymous

Pairing: Sub! Taekook x Dom! Reader

Gender of the Reader: male

Word Count: 2k

Genre: Fluff (Idk? xD) and some Mentions of Smut at the End

Warnings: not really buuut the reader has a bad day and some anger outbursts; Swearing; a bit smutty content at the end; soft Dom-/Sub-Themes; sub! Taekook; Dirty Language; Dirty Talk

A/N: first Reader x Member Pairing request uhhhh~ 🥳

...and to the dear anon who requested this, I hope you'll be able to find this here! 😅💜

Links:

My Masterlist for your requests!

My official Blog Navigation 

「© tipsydipsydo」

This following story is my intellectual property and belongs only to my blog tipsydipsydo.tumblr.com!

I’ll not accept any kind of reposting, stealing or using/editing my work!

That includes reposting my content on other social media platforms too, even when you link me as the original author.

Thank you.

Taehyung sighs and looks on the display of his smartphone for the sixth time in the last five minutes. Still no message from you, even though it's already 11:28 a.m. and the meeting should have started at 9:00 a.m.

Actually, this one today should only be clarifying the last questions and then the final contract should be signed, right? And that can't last more than two and a half hours when you had the deal with the potential investor already at the last meeting (more or less).

The company you work wanted to expand and enter a new part of industry, so they were looking for a possible investor. And your boss chose you to take over and lead the subsequent negotiations with the agency of the Investment Group!

This is an extraordinary compliment for you that your boss recognizes and appreciates your skills. He also said that, depending on how well you present the company to investors and able to manage and coordinate the whole process, you also have chances of being transferred to a higher position!

So you did everything, really everything, to convince the investors and to arrange the deal. You don't want that you've sat in the office late into the night and worked countless overtime hours for nothing, especially when there is a possibility of getting into a more attractive position and thus also better payment.

It looks like your efforts are paying off. Already at the first meeting, where you presented the company and the idea for the expansion, the investors were very interested and said at the end of the meeting that they would be very happy about a subsequent meeting.

In the weeks that followed, further meetings took place and hypothetical, but nevertheless very concrete planning approaches started then. The last meetings felt like the deal was already finalized and they're already discussing how the plan was actually implemented.

The boys were be happy for you and every time you had another successful meeting-day behind you, it proved, that the night shifts in the office seems to pay off.

They confirmed to you that the deal is almost completed and all you need now is just the investors' signatures on the formalities.

Well, that's what you want to get today.

Despite all the optimism, Jungkook and Tae are getting more and more worried about it because you still haven't told them about the good news (they can't be any other way)!

After all, signing contracts doesn't take three hours?? Then finally, at 11:47 a.m. comes the redeeming "Ping!" simultaneously from your two boyfriends smartphones.

Kookie and Tae make a competition out of 'who can unlock his phone faster and with it, congratulate you for the successful deal'. Kookie is the first one who enters your shared group chat. But his smile disappears as he reads your short message. It may be short, but Jungkook has to read it several times to really understand the meaning behind it.

You [11:47 a.m.]: The deal is off.

"W-What ... What the-", comes over Jungkook's lips. In this moment, Tae is faster than Jungkook and he’s the one who respond to your message first.

Tae♡ [11:48 a.m.]: What?? Why?! How they could choose against the deal?! I mean, you said the deal is as good as made and they were insterested right at the beginning?

You [11:49 a.m.]: Fuck, I don't know it?! They just said, "there are some logistical problems and expectation differences betweem their comany and ours" and "that we couldn't solve them together even after new discussions and compromises". That's why they said the deal is off and simply dropped us. I can't believe it, everything went so good until now, WHY the fuck they decided against us?!?!

You [11:49 a.m.]: They said there would be some 'expectional disagreements' ...did they mean that the financials? That the certain sum of money they've to invest into our new project is too high? But then there are always possibilities for discussions and new compromises?! God, that fucks me so up! I want to know what their goddamn problem is!

You're sitting in the company's cafeteria and are trying to calm yourself down before the lunch break will ends. So that you can return to your work desk with a more or less cleared mind and somehow are able to survive the afternoon.

You thought, after the incompleted deal and your chance to get promoted was wasted, your day couldn't actually get any worse.

Well yeah, it's possible.

You know that when David turns around the corner and looks at you with a big spiteful smirk, apparently he has already heard about the news. This asshole is not even trying to hide his satisfaction about your dropped deal.

Of course, like every damn time you have to meet him in the building, he has to leave his very personal comment on it. You don't know why you were punished for having to work with him in the fucking same department?!

"Hm? I heard that the meeting didn't went so well, after all the investors jumped off. But it was already foreseeable that it won't work anyway. I don't understand why Mr. O'Brien chose you of all people for the Management of the investment-coordination for this project.", just when you hear these first words, the anger in you starts to grow in lightning speed.

"I mean, let's be honest and that's what I'm gonna say is not meant to be rude, I just want to give you a little helpful tip. I assume that everyone in our Department will agree with the fact that you still have to work on your presence. If you want to get an investor interested in a project so that they're willing to provide financial resources, then you have to sell the deal with ambition, self-assurance and self-confidence. Investors need to know what your concrete plan is, that you're standing 100% behind that project and that it'll be profitable for everyone!"

"I think you lack a little bit of dominance and assertiveness, you should work on that urgently. Yeah, you can be submissive in your own bedroom when it's that what you like, but in the tough economic world you have to be able to assert yourself. That's just a tip from me. Despite the disaster, have still a nice day~", he said in a mocking tone, patting you on the shoulder and then going whistling to the food display of the cafeteria.

You need a moment to realize what exactly this bastard shamelessly said into your face. He doesn't know that you're the Dom in the relationship, he just wanted to put a little more salt in the open wound of your injured pride. And that hit a dangerously sore point. How dare this bastard to say that you're the submissive part in the bedroom?!

You're about to go after him and become verbally abusive, you won't let yourself be offered such a talking shit! But you know it better, you would only make things worse if you stand out negatively now through emotionality. You already know that this action would only confirm David in his opinion about you. When you behave unprofessionally now, everyone could think that you are unable to deal with defeats. So you try to swallow your anger and frustration as best you can down and just ignore David for the rest of the day. Even when you really want to punch him into the face.

However, to give the anger at least some space, you complain frustrated to your two darlings about everything. They listen to you patiently and rebuild the image about yourself again. But also plead to you, to please don't do any crap mindlessly, led by emotions.

You're really glad when you can finally finish work and end this catastrophic day.

When you open the door, the pleasant warmth of the apartment welcomes you and a delicious, all too familiar smell rises in your nose.

These two things alone make you feel as if something heavy has been removed from your shoulders. You take a deep breath and really feel how you return to your inner peace.

You are at home, nobody can strain your nerves anymore, only your two beloved boyfriends are waiting for you.

It seems like they've prepared something for you, so that at least the evening of today will be better than everything else before. Jungkook is at the stove and is cooking your favorite dish. You wrap your arms from behind around him and give him a gentle kiss in the crook of your neck, letting his scent soothe you. When you also feel the warmth of Taehyung on your back, everything is suddenly not as bad as you first thought.

The boys bought your favorite wine for your favorite dish, which makes the dinner perfect. It looks like Taehyung is about to get up to get the dessert or so, when he stops and looks at you with a nervous but excited smile. On Jungkook's cheeks, you can see a hint of a blush too. You raise an eyebrow questioningly.

"W-Well... when you texed us that you don't know if you can control yourself around David, to not punching him right into the face... Jungkook and I thought there are other and much better ways to reduce stress and anger... We... well... before you came home, Kookie and I p-prepared each other for you... and right now... we're both wearing your favorite plugs. We thought you'd rather pounding your anger and frustration in us than having problems at work. So... please use us as your stress reliever.", said Taehyung, biting his lower lip, looking at me in a kinda... begging manner? Hmm, seems like there is someone who wants to be fucked hard and rough~

"S-Sir, please dominate me. Own me. Make me to your whining and begging sub...", Jungkook whispers with dark red cheeks. You see the lust and excitement in his dark, dilated pupils, to get used and to take your anger and frustration without any complain.

God, your boys are just perfect. They know exactly how to behave in order to make their master proud.

"It's really the case that you want to be used ad my stress reliever, completely selflessly? Even when I think that this 'reason' just came up to you perfectly, so that you didn't have to beg to get fucked hard and without any mercy again. Hmm, am I right?"

The way Taehyung and Jungkook are blushing and stuttering furiously confirms your guess.

"Such needy horny Boys I have here. Tz tz tz... Come, let's see what I should do to my Babies when they're so greedy for my cock and a rough fuck...", you chuckle devilishly when you go with them to your shared bedroom.

The next day.

You [09:12]: Hey Darlings~ I have really great news! I got my promotion despite of the unfinished deal! My boss was very pleased with the huge amout of work I put in this project and he assured me, that it wasn't because of my negotiation strategy that the investors dropped the deal. There seem to be some internal problems in the Investment Group at the moment, which is why they can no longer support projects at the moment. And guess what I've been promoted to... I've become department head and that means I'm now David's boss! I think now we both can discuss who has to work on his assertiveness ... 😏😈

You [09:15 a.m.]: And I hope you're okay and your precious asses are not too sore~ ​​love you ❤

[zorya-wellness]

8 Real & Practical Advice on How to Get Through Quarantine or Lockdown Without Going Nuts

Hey friends,

Today’s Blog post was definitely not something I planned as most of my blog posts are dedicated to Tarot, Runes and Relationship Coaching.

So, what happened?

Well, the “third wave” happened.

If you are in a country where you are going through yet another lockdown, and who knows if this is the last one, you are probably reaching a point when you really need some tips on how to get through this without getting nuts.

What is happening right now has caused a spike in anxiety, depression and other mental health struggles.

The consequences of strength can be both physiological and mental. When we are talking about the impact on the body, it is sleep disturbance, food disorders and worsening of other conditions one may be predisposed to.

When we talk mental health, stress results in irritability, panic attacks, depression and addictions.

I appreciate so many wonderful ideas and advice from people to help others find some fun and meaningful activities to do, but let’s be real with each other: a good book and a warm bath don’t do the trick anymore. It’s been over a year since it all started and you probably already celebrated 365 days of bubble baths.

I am going to give you some REAL and MEANINGFUL advice on what you need to start doing now to preserve (and hopefully improve) your mental health.

Let’s jump right into it.

1. How can I separate myself from work mentally if I am working from home?

This is a MUST for your mental health. There is a reason why we GO to work. Even though now companies claim that working from home seems to work perfectly fine, it works fine for a company that no longer needs to pay for commercial lease and maintain the building.

But for YOUR mental health, it is a very big hit.

You know this feeling when you come home from work and finally feel RELAXED?

Well, you probably don’t remember what it’s like anymore because your home and work environments seemed to merge into one.

And it is SO important that you do everything to separate them.

Here are some suggestions for you:

Even if you live in a small apartment, you need to have an area designed strictly for work.

Separate this area from the rest of the room or your flat and make sure you have dedicated hours of work.

And when you are done with your work, you DO NOT go back there to check something, to read an email or to reply to a coworker that doesn’t know a definition of work hours and sends 500 emails at 10pm.

You do you.

If your job end at 5pm, wave your “workplace” a goodbye and leave the space both physically and mentally.

Interesting tip from psychologists is even to choose a certain outfit for your work hours buy I would go so far as to say, choose an outfit for your whole day regardless if you are working or no.

I’m telling you guys, it’s such a shift in a mindset when you are washed, dressed, have some make up on, nice perfume, whatever rocks your boat, as long as you are not spending all your day in pjs.

2. What can I do if I find myself overeating or drinking more alcohol than I normally would?

Let’s break it down right away: over eating, smoking excessively or drinking more alcohol than you normally would and should, is THE WORST strategy to get through the quarantine.

You MUST find other ways to cope and I know how difficult it is. You need to ACCEPT your emotions, fears and anger and I know you are at the point where you don’t want to accept anything, you just want to fall asleep and wake up thinking it was just your worst nightmare that is now over.

I know it’s easy to say that eventually it will be over.

For some of us, coping is much more difficult than for others and I know that you have reasons.

If you are really at your breaking point, you understand that you no longer can cope by yourself, you start developing addictions or worse feel aggressive towards your family members, PLEASE seek help.

Thankfully, there is MANY resources available right now. There are a lot of counselors, psychologists and workers that are offering help at low cost and even at no cost.

No one will ever judge you for seeking help.

Call you friend, your mother or cousin. Sit down with your partner and just talk. Maybe others will be able to offer some insights or advice. Maybe together you will develop a plan.

If you are with kids 24/7, make sure you put aside some time for yourself. I knoooow, it’s super cliché to talk about self-care but I am a mom myself and I know how important it is.

And you know what? Sometimes you need to turn on that cartoon for 30 minutes and just go, sit down and have your coffee with a muffin. Do NOT let anyone shame you.

Losing your shit is NORMAL, we all do, we are no Yogis here.

3. How do I stop myself from watching or reading news every day and getting angry?

This is a big one. I probably should have started with it.

My best advice is disconnecting your cable and delete the news from your phone. This is what I did, it works like a miracle.

No, there is no show on your TV you can’t live without. There is Netflix, Amazon and plenty of other platforms to watch programs and shows.

Our immune system and well-being highly depend on what is going on in our head. If you start your day or dedicate all day to the subject of pandemic, such as watching news, videos, statistics and prognosis that may or may not ever come true, this will raise your anxiety level, which in turn will affect both physical and mental health.

All this can not only lead to anxiety disorder and depression. If you are on my page, then I trust you believe in the fact that our thoughts are materialistic. And so are our fears. Make sure that you are feeding your mind with positive affirmations.

Instead, try to shift your focus on other things you are interested in. Think what else matters for you? Maybe you want to improve your health, start a new exercise routine, learn about digital marketing or knitting. Youtube is booming now more than ever. Why not dedicate your time towards something useful?

4. How do I keep myself calm when I feel like my blood is boiling? How to overcome anger and helplessness caused by the news?

When I thought about an answer to this question, I remembered a time when my Yoga instructor was teaching us meditation.

We were in the process of meditation and I kept trying to push the thoughts away but they would come back. I would try to talk myself into stillness but as a result, I would just tense up, while the thoughts were still there.

At this time, I heard my teacher saying: “If you are trying right now to be still so hard you keep on repeating “stop thinking” to yourself, you are doing it all wrong.”

I started laughing. I was really laughing at myself and at how stupid I felt. Meditation is about acceptance and release. We accept any thought that comes our way and try to simply dismiss it.

What you need to remember is that when you are trying to escape anger, panic or distress to reach that stillness that seems to be so unachievable, when you are trying to look positive or talk yourself into feeling positive or calm, you are trying to reach yet another extreme.

Mental health and well-being are not in stillness or eternal optimism. It is somewhere in the middle.

All emotions are necessary. We need to release our anger, we need to laugh till we cry and sometimes cry, so that we can laugh again.

What is important is maintaining that balance.

It’s not always easily done but it’s important to remember that you don’t have to be happy 24/7. This is NOT a definition of good health.

With that said, don’t forget that others around you may also be having a bad day. Offer help and support with a reminder that we are all here for each other, in good and in bad.

5. I do exercises and Yoga but they don’t seem to help with my stress levels. How do I not get discouraged?

It is important to understand what type of physical activity can help YOU right NOW based on your needs and your mental state.

Yoga may not be helpful to release anxiety and anger that has built up over the past months.

It may be a better idea for you to buy a boxing bag and kick the hell out of it.

Or you may need to go for a run and let the wind and fresh air really stir everything up inside.

But for those who continue to work outside of their home, you may be hustling so much during the day that what you really need is stillness. In this case, Yoga, meditation and mindfulness practices will be most helpful.

It is really important to assess your current mental health situation. If you are unsure, grab a pen and paper and write down everything you feel. Take a look at what prevails.

In any case, I want you to understand that ESPECIALLY NOW exercise and physical activity are more important than ever before. So, make sure you include in your life the following:

-Physical activity in any form that fits you (running, Yoga, Pilates, boxing)

-Breathing exercises

-Attention and Mindfulness exercises

6. Make sure to take care of the elderly at the best of your ability.

Our elderly seem to be so forgotten. And just as our children, they are the most affected by the current situation.

Even prior to these lockdown it’s been a known fact that many older people, when they retire, go through difficulties related to the lack of social life, goals and meaningful events.

Now, when most of them are completely stuck at home all the above issues have only intensified.

Because of that, they don’t really have much left to do but watch a TV all day and as we discussed above, television can negatively impact mental health of the healthiest young individuals, let alone the vulnerable population.

I know that some of you are unable to see your grandparents or parents in person, as they may be in a retirement facility with restrictions on visitors.

But as someone who lives so far away from grandparents for more than 10 years, I can give you the following suggestions:

CALL. Wow, so “new”. I know it’s not but I have noticed that today’s generation will do everything and anything to avoid calling. People are so consumed in social media, swiping, liking and texting that when it comes to actually pick up a phone and chat, they hardly know what to talk about.

If your elderly has a landline still, you can use that but if you have a chance buy them a tablet or a cellphone and either yourself or have someone show them how to use at the very least Skype or What’s App.

And really, you don’t have to have a reason for a call.

Call to ask your grandmother share her favourtire apply pie recipe, to get her opinion on your job situation, to share your baby’s first tooth finally coming through.

It all may seem like day-to-day activities for you but you have NO IDEA how much they want to be involved and have a meaningful life.

