#i think it’s different when it comes to amazons bc they’re all subjected to this treatment

[starlooove]

Why are y’all so mad abt jayara it’s literally not that serious 😭💔

[thelargefrye]

YEARNING FOR YOU. kang yeosang (18+)

── summary. you’re just within reach and yet every time he tries to get to you, you vanish right before his eyes... again and again and again.

── roles. mage!yeosang + mage!f!reader (ft. poly!mage!ateez & other idols)

── genre. smut + one-shot + mages + magic shop + supernatural + mythology + historical to modern day + romance + eventual poly relationship + angst + drama + reincarnation (most of these are for the overall story not necessarily this one-shot)

── word count. 3.3k

── warnings. nightmares + language + sub!yeosang & dom!reader + kissing + little hair pulling + one moment of spanking + anal fingering + handjob + degrading + amazon position + y/n is mentioned to have tattoos 

── developer’s note. happy birthday @atiny-piratequeen​ !! this is just a small something that i’m working on that’s inspired by against the tide !! i figured that since i probably might not get the whole story done by your birthday bc i’ve already been working on it for two weeks and i’m only still doing world and backstory building rip then i would just share a small piece that included yeosang. i’m still working on characters and personalities so anything you read here is subject to change by the time i get the first official chapter out. 

when the door to the shop chimed, yeosang didn’t bother looking up from his book he was reading. he knew that usually customers – humans at least – would just look around before leaving or come up to mindlessly flirt with him. it was the same thing every time the bell dinged. 

he could hear the customer’s shoes, heels to be exact, softly thudding across the old wooden floors as they strolled around the small shop. his hearing could pick up where exactly in the shop they were, so when they finally started nearing the back to where he and register were, he assumed this customer just wanted to flirt with him like always. 

“um, excuse me,” yeosang’s head shot up immediately at the sound of the familiar voice. you stood in front of him also with a look of shock from how quickly yeosang moved and his eyes flickered down to the canvas in your arms. 

“o-oh, um, hi. how can i... how can i help you,” yeosang says as he tries his best to relax, but honestly he doesn’t think he can, not when you’re here in front of him and talking to him. 

you smile softly at him before handing over the canvas you had in your hands, “this is the painting hongjoong asked me to paint. he told me i could find him and the rest of you here. is he, um, is he here by any chance?”

“huh? oh, yeah is he, let me go get him!” yeosang had never moved so fast before as he practically jumped off his stool and ran to the back to get the group’s leader and tell him you’re here. 

“y/n’s here!” yeosang says probably a bit too loudly and maybe just a little too excitedly but he hasn’t seen you in centuries. he has a right to be happy to see his missing lover. 

hongjoong isn’t by himself in the back, all the others are basically here too, except for jongho and san who had gone out to get information on how to help you remember your first life.

“she is? why?” mingi asks, a look of shock drawn on his face knowing you’re here just in the other room. 

“she brought the painting hongjoong asked her to paint,” yeosang says and hongjoong is quick to go to the front and yeosang picks up on how hongjoong greets you with a cheery tone. 

at first yeosang thinks about staying in the back and letting you and hongjoong talk for a moment, but his need to see you again overcomes that he heads back to the front of the shop. he hears the others coming up behind him as he does and he figures the others couldn’t wait either. 

a wave of memories washes over him as he sees you and hongjoong interacting so closely. all the times he would see you and hongjoong interacting on the utopia, all the lingering stares and touches you thought no one else saw, but in reality everyone saw.

he misses you. they all miss you. 

“wow, y/n, this is beautiful,” hongjoong can’t take his eyes off the painting you gave him and you have a proud look on your face as your eyes flicker between the male and the painting before you slowly look up and over at where him and the others are. 

“oh, i didn’t know you all worked here as well!” you say and greeted them all with a smile. 

“i actually own this shop,” hongjoong says and you turn to look at him in shock. “my grandmother ran this shop before passing it down to me before she retired.” yeosang couldn’t help but slightly snicker at how hongjoong called hyuna a grandmother. 

“really? that’s so cool! i had actually never been in this shop before until today,” you offhandedly as you glance around the shop some more. “oh!” you say catching the six males off guard as they watched you dig through your bag before pulling out eight envelopes. “siyeon is throwing a party and wants me to invite you all!” you say handing each other an invitation before giving jongho and san’s to wooyoung. “i hope you all can make it!”

“of course! we’ll do our best to be there,” hongjoong says, but yeosang knows that all eight of them are definitely going especially since you’re going to be there. “also, thank you again for the painting, it really is beautiful.”

“oh, of course! i’m glad you like it, i always enjoy painting sea related stuff, so this was a blast to paint,” you explain with a small laugh. “well, i should be going! i promised siyeon i would help her with party decisions, so... i’ll see you all around,” you say bidding the males goodbye before turning on your heels and leaving the shop. 

yeah, yeosang and the other are gonna have to work fast.