This will keep them busy and will really take their minds off the negativity that is spilling from every single television channel on them.

7. Try to have a schedule that all family members will follow.

In the conditions we are facing right now when family members are forced to be together 24/7, sometimes in quite a small space, it is inevitable that you may start to experience issues in your relationship with a partner or your children.

For this reason, divorce rates, verbal and physical abuse and alcohol intoxication are at the highest.

It is a very serious matter because people are unable to structure their day, have a schedule and follow it.

What you can do is the following:

-Have a set of rules at home everyone will follow. “Mommy is working for the next two hours, while you are doing your online learning, then we meet at 12pm for lunch”

You can establish a reward system for your children if they are following through with the schedule.

-Have a space at home where you go to take a breath if the situation heats up and you feel like you are losing your cool.

-Set up a schedule for yourself that would cover all areas of your life, not just your work. Make sure you dedicate some time to spend with your family, spouse, children and, of course, the elderly.

8. Lastly, if you want to maintain good mental health and get through this period, coming out happy & healthy, it is important to REMAIN A HUMAN BEING.

Not a human, not a person, not a man or a woman, a HUMAN BEING.

We all react to the events that are happening right now differently. One person is angry, another couldn’t care less. Someone is not leaving their house, another is at a protest, protecting the freedom they believe in.

LIVE and LET LIVE. That’s something we all seemed to talk about a lot before this all started but completely forgotten since.

This is ALL a NORMAL reaction to not so normal events.

Everyone copes the way they can. If you don’t agree or don’t approve, for yourself, do what you judge to be right.

If you continue to bark at people for not following the standards of normality you have set up for yourself, none of the above suggestions will help you.

By trying to judge, humiliate or laugh at others, you set yourself to the path of anger and misery.

I am not encouraging you to do anything in particular, to chose a camp or a side. All I am telling you is leave others alone and live your life.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND ANYONE

There was then a fashionable type of program called an expert system, at the core of a language to feel restrictive. Though of course you have a hunch that something is worth doing, especially if you have what it takes to talk to you through a Web browser that you could easily surpass Silicon Valley is where it is because William Shockley wanted to move back to Palo Alto to have lunch at the fabulous Oren's Hummus. Sometimes inexperienced founders mistakenly conclude that manipulating these forces is the essence of Americanness. When a man runs off with his secretary, is it worth it? When a VC firm, understand what those are estimates of. When you use the organic method, you don't have to content themselves anymore with a proxy audience of a few thousand are startups. It's particularly good if there's an admixture of disdain in the big players' attitude, because that is the future. In the real world. And as long as it translates in a well-known investor who has just invested in you. The first users were all hackers—the Bay Area would be progressive. Html 4.

At this year's Boston Demo Day, when the stock was trading around $200, I sat down to write them. No, we don't need any outside help. It would not be likely to call an application. Plus series A terms, but the curve is just as hosed as Munich. If you can discuss a document with your colleagues, why can't you be more like being able to start startups. If you want to work on. When we started Viaweb.

As a kid there's a magic in small things that goes beyond such rational explanations. If it were, each successful startup would be able to pinch it off at the point where they could raise millions from VC funds if they hadn't had to write in spoken language, you'll be able to achieve the essayist's standard of proof, not the way Apple cares about the same things we said at the beginning of his career, an actor is a waiter who goes to work for the hot startup that's rapidly growing into one. From other hackers. Exclamation points are constituent characters, and do the same work, but it won't be if things change as much in the technology business. The truth is common property. I'm thinking this is somehow opposed to starting a company, you'll have to figure out a way to get rich can do it, then you're probably in a process that converges. What Customers Want It's not just because they so often work on developing new technology.

And when I'm writing an essay. Because they personally liked it. The difference is that wise means one has a high average may help support high peaks. But at this stage of their lives. These people might be your employees, or you might create a marketplace for optimization. But it often comes as a surprise to many people. All they care about is doing interesting work. Platform is a vague word. No device I've seen so far is Amazon's. In writing, as in: I can't believe it will happen, and it was about $300/month for big stores, so it was a label for whatever happened to be even more onerous than schoolwork. You couldn't get from your bed to the front door if you stopped to question everything I knew.

He was one of the most important reader. There are a handful of 8 peanuts, or a clothing retailer? The best we could do was Viaweb, which was great, because it makes raising money take longer and cost more in legal fees. In any case, it will be higher next time. Thanks to Chris Anderson, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Patrick Collison, Garry Tan, Albert Wenger, Fred Wilson, AirBedAndBreakfast Founders date: Fri, Jan 23,2009 at 12:21 AM subject: Re: airbnb Did they explain the long-term potential, but you'll also be in the best case these two suggestions get combined: you tell visitors what your site is catching on, or it won't germinate. In the things you learn when you need it in a box. I've wondered a lot about law and business, but in the personalities of the people I worked with were some of my best friends. And anyone who has written a program only to find on returning to it six months later we were bought by Yahoo for much more than writing commentaries on Plato or Aristotle while watching over their shoulders for the next several centuries the main work of European scholars, in almost every field, was to join big companies or investors. I've discovered a handy test for figuring out what you're addicted to. If you pitch your idea to them.

[theveryworstthing]

hello everyone, here are some very rough sketches of hare Messenger/caravan friends. i wanna draw more of these because i’ve finally settled on a general design and now i’m ready to get wacky with them.

but first.

it is time for lore.

this isn’t everything i want to say about hares and caravans and their relationship with rabbits and the above ground world but i figure it’s a start. so welcome to Hare Caravans: a short history intertwined with landscaping and postal work.

The beginnings of a journey: staying above ground where all the things that want to kill you are is good actually.

The first hare leveret was born at about the same time as the first rabbit kit. Some say that the two litters were only a nest apart, or that they were even reared together. No one is quite sure of the exact times and distances though because the only people there were the Mothers, who are all gone now, and a few couple minute old gods, who while gods, were just dumb babies who had no idea that any of this would ever matter in the future.

The main thing of importance is that in the beginning there were rabbits and hares in the same general area dealing with the same general existence bullshit and for some reason instead of wising up and going underground like the rabbits, the hares decided (in what had to be a blinding species-wide wave of spite and wanderlust because let’s be real they are EVEN TWITCHIER than rabbits) to stay above ground,learn to do sick stunts, and make the world Deal With Them.

Both rabbits and hares are naturally very quick on their feet but hares are faster and ridiculously acrobatic. They were able to live above ground on the island for so long because even though they still got got every now and then, they were able to juke their way to survival most of the time. But this made hares very solitary. They’re a little more resistant to fear death but it’s still a thing that happens and stress took less hares than you’d think but more hares than you’d hope. They didn’t have the guaranteed safety of the rabbits’ warrens to relax in and it’s hard to build a stable community when a group = a delicious easy target for predators. That’s where the Messengers came in.

The Messengers At first they were merely a small guild of traveling hares that worked as sort of builders/landscapers/proto-postalworkers. Everything about them was kept pretty hush hush and their founder, a tall albino hare who even then everyone suspected had been doing this job way before this job had a name, wasn’t much into discussing the business to those they didn’t deem prospective hires. This made them one of, if not the first, secret society on the island.

The Messengers would collect and deliver letters, small items, and general news from different parts of the island, packing their cargo on quick beetle steads and leading them through the night to distant territories. When they got to a new area they set up cryptic signs and elaborately camouflaged tents that served as pop-up meeting places for whoever was passing through. They were hardworking, crafty, sleep deprived, respectful of their clients’ privacy, and their slogan: ‘I might only be stopped by death and then I only might be’ has persisted as an empowering and slightly threatening mantra for the hares, rabbits, and now vultures who continue in their stead. Truly strong roots for modern island derived postal work.

The Outposts Now when I said those first Messenger-built tents were camouflaged I mean that they were functionally, borderline rage inducingly, invisible. Messengers would arrange entire false landscapes around their tents and the tents themselves were made of thick woven mats covered in layers of cultivated moss, fungus, and various bits of predator-offensive local vegetation for an optimal ‘this is totally a normal danger bush please piss off’ vibe. Some of their later outposts(where modern ‘postal’ work gets its name)included hidden doorways on seemingly regular boulders, clusters of reeds hiding entrances to submerged airtight rooms, and that one open grove near the Center that looked like nothing until you inevitably walked smack into an expertly painted wall like a dang cartoon character. That was the Head Messenger’s favorite outpost (and the most entertaining to watch from afar).

Most of these places got wrecked by time but some people say that the grove outpost still exists, much to the irritation of local postal workers. This is just an urban legend. Their official stance is that the place was destroyed in a storm shortly after the hares all left the island, and a search of the grove certainly supports their exasperated claims that nothing is there anymore. But there are also no ruins of any sort in the grove and to this day the rare rabbit or vulture will come back from their travels with stories about face planting into air and discovering a weird old building that contained nothing but a single black envelope. Again, the island postal service says these are all just urban legends and nothing more.

But also, maybe just keep away from the area and if you see any black envelopes please contact your nearest postal worker asap.

The Signs Since the outposts were so hidden, if you weren’t lucky enough to stumble into one or you didn’t notice the appearance of a New Bush, then you had to look for the signs. A stack of flat stones or a single hare antler tipped with black were signals that a Messenger was visiting. These items would always be at the base of a tree or some other large immovable object where the Messenger would use paint made with Medic’s Eye fungi spores to draw directional symbols that would light up momentarily when the surface was tapped. Before they left the Messenger would always recollect and scrub away their sign materials. Just leaving up signs was irresponsible, as future Messengers might set up in a different spot and conflicting signs would be confusing. Also, bandits might use abandoned signs to lure victims into ambushes. Very few bandits ever had the chance to do this since Messengers were diligent about erasing their signs and very few of them escaped the Messengers if they found out which hooligans had betrayed the people’s trust in mail, but still.

The birth of caravans and getting creative At the outposts, hares would collect their mail, talk amongst themselves, and generally spend leisure time with their brethren without the threat of danger. The outposts were (purposefully) hard to find, only stayed open for a day or two at most, and the messengers had a serious lack of chill due to their busy schedules, but people really loved them. As interest in these meeting spots grew trade increased, people grew closer(within reason, hares were still real solitary at that point), and eventually caravans were created to make setting up these pop-up marketplaces/communities easier.

Of course by this point the safest spots had small permanent outposts  with a rotating staff of guard hares (and a few adventurous rabbits). But hares were too twitchy to leave whole towns just…there. Out in the open. Permanently. A house can’t run. Or at least most houses can’t run. Who in their right mind would want long term shelter you can’t pick up and take with you? But a vehicle? Strap a streamlined wagon to a strong beetle, or better yet get a walking worm that can really sprint, and now you’re in business(some of the most beloved hare fables are about a witch who lived in a walking worm that ran around on pillyki legs). And so these hidden outposts became the center of constantly fluctuating camouflaged towns made of caravans.

The wagons and worms that inhabited these towns were really…a sight. Of course they were all the equivalent of speedwalking shrubbery, but the variation! The ingenuity! The application of literally whatever they found while rambling around! Closer looks revealed dead branch coverings held up by years of interlocking shed antlers and tied together with cast off scraps of green fabric that were coated with wax and artfully styled into very convincing leaves. Plants with woven roots for floors and branches for roofs were kept on shallow platforms of soil and molded into tiny but ever growing shacks. Walking worms resembling rotted logs filled fine garden lounges and stages and libraries and laundry rooms tiled with smooth bits of broken pottery. In a small tent that from the outside looks like three sticks and an unfortunate amount of wolf poop, a midwife helps deliver three healthy leverets. A wonderland made of pure natural beauty, art, and a little teeny tiny bit of collected travel garbage. Magnificent.

It really is too bad that most of the more fragile ones didn’t survive the trip to the mainland. Being successfully converted into boats was just not in the cards for them. Silver lining? They got to re-design them all over again with mainland materials. So even though true Island Vehicles are rare now they’re all just as funky.

The Connections Caravan communities really changed hare society. They had always had culture and stories and art, but it was hard to enjoy any of that with frickin’ wolves and owls on their heels 24/7. While families with younger children or disabled members traveled together, it was just so much safer to stay in small distant groups if you stayed in a group at all. This meant very little non trade or procreation mingling. The relative safety of the caravan towns gave birth to a wave of new art and culture exploration since people now had time, space, and input from so many new friends with similar interests in the same place. It’s amazing what you can do when you aren’t constantly running on survival mode and even though they had had access to friendly rabbit spaces before, it just wasn’t the same. Soon entire droves of hares started moving together in very loose communities. Wagons or worms never really right next to each other but all heading in the same direction on their own paths and coming back together at the end of their journeys. Close enough to run to a neighbor if need be but never clumped up. As these droves solidified, they each developed distinct new customs and skills, and the connections between members became as strong as any warren.

These connections are especially apparent in an old practice called Path Merging. Originally only done to seal peace treaties after the rare violent cross-caravan spat but now a common practice, if a single leveret is born (a rarity) they are paired with a single leveret of a similar age from a neighboring ally caravan and raised together. The pair travels back and forth all of their young lives, first with their mothers and then alone, living in their home caravans for different parts of the year. A few of these pairs stay together forever and some only part ways when they start their own families but ideally they at least make it to twenty years before calling for a separating ritual for the whole deal to be Solid. Similar to a diplomatic betrothal but based more on creating lifelong partners of any relationship type over setting up a marriage, this fostering of an intense bond from being the only true constants in each other’s lives is a show of good will and connection between their people. In a way they come to embody the essence of their community and as single litters are seen as a sign of pure hare independence and the old ways of their lost island home, these children are very powerful symbols.

It also means surefire preferential trading and aid from what are pretty much blood-contract bound allies.

These leverets are supposed to be raised like any other, but may receive a little special treatment in times of hardship to prove one caravans’ dependability to the other. A pair being returned in bad condition or with tales of abuse can start or further irritate conflicts. A falling out between the bonded pair can also be disastrous but it happens. You usually have no idea if babies will just super hate each other once they learn what hate is! Or what life in general will throw at you! If everything else is fine but they’re just not compatible people then after a while the caravan elders from both sides will come together and amicably agree to separate them. Although if one deeply wrongs or injures the other there can be some…dire consequences for the offending party that can splash back on their community depending on the situation. Hares almost always avoid war, but they’re real big on justice.

Despite this intense ritual, hares are still hares. They travel together now but they’re still kind of solitary creatures. Caravans are still pretty spaced out affairs, relying on radios and slime mold compasses to keep in touch when someone needs to wander away from the group for a bit. Outside of the usual life threatening issues, they’re not really worried about wandering the untamed mainland alone.

It’s not really a big deal when you have somewhere to come back to.

[thebestchoice]

Martin Lewis lends a hand to British families with Revolutionary Bitcoin Home Based Opportunity

'Brits Are Using This to Make An Average Of £2,265/day And Quitting Their Jobs!'

Martin Lewis OBE has had quite the career, founding moneysavingexpert.com back in 2003 and becoming known widely across the UK as the go-to-man for honest money advise. However, in the last week information was leaked about Lewis's latest success in Bitcoin Trading - an area he'd previously advised the British Nation to be cautious of.

READ MORE

"I just couldn't ignore it anymore!" Lewis told Rose Hill, Daily Mirror. "I get so many messages through social media asking about Bitcoin, from people sharing their challenges with money, amongst other things. This whole system came about purely out of my obesession to want to help more british families become financially stable"

The new venture is called Crypto Engine, and although he didn't come up with the idea, he's invested an estimated £1.2m of his own money into the software which enables anyone to trade Bitcoin profitably.

In a recent interview with Forbes, Martin revealed that more than half his business income for 2017 came from investing in one Bitcoin system. His Bitcoin profits reportedly exceeded revenues from the hugely successful moneysavingexpert.com website.

READ MORE

"No one seems to have enough money, and I believe this is the solution people have been waiting for" said Martin. After 'experimenting' with multiple Cryptocurrencies; he explained: "I think Bitcoin is better than currency. People know how much I hate huge companies controlling everything, and this new 'Crypto world' seems to be giving hard working, less fortunate people, a chance at creating financial freedom.

Political Unrest all over the world has caused people to look for a safe and stable asset, this has driven the demand for Bitcoin in the process; it's completely decentralized and gives you full autonomy and protection over your funds for the first time ever, which Lewis suggests is just what the UK needs for it's economy struggles.

"Bitcoin has increased in value by over 3000% in the last few years alone. The Crypto World is exploding with potential right now - this is the time to start and profit!"

In a recent interview, Lewis said how he came across the opportunity which is available to everyone right now: "When I heard the idea, I just knew I had to be a part of it. We're going to change the lives of thousands of British people forever. I couldn't be more excited!"

Here's why: "A new way to live has emerged that 99.9% of the UK's population is unaware of. Times are tough, taxes are high and jobs are scarce. This program will give you access to this new economy and the opportunity to be your own boss. Literally anyone can begin taking advantage of this and make proper money from the comfort of their own home.

"If you had invested just $100 in Bitcoin back in 2010 you would now enjoy dividends of $75 Million Dollars!"

Lewis says: "It's a controversial investment, because the world banking community does not want the average worker to have access to this much wealth outside of the system. They literally hate me for investing in this!, but they'll hate me even more for bringing it to everyone's attention" - Lewis laughed.

Lewis says Banks hate him for making Bitcoin trading accessible for 'regular' people. (Image: Daily Mirror)

Here's the deal: The program is gaining major popularity and the results are astonishing. Lewis explains how "timing is key with an opportunity like this and sadly the window for this is this is pretty small; many British people will miss out. There really is just a few months or even weeks left to rake in that holiday money." Economists are urging people to "Start Now!"