𐂴𐂴𐂴

sometimes when yeosang misses you, he’ll find himself remembering the time when you all were together on the utopia. he’ll remember how you use to help him in the kitchen, acting as both a hand and taste-tester to him. 

all the heated gazes the two of you shared being the reason for his flushed face that he would blame on the heat in the kitchen when the others would question him. although he was sure the others didn’t believe because his magic dealt with fire, so some kitchen heat was nothing for him. 

but no matter what the same thought still comes to him. he just misses you. he thinks that over and over again until he falls asleep and you appear in his dreams. 

it’s silly he knows it, mainly using his magic in order to ensure that you appear to him. he has sweet dreams when you are with him and others all enjoying your time together; however, the moment he remembers that none of it is real and that you are living a completely different life without remembering them, without remembering him. it all turns into a nightmare. 

and its always the same. the same day he and the others are forced to remember and sometimes relive again and again for centuries. 

“yeosang, wake up!” 

his eyes snap open and he feels hot, his bangs matted to his forehead with sweat and his eyes are immediately trying to get used to the darkness of his bedroom.

that voice... he thinks as he brings his hands up to cover his face. huh? was he crying? 

“yeosang,” he hears it again and sounds so close to him. right next to him and he feels like he’s still dreaming. but he turns his head and his brown orbs meet your own worried eyes as you sit next to him in his bed. 

“y/n...?” he reaches out to touch your cheek, his hands caressing your face and he gasps when he realizes you’re real and next to him. 

“why are you crying, love?” you ask him watching as he sits up. you reach over to brush his tears away before he suddenly takes you in his arms. “did you have a bad dream, yeo?”

yeosang doesn’t trust his words so he just nods his head as he nuzzles his head into your neck. “it’s okay,” you say softly, rubbing his back in comfort, “i’m here and nothings going to happen while i’m here. i promise.”

yeosang has heard you say those words before and it only makes him cry harder. you said that to him the first time you woke him up from a nightmare. you would always take him into your arms and hold him and wipe away his tears and tell him it’s okay and it’s all in the past. 

when yeosang does finally calm down, tears no longer running down his face, he slowly pulls away from you to lay back down. you lay down right next to him, pulling the blanket up to your chins as you brush hair away from his face. 

“i love you,” he says as he feels himself slowly falling back to sleep. you smile sadly at him, a hand still running through his hair as his eyes finally close. 

𐂴𐂴𐂴 

seonghwa was jealous, yeosang was 100% sure of that. the ice mage’s glare could probably set someone ablaze if he had fire magic instead. and honestly, yeosang doesn’t blame his boyfriend for being jealous because he was as well. 

“and who the hell is that?” wooyoung was the one who spoke up, shocked like seonghwa and himself at the sight of you talking to this unknown male. 

well, unknown to them at least. you seemed to be pretty close to the male, too close if yeosang or any of the others could say anything. 

“do you think they’re...” mingi didn’t want to say it out loud, probably knowing how much chaos he would cause among them if he did. 

yeosang wanted to be upset. upset at you for potentially going and falling in love with someone that isn’t them, but he couldn’t. he couldn’t be upset at you because this you, the one standing not too far from him and his seven lovers, this you isn’t the same you he met all those centuries ago. 

you don’t remember the love you shared and it broke yeosang’s heart. 

his eyes flickered over to seonghwa noticing the furrow in his eyebrows before he looks over to hongjoong who is just staring at you with sadness. then his eyes go back to you and this male who are sitting closely next to each other. the guy looks at you with such a softness that it reminds the fire mage of how seonghwa looks at all of them, with love. 

the male plays with the ends of your hair, running it over your face in a teasing manner that makes you laugh and yeosang would be lying if he said your laugh didn’t make his heart flutter. 

yeosang misses you.

𐂴𐂴𐂴

yeosang can’t help but sigh as soon as his body hit his bedsheets. he felt clean and relaxed after a long day of working in the shop below them and dealing with both humans and supernatural creatures alike. 

while he was staring up at the ceiling, he closed his eyes and started to doze off. he’s not sure for how long his eyes were closed, but he only opens them when he feels his bed dip. 

looking over he was greeted by the sight of you in little to no clothing and a warm smile on your face. 

“y/n, what are you doing?” yeosang was more than surprised to see you in his room. he was quick to sit up with a shocked expression as he moved so he was sitting right across from you. 

“what do you mean, yeo? i’m visiting you of course!” you say cheerfully. 

yeosang looked over you and he noticed the familiar tattoos that decorated your right arm. “you’re not real, are you?” he asked as he bowed his head so you couldn’t see his face. 

one of your fingers reached under to tilt his chin up and you looked at him with a gaze, “i’m as real as you want me to be,” you say with a smile as you leaned over and kissed him. 

yeosang immediately allowed you to take the lead. your lips guiding his as you ran a hand threw his hair and gently tugged on it causing yeosang to moan into your mouth as your tongue explored his mouth and while also teasingly play with his own wet muscle. 

yeosang was melting into the kiss, his hands coming up to your waist to pull you closer to him with your chest flushed tightly against his. when you pulled away from the kiss, yeosang tried to follow after your lips making you let out a small laugh at how cute he was acting. 

yeosang only looked at you with slightly dazed eyes, still not fully believing you are here in front of him which allowed you to push at his shoulders, making him fall on his back and into the softness of the bed. 

“y/n... please,” he whines as you hover over him slightly, both your hands caging his head to the bed as you look down at him. 

“what yeo? what do you want me to do?” you ask with a teasing smile, god, he hasn’t seen this smile in centuries. 

“p-please, please fuck me,” he chokes out and your smile turns into a grin as you trail your finger down the center of his body before it stops at the towel he still had wrapped around his waist. 

“want me to take it off?” he nods without hesitation, “words.”

“yes!” and the towel was unwrapped from his hips and now he was completely bare to you. his cock was only semi-hard when you removed the towel and yeosang watched as your fingers ghosted over the tip, just barely grazing it. “please touch me, don’t tease me,” he begs and you hum before wrapping your hand around his cock and slowly began stroking it until it was fully hard and an angry red, his pre-cum only just slowly starting to appear at his tip. 

he let out a string of whines and curses as you began moving your hand suddenly at a fast pace without warning. yeosang’s back arched off the bed, but your free hand came down to hold him still to the bed before you suddenly stop stroking him. 

yeosang watches you as you move in between his legs before grabbing the underside of his thighs, giving them a good squeeze before hoisting them up to his chest. when you let go of his legs, yeosang immediately went to hold them in place as his face was flushed a bright red. 

you cooed at him as you leaned over his bent body and kissed him before pulling away to look at his ass that was now on full display for you. his hole tight and pink as you played with it, wiggling just the tip of your index into him before pulling out. 

“you’re so tight yeo, does none our boys fuck you open enough?” yeosang moaned at the degrading tone you had laced in your voice. “that’s okay though,” you begin adding a firm smack to both his asscheeks, “i can just fuck you open myself.”

yeosang wanted to come with there and then at your words, but he only settled for letting out a few moans instead. he knew the minute he came then it would all be over. he watched you quickly stand up and go over to his bedside table and dug through the draw before pulling out a bottle of lube. 

yeosang watched as you squeezed the clear liquid substance into your palm before he felt you apply it to his hole. he moaned at the cold feeling it gave him as you rubbed it around his puckered hole before applying more to your fingers. fuck, he couldn’t hold his excitement as he felt your index probe at him before slowly slipping inside him. 

“f-fuck– oh god, please!” he moaned out, throwing his head back as you eased him open. your movements were slow, almost too slow as if you were messing with him and he looked over to meet your eyes. 

when you finally entered a second finger he felt his eye roll back as you started to pick up the pace a bit in your thrusting. yeosang let out a broken fuck as you slowly started hitting his prostate before grabbing his dick with your free hand and stroked him in time to your fingers thrusting in and out of him. 

“does that feel good?” you ask and yeosang can only nod as his head fell back onto the bed. you frown at his nonverbal response and quickly stop both your hands making his whine as you remove your finger from him. “i asked a question yeosang, so answer it,” your voice sent a chill down his back as if it was seonghwa speaking to him. 

“it does, it feels good,” he says, face burning red, “b-but...”

“but what? what do you want?” 

“please, let m-me... let me be inside you,” he says and you coo once more at him before you lean over him once more. your nose brushing his from how close you are. 

“do you deserve to be inside me? you may have a nice dick, but do you think you can use it to pleasure me?” you ask, raising an eyebrow and yeosang felt his dick twitch from between the two of you at you questioning tone. 

“p-please, y/n, please u-use me to pleasure you,” he says out of breath and you let out a small laugh as you sat up and slowly grind down on his dick. the fabric of your underwear slightly damp from your growing wetness and causes yeosang to moan at knowing how close he was actual to you. 

“do the others know how much of slut you are?” you ask with a small laugh, “i’m sure they know how much you like to be used. hm, don’t they?”

“t-they do,” yeosang stutters out as he watches you move off of him to take your underwear off and he feels a chill run down his spine as you hover back on top of him to take his dick in your hand a position it at your entrance. 

“is this what you want?”

“y-yes!” you smile as you sink down on his length with a moan. yeosang lets his mouth drop open as you start to bounce on his length, the sound of your skin meeting his joining the sound of his and your moans. 

“f-fuck, yeosang!” you moan as yeosang takes you all in. his eyes fall on your chest which was still covered and he lets his legs go for a moment in order to unclasp your bra. you take your bra off and throw to the side now allowing yeosang the ability to see you completely bare now. 

god, how he missed this sight and he was glad you were using his legs as support for yourself because this allowed him to roam his hands over your body.  

getting lost in his pleasure he accidentally thrusted up making you glare at him before stopping, “toys don’t move, so still or i won’t let you cum,” you say and yeosang nods letting out a quiet y-yes before you continued between bouncing and moving your hips in figure-eights. 

yeosang felt himself grow closer to his orgasm and you clenching around him doing nothing but bringing him closer. “i-i’m c-close! please y-y/n! let me–

he own choked moan cut him off as he felt you clench around him as you came with a loud moan and a whimper of his name. you coming was enough to finally send yeosang over the edge as he took in the sight of you climaxing, knowing you used him to reach your own pleasure. 

it took you a moment before you slid off of him and next to him. you were quick to get him to put his legs down which felt a little sore from the position he held for so long. 

while he caught his breath he felt you reach over and press different kisses all over his face making him smile. you pressed a final kiss to his lips before cleaning him up and helping him under the covers. 