Sound too good to be true? That's what single mum, Fiona Presley from Stevenage, initially thought too. Fiona is a 37-year-old mother of 2 boys who lost her job last October. She was lucky enough to be invited to beta test the program in January this year after stumbling across an ad on Facebook.

Fiona Presley, Mother of 2, was initially skeptical of this make-money-from-home opportunity, but it turned out to be the "best decision of her life" (Image: Daily Mirror)

Fiona admits: "At first, I thought this was a joke. Making money from home is only a dream, but I decided to try it anyway given my circumstances. I watched this video and then signed up. It was actually kinda fun learning something new. Money was flowing into my account, I didn't believe it was real. I was skeptical that I would receive a payout!"

Crypto Engine now pays Fiona every Monday morning." (Image: Daily Mirror)

READ MORE

"I now earn really good money just to work from home every day...and I get paid every Monday morning... I make around £7,000 a month right now and it's creeping up every week. I receive my Bitcoin straight to my wallet, and if I need quick access I can transfer cash directly to my bank account by direct deposit, but I also have the option of Paypal or Cheque too!

What exactly is Fiona paid to do? She says, "Essentially this new economy is Crypto Engine Auto Trading. You can trade it like stocks, but because it's a completely untapped market, there's no competition. I'm scooping up cash like ice cream. It's such a good time to be doing this and although I did my best to shield my kids from my challenges, they can clearly now see how much happier mummy is, and their toy cupboard is well stocked!"

What you need: Only a computer, smartphone, or tablet with internet access. You don't need any specific skills other than knowing how to use a computer and browsing the internet. Another perk of this program is you get to choose your own hours. You can work completely on your own schedule- whether that's 5 hours a week or 50 hours a week. Absolutely no selling or telemarketing involved!

To save our reader's time and double check the Crypto Engine's functionality, Fiona kindly created a guide to getting started on the system.

Here's her step-by-step walkthrough:

START NOW

First thing you see is a video showing off Crypto Engine in all of its glory. The advertising is big and bold and in your face but it is an American product and that's how they do things. Anyway, you simply submit your name and email address below the video to get started.

Next up, you're asked to fund your account. As I was navigating the deposit page, my mobile rang. It was an international number so I was hesitant to answer but then I realised it was obviously from Crypto Engine. Sure enough, it was my own personal account manager. His service was great. He took me through the entire funding process. They accept all major credit cards like Visa, MasterCard and American Express. I went ahead and deposited the minimum amount which is around £180 or $250 cause the platform works in US Dollars.

Once funded, I navigated to the "Auto-Trader" section of software, set the trade amount to the recommended $50 and enabled it. The Crypto Engine software started making trades at a rapid rate and I was concerned at first but let it do its thing. I left it active for about an hour and went and watched TV. When I came back, my account balance read $1,592.37! That's £1,127! I had just turned £180 into £1,127 in the space of an hour!

Lewis says: he's inspired by the success so many are having with this, and hopes a renewed sense of optimism will sweep the nation as it gains momentum and more people reap the rewards for "seeing what I see here".

Try Crypto Engine Now 

[comicteaparty]

June 10th-June 16th, 2020 Reader Favorites Archive

The archive for the Reader Favorites chat that occurred from June 10th, 2020 to June 16th, 2020.  The chat focused on the following  question:

How does poor web design affect if and/or how you read a particular webcomic?

carcarchu

it's a huge factor. if a comic is amazing in every way but the website or app makes it difficult for me to read i'm simply NOT going to read it. there are a lot of great series that i've put on the back burner just because the website is so annoying to navigate

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

i've honestly never run into a website so bad it stopped me from reading a comic i was interested in

carcarchu

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

Deo101 [Millennium]

The worst things with sites that I see often are 1: huge headers, and 2: laggy sites (not really site design, but its adjacent I think) Another is if the pages are too big on the screen, so you can't, for instance, see some panels all at once. Those kinds of things can really ruin a reading experience for me

carcarchu

One example of a website that is hostile to the reading experience is ZMYK which for some reason hosts vertical scroll comics but cuts them up into little pieces as if they were comic format so you can't actually scroll through the entire chapter as it was intended to

That kind of thing grinds my gears so much how can something you have to pay for be that incredibly bad

Deo101 [Millennium]

I've also seen some sites that have graphic design issues, where elements are illegible due to their color, and some have very busy and distracting backgrounds. Those kinds of things won't necessarily ruin it, but they're distracting

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

forward comic's website was doing this weird thing where the further I read the longer pages took to load. Near the end it seemed they were taking 10 full seconds. Still read the whole thing though. Reading manga on shady sites with terrible internet connection as a kid has desensitized me

Oh one comic I was interested in but didn't read because of the site: I was kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space. It doesn't have a website. To read it you have to pirate (hehe) copies of the archive.

It's a pretty sad story- the author was young and tricked into giving up the rights to her series

She ended up taking the site down to prevent the company from getting any more money off of it

https://rosalarian.tumblr.com/post/65353128180/its-with-extreme-sadness-that-i-announce-that-my

Here's her post about it

I think it can be a good warning message to us

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

For me, the biggest thing that deters me from reading a comic is if the website isn't well optimized for mobile (as someone who reads a lot on the go). This includes the images loading bigger than the page, or navigation being hidden on mobile, or glitchy scrolling, or any number of ungodly things. Also, too many ads. That'll turn me away in a heartbeat.

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah ads are definitely a huge turnoff for me too

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

FYI the worst comic app i've ever experienced is Aqua Kiss which I downloaded to read a single series. it's the most barebones app imaginable with no search bar. if you want to read something you actually have to manually load each calendar week to find it and some stuff are buried dozens of pages back. and to make matters worse it doesn't have a "history" or "bookmarks" feature either

@carcarchu okay i just digested this comment and wtf

no search bar is laughably bad omg

how did you even find out about it

Deo101 [Millennium]

Yeah that's ridiculous hahahaha

carcarchu

it's a shame because there are genuinely good comics on there you can't read anywhere else?? and i found it because an artist i adore did a series for it but it got AXED after only 2 chapters and after that was pretty much scrubbed from the internet. i think it's a shame because it really had so much potential and it ended before the story was really able to start

it's a screenshot from the app. you can see that it is categorized reverse chronologically by week

the point of aqua kiss is to emulate monthly/weekly style manga magazines but in app form. however i think the execution of this idea was horrendous

SteffieMusings

Oh no! It must make reading there so challenging. As for me, if the navigation is so hard to understand/pages don't load properly when you click a link or when the website's colours hurt my eyes so much I can't stay there for too long.

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

Honestly nowadays most of the CMS's out there share the same basic functionality and adaptability, so it's getting harder to screw up on that. Most sites are OK, if only a bit laggy. If the site takes less than 2 seconds to load and it's not so crowded that I have to look for the comic, I'm generally good.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How much bad/inaccessible web design I'll tolerate is directly proportional to how much I care about the comic.

I've dropped a couple series in the middle of the archive just because they changed the site design to screw up the tracking of bookmarking sites, so I would've had to figure out an alternate way to keep track of it, and it didn't seem worth the effort

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh yeah, I've totally had that happen too where I was deep into an archive, had taken a reading break for a month or two, and came back to find the urls had been updated and my spot was lost it isn't so bad if a comic also has an archive page, but ive stopped reading a few stories that it would have been too hard to track down where I was.

DaeofthePast

I haven’t had to experience weird websites in a while, but I do sometimes go to an unknown website to read the comic/manga I’m looking for. Mostly what I’ve had trouble with is unnumbered chapters, of that it’s unclear where/how to start reading in general.(edited)

Like, I get to the page for that specific comic and then there’s no easy “start reading here” button anywhere

And when I do find the chapters list, I don’t know which end of the list is the beginning bc it’s unnumbered

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Is a "First page" button enough or are you looking for a "new readers start here" button? (<- is redisigning her page)

DaeofthePast

Is there a difference? :0

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

hm, sometimes yes.

Some old running comics have different jump-on points (schlock mercenary for example).

DaeofthePast

Ooh I see

Well when I first go on the site, I just want to start reading so idk

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

So, I always try to read every comic that's featured in the book club all the way through. Like even if I don't particularly like the opening, or if the comic is thousands of pages long, or I don't have time to meaningfully discuss the comic, I do try to at least give the comic a fair shake by reading through the entire archive. There have been four exceptions. One was because of content (it was a gag a day comic, and the content was SO horrible for SO long that I just couldn't stand it anymore. real "punching down" type of humor). Another was because the comic was literally deleted before I could get to it. The remaining two were because the site design/organization were so awful that the comics were unreadable. One of the two comics had a custom built, hand-coded site (I assume), and it just... didn't work properly. Like the "previous" button seemingly took you to a random page, the "next" button and the "latest" button led to the same place, etc. I'm not sure the creator ever bothered to test the site. The other one used some pre-built stuff, so it was ok... but you had to scroll to the top of the page to go to the next page. Not only that, but the author was posting all their comics to the same archive - which means one page would be the comic that was actually meant to be read for the book club and the next few pages were a completely different comic entirely. And this wasn't a gag-a-day either - it was a story based comic, so the three action minimum to get to the next page made things absolute hell to keep track of.(edited)

DaeofthePast

Wow

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Uff, yeah, that sounds horrible.

Nyx+Nyssa's page is currently a barebone mess, but I made at least sure the navigation works. :/

DaeofthePast

Having the comic be deleted while you’re reading it sounds like such a weird experience lmao

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i mean, it wasn't thanos snap style lol

DaeofthePast

Was the website gone too or?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

it was in between days

nah the website was still there, it's just that the author had decided to reboot their comic and forgot that they had submitted it to the book club

DaeofthePast

Oh okay I imagined Thanos snap style

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Not really a design but a site thing: I can't do comics without an archive of some sort. On platforms like Tapas or WT, the episode list serves that purpose perfectly fine. I personally need to be able to see how many pages there are, and I need a way to go to specific pages easily. It might sound like a small complaint, but it's a big thing for me! There have been comics that piqued my interest, but once I saw that there was no archive of any form, I left forever. Sure, I might be missing out, but there are also lots of good comics out there that have accessible archives. My life isn't long enough to read them all, so I'm letting myself be very picky.

copperine

I can manage a very basic site just fine. But if a site is hard to navigate, or just makes reading the page/getting to the next page difficult - I'd be likely to give up eventually. Doesn't matter about the quality of the comic, but if it's a chore to just read it, it's going to put me off after a while

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

I will note - if you want me to actually discuss your comic in the book club, please do have an archive link, and probably a cast page too. Like the lack of one doesn't stop me from reading entirely, but I can't discuss anything without being able to look back at specific moments. (and one of those archives that just has dates doesn't count - lemme know what the chapter is!)

copperine

For example - when I read webcomics on dA, I was absolutely fine with either the author having a dedicated folder with the pages in order. Another option was to link next and prev pages in the description. But if I had to go find each next page, I just wouldn't.

DaeofthePast

By an archive do you mean kinda like a chapters list?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

A list of all the pages, ideally

That also list the chapters somehow

copperine

Short version: if I feel like I'm spending half as much time navigating the site as I am actually reading, it's gonna get old real quick

DaeofthePast

And same copperine. As long as it’s organized well, I will probably read it

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like maybe you click on a chapter link to get to a list of the pages, or maybe it's just a list of the pages with the chapter names as headers

some sort of organization

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! (I admit my own comic's archive page isn't the prettiest, but it's 100% functional.)

DaeofthePast

I only have a chapter list so far ^^; idk how to go about getting an archive

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Chapter list is totally fine if your chapters tend to be on the shorter side

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

I like having chapter lists around, although coding them can be a handful Not sure if to go for an archive with thumbnails or just with page numbers though.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

It's also workable if you also have like... a dropdown menu for individual pages on the actual pages? So it only takes 2 clicks to go to a specific page (first click to go to the chapter, second click to go to the page)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

OH yeah, there was also a dA comic in the book club once that didn't have any next/previous buttons. However, it was a short comic - the bare minimum for getting into the book club - so I still read it all the way through. But it was pretty annoying to do so. (it was also pretty obviously a fetish comic, but that's not really relevant to the discussion XD)

DaeofthePast

I want to post by scene so I’ll be dividing chapters like “chapter 3 part 1” to hopefully that will be better

copperine

I'll always take functional over pretty

DaeofthePast

Haha I’m not sure if I want to know the comic for that one

Also what is “punching down” humor?

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, the author was a straight man, and nearly every joke was making fun of people who weren't those things.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

it's like making fun of people but

copperine

Yikes

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

you're intentially trying to put them down

that's punching down in my imo rip

DaeofthePast

Oh

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

yeah....

DaeofthePast

Well at least I know what to call it when I see it in the future ._.

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Like, occasionally I see a shitty joke in a comic and I keep reading because maybe the author improved (we do sometimes get comics with archives that date back decades in here) But this comic was just so consistently awful for so long that I couldn't stand it

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

oof that aint good

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Though that's kinda off topic lol

DaeofthePast

Oh yeah

So bad site design...

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Anyway, I don't really wanna post the examples of the comics I talked about in here cuz I don't wanna call anyone out

Actually, hold on, lemme check something

DaeofthePast

I feel I haven’t had too much experience with bad site designs, but I might have just forgotten(edited)

K

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

ok yeah

so, the comic where you had to scroll up to the top of each page to click to the next one, and the site was multiple comics alternating pages that made the story rough to follow

copperine

Oof yeah having to scroll up to click next won't stop me but it is a bother

DaeofthePast

I like having the next button both on top and the bottom, even if they update page by page(edited)

It just feels convinient

copperine

Yeah same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Re: punching up/down, here's an overly simplistic set of examples: billionaires making fun of poor people is punching down. Poor people making fun of billionaires is punching up.

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

's good webdesign pattern for everything with continous content - e.g. blogs, web-novels, webcomics.

Ideally you have one on top, between content and comments and under comments

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

the comic that alternated storylines & required scrolling back up to go to the next page was Antibunny: http://vinnied.comicgenesis.com/d/20061002.html if you see that page I linked and click next a few times, there's no obvious distinction between the main story and the spinoff story (no, like, header change between the two, and the art style looks similar), so you can see how it'd be confusing to follow and the scrolling is just icing on the cake (it used to be even worse) the only reason I feel comfortable sharing that is because the author uploaded the comics to new sites, and fixed all those issues in the process: http://antibunny.net/

DaeofthePast

Oh nice. So they realized the problem

copperine

Aren't they in this server? Or am I thinking of another one

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah, the author is in this server

copperine

I thought so

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Hence why he realized, because we told him that there was a problem during the book club

copperine

I'm not gonna take anything said here as a comment on anyway btw

DaeofthePast

It’s cool that submitting their comic to the tea party resulted in some good feedback :3

copperine

You love to see it!

It always makes me happy when webcomic community stuff helps people out, that seems like the ideal outcome

DaeofthePast

Yess

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

i agree on that yeee

DaeofthePast

It’s like having a friend point out a spelling mistake. Embarrassing but you can live with the knowledge that your work is now a little bit better(edited)

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

Yeah kinda off-topic, but I love it when the author of the comic for the book club joins the server. Like not only does it mean that the author could join in on others' discussions in the future (pay it forward 'n stuff), but... it's just really sad when I see a comic pop up in the book club and the author seemingly forgot they submitted it.

DaeofthePast

How long does it usually take to get to a comic? :0 that they would forget they submitted it?

copperine

I always hope I can help others out or support them, and I hope they feel the same

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The book club had a very very long wait list in the past. These days, not so long.

DaeofthePast

And I guess if you submit a comic with a website, the people here can be your beta testers

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

what's odd is that five months ago, the wait list was six months but now, the wait list is two months y'all need to submit/resubmit your comics

DaeofthePast

I tried going to submit mine yesterday and the site doesn’t let me v.v says you’re booked for July

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

oh yeah, so it is

DaeofthePast

Maybe later :3

snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights)

i guess Rebel doesn't want the queue to get too long

copperine

I would submit mine but I'm only at 10 pages and I believe you need to have 20 to submit

DaeofthePast

Ooh they have a minimum?

Gotta count my pages now

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I mean it makes sense. Hard to discuss a comic that only has the cover for chapter 1

DaeofthePast

XD

Tru

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

"Let us dissect this cover image for an entire week"

DaeofthePast

It would be a hilarious April fools challenge

copperine

Idk I think it was 20 minimum?

DaeofthePast

shrug

copperine

@snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) can you shed any light on this

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

The sign up form is where you would normally find that information.

copperine

... very good point

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

But the form is currently unavailable, and it's possible that Rebel might change the requirement when it becomes available again

copperine

Ah

Thank you for the heads up

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

FYI, https://comicteaparty.com/ is where the form will be available eventually

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

They accept resubmissions now?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I def like arrows on the top and bottom of pages for sites to be more of a thing, as well as clicking the image for the next page too! Honestly there hasn't been a make or break, mainly preferences, and the most complaints i have are with the mobile formatting. I think most comics have been pretty solid in functionality that i've read, and it's clear that having their own website is becoming mainstream enough for there to be help, tips, and tricks to making it work!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I definitely prefer if I can just click on the comic image to go to the next page especially for mobile.

copperine

Agreed!

Idk about resubmissions tho

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... Wow. I absolutely HATE clickable images on mobile, because they usually mess with the pinch-zoom.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i've had sites that didnt have image click throughs and the arrow..... was like SO TINY XD

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Didn't think anyone would actually like it, so... huh.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i kept going back and forth

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

yeah, navigation needs to be bigger on mobile for safe tapping.