“i love you, y/n, please don’t disappear,” he says as you hold him close to you under the covers of his bed. you remained silent, only slowly running a hand through his hair and lulling him to sleep.

eventually, yeosang closed his eyes welcoming sleep as he fell asleep in your arms. 

when he woke up the next morning he was greeted by an empty bed and yeosang can’t tell if what he experienced last night with you was even real or just a dream. with a sigh, he gets up and starts to get dressed before heading out of his room and to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for himself and the others.

“i love you, too.”

[sootbird]

Hi sootbird :) I was wondering how you study Japanese, like, what materials or books do you use, do you attend a class or are a disciplined self-study person? I've tried several methods and apps and such and so far, nothing really turned into a routine for me...

Hello!! To answer your question about my own personal Japanese study, I took five years of Japanese classes at my university and have a bachelor’s degree in it. Right now, I’m self-studying, because I’m still not where I want to be in terms of fluency. It takes a fair bit of discipline, but I think it’s fun and I’m a big nerd so I like to study it every day. ;;

I’m so excited you’re interested in learning Japanese!! It’s such a neat language. I’m not entirely sure how to advise self-study straight from the beginning, but I can try! I’m sure there are lots of resources online for learning Japanese (it’s a fairly popular language to learn these days), but I also have a slew of books that I can recommend to you. Some are books that I used at school in my classes, and others are books that I acquired on my own over the years. The textbooks tend to be more expensive bc they have a lot of material, but I do think they’d be useful for beginning self-study, because you do need some sort of foundation before you can branch out on your own. I do think that having materials made me feel like I was properly studying it and I think has encouraged me to keep up with my self-study!

Textbooks:

Nakama books

These are the textbooks I used in my beginning classes. Nakama 1 was for first year, and Nakama 2 was for the second year. I think they’re pretty good books, and you can rent them for a semester on Amazon it looks like.

Genki books

I haven’t used these textbooks, but I have friends who did use them in their Japanese classes, and I’ve heard good things about them. I recommend checking the reviews and seeing which book series (Nakama or Genki) you wanna go with. Of course, if you feel like splurging, you can always get both and cross-reference them.

Other books: These are other books that I use to supplement my study. AKA you don’t need them right away.

A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar -- Makino/Tsutsui

The Handbook of Japanese Verbs -- Kamiya

A Dictionary of Japanese Particles -- Kawashima

All About Particles -- Chino

The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs -- Kamiya

Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication -- Kamiya

The first step you wanna take before anything else is learning how to read and write the Japanese syllabaries. Japanese doesn’t use an alphabet like English does. Instead of the written characters representing individual sounds, they represent syllables. Let me illustrate this with an example: the Japanese word for “heart” is こころ. As you can see, there are three characters there. When written in Roman letters, it is spelled “kokoro.” Six letters in our alphabet, but only three Japanese characters. The syllables in that word are “ko,” “ko,” and “ro.” You can see how the writing system is syllable-based.

Japanese has two syllabaries. The first is called hiragana. The second is called katakana. The syllables represented by these two systems are exactly the same, but the syllabaries are used differently. Hiragana tends to be used more, and katakana tends to be used for loan words (words from other languages that have been integrated into Japanese). I’ll use “kokoro” as an example again.

Here is “kokoro” in hiragana: こころ

Here is “kokoro” in katakana: ココロ

The use of hiragana versus katakana is something you’ll get used to with experience, but it’s important to know BOTH syllabaries. I didn’t learn katakana well enough at the beginning and it haunts me to this day. Don’t rely too heavily on romaji (the writing of Japanese words in Roman letters) because the Japanese don’t use it. Only use it as a pronunciation tool at the beginning. I do use romaji on a romaji-to-Japanese keyboard I have on my phone, but that’s really just a matter of convenience and for quicker typing.

Learn both of the syllabaries and practice writing the letters as you go. I recommend using a fun pen! After that, the textbooks can tell you what to do next. (The textbooks do tell you how to learn hiragana and katakana as well at the start, if you need more guidance than the internet gives you.)

Here are some other important resources that will be a big help to you:

Dictionary app: A Japanese dictionary is gonna be really important and I find that it’s handy to have one on your phone. I don’t know about Android, but the App Store has a few of them. I use one that’s just called “Japanese Dictionary” and it’s got a red icon.

Online dictionary: If you can’t get your hands on a dictionary app or if you’re on the computer, you can use this great online Japanese dictionary called Jisho. I use it frequently when I’m on my computer.