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Oh, re:resubmissions, I'm pretty sure you can if it's been long enough? I think @snuffysam (Super Galaxy Knights) mentioned it recently as an option. But maybe a tangent for #general

boogeymadam

i dont mind the pinch zoom being a little more difficult from time to time cause usually the clickable image is worth it to me

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Same

boogeymadam

am also fond of sites that allow left/right arrows to let you move forward and back on desktop

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Mainly it's just for like Krispy said, reading on mobile and tiny next/previous buttons.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ye my dummy thicc fingers prefer the click through image for sure

ohh yes Boogey that too

boogeymadam

it took me hours of googling to find the very simple comicpress option to just turn that on on my site

copperine

Mmm I do like sites that allow pinch zoom though

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I also prefer clicking on the image to go to the next page

mariah (rainy day dreams)

My fingers small, but still dummy T-T

copperine

It makes it easier to get a better look at the page

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

iweudhweiu Mariah XD

copperine

Especially if it's got smaller font

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

nyxandnyssa has a seperate navigation for mobile that's much bigger and skipping scene select to make tapping easier.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I've had the hover text def bum me out for some comics, where you click the image and it just displays the text, then you gotta click the tiny next bar def killed me there

copperine

I've never had issues with pinch zoom affecting clickable images but I can imagine it would be annoying

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

but! never breaks me out of a comic for me to stop reading-! i persevere in the face of adversity XD

boogeymadam

i've never encountered a site so bad i couldnt continue reading. maybe stuff where i'd stop reading until i was less frustrated but i'd come back later.

DaeofthePast

That’s something I’ll have to consider for my site then

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I feel like Smackjeeves had a really obnoxious auto pitch & zoom before they updated most recently. I like when I can turn it off on my phone. I'd rather do it myself most of the time and let my phone try to auto it X')

DaeofthePast

I usually read on desktop more often than on mobile so it’s good to hear from other’s experiences

copperine

Idk I've never used a custom site yet

boogeymadam

same dae, except on tapas and webtoons!(edited)

comics with their own website i'll boot up my computer for a single update of

DaeofthePast

Even on webtoons I read on desktop

boogeymadam

omg your power, webtoons feels so choppy on desktop to me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

im definitely lucky that our site got a mobile friendly version i remember the 'ol pinchy zoomz was tiresome on our site for sure

DaeofthePast

I get headaches from reading on my phone unfortunately :/

Idk what the difference is between reading mobile and on a desktop but my brain doesn’t like it

Like, I can text fine???? But reading a comic for some reason is like “no”

So yeah, comics on desktop for me

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohh!! it could be the close proximity!

DaeofthePast

Ooh :0 maybe?

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i know i get motion sickness depending on how close/ far i am from screens

DaeofthePast

Maybe it’s something like that... :O

boogeymadam

whatever the reason sorry you get headaches and motion sickness from comics :'0

DaeofthePast

Every once in a while I’ll try again to read on mobile I never learn

boogeymadam

the only reason i dont like mobile is sometimes comics text is a combination of too small there and the font is hard on my dyslexia

DaeofthePast

Rip

boogeymadam

so i see if zooming in on my computer helps

DaeofthePast

The lesson here is that it’s good to have both mobile and desktop options

boogeymadam

yep :'D

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ohhh yea def agree. I know that feeling and i sometimes ... have a Time reading my own work XD (i admit it lol!!)

boogeymadam

sometimes my own comic is hard on my dyslexia for The Effect so i never have hard feelings with other comics

copperine

(brb)

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

ewiudhiwue the things we do AT WHAT COST XD

DaeofthePast

Asdfghjkl

Meanwhile I use the same font for everything

boogeymadam

wait im gonna generalize this more so it can be a party

DaeofthePast

Please post that on pillowfort so I can reblog it

boogeymadam

you can post it for yourself if you want dae!

i'm having a hard time logging on asdfgjh

DaeofthePast

Rip sure

copperine

Ah see I have both

Because hand lettering

It's great for feeling right for a comic but also eternally wondering if it's readable

DaeofthePast

Ooh yeah I guess that would count as both

What’s your comic btw :0

Wait, we’re supposed to be talking about website design right

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yep! If it gets too off topic, you can always continue in another channel that's more fitting.

copperine

Ah sorry! Sure thing

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Mobile is too small for me

DaeofthePast

Yeah

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

(oHHMYYGOSH BOOGEY XD)

boogeymadam

mm archives were mentioned already, and how it can really turn readers away to simply not have one at all? my favorite archive is https://www.vaingloriouscomic.com/comic/archive 's but i've seen some where they attempted an all picture archive and it backfired by just being a page of all empty boxes. this didn't deter me from reading it and it got fixed pretty quick tho~ mine is one of these and its a very chonky slowmoving page cause i uploaded the first 90ish as fullsized pictures. nobody's ever complained so idk if it's ever deterred anyone from reading but i know i gotta fix it someday.(edited)

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I really dont mind any kind of web design in particular though tbh. I prefer desktop sites but it’s fine if the design isnt great

DaeofthePast

Have you guys ever gone to a comic website (for a single comic) and the colors used in the background were so bright that it felt like they were blinding you to the point it was hard to read the actual pages?

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My archive is down right now becayse it broke and I dont know how to fix it lol

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i def want a fully view-able archive but we're gonna be hitting 800 pages and i dont know how well that will work XD

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

But I have a navigation bar now

boogeymadam

u could have multiple pages of archive, krispy!

i'm starting a new page for chapter 2

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Or dropdown menus

boogeymadam

but its probably important to have a dropdown if u have more than 1 page, yeah

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I want to switch to picture archives, but I haven't found a good plug in/way to get my word press to do it :( if anyone has recommendations...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I wish I knew how to make dropdown menus

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

i'll have to bring that up ! we dont do the tech work for our site ( thank gosh seriously) but i love archives that show full pages

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

If I could make dropdown menus I would be unstoppable

copperine

I miss the drop-downs on SJ

boogeymadam

i feel like dropdowns are smth i pretty much only exclusively see on hiveworks comics

i wonder what their secret is,,,

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I’ve inspected the elements on so many hiveworks sites lol

I want to know

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

they use word press I think

for their comic sites

just have to do some digging with the site html and csss

copperine

Right click and inspect maybe...

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

Php stands for my Personal hell pit

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

if i could go undercover for yall i would XD

boogeymadam

also!! @mariah (rainy day dreams) i use elementor for mine

its not perfect and breaks like every time i update it but it works asdfg

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

... I'm currently writing a sparkling fresh wp-plugin for my page (comic easel wasn't doing what I wanted), but I am also a software dev who enjoys coding.

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

My template I use functions in mostly php and xml and its gibberish to me but functions so well I dont know how to improve it to have specific things I want

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

my knowledge with site design is basic at best lmao

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

wordpress is a bit special in that it does most things more complicated than strictly necessary.

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but I do like fiddling with stuff

^that too lmao

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

I know Shiza of osarilho is really good at web designing? she's made some beautiful work with her site!

boogeymadam

i want to ask shiza for more help but not before i have some money to pay her :')

she's helped me a lot already

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I can do html and css at the babiest level

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'll check that out Boogey, thanks! Even if it does break X') And I guess I'll just make a note to start stashing money to hire shiza XD im definitely at the point where my site needs a general face lift, but I don't have the spoons for it.

boogeymadam

imo i've made some really pretty pges with it. it's a drag and drop that's excellent at galleries, but it doesn't like when you don't have even rows for some reason

the wordpress plugin, Elementor, i mean.

copperine

I've been wanting to try comicpress for ages

I just don't know where to start

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm gonna move over to #shop_talk for my response

copperine

I had someone who was gonna help me out but we lost contact so it's on the back burner

boogeymadam

OOPS yeah

copperine

But for websites in general I prefer to have one that feels very basic than one that feels too busy or crowded

I'm not a graphic designer at all lol

If I do try an independent site I'm planning to pay a coding friend to help me

DaeofthePast

yeah i have no idea what I'm doing when working on my site, it's kinda basic, but at least it looks nice

copperine

I just use a premade theme on my ComicFury site

It works and that's good enough for me so far

Oh I guess the other thing that would put me off reading a comic is if the site isn't formatted for mobile, and/or particularly if the site doesn't have adaptive formatting

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

same, but editted it hard core so it looks like it's own thing lmao

copperine

I usually read on my phone because my computer is where I work so I like to get off it for hobbies

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

but for me uh i guess mobile i try to read it either on tapas, webtoon or its own site

I find just clicking the page to the next one helps me a lot lol I don't do a lot of zooming

copperine

Mmm

copperine

It's personal preference a lot tbh!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I like my comuter because its big

copperine

Valid

Mine is not

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

did anyone talk about paying me please you don't have to do that

copperine

Idk but you can pay me

Idk what for but

I'll take money

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I absolutely would have to if you made my site awesome X') work is work, and you should be paid for it

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

fair enough

Just send me a DM whenever you're up for that and lemme take a look at what you already have

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I would hire someone to do web design for me but I dont have the funds & I dont wnat to make someone do work for me for free

sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead)

I've been meaning to set up my own website for a while now, since the collective i was originally hosting my webcomic with kinda fell apart, but it's so much work and i'm hella intimidated :'''D

copperine

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) there's been some related discussion in #shop_talk and I believe @boogeymadam might be able to advise (I'm sure others can too but I'm going off the convo from earlier)

Shizamura 🌟 O Sarilho

@sierrabravo (Hans Vogel is Dead) depending on how much it is I can help you out

RebelVampire

Admin Reminder Remember this channel is for experiences as a reader first and foremost, so #shop_talk and #general are better if you want to discuss your own stuff.

DaeofthePast

thank you for the reminder :3

RebelVampire

I would say poor web design is something I have a complicated relationship regarding webcomics. On the one hand, outside of a site being 100% completely broken, I'm willing to sit through a lot to read. So in terms of affecting whether I read a comic the first time or not, there isn't much to say there. But it does affect how engaged I am with the comic. Cause if I can't easily go back to re-read a page, easily find things like character names, have to deal with extreme lag cause the host is garbage, have to deal with eye bleeding color schemes, etc. you can bet your bottom dollar 1 time is all that comic is going to get in terms of reading it. I can only subject myself to so much, and if I don't feel like reading a comic again because of the site itself, I'm going to quickly forget it in favor of comics whose sites don't make me cry. I do give more leeway to sites created by creators in many respects. But professional bigtime hosts like Tapas or Webtoons literally have no excuse for some of their garbage design choices. And some of their design choices are super duper garbage.

DaeofthePast

that's true yeah, there's a big distinction of the quality expectations between sites by small creators and those of big companies like Webtoons

RebelVampire

At the same time, though, I know from first hand experience that poor design choices are literally influenced by user data for bigger companies. So for every decision I consider stupid- at the same time they probably did the AB tests that showed crappy design A had better results for their conversion rates than user friendly design B.

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Which boggles my mind

I wonder if there's some kinda causation-correlation thing going on that the A/B tests could not detect accurately

boogeymadam

Rebel mentioned sites that have eyebleedy color schemes and I'm in the same boat; will read the comic, just will be turning down the screen brightness a looot. Sites that have a huge space of extremely neon background that distracts from the comic make me reluctant to read on the site, and I'll look for a mirror before trying. That white background of the 2 big comic hosting sites can at least be affected and turned dark by nightmode when needed, while nightmode doesn't work on half the bright comic sites I've tried it on. u-u

[bountyofbeads]

The Liberation of Mitt Romney

The newly rebellious senator has become an outspoken dissident in Trump’s Republican Party, just in time for the president’s impeachment trial.

MCKAY COPPINS | Published OCT 20, 2019 | The Atlantic | Posted October 21, 2019 |

Updated: Sunday, October 20, 2019, at 9:32 p.m. ET

Mitt Romney is leaning forward in his chair, his eyes flashing, his voice sharp.

It’s a strange look for the 72-year-old senator, who typically affects a measured, somber tone when discussing Donald Trump’s various moral deficiencies. But after weeks of escalating combat with the president—over Ukraine, and China, and Syria, and impeachment—the gentleman from Utah suddenly appears ready to unload.

What set him off was my recitation of an argument I’ve heard some Republicans deploy lately to excuse Trump’s behavior. Electing a president, the argument goes, is like hiring a plumber—you don’t care about his character, you just want him to get the job done. Sitting in his Senate office, Romney is indignant. “Are you worried that your plumber overcharges you?” he asks. “Are you worried that the plumber’s going to scream at your kids? Are you worried that the plumber is going to squeal out of your driveway?” I am playing devil’s advocate; he is attempting an exorcism.

To Romney, Trump’s performance as president is inextricably tangled up in his character. “Berating another person, or calling them names, or demeaning a class of people, not telling the truth—those are not private things,” he says, adding: “If during the campaign you pay a porn star $130,000, that now comes into the public domain.”

At this, Romney glances over at two of his aides who are watching silently from the other end of the room, and grins. “They’re going, Oh gosh, shut up.”

I’ve spent the past several months in an ongoing conversation with Romney as he’s navigated a Washington that grows more hostile by the day. Before arriving in the Senate, Romney nurtured a pleasant delusion that he could somehow avoid being defined by his relationship with Trump. He had his own policy agenda to advance, his own vision for the future of the Republican Party. He would use his platform to take a stand against Trumpism, while largely ignoring Trump himself. When I would speak with his friends and allies in Utah during last year’s campaign, there was often a certain dilettantish quality in the future Senator Romney they envisioned—a venerable elder statesman dabbling in legislation the way a retiree takes up tennis.

Instead, Romney has emerged as an outspoken dissident in Trump’s Republican Party. In just the past few weeks, he has denounced the president’s attempts to solicit dirt on political rivals from foreign governments as “wrong and appalling”; suggested that his fellow Republicans are looking the other way out of a desire for power; and condemned Trump’s troop withdrawal in Syria as a “bloodstain on the annals of American history.”

Trump has responded with a wrathful procession of personal attacks—deriding Romney as a “pompous ass,” taunting him over his failed presidential bid in 2012, and tweeting a cartoonish video that tags the senator as a “Democrat secret asset.”

These confrontations have turned Romney into one of the most closely watched figures in the impeachment battle now consuming Washington. While his fellow Republicans rail against “partisan witch hunts” and “fake whistle-blowers,” Romney is taking the prospect of a Senate trial seriously—he’s reviewing The Federalist Papers, brushing up on parliamentary procedure, and staying open to the idea that the president may need to be evicted from the Oval Office.

In the nine years I’ve been covering Romney, I’ve never seen him quite so liberated. Unconstrained by consultants, unconcerned about reelection, he is thinking about things such as legacy, and inheritance, and the grand sweep of history. Here, in the twilight of his career, he seems to sense—in a way that eludes many of his colleagues—that he’ll be remembered for what he does in this combustible moment. “I do think people will view this as an inflection point in American history,” Romney tells me.

“I don’t look at myself as being a historical figure,” he hastens to add, “but I do think these are critical times. And I hope that what I’m doing will open the way for people to take a different path.”

With his neat coif, square jaw, and G-rated diction, Romney has always emanated a kind of old-fashioned civic starchiness. In the past, this quality has been the object of occasional ridicule. (During his 2012 presidential bid, reporters like me often snickered at his penchant for quoting lines from “America the Beautiful,” which he called his favorite of the “patriotic hymns.”) But in these decidedly more vulgar times, there is a certain appeal to the senator’s wholesomeness.

When I first caught up with Romney, in June, he was in a buoyant mood, preparing to deliver his “maiden speech” from the Senate floor later that day. I asked him how he was settling in. “This is great!” he replied. “I mean, everybody told me I was going to hate it here.”

I confessed that I was among those who thought he might not enjoy being the 97th most senior member of the Senate.

“I think people forget I worked for 10 years as a management consultant,” Romney said, referring to his time at Bain & Company. “Which meant I was able to make no decisions, I was able to get nothing done, and I had to try and convince people through a long process.” In retrospect, it seems, he was destined for the U.S. Congress.

Romney told me that he doesn’t think much anymore about his 2012 defeat to Barack Obama. “My life is not defined in my own mind by political wins and losses,” he said. “You know, I had my career in business, I’ve got my family, my faith—that’s kind of my life, and this is something I do to make a difference. So I don’t attach the kind of—I don’t know—psychic currency to it that people who made politics their entire life.”

Not everyone he’s met in the Senate shares this outlook, he said. “People are really friendly, they’re really nice—except Bernie,” he said, laughing. “He’s a curmudgeon. It’s not that he’s mean or whatever; he just kind of scowls, you know”—Romney hunched his back and summoned a Scrooge-like grunt. “For Bernie, it seems like this is kind of who he is. It’s defining. It’s his entire person. For me, it’s part of who I am, but it’s not the whole person.”

After he was elected in November, Romney began typing out a list on his iPad of all the things he wanted to accomplish in the Senate. It was 50 items long by the time he showed it to his staff, and though they laughed, he continued undeterred. By the time we spoke, it had grown to 60, with priorities ranging from complex systemic reforms—overhauling the immigration system, reducing the deficit, addressing climate change—to narrower issues such as compensating college athletes and regulating the vaping industry.

As he searched the Senate for legislative partners, Romney told me, he was warned that his efforts were likely doomed. Even in less polarized, less chaotic times, the kind of ambitious agenda he had in mind would be unrealistic. But Romney was steadfast in his optimism. “I’m not here to say it can’t happen,” he told me.