Flashcard app: Flashcards are gonna be your best friend. I recommend getting a good flashcard app. The one I use is Anki, and I have it on my phone and on my computer. You can download it for free on your computer and I think it’s free for Android. I have an iPhone and I had to pay 25 bucks for the app but I’ve heard that there’s a free version on the App Store too? It might just have ads, but I’m not sure. Anyway, Anki is great because it will make note of the flashcards you’re having trouble with and give them to you with more frequency. There are also a lot of decks that people have uploaded to the Anki website, so you can find all sorts of community-made Japanese decks that you can import (I think you have to import a deck on the desktop version, but then you can sync it up to your phone). 

And finally, some things to keep in mind before starting Japanese. 

Japanese is generally agreed upon to be a pretty difficult language to learn (for English speakers at least). As a native English speaker, I would agree that it is kinda hard. The general sentence structure of English is subject-verb-object. In Japanese, that structure is subject-object-verb. Since the verb is at the end of the sentence, it can be tricky to switch your brain around to the order.

A lot of people will also tell you that kanji is a nightmare. Kanji are the third element of the Japanese writing system, and are characters borrowed from Chinese. In fact, Japanese did not have a written form until the 5th century, and all of it came from Chinese. Kanji characters however, have mostly retained their resemblance to Chinese characters. They more closely resemble traditional Chinese characters, and visually look like a step between traditional Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters.

Anyway, they may look quite complicated and there are a lot of them. But you will learn to love them, and they’re so fun to write. This is a kanji-positive zone so if you ever get stressed about kanji come chat with me and I will reassure you.

Here is a book I am currently using to effectively memorize kanji, and I highly recommend it. It’s beginner-friendly.

So, you may get stressed out by Japanese and maybe by all the information I just gave you, but don’t worry!! It’s a very fun language to learn and anyone can learn it if they put their mind to it! I believe in you! Come back and ask me if you have any questions.

Thank you for the ask and I hope this helps!!

[anthonycrowleymoved]

i'm not exactly sure what all the neilm*n discourse is re: a/c, but like...i kinda like that it's open to interpretation bc then i can read them as ace~ like me!

ok i’m answering this because i feel like i can explain this relatively succinctly here: i don’t care how people view the a/c relationship. it’s the fans at this point. if fans view them as friends or ace or gay or something else, that’s fine! it’s up to you! i may not agree with your interpretation of the characters, but it’s yours to do with as you wish! 

and i know that you didn’t ask this, but i don’t really find the show all that queerbaity - if anything, i view it as a romantic narrative done chastely, which i don’t think was neil’s intention, but it was the director’s and actor’s (based on interviews). they never pulled a no-homo and, also - stating this if you’re new - throughout the time before the show came out, neil was steadfast in saying they would not explicitly together (the advertising campaign devised by amazon was a bit different, but that’s another story for another day). if you view it as platonic, though, that’s also fine and valid. but regardless, in my opinion, at the very least it wasn’t a classic queerbait situation. up until this point.

what grinds my gears is twofold: the first - most pressingly - is neil’s current behavior. if you’ve been here for a while, you know neil’s perspective has steadfastly been ‘view it however you want but leave me out of it and we wrote it platonic.’ which is TOTALLY okay and valid and even kind compared to some other authors i could name. the PROBLEM is that as soon as people watched the show - not lgbt book fans like myself, who he probably thinks would have viewed it as romantic regardless, but news outlets and mainstream fans and people who have never read the book, in large numbers - and said that it tracked as romance, he decided to flip his view. the view he’s steadfastly preached for THIRTY YEARS. he’s started posting and retweeting and responding to things where people are explicitly reading them as non-straight and non-platonic. which, if that was actually his intention, would have been great! but the reality is up until this week he’s said that he’s viewed aziraphale and crowley as platonic, and it smells like he’s flipped primarily for the #ally points. it’s gross and i see right through him.

in addition and less importantly are the people who are looking at what he’s saying now and taking it as canon. either they’re reading it as “oh they’re gay and always have been and neil approves” which. i can assure you isn’t true. or they’re taking it and saying “oh they’re ace/something else” and getting pissed when people who ship them are making their relationship sexual when it isn’t and are “taking away asexual representation” (which has been a thing on and off for a while it’s just more vocal now when i go into the tag because there’s more people) and it’s like. bro i have Been Here longer than you let me live yanno. also death to the author what he said is meaningless especially since nothing is explicitly stated in the show OR book (before you come at me for “angels are sexless” i remind you that “unless they make an effort” directly followed it and aziraphale COULD thanks)

ANYWAY that’s a pretty complete easy to digest summary of my opinions. done now i never want to touch this subject again thanks.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE TROUBLE WITH THE BUBBLE GOT RIGHT

Some would-be successors both directly, as Roger Bannister did, by lodging the idea in users' minds that a single man in possession of a good programming language should, like oil paint, make it available, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will; the rest will still be scooping ice cream. Some VCs will offer you an artificially low valuation to see if the results are distinctly inferior. Right now, VCs often knowingly invest too much money chasing too few good deals. Another powerful motivator is the prospect of an immediate reward to motivate you. William the Conqueror distributed the estates of the monasteries to his followers, the conflict was military. And usually the acquirer doesn't pay till the developers have proven themselves. Hundreds if not thousands of conversations of this type by teachers, because I have to admit it's one of those rare, historic shifts in the way math or history or most other university subjects do. The most efficient way to reach me, how are you going to create a named function to return.