When I broached the subject of Trump that afternoon in June, Romney’s face didn’t register the familiar mix of panic and dread that most GOP lawmakers exhibit these days when faced with questions about the president. If anything, he seemed a little bored by the topic. I had heard repeatedly from people close to Romney that his decision to run for Senate was motivated in part by his alarm at Trump’s ascent. But he still seemed to believe that he could illuminate a path forward for his party without incessantly feuding with the president. “I’m not in the White House,” he told me. “I tried for that job; I didn’t get it. So all I can do from where I am is to say, ‘All right, how do we get things done from here?’”

Anyone familiar with the fraught history between Trump and Romney might have known that a detente was unsustainable. Trump has nursed a grudge since 2016, when Romney denounced him as a “phony” and a “fraud,” and warned of the “trickle-down racism” that would accompany his election. After he won, Trump briefly considered tapping Romney as his secretary of state, but the match was not to be. And in the years that have followed, the tension between the two men has only grown more exaggerated.

They manage that tension in different ways: While the president spent a too-online Saturday earlier this month unloading on Twitter—launching #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY into the canon of viral Trump taunts—Romney enjoyed a quiet afternoon picking apples with his grandkids in Utah and refusing to take the bait. When I met him in his office a couple of weeks later, I asked if the Twitter insults bothered him.

“That’s kind of what he does,” Romney said with a shrug, and then got up to retrieve an iPad from his desk. He explained that he uses a secret Twitter account—“What do they call me, a lurker?”—to keep tabs on the political conversation. “I won’t give you the name of it,” he said, but “I’m following 668 people.” Swiping at his tablet, he recited some of the accounts he follows, including journalists, late-night comedians (“What’s his name, the big redhead from Boston?”), and athletes. Trump was not among them. “He tweets so much,” Romney said, comparing the president to one of his nieces who overshares on Instagram. “I love her, but it’s like, Ah, it’s too much.” (After this story was published, Slate identified a Twitter account using the name Pierre Delecto that seemed to match the senator’s description of his lurker account. When I spoke to Romney on the phone Sunday night, his only response was, “C'est moi.”)

He understands, of course, that many of his Republican colleagues live in fear of being subjected to a presidential Twitter tirade. In fact, some believe that Trump’s targeting of Romney is intended as a warning to other GOP lawmakers lest they step out of line. That fear is one of the reasons his caucus has attempted such elaborate rhetorical contortions to defend Trump as the House impeachment inquiry turns up damning evidence. “I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power,” he told me in an interview last month at The Atlantic Festival.

Romney told me that he does not have an abstract definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” and that when it comes to identifying impeachable acts, he follows Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous standard for defining hard-core porn: “I’ll know it when I see it.” Asked if he’s seen it yet, Romney told me that he’ll make up his mind once he hears all the evidence at the trial: “At this stage, I am strenuously avoiding trying to make any judgment.”

In the meantime, Romney is leading the Republican revolt over the president’s recent decision to pull troops out of northern Syria, leaving America’s Kurdish allies behind. In a withering speech on the Senate floor last week, he condemned the administration’s betrayal of the Kurds, and called for hearings on the matter. He told me that he wants to see a transcript of the phone call between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that preceded the troop withdrawal. “This is not just a disagreement on foreign policy,” he said. “This is a violation of fundamental American honor.”

Amid all the tumult, Romney has come to terms with the fact that there will be little progress on his legislative to-do list for the foreseeable future. (Between impeachment proceedings and next year’s elections, who has time to pass laws?) Nor is Romney especially well positioned to launch a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, despite endless fantasizing by pundits. (He has said he’s not planning to run again.) While his battles with the president have earned him plaudits from some in Utah—where support for Trump is uncommonly weak for a red state—he is widely viewed as a villain in MAGA world.

But Romney is looking beyond the next year, and beyond the president’s base, as he tries to lay the groundwork for a post-Trump Republican Party. While he acknowledges the failures of his own presidential campaign, he told me that he doubts Trump’s electoral coalition will be replicable in the long run. “We have to get young people and Hispanics and African Americans to vote Republican,” he said, adding that he hopes these voters will see his resistance to Trump as a sign that one day they could find a home in the GOP. If that seems naive, the senator is probably okay with it. In cynical times like these, someone has to serve as the guardian of lost causes.

After all, Romney said, “the president will not be the president forever.”

[that-curly-haired-lesbian]

Proud

A/N: This was prompted here on tumblr and was written pre-mural-gate :p 

In all honesty it's a lil rushed and on the short side since I wanted to get it OUT (pun intended) before the actual 4.26. Thus this has had no BETA, but I do hope it's decent!!

Summary: A fictionalized AU version of what went down on 4.26 2019.

TW: Anxiety

Read it on Ao3 or on wattpad

--

I'm gay.

I'm gay.

I'm gay.

The first time Taylor Swift said those words out loud she'd just turned 14 and she could hear her own heart beat in her ears, so loud that it drowned out her words.

Those scary, stigmatized words that she'd been planning to let pass over her lips for months by the time they actually did.

Now, all these years later all she can remember from around the time of her 14th birthday is the day after her the party. It was overwhelming nausea, it was shaking hands and then hugs, a lot of hugs, most of them from her mother who'd always been supportive and proud of Taylor for being herself; no matter what that had meant over the years.

Andrea is standing beside Taylor now as the 29-year old looks over her appearance in the mirror and presses her stubborn, unruly hair down for the fifth time in just over a minute. Her mom's smile is encouraging, "You look great, honey." She says placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder, "You look great and you can do this."

"Thanks mo-" Taylor begins only to be cut off by the sound of her phone ringing in the back of her jeans' pocket.

Fishing the phone out Taylor glances at the screen and smiles, "it's Austin." She announces, accepting the call and putting the device to her ear. "Hi!"

"Hey! How are you doing so far?" Her little brother asks gently and Taylor's smile dies from her lips as if on command. "I'm okay, I'm waiting for Karlie..." "She's not there?" "She and dad just took Joe for a walk..." "Lousy timing!" "No it's okay, I'm okay...And mom's here." "Okay...Teffy?" "Mhm?" "I love you and I'm damn proud of you."

"Thanks," I love you too!"

The two have barely hung up when Karlie comes into the room in the company of Joe the dog and Scott Swift.  Karlie immediately takes Joe's leash off and then makes her way right to Taylor who has now sat down at the piano.

As her girl walks over Taylor has the time to observe her own fingers on the piano keys and to will her hands (to only moderate success) to stop shaking. She takes a deep breath and looks up at the clock, five minutes til midnight. Exhaling unevenly Taylor lets her finger dance over the piano keys without pressing them down, just to check she has it all memorized.

Just then Karlie is there, close, with her, wrapping her arms around her fiancée. "How are you doing, Daisy?" She whispers softly and Taylor feels herself tense up at the uncomfortable question. "I'm fine, I've got this..." She says and wishes she could've sounded more confident. "Damn right you do," Karlie assures her, "but I'm gonna need you to talk to me because I can hear in your voice that you're not okay..." The younger woman pushed. "...I'm...nervous." Taylor admits reluctantly, the statement sounds almost like a question and her voice is small. "Awww," Karlie pulls her closer and brushes some hair away from Taylor's neck with her nose, kissing the now exposed skin almost teasingly, "My baby still gets nervous?"

"Extra, tonight..." Taylor leans her head back and into Karlie, wanting the embrace to protect her from the mounting anxiety. "What if they figure it out, Karls?" She mumbles and feels her heart fall into her stomach once again as a new wave of nausea hits. More kisses, "if they do they do." Karlie says simply and there is a trademark Sunshine smile in her tone. Taylor twists her engagement ring nervously and Karlie rubs her back in reassurance.

"Baby, you're being the bravest possible version of yourself and I'm so damn proud of you!"

"I hate to interrupt this supportive moment," Tree's voice, (filled with so much genuine empathy and care that Taylor wants to cry from the overwhelming love in the room) sounds from the couch, "But that's two minutes to midnight, T."

"Okay," Taylor agrees a little breathlessly, slipping her ring off and handing it to Karlie before she mounts her phone atop the piano,  in the optimal angle to record her face and the keys as she plays. Karlie scurries away and collects Joe before joining the others on the couch.

"If this is too much, we can always take the backup." Tree reminds Taylor who only shakes her head.

They've been planning this for weeks now and she won't back out at the last second. There will be plenty of time to play In Your Eyes later after all, it will be the second single, but it shouldn't be the song played or released tonight.

"Okay, the post is up and it's midnight, go!" Tree says and Taylor presses record on her phone to officially start the Live video now streaming on her website where the countdown used to be only moments ago.

"Hi guys!" Taylor exclaims and waves at the camera, hoping her smile doesn't look as nervous as it feels.

To all the world it looks as if Taylor is sitting alone in the living room, at her piano, everyone watching her right now have no idea of the entire support system hidden from view. The support system of four of Taylor's favorite people on earth, only one of them secretly so.

She swallows, "So I figured before the new song goes up on all the streaming platforms I'd play it for you, just you and me, how does that sound?" She pauses for a moment as the comments pop up and she can't help but smile.

"Okay so the song is called Wedding Bells and it's off of my new album Proud that's gonna be out on July 13th, I am super excited for you to hear it!"

--

February 2017

"Karlie," Taylor said, exasperated and not even close to smiling. "Why are you trying to make this into a joke when I clearly don't find it fucking funny?"

These words were causing Karlie to seriously consider how much biting off her own tongue would actually hurt.

"Hey," she tried softly instead, "hey...I'm sorry, okay? I'm just trying to make this a little easier."

"But it's not easy baby, it's not!" Taylor protested and tears were running down her cheeks now.

"Believe me I know, but Taylor, please, I can't have you freak out like this, I-"

"I'm not freaking out," Taylor said, a little calmer now, wiping her tears and biting her lip to stop the new wave threatening to fall from her eyes.

"So what you're telling me," she asked slowly, seemingly fighting to keep her voice calm. "Is that you're going to pretend to marry him?"

At those absurd words being spoken aloud Karlie's already fragile, tired heart shattered into a million pieces, Taylor wasn't even looking at her anymore.

The singer had spun around and started aimlessly rearranging the dishes in the sink in an attempt to find something to do with her hands, probably.

"Okay, first of all," Karlie said as she walked over to her girlfriend, prepared to wrap her arms around the shorter woman. "The keyword here is pretend."

Karlie pulled Taylor close as she spoke and pressed her lips softly to the side of the singer's neck. Something that'd usually appease her, not this time though. Taylor (likely realizing what Karlie had in mind) jerked her head unceremoniously to the side, away from Karlie's approaching lips and causing a cup she'd been holding to fall back into the sink with a jarring crash.

The model hadn't noticed before, but now she could plainly both see and feel that Taylor was shaking and when she turned back towards Karlie the familiar blue eyes were flaring with...something. Anger? Hurt? Frustration?

Karlie caught herself lowering her own gaze at the sight; Taylor was clearly taking this badly. That had of course been expected, but Karlie was starting to get genuinely scared now, Taylor was even more upset than she'd feared.

"Well," She snapped, brusquely backing out of Karlie's attempted embrace and causing her arms to fall awkwardly to her sides, "We said it wouldn't go that far, we always said...." She seemed to lose her words, or her train of thought, or her sanity...

Karlie looked up to meet those eyes, dark with hurt now.

"Tay," She tried, but her girlfriend shook her head, her eyes almost overflowing with held back tears now.

"I just always thought-"

"I know..."

--

Taylor suppresses the rest of the unpleasant memory, she looks back up smiling at the camera again as she starts playing.

What if they figure it out? They won't though, not for another month and that's how she wants it, for tonight she's just proud of herself for taking the first step on this last bit of road. It's been a long walk, but just like they promised each other that night in the back of a car, Karlie squeezing her hand, they've never stopped walking it together, not even for a second and soon everyone else will get to march with them too.

There may not be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but there will be happiness. Happiness and freedom for her and for Karlie and that will be worth all of this, the tears and the fear. Maybe it's the fact that she took such a hefty doze of anxiety suppressors for this but Taylor isn't scared anymore, not one bit, instead she's proud!

A/N: Happy 4.26, let's hope we all survive!

[suechoiart]

SU19 Internship_ Week 4

Today I want to talk about client relations and office productivity. 

Firma started business in 2015 and it is a relatively young firm. It has been interesting to see where Scott has adopted practices from Olin (where he had worked for over a decade) and where he is trying to cultivate new standards and a “knowledgebase” for his own firm. I love the energy of the firm and their attention to office improvement- it really feels like they are in for Firma to be a good firm, and not just one that exists. 

I attempted very, very briefly to do freelancing as an artist and I like to entertain the idea of having my own practice in the distant future. My (marriage) partner has been running his own business for nearly five years. Entrepreneurship and small business are both dreams and reality to our lives. So, another benefit to working at Firma is: this is a chance to absorb a lot of small business skills. 

_ project management (Asana) 

Firma is a small office. There’s enough breathing room for two regular employees, one intern, and an extra desk for a second intern (or new employee?!). Anyways point is, we are always in earshot of each other when we’re in the office together. It is still very important to touch base and keep track of project/office tasks and progress! 

Firma uses a service called Asana to track to-do lists. I think I’ve heard Asana be advertised on a podcast, so it must be popular in the tech field (just a guess)... Few notable things are: each task has its own section to take notes and create subtasks; tasks can be assigned to specific people and put a deadline on it, so you can open your profile and see what tasks have bee assigned to you.

My task page under “intern tasks” - some are actually assigned to my profile, some are floating tasks that have been filed in this category. I don’t have access to any ‘pro’ features, so this could be substituted with any document sharing platform in my world... The important thing is probably to actually use it and update it regularly. 

This has been a helpful tool for us to get together at the beginning of each week and assess priorities. Yesterday (Monday/Week5) was the first time in my internship we looked through all active projects and checked through any outstanding tasks. (With summer vacation days, it’s been a quick 4 weeks!) During that process, Scott and Sarah added new tasks to projects, archived projects that are no longer active (e.g. the rest of the work was not part of the scope anymore.) It was good to listen to that conversation to get a sense of when projects finish, when limbos happen, etc...

_ scope 

Scott shared with me a copy of a new “Proposal for Landscape Architectural Services” that he had written for a new client. (The client has accepted the proposal and we have started working on this project!) 

The scope is essentially the contract of work between the LA and the client. Along with fees, this proposal lists a range of services that will be provided organized by phases (e.g. 1-Schematic Design, ...) over a schedule, a estimated time frame for services to be completed. In addition to what Firma will do, there is a section called “Assumptions/Exclusions” that list, well, exactly assumptions and exclusions stated by the designer for the client to review. 

For instance, if the scope outlines production of CAD drawings but not other renderings - any task for Firma to produce visual renderings for municipality reviews would be an additional service, because it was not included in the initial scope. 

This document also includes the fascinating world of fees! Firma typically charges in lump sum (e.g. $100,000 for all work rather than $200/hr), and Scott shared that price reflects his experience with similar types of work and how many hours he typically spent on similar jobs. He also keeps in mind market standards for landscape architect work. For instance, firms with more ‘boutique’ reputation (”market power”) could, in addition to assumed hours spent, charge a little more and still attract clients! 

So it is within this scope that Scott and Sarah create tasks on Asana; and based on those tasks we work and keep track of our time spent... 

_ time tracking (Harvest) 

I think this has been one of the best things I’m going to gain this summer- the very habit of time tracking. Firma uses a service called Harvest to keep track of time spent for different projects. I’ve had multiple conversations with different design students about how much work design students do, and how little there is to show for it.... If not good design, I have now developed the habit of showing how much time I’ve been doing stuff--! 

What I’ve done on June 14. This was a day with various tasks- some days I’ve spent more than 7 hours on one single project; and it has been cool to be able to see all of that! 

There isn’t too much to share from my window, but I can speak to the strength of Harvest over just pencil scribbles. Through this platform, you can create a list of sub-tasks per projects and even categorize them - e.g. into “billable” and “non-billable” hours. In a previous office I worked, we tracked by hand (or recited by memory?) how many hours were spent on a project, and it was to be tallied by the person creating the invoice... But this interface prompts you to log descriptions, categories for projects, etc.... And you can get a quick glance at what you’ve done in a week! 

This was the week I spent mostly researching and creating a presentation for outdoor furnishings-- more than half of the week was spent on it! 

Obviously I won’t have billable hours doing my school homework, but this in itself is a brilliant thought to just track what I am doing when. It would be good to find a free or personal version of this software to use on my own. 

Anyways, Scott uses this to tally up the hours spent on jobs- I think he uses his professional discretion before writing the invoice, but he has a solid body of documentation to back up ‘work done’ when he is talking to clients. I think that is so cool! 

_ reflection 

I ended up just geeking out over what we do in the office, but I really am impressed that Firma incorporates smart ‘apps’ that exist out in the wild. I guess I’ve just never worked in an environment like that and hadn’t thought of those workflows that make lives easier! Of course, this increases office productivity (less time spent mulling over “what did I do?” and more “do!”) and keeps everyone very accountable, which I believe leads to a happy work environment. 

I do want to share one story about scope -- Scott shared that clients typically reduce scope first by dropping site visits. He attributed this to how site visits occur typically in the later part of the project when clients realize how MUCH money they’re paying (which is what they agreed to pay!). So I’ve learned that there are scopes where the site visit is not included at all, and some that have a lot less site visits than designers would like. 