The people are the foundation of Yahoo Shopping. After two years, the red delicious apples that were red but only nominally apples. The sentence structure and even the words are different. Arguably a market is such a valuable technique that any company that needs to happen first.1 It seemed to me this couldn't possibly matter. Even with us working to make things happen, because otherwise they become implicit vote up if you believe we can improve it, which probably averages about five years. Instead of saying that is that no city with a dead center could be turned into a startup. Gradually you realize that existing conventions are not the main reason I wrote this talk for a high school.2 They want to feel safe, and death is the topic adults lie most conspicuously about to kids. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the next thought would have been too slow to become profitable.3 If you want to do, and even so it can't compete with Facebook.

In the times when they weren't, philosophy was hopelessly intermingled with religion. During this time you'll do little but work, because we often have to work quite closely with them for three months—so closely in fact that place was the perfect quality to instill in their kids, so it's time to buy.4 And yet because of the slow sales cycle. Ambition May 2008 Great cities attract ambitious people. Was Amazon supposed to say no. When I say Java won't turn out to be enough. To have a sense of humor is to shrug off misfortunes, and to him they looked wooden and unnatural.5 How do you do that?6 I was talking recently to a founder who considered starting a startup could well become as popular as it deserves to be famous on that account. This varies from person to person. Online dating is a valuable thing. VCs intimidating and inscrutable.7

Yahoo that grad students can do it mostly on your own projects. To answer that we have to rely on customs to protect us. But after I'd been there a few months by buying an additional disk drive. But a company with 100 people will feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious identity is one of the taboos a visitor from the future would agree with us most of the rest. When you can ask it of even the most successful startups have elements of both. How to Make Wealth May 2004 This essay was originally published in Hackers & Painters. Also, common spelling errors will tend to bet wrong. Why call an auction site eBay?8 You can also be in closer touch with your code. Experts have given Wikipedia middling reviews, but they were so short, nothing really had to happen; you could simply be a source of deals.9 The obvious way to solve this problem, without waiting for the line to collapse.

It's practically the standard ending in blog entries—VCs 650 33. For sufficiently small audiences, it may not be a student?10 But what they're really saying is they want both. Patent trolls are just parasites.11 And since one person can only manage so many deals, each deal has to be ignorable to work. So the language is brief to a fault. Being available means more than being installed, though. The spammers are businessmen.

This is actually a lot happier now that they didn't have to try new things, some old rules don't apply.12 Faced with the idea of reusability got attached to object-oriented techniques to do in the 90s, and OkCupid looks likely to do this if they're close in the VC business when that happens. You can ask it in real time. Not better off, as more than one function refers to the same cause: Gates and Allen wanted to move back to Canada and live in their parents' basements. If I was any good, why didn't they start them? There was then a fashionable type of program called an expert system, at the end, just as they'll do things in your early 20s that you can't find another? You can do this or not, you're planning to disprove the Pie Fallacy.13

Notes

So where do we draw the line that philosophy will suffer by comparison, because you're throwing off your own time in the comment sorting algorithm. Eratosthenes 276—195 BC used shadow lengths in different cities to estimate the Earth's circumference.

I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about, like hedge funds, are better college candidates. And while we might think it was 94% 33 of 35 companies that grow slowly tend not to need common sense when intepreting it. Google will pay for stuff online, if you sort investors by benevolence you've also sorted them by the same thing—trying to make that their prices stabilize. Even Samuel Johnson said no man but a lot of companies used consulting to generate all the difference between surgeons and internists fleas: I should degenerate from words to their software that doesn't lose our data.

This essay was written before Firefox.

Predecessors like understanding seem to be so obsessed with being published. The idea is to start a startup. The other reason it's easy to write in a request.

For example, there is money.

In practice sufficiently expert doesn't require one to be about web-based applications greatly to be on the process of trying to focus on the spot, so they had to push founders to overhire is not Apple's products but their policies. The only launches I remember about the idea that was really only useful for one another, it may be some formal measure that you have to deliver these sentences as if having good intentions were enough to defend their interests in political and legal disputes. This is the same lesson, partly because it depends on them, but the returns come from going to work on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end a series. If that worked, any claim to the principles they discovered.

Patrick Pantel and Dekang Lin. What people usually mean when they say this is so plausible, the term whitelist instead of hiring them. But scholars seem to like to fight back themselves. Because it's better if everything just works.

But although for-profit prison companies and prison guard unions both spend a lot to learn to acknowledge as well use the wrong side of being watched in real time. Not startup ideas is to carry a beeper? He had equity.

If asked to choose between great people. 05 15, the more powerful, because outsourcing it will have to be the only cause of poverty. Startups that don't scale.