I got to follow along to one site visit, where it turned out the landscaping contractors had been operating on a old planting plan. When we got there, they had already ordered based on the old planting plan and started planting as such, and the plants that arrive were different too, because it’s based on wholesale availability... Thankfully the new planting plan was not a big departure from the old one, but Scott had to make a lot of new decisions on site that he wasn’t planning on. He mentioned that this particular project did not include as many site visits as he’d like, so the other times he’s visited, there was always something slightly different than what they had proposed... 

_ closing

This (last) week I’ve learned that landscape/landscaping is a particularly difficult career to ‘see through,’ since there are so many variables along the way. The nursery might not have the right plants, whoever is installing or maintaining it might introduce a new problem, or the weather just might say no.... There is always something to be cautious about, and it requires a whole lot of optimism and patience to tend to these issues! 

Oh, I didn’t get a chance to address client-designer relationships at all! 

Next week I want to talk about company structure, hierarchy, and employee management. !! Fun stuff 

[moffixxey]

How to Promote Your Blog in 2019: 9 Creative Strategies

Whether your blog is brand new or already established, you can never have enough traffic.

Seriously…

I work at an SaaS company called Ahrefs, and even though the Ahrefs blog pulls in over 200k organic traffic every month, we still experiment with ways to promote our blog and bring in more traffic.

Because let’s face it:

It’s 2019. Simply sending an email blast to your subscriber list doesn’t cut it anymore.

But don’t fret.

If you’re stuck coming up with new ideas for how to promote your blog, here are 9 tried-and-tested tactics that have worked for us.

Let’s dig in.

#1. Work with Podcasts

Let’s start things off with the buzzword of the year: podcasts.

Thanks to their flexibility (you can listen to them while you’re at work or when you’re on the go), they’re the most popular form of audio content.

They’re also widely available on services like iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify.

Some quick facts:

Over 44% of the US population has listened to a podcast;

They’re extremely targeted, with multiple podcasts covering every niche imaginable;

Their audiences are incredibly engaged.

Ahrefs has had great success with sponsoring podcasts (paid advertising) as well as guesting on them — that is, sending a member of our team to be interviewed on a show.

Here’s an actual comment from a new customer and blog reader of ours:

For sponsoring podcasts, think of this tactic as a type of influencer marketing.

Your job is to sell your blog to the podcast host and the podcast host’s job is, in turn, to sell your blog to their audience.

How to Promote Your Blog by Sponsoring Podcasts

If you have the budget, sponsoring podcasts is a great way to promote your blog. Here’s how you do it:

Step #1. Do Your Research

Create a list of podcasts whose audiences are a good match for your blog. If you have no idea where to start, here’s a tip:

Try using a specialized podcast search engine like Listen Notes. Browse the shows and pick your favorites.

Step #2. Make Contact

Once you’ve created a list of targets, you’ll need to contact the podcasts and inquire about sponsorship details.

What are their pricing packages? What dates do they have available? Are there any gotchas?

Prices can range from $50 to $5,000 and beyond per episode, so work within your particular budget.

Step #3. Iron Out the Details

This includes your ad copy, delivery, and any other deliverables like your blog’s logo and elevator pitch.

In my experience, organic reads do much better than “scripted ads.”

The goal is to get the podcast host to sound like a fan and regular reader of your blog.

Step #4. Wait for Your Ad to Air

If anything is off, be sure to let the podcast know as soon as possible!

How to Promote Your Blog with Podcast Interviews

If you’re strapped for cash (or simply don’t want to do podcast advertising), another approach is to appear as a guest on podcasts.

This is usually free — unless you’re approaching extremely-popular podcasts, which tend to charge a one-time appearance fee.

The catch is you’ll need some kind of credibility to your name. In other words, you’ll need to convince the podcast host that you’re someone their audience would love to listen to.

The process for this is similar to the one detailed above:

Step #1. Create a Target List

Use Listen Notes or a similar tool to create a list of podcast targets.

Step #2. Check if They Accept Interviews

Often, podcasts will explicitly state on their websites whether or not they accept interview requests.

And if they don’t accept interview requests? Ask anyway.

Send in your pitch and convince them you have lots of value to add.

Step #3. Follow the Host’s Lead

Every podcast will have their own process. Some may want to do pre-interviews, some may want to work on a rough content online with you, and some may want to just “wing it.”

Whatever the process, remember to be courteous and respectful — you’re a guest, after all.

Just don’t forget to mention your blog!

Editor’s Note:

Appearing on podcasts is one of our favorite promotion strategies here at Smart Blogger — as evidenced by our appearances on EOFire, James Altucher, Duct Tape Marketing, the Write Podcast, and Loz James’ Content Champion.

Just make sure you’re prepared:

Show up early to the interview so the host has time to do a sound check.

Don’t use your phone or your laptop’s built-in microphone; instead, invest in an external microphone. Quality and price points vary, but you can get a simple microphone that plugs into your computer’s headphone jack for the price of a medium pizza.

Use headphones to cut down on echoes.

Turn off all notifications and, if you can, shut your door to minimize background noise.

#2. Republishing on Medium

Sure, you can publish tons of absolutely amazing posts on your own blog.

But if you never extend your reach, whether it’s by growing your list of email subscribers or boosting your number of social media followers, your audience will be limited.

So what do you do if you don’t have time to create promotional content and extend your reach?

Try this:

Republish your existing posts on blogging platforms like Medium.

Your content will be seen by a whole new audience — some of which will then visit your blog and discover all the great content you have to offer.

For example, look at this blog post I published on the Ahrefs blog last December:

It got 463 shares and 43 comments — very decent engagement considering the fact that the topic likely didn’t appeal to our blog’s core audience (people interested in search engine optimization).

In a bid to push the post out to a wider audience, we republished it on Medium. It turned out to be a fantastic decision.

Here are the stats as of March this year:

That’s 13.6k views in total, with 22% of readers actually finishing the whole post.

Plus, the Medium publication of this post averages a steady trickle of 10-30 readers every day.

Note: For the SEO-conscious among us, Medium uses canonical tags when you use their republishing tool. So no worries about duplicate content issues.

How to Republish on Medium

Medium has made the process of importing and republishing content super simple. Here’s how you do it:

Step #1. Choose a Post to Republish

Ideally, pick one of your top performers (since it’s already proved it’s popular).

You can use a tool like Ahrefs’ Top Content report in Site Explorer to see which of your posts have the most shares on social media.

Since they’ve proven themselves on social media, these posts are the most likely to resonate with audiences beyond your blog’s existing one.

Editor’s Note:

Though they aren’t nearly as detailed, there are a few free tools to track social media shares if you aren’t an Ahrefs customer.

As an example, SharedCount.com lets you copy and paste URLs of individual posts; however, they only show counts for Facebook and Pinterest:

Step #2. Import Your Post Into Medium

Enter the URL of your post into the Medium import tool and hit “Import”.

Step #3. Publish Your Post on Medium

Follow Medium’s guidelines to format and polish your post, then click “Publish”.

That’s all there is to it!

Further Reading:

How to Get More Traffic from Every Post by Republishing on Medium

Medium for Marketing: How to Get 1,000 Followers and 46,287 New Site Visits in 30 Days

#3. Smart Social Sharing

I know, I know.

It’s 2019, and promoting your blog posts on social media is by no means a new strategy.

BUT — there’s more to social media promotion than pasting a link and clicking a “Tweet” button.

Here’s an example of the success we’ve seen from smart sharing on the Ahrefs Twitter account:

Pretty impressive, right?

Here’s another example:

These tweets received amazing engagement, but we actually spent very little time creating them.

We achieved this ROI by working smarter, not harder.

How to Promote Your Blog Using Social Media (Smartly)

Here’s our process:

Step #1. Brainstorm Ideas and Organize Them

The great thing about social media content is it’s all fleeting. Even if an idea is a flop, it’s easy to turn the page and try the next idea.

But to make the most of these (admittedly fleeting) opportunities, you need two things:

A large list of ideas;

A method for grouping similar ideas into categories.

To brainstorm ideas, get a pen and paper (or launch Google Docs, Microsoft Word, etc.) and jot down things you would like to try.

Get as creative as you want.

Think memes would be popular with your audience? Write it down. Believe infographics or inspirational quotes could be successful? Write them down. Believe posts or tweets on Topic X or Topic Y could receive high engagement?

(You get the idea.)

By listing all of your ideas, you’ll then be able to group them into categories. This will help you track which categories are successful and which are not.

Step #2. Craft and Publish (and Monitor) Your Content

You can use social media management tools like Buffer and MeetEdgar to schedule your content and keep it running automatically.

Once your social media posts begin making their way into the wild, you’ll be able to track their progress.

Do some receive more comments, while others receive more shares and retweets? Are some more popular in the mornings, while others receive more engagement during the evenings?

All data, both good and bad, will help you in the next step.

Step #3. Review the Results

After an appropriate amount of time has gone by, hold a review.

Drop the categories that didn’t perform well. Keep the ones with potential and refine them.

You want to focus on the categories your audience likes and tweak them.

Do they like emojis, or do they gravitate towards a more “serious” tone? Do they like infographics, or long chunks of copy with statistics thrown in?

And so on.

From here, keep repeating steps 1-3 until you’ve locked down the type of content your audience loves.

And once you’ve figured out what they love, keep giving it to them.

Step #4. Advertising (Optional)

If you want to try advertising, the above process will save you some serious money.

Pick your top organic performers from Step #3 and put money into promoting them.

Since they’ve already proven themselves to be popular, this is a safe and effective way to buy ads to promote your blog (without wasting time and money on losers).

Further Reading:

10 Simple Twitter Tactics That Will Get You More Traffic Today

9 Ways to Go Viral on Pinterest and Get an Avalanche of Traffic

How I Got 532 Subscribers in 43 Days Using Cheap Facebook Ads

#4. Create Roundup Posts

The perks of this strategy pretty much sell themselves.

Here’s what happens when you publish a good roundup post:

First off, it’s easy to write since most of the content is created for you;

You make new and powerful connections within your industry;

Thanks to those connections, you gain access to new audiences;

Your post naturally gains backlinks and social shares.

So… what’s a roundup post, anyway?

Here’s an example:

Essentially, a roundup post features a compilation of answers to a single question, ideally by established experts in the field.

A great roundup post adds immense value to readers since they offer a range of expert opinions in one place.

Plus, they tend to bring in lots of traffic since the experts featured in them will often share the post with their own audiences.

What’s not to love?

How to Create Roundup Posts

Here are the basics of roundup posts so you can create your own:

Step #1. Craft Your Question

Don’t take this step lightly.

If you ask too much of the experts you’ll be polling, most won’t have time to participate (even if they want to). And if you ask a question they’ve heard (and answered) a million times, most won’t be interested.

Your question needs to be clear, succinct, and something that will appeal both to your readers and the experts you’ll be asking to participate.

Step #2. Create a List of Influencers

Once you’ve crafted your question, it’s time to create your influencer wish list. These are the influencers (“experts”) you’ll be asking to participate in your roundup post.

Since not everyone will respond to you, reach out to significantly more experts than you need.

For example, if you need 20 people for your roundup post, reach out to 40 experts (or more).

Remember:

A roundup post is only as good as the people you feature. While it takes exponentially more time and effort to get a response from a more recognized name in your industry, it’s likely worth it.

With that said, don’t expect the Michael Jordans of your industry to respond to your outreach — try to find people with a reasonable level of influence who aren’t complete titans.

Step #3. Reach Out to the Experts

You can use specialized tools like BuzzStream or Mailshake to streamline the entire outreach process by making it easier to hunt down email addresses, batch send messages, and conduct follow-ups.

Quick tips for the message you send:

Keep it short;

Keep it genuine.

Step #4. Follow Up (But Only Once)

There’s a chance your first email will slip past the expert you’re trying to reach. After all, they’re very busy and likely receive dozens (or hundreds) of emails every single day.

This is why sending a follow-up email is helpful:

However, please don’t follow-up more than once — any more than that and you’re just being a nuisance.

Step #5. Compile Your Responses

At this point, you’ll have a bunch of answers ready to sift through. Now all you need to do is turn them into a cohesive post.

Try to find trends in the responses and sort them into sections.

Next, add your own introduction to each section, as well as your opinion on why certain trends occurred.

This is how you put your stamp on the roundup post and make it your own.

Step #6. Publish Your Post (And Tell the Experts)

Once your post is published, it’s time to let everyone know about it.

Email everyone who responded to your outreach emails (whether they ultimately contributed to your post or not) and thank them for their time. Include a link to your post, and be sure to send them well-wishes.

You can also ask them (politely) to share your post with their audience, but this is often implied.

Editor’s Note:

Want to let influencers know your post has been published and promote the post at the same time? In addition to emailing them, tag the influencers on Twitter too.

#5. Advocate In-Person

While all blogs are digital in nature, your promotional efforts aren’t limited to the digital world alone.

It might be a step (or ten!) outside your comfort zone, but try this:

Approach a local event in your niche and pitch yourself as a speaker.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world or how big the event is — it could even be a small meet-up session.

The idea is to reach out to new people and give the work you do a huge visibility boost.

How to Promote Your Blog by Speaking at Events

If you’re interested in this advanced promotional tactic, here’s how to get started:

Step #1. Shortlist a Few Events or Meet-Ups You’d Like to Attend

If you’re not sure where to start, look around on Reddit, Facebook groups, or Slack groups and join some communities in your industry.

Chances are good people are organizing and promoting events in these communities.

Make a list of potential targets, underline your favorites, and move on to the next step.

Step #2. Pitch Yourself to Event Organizers

When pitching yourself, propose some topics that you’d be comfortable speaking about and explain how your content will add value to their audience.

Hopefully it goes without saying, but you should know these topics very well.

Note: If you have no experience with public speaking, it’s a good idea to start small. Save the conference keynote speeches for later.

Step #3. Craft Your Presentation

Try to deliver as much value as you can and position your blog as a great resource. This is also a good time to promote your social media accounts, which are ideally already geared towards driving traffic to your blog.

Just be sure not to make it all about you. Your job is to teach, to impart your know-how to others.

And when you’re able to do this well, promoting your blog will happen organically.

Step #4. Speak

Show up to the event, deliver your speech, meet lots of new people, and enjoy converting some new readers!

Editor’s Note:

To improve your chances of landing speaking engagements, make sure you:

Have a website (aka your business card);

Create a 2-3 minute demo video (aka your movie trailer);

Acquire a few testimonials (from people willing to vouch for you).

There’s a lot more to it than we can unpack here, so be sure to check out Grant Baldwin’s post How to Get Speaking Engagements. In fact, browse his entire website, The Speaker Lab. It’s chock-full of helpful information.

#6. Integrate Your Blog with Your Product

Most businesses have blogs that are completely disconnected from their main product.

If you blog for a brand or business, why not align your messaging and integrate your blog posts directly into your UI (for software products) or in your product descriptions and previews (for e-commerce)?

This lets you direct traffic over to your blog and gives your customers a more seamless experience.

How to Fuse Your Blog and Product

For software products, one way to notify people of your newest blog posts is to include a (preferably unobtrusive) in-app notification.

Here’s what it looks like when using Ahrefs:

Click the bell icon and we display a simple drop-down menu listing all our newest content.

So simple, but so effective.

If you have an e-commerce website and your blog posts are educational in nature, you can promote them directly on your homepage.

Beardbrand does this beautifully:

Another way to do this is by scattering in individual links and excerpts of your blog posts wherever they’re relevant. This is how Mr Porter does it:

Time to get creative!

Editor’s Note:

Here’s one more tip that’s missed by a surprising number of business websites…

Include a prominent link to your blog in your website’s navigation menu.

Ahrefs, MeetEdgar, Elegant Themes (affiliate link), and many other smart businesses feature their blogs in their navigation, which helps drive traffic to them.

Here’s how Quuu (affiliate link) does it:

In other words:

If people have to hunt to find your blog ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE, you're doing it wrong.Click To Tweet

#7. Collaborate with Other Blogs

Creating content in collaboration with another blog means you’re able to tap into each other’s audiences and can promote yourself to a whole new set of blog readers.

You can even split the work!

Here’s a post that Ahrefs did with Buffer, a social media management tool:

How to Join Forces With Another Blog

Fair warning:

Collaborating with blogs significantly larger than yours probably isn’t in the cards. However, collaborating with a site similar in size is definitely doable.

Here’s how to get started:

Step #1. Find Opportunities in Your Niche

Look for opportunities to work with blogs within the same niche as yours.

Start by approaching bloggers you have an existing relationship with and ask if they’d like to collaborate. You should leave cold pitching as a last resort.

If you have no idea which blogs to approach, Ahrefs offers a nifty trick:

In Content Explorer, enter a relevant keyword phrase in your niche.

Set the “published” filter to “Last 12 months” and the “Language” filter to “English”. Next, highlight the “one link per domain” option.

Finally, you’ll want to set one more filter: DR (“domain rating”).

The higher this number, the more authoritative the website; however, the more authoritative the website the harder it will be for you to get the blogger’s attention.

In the screenshot below, we set the DR to 40:

This will pull a list of active blogs in your niche.

From here, just sift through the possibilities and pick the ones you’d like to approach.

Step #2. Make Your Pitch

The process is pretty similar to advocating in-person: you need to make your best pitch.

Focus on explaining why you want to work with that particular blogger, as well as how collaboration will benefit them.

Feel free to suggest a couple of topics you feel would work well.

Step #3. Create

Creation time!

Finalize your content with the blogger you’re working with and remember to stay prompt and gracious throughout.