At the time I had no choice but to a partner from someone they respect. A knowledge of human anatomy. So, can I count you in a large number of restaurants that still requires jackets: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China, during the Ming Dynasty, when the company, and 20 in Paris.

This is one way to make a conscious effort. Incidentally, Google may appear to be redeveloped as a naturalist.

The expensive part of this talk, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs. You may be underestimating VCs.

Many people feel good. I've learned about VC inattentiveness. But he got killed in the case. See Greenspun's Tenth Rule.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Steve Melendez, Robert Morris, and Reid Hoffman for sparking my interest in this topic.

[bintaeran]

Interview with Charlotte Bell, Author of "Hip-Healthy Asana"

Interview with Charlotte Bell, Author of "Hip-Healthy Asana" Nina Zolotow

by Nina

I'm pleased to announce that today is the release date for Charlotte Bell's latest book Hip-Heathy Asana: The Yoga Practitioner's Guide to Protecting the Hips and Avoiding SI Pain! You can order this important book from Amazon, Shambhala Publications, Indie Bound, or your local bookstore. Would you like to know more about the book? Yes, I thought you would. That's why I did a rather in-depth interview with Charlotte that I'm featuring today so you can learn why she wrote a whole book about how to keep your hips healthy with yoga and what her basic approach is to hip health.

Nina: Can you introduce yourself to our readers? What is your yoga background? And what are your previous publications?

Charlotte: I began practicing asana in 1982. My first teacher was a student of Indra Devi. Six months after I started practicing, I moved to Salt Lake City and connected with teachers in the Iyengar tradition. I studied in that tradition for decades. My most influential teachers have been Donna Farhi, Judith Hanson Lasater, and Elise Miller. I began practicing Insight Meditation in 1986 with Pujari and Abhilasha Keays, also certified Iyengar teachers, and regularly attend retreats there and at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. I’ve taught yoga, mostly in Salt Lake City and the surrounding area, but also in San Diego, Vancouver, BC, and Volcano, Hawaii. 

I’ve been writing a yoga column for CATALYST Magazine for about 10 years, and also write for Yoga U Online and the Hugger Mugger Yoga Products blog. Previous to writing my book Hip-Healthy Asana, I wrote two books that were published by Rodmell Press and are now a part of Shambhala Publications’ list: Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice and Yoga for Meditators: Poses to Support Your Sitting Practice.

Nina: After writing your previous books, what made you decide to focus an entire book on yoga for healthy hips? 

Charlotte: I became very interested in the subject of hip-healthy practice after being blindsided by a hip x-ray indicating that there was significant degeneration in both my hip joints. I had thought that because I was flexible and had kept myself in good shape that my hips were immune. Nothing I did in yoga practice felt uncomfortable, even the most extreme poses. What I didn’t know then was that cartilage has no enervation. This means that you don’t feel degeneration until your cartilage is gone and your joint is bone on bone. 

All of my most influential yoga teachers, at some point, suggested that I focus on stabilizing my joints instead of pushing my natural flexibility. But I was under the mistaken impression that yoga was about becoming more and more flexible. Because of this, it fed my ego to be the most flexible person in the room so I just kept pushing my flexibility. 

These days, I think that there’s even more pressure to perform the “advanced” poses that push your joints to their limits. People who post photos of themselves doing some of the really crazy poses on Instagram get lots of encouragement and kudos. As yoga has become more popular, the extreme poses, which, in reality, most people’s structures will never be able to perform, have become the gold standard. 

While I know that my particular genetic inheritance, specifically hip dysplasia, is the reason for my bilateral hip replacements, I also wonder if the crazy poses I used to practice may have sped the process up. So my idea in writing this book is to give yoga practitioners an alternative viewpoint that might help them prevent problems further down the road.

Nina: I’m very glad you’re taking on this topic because I know that hip problems, including hip joint wear and tear as well as SI joint problems, are a kind of “dirty secret” in the yoga community. In a nutshell, what is your basic advice for yoga practitioners to help avoid hip injuries and/or problems.

Charlotte: There are many reasons that people’s hip and SI joints degenerate and destabilize when they practice yoga. Some people are more prone to problems than others simply because of differences in structure. So it’s a bit of a challenge to come up with some sort of blanket, anatomy-based advice. 

If there were any advice I could give about the mechanics of practice, I’d encourage people to question alignment cues, to take time to feel the effects of them on your own body. There’s really no single instruction that is going to fit everyone. Some of the alignment “rules” that have persisted for decades don’t make anatomical sense and can even cause hip and SI joint problems. Instructions such as squaring your hips in standing poses have been taken as gospel for decades. My experience with this particular instruction is that it really doesn’t make sense for most people’s bodies. 

The intention you bring to practice determines the eventual results of your practice. That’s why a good portion of Hip-Healthy Asana addresses intentions for practice. Here are a few suggestions invite exploration into how you approach your practice:

Do your own practice. Comparing your practice to someone else’s is not productive. We all come into the world with very different structures. Some people’s hip sockets are shallow; other people’s are deep. The location of hip sockets on the pelvis and the angle of various hip sockets can be very different. The size, curvature, and angle of the femur shaft can be really different. All this means that no two people’s yoga poses are going to look the same. Comparing yourself to someone else is truly futile, and trying to emulate someone else’s practice can cause injury. 

Develop an inner reference system. Mindfulness goes hand in hand with healthy practice. As I said earlier, we won’t feel the effects of pushing too far into our hip joints if our cartilage is still intact. So shifting your intention from pushing into your edge to gently approaching your edge—and even staying a bit inside your edge—will help you keep your joints within their healthy range of motion. 

Stability is as important as flexibility. We all know that being too stiff is a form of imbalance. But most people who practice yoga don’t recognize that being too flexible is also a state of imbalance. Practice to find a balance between mobility and stability. Practice stabilizing poses, such as balancing poses and standing poses, to build strength. 

Nina: And what about people who already have these types of problems? 

Charlotte: It’s important to understand that everyone’s practice has to change according to the reality of their present situation. I had SI joint instability for years that often turned into painful sciatica. Because of this, I had to alter my practice, which meant giving up some poses I really liked that were exacerbating the problem. Pigeon Preparation pose was one of them. Not only do we come into the world with our own unique structures, but our bodies also change over time. We need to be flexible enough (pun intended!) that we can let our practice evolve with us.

Nina: I once wrote a post called Not All Yoga Poses Are Created Equal, in which I said that some poses should probably not be practiced every day while others were safer for regular practice. What are your thoughts about that? And, if you agree, which poses do you think should be practiced only occasionally and why. 

Charlotte: That’s a great post! I like to use a food metaphor for this idea: There are certain poses that are like vegetables. They’re the basics that provide sustenance and should be the foundation of your practice. In general, these are the simpler ones: standing poses, balance poses, restorative poses, and gentle twists, backbends, and forward bends. Then there are the “fancier” poses, which are more like dessert. They can feel good to do once in a while, but they don’t provide sustenance. If you do these so-called “advanced” poses every day, you’re more likely to suffer imbalances. 

The extreme “fancy” poses, such as putting your ankle behind your head, have no evolutionary purpose in terms of helping us maintain health or grace in performing our everyday activities. In fact, destabilizing or degrading your joints from practicing too forcefully can make everyday movements more painful and difficult. It took decades, but I’ve finally given up the desire to do these poses. I no longer feel there’s something I need to prove. Maybe that comes naturally with age or maybe it has to do with having gone through two hip replacements. Even though my titanium hips are every bit as flexible as my original ones were, I just have no desire to practice the fancy poses anymore. They don’t serve my ability to move through my life.

So, in a nutshell, I’d say that the poses that can help you do the things your physical body needs to do to accomplish your daily tasks are the staples. Poses that help you sit, walk, run, squat in your garden, climb stairs, and get down onto the floor and get back up are the poses that should be a part of your daily practice. 

Also, it’s important to vary your practice. Practicing the same poses every day can cause repetitive strain injuries over time. Tune into what your body needs on a given day. 

Nina: Do you have anything else you’d like to say to our readers about hip health? 

Charlotte: Yoga practice can’t grow your cartilage back if your hip joints degenerate to the point where they need to be replaced. But it can help you move through the process of replacing your hips with greater ease. A committed foundation of asana practice can help you recover much more quickly. 

If you do find yourself facing a hip replacement, be thankful that the technology is improving all the time. In the year and eight months between my two replacements, the hardware changed slightly and the post-surgery and physical therapy protocols changed for the better. My hip replacements truly gave me my life back. I wouldn’t be walking today, let alone enjoying yoga practice, if it hadn’t been for my hip surgeries. Every time I find myself wandering the gorgeous landscapes in my adopted home of Utah, I feel grateful for the technology that helped me regain my ability to hike. 

Nina: What are you up to these days? And are you planning to tackle any new topics? 

Charlotte: I’m doing a lot of writing and editing, for Hugger Mugger Yoga Products and Yoga U Online. I really enjoy getting to read the articles on Yoga U—including yours—because I always learn something new. I’ve enrolled in a two-year mindfulness teacher training program that starts next January, so that will keep me busy, along with my own classes and workshops. I continue to flesh out my workshops on healthy hips. There’s so much more to learn! 

I’ve got a few ideas in mind for a possible new book topic, but I need to develop them a bit more before I’ll feel ready to write a proposal. I’m pretty sure my next writing project will lean more toward philosophy and meditation, but I’m not sure exactly what it will be yet.

Charlotte Bell began practicing yoga in 1982, and started teaching in 1986 and has taught yoga continuously since then. Certified by B.K.S. Iyengar, she teaches classes, workshops and teacher trainings. In 1988, she began practicing Insight meditation. She teaches asana and beginning mindfulness classes at Mindful Yoga Collective, the studio she founded in 2013. Author of two books, Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life: A Guide for Everyday Practice and Yoga for Meditators, Charlotte has written for Yoga Journal, Yoga International, CATALYST Magazine, Yoga U Online and the Hugger Mugger Yoga Blog. For more information visit charlottebellyoga.com.

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