This is not the time to get pushy or rude and make an enemy out of a would-be ally.

Step #4. Publish and Promote

Promote the post to your newsletter and social media accounts. Make sure to tag and give credit to the other blogger too.

Further Reading:

Bloggers Unite! A 10-Point Guide for Blogger Collaboration

How to collaborate with other influencers

How to Collaborate: Examples, Tips & Tools for the Ultimate Influencer-Sourced Content Asset

#8. Repurpose Content Into Other Formats to Reach New Audiences

You’ve spent all this time and effort to create amazing content in the form of blog posts.

Why not get more out of the same piece of content?

Since your customers hang out in multiple places online and have their own preferences when it comes to content formats, you should try to reach audiences beyond blog readers.

And you do that by repurposing your content.

How to Repurpose Your Content

Some examples:

Turn your blog posts into SlideShare presentations;

Take a small section of your blog post and reimagine it as an infographic;

Convert your blog post into a YouTube video.

Or, do it in reverse.

We published a YouTube tutorial on WordPress SEO. It has over 20,000 views and 70 comments — not too shabby.

We decided to turn it into a blog post. Here’s how it performed:

By re-creating our video in written form, we were able to reach an entirely new audience on an entirely different platform.

And the best part?

We didn’t have to come up with fresh content for the post. We took what we already had and created something new with it.

Further Reading:

7 Ways You Can Repurpose Your Old Blog Posts to Get More Traffic

11 Clever Tips to Repurpose Content

#9. Monitor Online Conversations for Opportunities to Promote Yourself

People talk about all sorts of things on the Internet, including your niche.

If you monitor these conversations, you’ll get lots of chances to slide into the discussion, add value, and (subtly) promote your blog.

Here’s a pretty meta example of this tactic in action.

I once mentioned Talkwalker alerts in a blog post I wrote, and an employee commented on the post to provide the link:

How to Monitor Conversations for Promotion Opportunities

Tracking online conversations is surprisingly easy. Here’s how you do it:

Step #1. Set up Your Alert

You can use a free tool like Google Alerts, or services like Talkwalker Alerts and Ahrefs Alerts.

For Ahrefs, go to Alerts, Mentions, +New Alert, and enter your keyword you’d like to track.

What these tools do is send you an email every time a keyword is mentioned on the web.

From there, you can simply follow the link in the email to find out where you’ve been mentioned.

Step #2. Carefully Monitor Your Mentions

Whether your mention comes in a blog article or a forum discussion, look for suitable areas where you can add value.

For example, if you’re a food blogger and you receive an alert for a discussion of a restaurant, it’s your time to shine by talking about your own experience.

However, a word of warning:

It’s extremely important not to shoehorn yourself into conversations.

If you’re clearly only there to advertise your own blog, people will catch on pretty quickly.

So, be sure to link to your own blog strategically, and only after you’d added value to the discussion.

Editor’s Note:

You can also track mentions using Twitter’s advanced search.

For example, let’s say I wanted to find every English-speaking tweet in 2018 that mentioned Jon Morrow by name:

Twitter’s advanced search results would return a veritable smorgasbord of tweets:

Cool, right?

Use this feature to find keywords and mentions that matter to you, roll up your sleeves, and then get to work. The applications are nearly limitless.

Over to You

If you sometimes find yourself lying in bed at night wondering, “how do I increase my blog traffic?”, I feel your pain.

I did my best to stay away from the more common methods of blog promotion, so hopefully you found something new to try.

Of course, not all of the tactics we discussed will be suitable for, or will work for, your blog and your particular niche.

You’ll need to experiment and find what works for you.

When it comes down to it, marketing is always about experimenting — experimenting, failing, and going at it again and again until you succeed.

Now, go forth and get that traffic!

About the Author: Rebekah does marketing and writing for Ahrefs. She doesn’t sit still for long, so catch up with her on Twitter.

The post How to Promote Your Blog in 2019: 9 Creative Strategies appeared first on Smart Blogger.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/how-to-promote-your-blog/

[riusugoi]

Protocols: Duty, Despair and Decentralisation transcript - Matt Dryhurst

https://medium.com/@matdryhurst/protocols-duty-despair-and-decentralisation-transcript-69acac62c8ea  No-one is going to pay for music anymore sufficient to keep scenes as we know them going. At least not in the ways many have been used to. So while some artists might make petty change from digital sales through Bandcamp, my assumption is that those figures will dwindle over time as streaming establishes greater supremacy. My assumption is also that whichever streaming platform wins (as all roads lead to monopoly in this current paradigm), the artists that benefit from that streaming platform will be those that most dutifully satisfy the requirements of the streaming platform, which I think is a very different aspiration than satisfying the requirements of feeding healthy international and local music scenes. When Daniel Ek says he wants “one million artists to live from their work”, I think of one million musicians, sitting in flat shares, stocking playlists for people to shower to. Music from nowhere, for no-one in particular. A far cry from a healthy, or interesting, music community that people in attendance today might care about.  My other assumption is that Spotify won’t succeed. If I were Google, or Apple, or Amazon, I would look at Spotify’s immense burn rate: “they posted an operating loss of $461 million on revenue of nearly $5 billion last year”, and bide my time. From where I stand, Spotify is spending immense amounts of money to reorder the way music works as we know it. They might well eradicate the traditional label and publishing model, by finding new ways for artists to post directly to their platform, locking them into new forms of agreements over their work that also indemnifies them, or any prospective parent company, from legal action over copyright infringing material that might be hosted on their servers. Soundcloud is trying to do something similar with their new agreements, and in lieu of a viable business model appearing, all I read from that is that these are moves to leave the door open to potential acquisition by a bigger fish I don’t think there will be a streaming competitor to Spotify, or whoever might acquire them. Our best bet is to drastically reconsider the value proposition of music. What do people value and what are they prepared to support? the club music economy is resilient in ways that other scene economies are not. Club music, on the contrary, is very much based on location and loyalty, and is more generalised and functional. People go to dance, and are often less concerned with who is playing than what they are playing. The functional underpinnings of most club music are also compatible with the functional expectations of streaming, as both require a fast and steady stream of somewhat anonymous compositions that transition seamlessly into one another. Music to work to. Music to play to. Seamless. This is all well and good, but again we are left asking, what about those musicians who don’t want to tailor their output to a predetermined function?

One of the significant battles we face at the moment is a war between music from nowhere, and music from somewhere. Music designed for instantaneous engagement, and instantaneous dismissal, and music that communicates with an archive. The role of the critic has been under threat some for time, and will continue to lose influence to algorithmic populism, and the kindof process-hack algorithmic manipulation that makes stars on Instagram and Youtube. Spotify and Apple are already hiring journalists to cover the work they promote on their platform, so we will see more hagiographical journalism feeding that system, and the traditional idea of the critic as arbiter of taste, and gatekeeper of the archive, will continue to be eroded. Other gatekeepers, such as labels and niche festivals, will continue to lose prominence over time unless they radically reconsider their value propositions. The end of history? Nope, but the end of an era for sure. The recent announcement that Conde Nast intends to paywall all of it’s publications, presumably including Pitchfork, by 2020 is interesting news. Exclusivity like this might work for the cream of publications, and also might perhaps trigger a snow ball of similar subscription plays by smaller publications. I like it when people pay for things, and we will see how that experiment plays out, but once paywalled, what we understand as the archive might well end up being housed behind those walls. Better that than disappearing altogether, perhaps. RBMA and Boiler Room have been busy creating maps of culture. Maps are valuable, as they allow for the establishment of trade routes. On the one hand, RBMA and Boiler Room are doing a great job, as their models are predicated on the primacy of the kind of cultures that are under threat by the algorithmic populism of say, a Spotify or a Youtube. Contrary to the hackneyed divisions that linger from the past, there really is no “mainstream” or “underground” in this new economy. Under ad-driven platform capitalism, there are either fertile pathways to sell people stuff, or barren and quantified pathways to sell people stuff. It’s a map. I’ve said a million times, in this economy, unique niches (or unexplored corners) are highly valuable. If you are an artist whose practice speaks to a unique intersection, say based on genre, identity, or personal narrative, then you are an interesting proposition to advertisers, as you are prospectively establishing new territory to sell people stuff. Brands, as patrons, want you to establish new territory on their behalf, and be first to that party. So, for example, if now millions of people have the tools to create good-enough-Jeff-Mills-derivative techno tracks, it only makes sense that the distinguishing logic that someone might use to opt to support producer X over producer Y would heavily focus on tangential narrative elements. So much so that these narrative elements become the main source of value when competing with art of similar formal characteristics. Those tangential elements are perhaps better understood as metadata; equally optimal for growing new audiences and courting the interest of brands looking to achieve visibility in new niche markets. The original indie pioneers did a great service to music, but let’s be real, have left us all an impossible legacy to continue. Record sales = money in the bank = options. Period. Options to say no. Options to do wild, and risky things. Who has those options today? Where would the money come from?     So the original indies, as far as I can tell, were predicated on two firm principles: 1.The majors were corrupt, strong armed bad music into the popular spotlight, and ignored radical new developments in music creation and localised scenes that needed to be represented. 2.On the other hand, being independent meant doing what you wanted, however you wanted it, with no-one above you influencing your creative decisions. Self sufficiency basically. People who colluded with brands were considered sell-outs as they had to tame their vision to appeal to a wider audience and secure that funding. I know of more people who cite concerns about the gentrifying effects of transnational cultural institutions spending money across the globe, but lets be honest, indie music scenes of socially mobile young artists were doing just fine at gentrifying neighbourhoods before brand money got involved. So, in the vast vast majority of cases, what is the inconsistency here? Warp, or Dischord, or 4AD, or whatever, aren’t communist enterprises. They aren’t radical free culture enterprises. No. They are and were, for better or worse, entities that made great strides to support the individual visions of unique artists, and helped them to gain prominence in the market for music, and for a period of time symbiotically reaped the rewards from sales of that work. I think that in many ways, the foundational logic of independent music won. Now large portions of the economy are predicated on the promise of individualist independence. Everyone is free to self publish their unique perspective, and hypothetically find an audience for it online. That being said, we hardly live in a utopia as a result. 

It is no secret that many of the original indies were founded by the wealthy, or in many cases by middle class entrepreneurs who could afford to dedicate their 20s to a speculative cultural business. Equal ability to publish something means nothing when only those with the ability to fund promotion of the work are discovered. I’ve said it before, there will be an abundance of free culture, and free time, in the slums. Amazon can produce your product cheaper than you can, and strong arm you out of business unless you work with them. Facebook can acquire any competitor before they become dangerous. Pop music can appropriate and spit out your micro-scene before it has any ability to generate its own momentum, or it’s own funds.

In 2019 we all work for Kanye, only some of us figured out how to get paid for it.

So in the absence of the ability to accrue a foundation of wealth and stability for new music, independent artists who gained prominence via the centralised media channels of the 80s and 90s will reign supreme over the long tail of precarious younger artists until the day they choose to call it quits. The gravitational pull of those artists who established the categories by which playlists, and festival line ups, must orient themselves to reach enough people, dictates that most new music emerging needs to flatter the formal and conceptual foundations of those pioneers.

There is going to be a whole lot more music that flatters the impressive legacies of Aphex Twin, Bjork, Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Aaliyah, Jeff Mills etc as those are the kind of petrified shapes of envelope-pushing music from just before when the volcano of Web 2.0 went off 🌋 .Radical musical culture circa-1996 preserved forever, like the ruins of Pompeii - or as I believe Mark Fisher (or Simon Reynolds, or both??) referred to it, a kind of permanent 1990s.

Well on the one hand, the platform monopolies like Spotify and Youtube are going to continually erode your influence with every new person that comes online. Their algorithms will direct traffic away from your priorities, and towards theirs, and to survive in that ecosystem you will need to satisfy their agenda. Doesn’t sound too independent does it? Journalists will have to write more about what Spotify prioritises. Artists will have to make work to satisfy the debased formal requirements of those platforms. Labels will be shoo-ed off like annoying pests that are messing with the platforms long term vision. Really bad, and a great reason to be really angry at that particular logic of culture.

If your previous raison d’être was to support marginal communities, and weird music, you are probably going to end up being out competed by their models. Models that manage to leverage brand money to support those communities will grow and grow in prominence. The thing is, if you are playing exactly the same game, and one entity found a model to support exactly the same thing that you have supported traditionally, but more effectively, then you are probably going to lose that game. It sucks, but that’s what is likely going to happen.

I think the ‘cultural cartography’ model discussed before is quite precarious, as of course they too need for new and diverse things to actually be happening on the ground in order to maintain the model that they have built. Companies dependent on brand money are always a few emails away from being out of favour. State supported festivals are very fragile to that possibility too. As the popular narrative that Spotify is ‘solving the problem’ of music proliferates further, it is going to become increasingly difficult for people to convince brands, or an increasingly conservative state, that these niche pockets of music we might care about are worth the investment. Stat-supported music, if unimpeded, will come into direct conflict with state supported music.

So I actually think it is in everyone’s interests for new models to emerge.

I think some of those models can be complimentary to the institutions we have today, and some can be wholly antagonistic, and ideally we would see both come to prominence in the next few years for the health of scene development across the board.

As I said before, one reason I see things going south for competitors to the brand-aligned organisations is that they are competitive. You solve this problem quite easily by becoming uncompetitive, and doing something they can’t or won’t do.

One thing brands or their intermediaries can’t do, for example, is distribute ownership under a cooperative model. They literally can’t. But there are all kinds of reasons why that might make sense for various different cultural scenes or organisations.

Co-operativising creates loyalty and an alignment of interests between an organisation, festival, artists and audience.

Co-operativising allows for collective strategising towards common objectives. Rather than funds being ingested to the benefit of one artist, in competition with another, those same funds can be channeled into infrastructure that helps everybody and keeps the culture afloat.

So what of decentralization? To explain what decentralisation is, I’m going to borrow from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin’s model, which is focussed on technical infrastructure but has application beyond that.

He breaks decentralisation into 3 groups:

Architectural (de)centralization — how many physical computers is a system made up of? How many of those computers can it tolerate breaking down at any single time?

Political (de)centralization — how many individuals or organizations ultimately control the computers that the system is made up of?

Logical (de)centralization — do the interfaces and data structures that the system presents and maintains look more like a single monolithic object, or an amorphous swarm? One simple heuristic is: if you cut the system in half, including both providers and users, will both halves continue to fully operate as independent units?

Benefits of decentralisation in the context of music:

1) the network/archive is hard to take down. If Soundcloud fails, what happens to all that music, and the activity around it? If a magazine goes down, what happens to all of that history?

Decentralised, nodal systems like blockchains, or torrent networks, are resilient both architecturally and logically. You can’t cut the head off them. It took the state to take down What.cd for example, such was its resiliency.

Projects like IPFS propose a peer-to-peer immutable web, a web that can never be taken down, fortified by a nodal structure not dissimilar to torrent seeding.

2) regarding political decentralisation, this can be approached by entertaining ideas of common ownership. Rather than a centralised team at Spotify, or Youtube, making decisions that determine how your artwork is distributed, or the logics by which some work is made more visible, and prioritised over other work, politically decentralised networks entertain the possibility of pluralistic and democratic decision making.

3) Decentralised networks, when dealing with an open source code base, also allow for forking. If you don’t the way things work, you are encouraged to take the code and build something that disagrees with it. Over time what this mechanism creates is a healthy competition of ideas, and participant choice.

[makistar2018]

How to succeed in business by being a Taylor Swift fan

Fandom can be an expensive hobby, but there are also ways to get paid for your time and affection.

By Kaitlyn Tiffany Nov 7, 2018

Taylor Swift’s very popular snake jewelry. Big Machine Records

Twenty-two-year-old financial analyst Zainub Amir moved to New York City from Albany last June, around the time that her Taylor Swift news account @SimplySFans celebrated its seventh birthday on Twitter.

The account has 124,000 followers as of this writing, but when Amir started it at the end of eighth grade, there was almost no demand for it. She was alone on Twitter as a Swiftie, she says, with “maybe 30 other fans.” It’s that early adoption of the platform that she credits with her success, and with her permanent place at the top of the Swift fan account hierarchy — it’s too late for anyone else to get this big.

Now Amir has a full-time job and responsibilities to her employer. Also: responsibilities to the 124,000 people who depend on her for news, as well as the management and tour sponsors and brand partners for the biggest pop star in the world, which regularly ask her for help promoting awards shows, limited-edition Keds, and Swift’s every move.

“It’s hard,” Amir tells me, sitting on a corner sofa in her Midtown office building, after most of the lights have gone down but the granola bar wrappers and Lipton tea bags have yet to be scooped from the floor. “The thing is it’s, like, the same thing as texting someone while you’re at work; you just have to be really fast. The whole point of an update account is getting the news first.”

“EVERYTHING COMES DOWN TO SOMETIMES THE SECOND OR MINUTE YOU POST”

To help, Amir has push notifications set up from fan accounts on Tumblr and Twitter, for Swift’s friends and management and publicity team, and, obviously, for Swift herself, who has made a tentative return to social media in recent months after conspicuously vanishingand deleting thousands of posts last August.

“As soon as she posts, I make sure I put it on Twitter. You just have to be quick about it. After a while, it becomes second nature,” Amir says. She does not use Google Alerts, which are too slow. “Everything comes down to sometimes the second or minute you post.”’

That’s because Amir isn’t alone on Twitter talking about Taylor Swift anymore. There are dozens of update accounts, plenty of fans who are willing to take on the job of fandom as a second full-time position. And Swift is far from the only celebrity who draws this kind of cottage media industry around her.

Last summer, I spoke to 19-year-old Yucatán resident Armin Lizama, who runs one of the biggest Lorde fan accounts on Twitter and regularly helps professional music journalism outlets fact-check fan rumors and news items.

Last spring, Harry Styles fans organized to teach each other how to download VPNs and fake US streams of his first solo single “Sign of the Times,” hoping to game the Billboard charts. One account, @StylesPromoTeam, put out a public application to join them, which was longer than a traditional job application and required applicants to state whether they’d be able to dedicate up to 20 hours per week to the cause. This is just how modern fandom operates.

Most of these fans are not doing it to be compensated, but there is compensation to be found nonetheless — like any account with substantial followings, they can charge for sponsored posts and retweets; like any influencer a brand wants to woo, they can expect gifts and trips and special treatment; like any ambitious young person situated in an economy that celebrates optimizing every moment of your life, they can try to use hundreds of hours of self-managed, largely unpaid “fun” labor as a line item on a résumé.

“I don’t really care about how much money I make with it,” Amir says.

Nevertheless, she’ll readily call her account a business.

And as with any business, there are challenges. One is copyright: “Any time a video goes over 30 seconds and it has music or media, anything from Taylor or any of her sponsors, it usually gets picked up by copyright,” Amir explains. “Same thing with photos that photographers are taking, even if it’s Taylor’s own photographers with Getty Images.” They’ll get flagged and removed, and it only takes six or seven violations to get an account suspended, which is a challenge for accounts updating three or four times a day while an artist is on tour, or dozens of times a night when they’re performing and talking and raking in trophies at an awards show.

“Screen record has become my friend. Mainly when it’s YouTube or DirecTV Now, but I have to be careful, which is why I’ve resorted more to retweeting from the source,” she says. She tries not to push it, usually taking clips of around 10 seconds and asking permission whenever she can.

“You want to grow your reach as much as you can, but is it worth getting that copyright notice at the same time?”

All this is why Amir, like many of the other proprietors of major news accounts, has a separate account just for media, which she’ll retweet into her main account’s feed, giving up maximum engagement on her main page in favor of preserving it.

She’s had to learn how to streamline the process, trying to provide a good product without running herself off the road. “There are all these paparazzi pages you can go on and get the image itself, and then you have to delete the watermark,” she explains. “But it’s not worth [the effort] really, because someone’s just going to post it two seconds faster than you.” She’ll ask permission to repost GIFs and videos from fans at tour shows, but only if she’s sure they’re sharing something Swift hasn’t done before. She’ll engage in trending topics only if she has something to add, an image and a great quote, or a video clip short enough to not get pulled. “Otherwise, I’m better off retweeting from the actual source, even though I’m going to lose engagement.”

She had to figure all this out on her own, since other pages are competitors, jockeying for the same audience and the same engagement.

Swift is counting on her, for real. In 2012, before there were very many other major fan accounts, and before Swift’s team really used or understood Twitter, they asked Amir to be the official promotional account of the Red tour.

When Swift joined her favorite social media platform, Tumblr, in 2014, the account was run by her management and only followed five accounts — all update accounts, and one of them Amir’s. “I posted something about the fall, apple picking or something, and I had no idea anybody was reading it,” Amir recalls. “Taylor reblogged it and it was her first reblog of Tumblr, and she ended up adding this whole paragraph about how she loves the fall. So every fall, late August, September, I get so many notifications because people start reblogging that again and again and again. It’s a ritual.”

Being early to two platforms guaranteed that both Swift and her team would be aware of Amir, which means they regularly come back to her — to include her in special fan activities and to do promotion work. (She’s spent time with Swift in person three times in the past six years.)

“FOR ME, IT’S COMMUNITY FIRST; I DON’T REALLY THINK ABOUT THE MONEY.”

Amir says Swift’s management has a list of popular and reliable update accounts that it gives out to her sponsors and brands regularly dole out exclusive content or giveaway items to her and her update account competitors. Dick Clark Productions, for one, will fly fan account operators to awards shows to post updates live, as well as provide them with a stipend to support a vacation day in Los Angeles afterward.

“Either I get compensated through money or through free items,” Amir says. “Or it’s things like free tickets or perks or just being on the inside or being able to go to a release party. Sometimes it’s not directly money-related, but when it is, it’s per post or how many engagements it gets. That’s why stats or using Twitter analytics is so important — so you can say what your worth is. I’ve had it be $300 for retweeting someone before, because it’s a lot of followers and it’s huge engagement. I think the lowest I’ve done is $50.”

“It’s like another job, basically,” she says. But “it isn’t as stable as people think it is with a fan account like this. For me, it’s community first; I don’t really think about the money.”

Madame Tussauds’ Taylor Swift figure, revealed in 2014. Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images

It’s not all profit. “I bought the [last] album five times without really meaning to,” Amir says when I ask about how much fans typically spend to put their affection into practice.

Swift combated the ongoing industry-wide decline of album sales by selling two versions of a limited-edition magazine to go with Reputation last fall, each going for $20 exclusively at Target and each coming with another copy of the album. Buying extra copies of her album also helped fans improve their place in line in Ticketmaster’s controversial Verified Fan program, which sorted fans into a queue to buy presale tickets to her stadium tour.

“EVERY TIME SHE LETS YOU INTO HER LIFE, IT’S A NEW MARKETING SCHEME, BECAUSE IT’S A NEW PART OF HER LIFE THAT YOU DON’T KNOW”

“You want the magazine because you want to see into Taylor’s life; she had to have two different volumes for some reason,” Amir says. “You want the album for the code to put in your Verified Fan thing; that’s your first incentive. And your second is that you want to read these poems that Taylor never released to the world, or pictures that have never before been seen during her two-year [social media] blackout.” The Reputation merch was “trendier” and more expensive than previous Taylor merch, but “as a fan, you tell yourself that you’re just going to compromise and buy it, and you do it without thinking.”

She says she doesn’t want to criticize anyone, but she noticed that Verified Fan tickets were more expensive than regular sale tickets, and says she paid $160 (plus TicketMaster fees) for a decent seat, electing not to spend the nearly $800 it would cost to be in what Swift called “the Snake Pit” at the front of the stage.

“Every time she lets you into her life, it’s a new marketing scheme, because it’s a new part of her life that you don’t know,” Amir says. But again, none of this is criticism. Why shouldn’t a pop star also be a savvy business manager? Why wouldn’t intimacy with her be commodified? These are not contradictions, Amir argues. It’s also not a contradiction that she loves Taylor Swift and benefits financially from loving Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift with Australian fans in 2012. Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Because it involves people, business is almost always personal, but when it involves heroes, it’s even more so.

Amir is Muslim, and she says that made it difficult for her to watch Swift’s quiet refusal to engage with a swirling national debate about basic human rights in the wake of the 2016 election. “I really wanted her to say something, because she does say stuff at her concerts, or to you personally, and she’ll like things on Tumblr.” It’s not as if she didn’t know Swift was on her side. Still, “she never said stuff out there, outside the community, where it makes a difference.”

Swift’s longtime silence on political issues — which ended with an October Instagram postendorsing Democratic candidates for several key midterm election races in her home state of Tennessee, seemingly spurring a massive increase in voter registration in the state — was always in tension with her near-constant willingness to speak up on her own behalf. She has been more publicly involved in her business interests than any artist at her level, championing the 2016 battle against the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which she argued gave YouTube a free pass on copyright infringement, and sitting at the center of the debate about Spotify (and music streaming payment practices in general) for years.

That’s a chapter she closed (somewhat awkwardly) during the lead-up to the release of Reputation last year, but she is still known for her litigious spirit, which she demonstrates by trademarking the names of her cats, attempting to copyright phrases like “look what you made me do,” and sending cease-and-desist letters to Etsy sellers who put her lyrics on homemade apparel.

In each of these cases, Swift isn’t really doing anything other artists wouldn’t (or don’t) do — but because she’s built a reputation as a ruthless capitalist, further news items that fit that narrative are easy to package. Each time she adds a brand to her portfolio — be it American Express or New York City — it looks cynical.

Amir doesn’t see it that way. Swift “reinvents herself just like companies innovate products, and that’s what keeps things exciting,” she says, swirling Swift’s musical evolution and personal brand metamorphosis and business strategy into one blanket compliment. She would understand, as an aspiring businesswoman who worked at a bank all through college, graduated early, moved to New York after interning at PR firms, was briefly the social media manager for a folk-pop duo, and is now looking for a way to blend financial analysis with the marketing skills she’s been honing since middle school.

“Taylor’s been a huge part of my life and the [fandom] community’s been a huge part of my life,” Amir says. “But you mature after a while; you get older. You can’t take days off work to be at an awards show.”

Vox

[062221]

07/08/2022

Today, the sun is comfortable as it melts. I feel like warm honey drying off from the pool. I process while exercising and I can’t tell if it’s working. The pool is salted by tears. I cry and I cry and I cry. I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. But I proceed to make my bed and start anew. Happy for evenings like this, the sun kissing my skin, cicadas singing.

Today, I quiver with fear. I am still trying to get in the habit of stepping up one stair at a time. Climbing where? I catch myself losing to the future. A future of uncertainty, uncertainty that affects my present mind. I’m scared I won’t succeed, with the cards I was dealt. How am I supposed to be satisfied in my present? I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. I’m glad I’m concerned at least. I’m prideful of my ambition.

Today, the world is cruel. The media is influential, the kids certainly aren’t alright. I am 90% inactive on all social platforms as a result. But I wonder if some people think of me. I wonder about people back home, if they envy the happy life I portray online. I still wonder what a lot of people think of me, so I no longer give them something to think about. I no longer have an excessive need to conform, to desire, or compete with anyone else. I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. My life isn’t cookie cutter, and neither are all lives behind each lens. It’s a hard concept to grasp, but I’m learning to simply let go. Especially of jealousy.

Today, I accept that the five stages of grief are present all at once. George is a beautiful relic that I hold onto. He isn’t here but my soul embeds his face into my mind. My heart longs for him, foolishly. I still cry. But I smile. I pray he is well, I hope he is happy and I am glad for my realization that life unfolds and it is okay for people live alternate destinies. I know he doesn’t want me. So I just imagine us- laying out, chain smoking cigarettes, complaining. I imagine the stagnancy we would have, how content I am now that I have no obligation of formfitting to his twisted idea of love anymore. I think of how we still love eachother. I both dread and appreciate that.

Today, my brother is also on my mind. Falling off the horse is no easy task. Getting back up again is harder. To deal with defeat is the hardest. There is no getting back up from a dishonorable discharge. His scenario is almost like dropping out of a bachelors degree just months before graduation. He does have a plan, much like me. He is ambitious, but another as lost boy under the sun. I pray for his strength which prevails. I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. I hope he isn’t as mentally sick as I am. I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. I know he is okay in the arms of aunt Sylvia much like I am, just at a distance. I fight the urge to call/burden her but I know she is always available. Busy but always available and always supportive.

My days are emotional rollercoasters, though as the klonopin kicks in, I start to reflect. As I am now, I still carry heavy weight. It manifests in my throat like sobbing, in my heart like breaking, and in my intoxicated facial expression like a night on the town. I wonder, I pray, and sit uncomfortably too often. I slow down and swim into ease knowing all is well and I’m still breathing. It is a gift I am wasting, but a sign of encouragement and perseverence. It is a gift that I am using more frequently, and a gift that I’m learning to use strategically throughout my trek on this road to recovery. Breathing in hardship and breathing out optimism.

And getting inside the house before the mosquitos feast at 8pm

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND INDICATOR

Below is the result of your feedback form is an instant giveaway. Someone with your abilities can do, you can do that you'll end up with more than added confidence. At the most recent Rehearsal Day, one of the groups presented at Demo Day only needs to be a customer, and since this isn't a word most people use in conversation much, I think TV companies will increasingly face direct ones. It's easy to convince investors there will be more mobility within it.1 Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders will not invest their time in a startup. Free If you do this on HN. The melon seed model implies it's possible to be too disciplined. And yet the one implies the other.2

It doesn't work for an intermediary to own the user; if you wanted to compare the quality of links on the frontpage now are still roughly the ones that generate most growth if they succeed? In fact, it could be so much more distracting that I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job.3 Recursion. The purchase price is just the beginning. Stuff used to be the middle course, to notice some tokens but not others. Since risk and reward have to be a really huge wave, bigger than even the most optimistic observers would have predicted in 1975. The mud flat morphs into a well. It's in these more chaotic fields that it helps most to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. A Plan for Spam filter wouldn't have caught it.

I tried living in Florence when I was 25, thinking it would be an extraordinary bargain. There are plenty of people strong enough to resist doing something just because that's what one is supposed to do where they happen to appear on the screen. We can of course counter by sending a crawler to look at the page. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters. Not all cities send a message.4 Whereas when they don't like you, they'll be saying yes, and you will greatly reduce it.5 What's changed is the ability to translate wealth into power.

Apple continues to maltreat them. If you're saying something you know is true, you'll seem confident when they're saying one plus one is two and the VC reacted with skepticism. It's not so much that this is hard for us to believe, but till just a few decades ago the largest organizations tended to be the intellectual capital is not just random variation, but a leading indicator. And since there are only a handful each year the conventional wisdom. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox. I'll wait till I'm sure they work before writing about them.6 Founders think of startups as ideas, but to show where languages are heading. This limitation went away with the arrival of block-structured languages, but by then it was too late. In practice this seems to work much as in LA.

064. Everyday life gives you no practice in this. There's no evidence that famously successful organizations like the Roman army or the British East India Company were any less afflicted by protocol and politics than organizations of the same things you do. Small meant small-time. But partners and suppliers are always complaining. Economic inequality will be as bad as they sound. There seem to be counting multiple times tend to be short. In practice this seems to work: it consists of willfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition.

Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. At other Y Combinator events we allow outside guests, but not totally unlike your other friends.7 Internet is an open platform. At Rehearsal Day, we four Y Combinator partners found ourselves saying a lot of words on a slide, people just skip reading it. This is in contrast to Fortran and most succeeding languages, which distinguish between expressions and statements. Founders at Work.8 So get to work. Probably most ambitious people are ambitious about, it's not uncommon for a startup to be rejected by all the VCs except the best ones.

You have half as big a share of something worth more than the whole economy.9 Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Then demo. Steam power was a sliver of the British economy when Watt started working on it. It's not something you have the means to finish. Filtering is an optimization problem, and the weather's often bad. It's that way with most startups too. How much would it cost to grow a startup to that point?

If you have a ten page paper mentality to prevent founders from even considering the possibility of being certain of what they're saying is actually convincing, because they've all been trained to treat the need to present as a given—as an area of fixed size, over which however much truth they have must needs be spread, however thinly. What's more, it wouldn't take very long. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. Suddenly a culture that had been more or less united was divided into haves and have-nots.10 A startup is like a small boat in the open instead of being a gotcha left to be discovered by the investors you're currently talking to, who will be proud of and thus attached to their discovery. Before they can judge whether you've built a good x, they have to run later.11 I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of startups.12 All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff.13 That's the characteristic failure mode of VCs. One is simply that they trained their filter on very little data: 160 spam and 466 nonspam mails. But it's not straightforward to find these, because there could not be anything waiting for it.14 Should Apple care what people like me think?

Notes

In fact the less educated ones usually reply with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate. That should probably be a founder, more people. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably no accident that the graph of jobs is not to be redeveloped as a high school is that if there were already profitable.

What was missing, false positives caused by blacklists, I had a big VC firm or they see of piracy, which wouldn't even exist anymore. More precisely, while everyone else and put our worker on a valuation. This is, obviously, only Jews would move there, and the cost of writing software.

Xxvii. There are fairly high spam probability. In When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation reaches a certain threshold. More precisely, this is mainly due to the writing of literary theorists.

Now to people he meets at parties he's a real partner. In fairness, I mean by evolution.

In oil, over fairly low heat, till onions are glassy. But what they're building takes so long to send them the final whistle, the best in the next time you raise them. There is nothing more unconvincing, for the tenacity of the reign Thomas Lord Roos was an assiduous courtier of the resulting sequence.

There are two non-broken form, that it killed the best startups, but instead to explain it would have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. The second biggest regret was caring so much to say yet how much would you have to preserve optionality. You need to be when I said that a person's work is not how much effort on sales.

Heirs will be regarded in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, incidentally, because some schools work hard to avoid using it out of the iPhone SDK. Founders are often unknowns.

Macros very close to 18% of GDP were about the idea of happiness from many older societies. Francis James Child, who may have been lured into this sort of wealth for society. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a reactor: the process dragged on for months.

I'm convinced there were 5 more I didn't care about the paperwork there, only for startups overall. To be safe either a don't use code written while you were. But there's a special recipient of favour, being offered large bribes by the leading scholars in the next Apple, maybe you'd start to feel like a knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between wisdom and probably harming the state of technology.

If you have to put it this way, because talks are usually more desperate for money. Most computer/software startups are often mistaken about that. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the ordinary sense. Except text editors and compilers.

I once explained this to some founders who are both genuinely formidable, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this type are also the highest price paid for a startup is taking the Facebook that might produce the next year they worked together mostly at night to make it.

Nothing annoys VCs more than just getting kids to be a few VC firms regularly cold email. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus ca.

Related: Reprinted in Gray, Donald J. I wasn't trying to capture the service revenue as well.

Doh.